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Subtractive Schooling Chapter Summary

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One particular class that has influenced me tremendously is my Ethnic Studies 130 course, the Chicano/Mexican-American Experience with Professora, Dr. Julie Figueroa - a badass professor most definitely. In her class we read the book, “Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring” by Angela Valenzuela. In this book, Valenzuela thoroughly explains her three-year ethnographic study “of academic achievement and schooling orientations among immigrant Mexican and Mexican American students at Juan Seguin High School in Houston, Texas” (p. 3). As I only hope you get to read this book, I understand by your time there will be numerous more books out talking with new data so I will summarize the chapters in the next paragraphs for you because i think it is important for you to know of this book.
In chapter 2, Seguin High School in Historical Perspective: Mexican Americans’ Struggle for Equal Educational Opportunity in Houston, Prior to 1970, Seguin was predominately all …show more content…

While immigrant youth may gain useful knowledge and skills, they miss out significantly on culture resources because they become Americanized. Subtracting schooling occurs in a variety of ways. Classifying ESL (English as a second language) are labeled “limited English proficient rather than as Spanish dominant” (p. 173), faculty and staff linguistically butcher names through mispronunciations, materials such as the school handbook that does not even mention the ELS program are not provided in English, and information is withheld from capable youth which can result in failure. This chapter also addresses the divisions among youth such as Latina female friends, religious immigrant males, immigrant females in trouble, ESL students, mixed generation groups, and U.S. born

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