Immigrant Hysteria, Immigrant Students and The Framing of Immigrant Schooling in “Made in America”
Oscar Medina
The history of immigration to the U.S. is peculiar but interesting. At several points in U.S. history, the nation has welcomed immigrants, but today, in times of economic and political turmoil, immigrants have increasingly become the scapegoats of America’s social problems. Recent policies at the federal level best exemplify these anti-immigrant sentiments. The passage of the border protection, anti-terrorism, and illegal immigration control act H.R. 4437 in December of 2005 demonstrates how nativists in the House of Representatives (who are considered public servants) have reacted in hostile manners to the flow of immigration. H.R. 4437 would have criminalized anyone affiliated with undocumented immigrants; thus, teachers, priests, and social workers would be charged with a federal felony if caught assisting undocumented immigrants. These nativists who supported such bill were left exposed, showing their ignorance as they caused an uprising of hundreds of pro-immigrant marches and rallies throughout the country. Never in U.S. history has this country witnessed massive rallies and marches in the thousands like on the days of March 25, April 9, and May 1 of 2006.
This was not the first attack on immigrants in the U.S. In the 1990s California experienced numerous attacks; in 1996 the passage of the “Save Our State Initiative” proposition 187 attempted to deny social services, health care, and education to undocumented immigrants residing in California. Following this proposition another anti-immigrant initiative struck in 1998. Proposition 227, the “English for the children” initiative banned bilingual education programs in public schools.
Today anti-immigrant forces like the minutemen continue to be fueled by right wing academic rhetoric like Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political science professor who recently published a book that dedicates an entire chapter titled “The Hispanic Challenge” to warning his readers explicitly about the large influx of Latino immigrants who pose a major threat to U.S. protestant culture. Huntington argues that compared to other immigrant groups Latinos fail to assimilate into “American culture.” However, Huntington’s primary concern is not the assimilation of Latinos but rather the transforming identity of the traditional Anglo-Protestant U.S, shifting to a more diverse multicultural identity.
On that note, diversity and multiculturalism is at the forefront of recent books centered on education and immigration. Laurie Olson’s book Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools is one of the few emerging critical texts that detail how immigrant students are excluded in American high schools. Her book takes the readers deep into examining how Madison High School fails to embrace immigrant students, diversity and multiculturalism. The following best conveys her sentiments as she embarks on her story: The story of one school [Madison High school] is…fundamentally a reflection of those wider struggles about immigration and its impact on our society, the struggle with responses to cultural linguistic and ethnic diversity, and the ways in which this nation turns to schools to mediate crises over diversity (Olsen, pg.15). This paper will identify and analyze how Laurie Olson’s book Made in America frames and narrates immigrant high school students at Madison High School with a moral undertone of inclusion, diversity and multiculturalism.
First, I describe Olson’s core ways of explaining how immigrant youth (“newcomers”) are incorporated into the U.S. secondary education system. I discuss the methodology and positionality she takes. Then I provide an example of the way Olsen frames and narrates the moral discourse on incorporating “newcomers” into Madison high. Which leads to discuss the style in which Olsen book is written. Last but not least, I discuss how Olsen’s theoretical lens guided the moral narrative of her book. I conclude by locating Olsen’s book as an informative and well-crafted piece of literature that details the issue(s) affecting immigrant students in American public high schools.
When I began reading Olsen’s book it reminded me of a book that I had recently read by Angela Valenzuela’s titled Subtracting Schooling. Valenzuela also conducts an ethnographic investigation; however her site is Juan Seguin High School in Houston, Texas. Olsen’s book takes place at Madison High School, located in the East Bay of Northern California. Valenzuela’s high school is composed primarily of Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant students whereas Olsen’s high school serves a racially and ethnically diverse mix of students—immigrant and U.S. born. Lastly, Valenzuela writes academically on how schools subtract students’ culture and subjugate students to an educational environment where teachers and administrators “don’t care,” which consequently creates a negative attitude of “not caring” among students. Olsen’s work resonates on a different terrain, where the concern is on how schools negotiate and incorporate immigrant students. Furthermore, Olsen’s ethnography is a compelling moral narrative that details the process of how immigrant students are excluded, sorted and incorporated at Madison high school.
