Immigrant Students Value School More

In sharp contrast to fears that new immigrants will weaken the nation's social fabric, researchers at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) have found that immigrant students hold much more positive views of school and school authority than their nonimmigrant peers.

Harvard researchers examined attitudes of four different groups of adolescents: non-Latino whites; second generation U.S.-born Latinos; newly arrived Mexican immigrants; and youth in Guanatajuato, a Mexican town with high levels of emigration to the United States. In comparing these groups, the researchers assessed Latino values, attitudes toward school, and achievement motivation.

"Our sample of Mexican immigrants -- by far the largest group of new immigrants to the U.S. -- reveals cultural attitudes and values that seem highly conducive to a productive life in the United States," wrote study authors Education Professor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Research Associate Carola Suárez-Orozco, both at GSE. "The U.S.-born youth reveal more dystopic attitudes toward school and school authorities."

The research team also noted that white students typically complain of boredom in school, while immigrant students seldom do. "White American students tend to display ambivalent attitudes toward school and, particularly, school authorities.... On the other hand, immigrant students tend to articulate much more positive associations toward school and school authorities. These students were not bored and alienated, but appreciative and gratified. Likewise, their attitudes toward school authorities were positive."

The GSE findings were presented in a paper titled Worlds Apart: Generational Discontinuities and the Latino Experience in School at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Feb. 10.

Differing Themes among Groups

To explore attitudes toward family in relation to school, the researchers asked the students to tell narratives in response to a card with a drawing from the Thematic Apperception Test. The card selected was one designed to elicit themes of achievement orientation, parent-child relations, and family values.

Researchers found that the themes of the student stories tended to vary by group. White adolescent stories tended to have themes of frustration and family discord about the pursuit of a task. Immigrant students tended to tell stories with themes of sadness, internalized concerns of adequacy, and their desire to seek help from their families. Second-generation youths told stories with themes of parental pressure, concern with failure, and a sense of hopelessness.

"Whereas immigrant students revealed an optimism and faith that through hard work, success was possible, many of the second-generation youths told stories in which failure was a significant preoccupation," the researchers wrote. "The energy and faith in making it that is characteristic of immigrant students seems to have significantly diminished by the second generation."

Further Differences

Although all groups reported that school is important to them and to getting a good job, the immigrant youths were much more likely to value school and schoolwork than their Mexican or U.S.-born peers.

Among U.S. students, the researchers found significant differences in attitudes toward school, school authority, and family. They also found:

* White students are the most likely to have negative attitudes toward school; immigrant students' attitudes are overwhelmingly positive.

White American students were the most likely to have negative responses to their own school (42 percent) and had the lowest percentages of positive responses (20 percent). For immigrant youngsters, 88 percent gave a positive response when asked about their school and only one student included a negative term. The rest were neutral.

Second-generation Mexican-American students revealed similarities to both their Mexican-born and white American peers. Sixty-six percent gave a positive response; 20 percent had negative associations, and the rest were neutral terms.

* Immigrant students are far less likely to view school authority figures negatively.

Forty percent of white American students gave negative responses when asked about their school principal, while only 10 percent of immigrant students did so. Immigrant responses were over 60 percent positive. Second-generation student evaluations of the principal were split 32 percent negative and 32 percent positive. The researchers noted that the students, coming from the same school, were evaluating the same principal.

* Immigrant students have a strong commitment to learning English.

Many immigrants spontaneously referred to learning English as essential to their future success, the researchers noted.

Conclusions

In evaluating their findings, the two researchers conclude that the difficulty second-generation Mexican-American youth experience with school "cannot be attributed to cultural background."

Instead, they posit a shift in achievement motivation as students assimilate to the majority American culture. "It seems as though the more acculturated students are, the more skeptical and ambivalent they become about schools," the researchers wrote. "Second-generation Latino youths may be assimilating to the American adolescent paradigm of ambivalence toward authority and school. In addition, other factors such as the stresses of minority status, discrimination, alienating schools, economic hardships, and pressures to work may all contribute to ambivalent attitudes and low achievement in school among members of this population."

Background on the Research

The researchers surveyed 189 students distributed evenly among the four different groups of adolescents: non-Latino whites; second-generation U.S.-born Latinos, newly arrived Mexican immigrants; and Mexican youth. The U.S. informants were selected from a middle school and high school in a rapidly growing immigrant-receiving area in southern California. The Mexican informants were selected from one school in Guanatajuato, a Mexican town with high levels of emigration to the United States.

The study is part of a larger exploration of immigration and cultural issues Marcelo and Carola Suárez-Orozco are pursuing. This work includes the book Transformations: Immigration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation among Latino Adolescents published last month by Stanford University Press. Material in this paper drew on work funded by the Spencer Foundation.