Olsen’s Methodology
Olsen spends two and a half years at Madison high school to compile a story of a diverse and multicultural urban high school that excludes and academically separates and sorts immigrant students from “regular” high school students. Olsen documents Madison High from inside the classroom, on the quad, and through observing life and talking to people on campus. She interviews faculty members, administrators and roughly four-dozen students at Madison high school and in the “Newcomer school.” Olsen opens in the introduction by identifying and positioning herself within her book as the “story teller, anthropologist and advocate,” which I believe makes her narrative strong and story tenacious. She states her position within the first few pages of her text, providing the reader with her academic background and political stance. As a white woman, Olsen articulates that she has a deep ideology on the matters of diversity, racial and language relations that position her within the struggles she attempts to record at Madison high (pg.22). These quotes best summarize her positionality and identity: I walked into the world at Madison High with my own concerns, interests, and lenses – and I held to these … as an activist and person in a position of some leadership in the immigrant education movement, my work aside from this piece of leadership was full of a sense of urgency about the need for institutions to address fully the diversity to their communities. How could I continue to try to be a fly on the wall, a neutral documentator of the struggle over immigrant education issues? (pg. 23,25) Throughout Olsen’s ethnography at Madison high, she keeps three formal journals, each representing three very different lenses and concerns. One journal is her story journal, the other is a formal field journal and the third is a personal journal. The notes in each journal helped guide her moral narration of her story of Madison high.
Olsen’s Story
The central theme that frames Olsen’s book is her perceived analysis of how the Americanization process operates to racialize “newcomers” at Madison High School. This process is best described in the chapter titled “The Maps of Madison High: On Separation and Invisibility.” In this chapter Olsen illustrates how students draw a social map of their campus solely on racial fault lines. She was able to do this with the help of a history teacher who had each of her classes do the same assignment. Students were to observe and describe why social groups on campus formed based race. The assignment was a brilliant methodology but also dangerous. Brilliant because students became ethnographers and sociologists at their own school, interviewing their peers and trying to make sense of the social groupings at Madison high; dangerous because students were prone to distort a group’s representation, which could provoke or lead to deepening segregated lines rather than encouraging integration. Ultimately the purpose behind the assignment was to see how immigrant students were perceived on the school grounds by “regular” U.S.-born students and to see how immigrant students perceived “regular U.S. American” students at Madison high. The social maps made by immigrant students and “regular” high school students demonstrates how students label and draw lines among other students based on national identity, skin color, culture and language. Using this student assignment, Olsen was able to illustrate how a multiracial urban high school faced internal segregation on campus amid its diverse (immigrant and U.S. born) student body.
Olsen’s Writing Style (Genre)
Olsen’s book is written in a non-academic style, making it an easy read for a large and diverse audience. The writing style has the potential to touch schoolteachers, administrators, policymakers, college students and parents, but also anyone with an interest to read what occurs inside California’s contemporary urban high schools. Despite its non-academic style, Olsen’s book can be used in several academic disciplines such as ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, women studies, immigration studies, education, etc, specifically to convey the treatment, experience and issues affecting immigrant students and the effortless response of schools to serve this student population. Her ethnography is powerful, detailed and simply well crafted, making her story a straightforward read.
Theoretical Foundation that Guides Olsen’s Narrative
I appreciate how Olsen references her theoretical foundation, located in the political and social reproduction theory, class and economic relations, and race relations. These three theoretical foundations guide Olsen’s story to focus primarily on racial and economic theories of reproduction and resistance. She best exerts her theoretical lens by selecting to hone in on the school as an institution attached to larger structures of government, and considering the role of the faculty and administrators that work to hold the structure together. In other words, Olsen uses this theoretical lens to narrate the phenomena (systemic and structural practices) affecting immigrant students at Madison high.
Olsen further opines that although diversity is spoken of as a valued commodity among Madison’s faculty and administration, they see no need to accommodate their structures or practices to serving their immigrant student population. Also, at the core of her narration is the administration’s refusal to cater to "special students" (immigrant students) and their adamant assertion that they must treat all kids equally (i.e. identically). By conveying the administration’s ignorance, Olsen posits that treating all students the same when their needs are different, results in unequal access and outcomes.
Conclusion
The narrative that Olsen takes up is one of great value. She joins a moral narrative on the status of immigrants that argues both that immigrants have a right to be in the U.S., and that “multiculturalism” as a social attitude fails to justly address the needs or desires of immigrants. She provides a critical inside look at the structural inequities immigrant students confront within Madison High as part of a larger educational institution. The book convincingly addresses the myriad problem at Madison high school e.g. the politics of bilingual education, inclusion, exclusion, racial identity, racial tensions, meritocracy, tracking, multiculturalism, affirmative action, gender roles, etc. Olsen lays out countless problems that Madison high and the state of California face. She gives her attention to the failing leadership of the school, district and state as schools accomplish an Americanization project at the cost of “newcomer’s” national identity, language and culture. Her ethnographic methods of interactive participation and in-dept interviews with students, faculty and administrators support the theoretical framework she sets forth. Lastly, the non-scholastic style she takes to tell her story of Madison high is intellectually rich and vividly crafted. My only concern is at the end of her narrative, which leaves the reader in a state of unease, with only a speckle of light in the midst of a dark tunnel. She mentions the power and ideologies of the right wing forces - their anti-immigrant sentiments, not mention their so-called color-blind utopia and their myths that inequities are the result of individual capabilities and efforts. Olsen concludes with little hope that the conditions for immigrant students will begin to take a turn for the better.
Worked Cited
Almaguer, Tomas (1994). Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA.
Huntington, Samuel P. (2004). Who Are We? The Challenge to America’s National Identity. New York. Simon & Schuster Press. NY.
Olsen, Laurie (1997). Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. The New Press New York, NY.
Valenzuela, Angela (1999). Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. State University of New York Press. Albany, NY.
The history of immigration to the U.S. is peculiar but interesting. At several points in U.S. history, the nation has welcomed immigrants, but today, in times of economic and political turmoil, immigrants have increasingly become the scapegoats of America’s social problems. Recent policies at the federal level best exemplify these anti-immigrant sentiments. The passage of the border protection, anti-terrorism, and illegal immigration control act H.R. 4437 in December of 2005 demonstrates how nativists in the House of Representatives (who are considered public servants) have reacted in hostile manners to the flow of immigration. H.R. 4437 would have criminalized anyone affiliated with undocumented immigrants; thus, teachers, priests, and social workers would be charged with a federal felony if caught assisting undocumented immigrants. These nativists who supported such bill were left exposed, showing their ignorance as they caused an uprising of hundreds of pro-immigrant marches and rallies throughout the country. Never in U.S. history has this country witnessed massive rallies and marches in the thousands like on the days of March 25, April 9, and May 1 of 2006.
This was not the first attack on immigrants in the U.S. In the 1990s California experienced numerous attacks; in 1996 the passage of the “Save Our State Initiative” proposition 187 attempted to deny social services, health care, and education to undocumented immigrants residing in California. Following this proposition another anti-immigrant initiative struck in 1998. Proposition 227, the “English for the children” initiative banned bilingual education programs in public schools.
Today anti-immigrant forces like the minutemen continue to be fueled by right wing academic rhetoric like Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political science professor who recently published a book that dedicates an entire chapter titled “The Hispanic Challenge” to warning his readers explicitly about the large influx of Latino immigrants who pose a major threat to U.S. protestant culture. Huntington argues that compared to other immigrant groups Latinos fail to assimilate into “American culture.” However, Huntington’s primary concern is not the assimilation of Latinos but rather the transforming identity of the traditional Anglo-Protestant U.S, shifting to a more diverse multicultural identity.
On that note, diversity and multiculturalism is at the forefront of recent books centered on education and immigration. Laurie Olson’s book Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools is one of the few emerging critical texts that detail how immigrant students are excluded in American high schools. Her book takes the readers deep into examining how Madison High School fails to embrace immigrant students, diversity and multiculturalism. The following best conveys her sentiments as she embarks on her story: The story of one school [Madison High school] is…fundamentally a reflection of those wider struggles about immigration and its impact on our society, the struggle with responses to cultural linguistic and ethnic diversity, and the ways in which this nation turns to schools to mediate crises over diversity (Olsen, pg.15). This paper will identify and analyze how Laurie Olson’s book Made in America frames and narrates immigrant high school students at Madison High School with a moral undertone of inclusion, diversity and multiculturalism.
First, I describe Olson’s core ways of explaining how immigrant youth (“newcomers”) are incorporated into the U.S. secondary education system. I discuss the methodology and positionality she takes. Then I provide an example of the way Olsen frames and narrates the moral discourse on incorporating “newcomers” into Madison high. Which leads to discuss the style in which Olsen book is written. Last but not least, I discuss how Olsen’s theoretical lens guided the moral narrative of her book. I conclude by locating Olsen’s book as an informative and well-crafted piece of literature that details the issue(s) affecting immigrant students in American public high schools.
When I began reading Olsen’s book it reminded me of a book that I had recently read by Angela Valenzuela’s titled Subtracting Schooling. Valenzuela also conducts an ethnographic investigation; however her site is Juan Seguin High School in Houston, Texas. Olsen’s book takes place at Madison High School, located in the East Bay of Northern California. Valenzuela’s high school is composed primarily of Mexican-American and Mexican immigrant students whereas Olsen’s high school serves a racially and ethnically diverse mix of students—immigrant and U.S. born. Lastly, Valenzuela writes academically on how schools subtract students’ culture and subjugate students to an educational environment where teachers and administrators “don’t care,” which consequently creates a negative attitude of “not caring” among students. Olsen’s work resonates on a different terrain, where the concern is on how schools negotiate and incorporate immigrant students. Furthermore, Olsen’s ethnography is a compelling moral narrative that details the process of how immigrant students are excluded, sorted and incorporated at Madison high school.
Olsen’s Methodology
Olsen spends two and a half years at Madison high school to compile a story of a diverse and multicultural urban high school that excludes and academically separates and sorts immigrant students from “regular” high school students. Olsen documents Madison High from inside the classroom, on the quad, and through observing life and talking to people on campus. She interviews faculty members, administrators and roughly four-dozen students at Madison high school and in the “Newcomer school.” Olsen opens in the introduction by identifying and positioning herself within her book as the “story teller, anthropologist and advocate,” which I believe makes her narrative strong and story tenacious. She states her position within the first few pages of her text, providing the reader with her academic background and political stance. As a white woman, Olsen articulates that she has a deep ideology on the matters of diversity, racial and language relations that position her within the struggles she attempts to record at Madison high (pg.22). These quotes best summarize her positionality and identity: I walked into the world at Madison High with my own concerns, interests, and lenses – and I held to these … as an activist and person in a position of some leadership in the immigrant education movement, my work aside from this piece of leadership was full of a sense of urgency about the need for institutions to address fully the diversity to their communities. How could I continue to try to be a fly on the wall, a neutral documentator of the struggle over immigrant education issues? (pg. 23,25) Throughout Olsen’s ethnography at Madison high, she keeps three formal journals, each representing three very different lenses and concerns. One journal is her story journal, the other is a formal field journal and the third is a personal journal. The notes in each journal helped guide her moral narration of her story of Madison high.
Olsen’s Story
The central theme that frames Olsen’s book is her perceived analysis of how the Americanization process operates to racialize “newcomers” at Madison High School. This process is best described in the chapter titled “The Maps of Madison High: On Separation and Invisibility.” In this chapter Olsen illustrates how students draw a social map of their campus solely on racial fault lines. She was able to do this with the help of a history teacher who had each of her classes do the same assignment. Students were to observe and describe why social groups on campus formed based race. The assignment was a brilliant methodology but also dangerous. Brilliant because students became ethnographers and sociologists at their own school, interviewing their peers and trying to make sense of the social groupings at Madison high; dangerous because students were prone to distort a group’s representation, which could provoke or lead to deepening segregated lines rather than encouraging integration. Ultimately the purpose behind the assignment was to see how immigrant students were perceived on the school grounds by “regular” U.S.-born students and to see how immigrant students perceived “regular U.S. American” students at Madison high. The social maps made by immigrant students and “regular” high school students demonstrates how students label and draw lines among other students based on national identity, skin color, culture and language. Using this student assignment, Olsen was able to illustrate how a multiracial urban high school faced internal segregation on campus amid its diverse (immigrant and U.S. born) student body.
Olsen’s Writing Style (Genre)
Olsen’s book is written in a non-academic style, making it an easy read for a large and diverse audience. The writing style has the potential to touch schoolteachers, administrators, policymakers, college students and parents, but also anyone with an interest to read what occurs inside California’s contemporary urban high schools. Despite its non-academic style, Olsen’s book can be used in several academic disciplines such as ethnic studies, sociology, anthropology, women studies, immigration studies, education, etc, specifically to convey the treatment, experience and issues affecting immigrant students and the effortless response of schools to serve this student population. Her ethnography is powerful, detailed and simply well crafted, making her story a straightforward read.
Theoretical Foundation that Guides Olsen’s Narrative
I appreciate how Olsen references her theoretical foundation, located in the political and social reproduction theory, class and economic relations, and race relations. These three theoretical foundations guide Olsen’s story to focus primarily on racial and economic theories of reproduction and resistance. She best exerts her theoretical lens by selecting to hone in on the school as an institution attached to larger structures of government, and considering the role of the faculty and administrators that work to hold the structure together. In other words, Olsen uses this theoretical lens to narrate the phenomena (systemic and structural practices) affecting immigrant students at Madison high.
Olsen further opines that although diversity is spoken of as a valued commodity among Madison’s faculty and administration, they see no need to accommodate their structures or practices to serving their immigrant student population. Also, at the core of her narration is the administration’s refusal to cater to "special students" (immigrant students) and their adamant assertion that they must treat all kids equally (i.e. identically). By conveying the administration’s ignorance, Olsen posits that treating all students the same when their needs are different, results in unequal access and outcomes.
Conclusion
The narrative that Olsen takes up is one of great value. She joins a moral narrative on the status of immigrants that argues both that immigrants have a right to be in the U.S., and that “multiculturalism” as a social attitude fails to justly address the needs or desires of immigrants. She provides a critical inside look at the structural inequities immigrant students confront within Madison High as part of a larger educational institution. The book convincingly addresses the myriad problem at Madison high school e.g. the politics of bilingual education, inclusion, exclusion, racial identity, racial tensions, meritocracy, tracking, multiculturalism, affirmative action, gender roles, etc. Olsen lays out countless problems that Madison high and the state of California face. She gives her attention to the failing leadership of the school, district and state as schools accomplish an Americanization project at the cost of “newcomer’s” national identity, language and culture. Her ethnographic methods of interactive participation and in-dept interviews with students, faculty and administrators support the theoretical framework she sets forth. Lastly, the non-scholastic style she takes to tell her story of Madison high is intellectually rich and vividly crafted. My only concern is at the end of her narrative, which leaves the reader in a state of unease, with only a speckle of light in the midst of a dark tunnel. She mentions the power and ideologies of the right wing forces - their anti-immigrant sentiments, not mention their so-called color-blind utopia and their myths that inequities are the result of individual capabilities and efforts. Olsen concludes with little hope that the conditions for immigrant students will begin to take a turn for the better.
Worked Cited
Almaguer, Tomas (1994). Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California. University of California Press. Berkeley, CA.
Huntington, Samuel P. (2004). Who Are We? The Challenge to America’s National Identity. New York. Simon & Schuster Press. NY.
Olsen, Laurie (1997). Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools. The New Press New York, NY.
Valenzuela, Angela (1999). Subtractive Schooling: U.S. Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. State University of New York Press. Albany, NY.
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