ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: US

  • Children of a new world, by Paula S. Fass

    Excerpts from: Nihal Ahioglu. Review of Fass, Paula S. Children of a new world: Society, culture and globalization. H-Childhood, N-Net Reviews. April 2009. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial Works).

    Children of a New World is an impressive book consisting of essays that the author has previously published on children in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. Two underlying themes connect these essays. The first suggest that childhood has become a significant working area in social history. Though these essays are profoundly informed by social history and carry a deep concern about large-scale shifts in the experience of children, Paula S. Fass also provides sharp pieces of cultural analysis. She relates her evidence to political history, and to other disciplines, such as literature, education and psychology. 
    From the interpretation of children and childhood using a broadly conceived historical approach, Fass reveals her second main theme: the influence of a “new world” or “globalization” on children and the meanings of childhood.
    In the first part of the book, Fass emphasizes historical change regarding children and the meanings of childhood in terms of schooling and migration in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Schooling was critical in a pluralistic society accommodating a great number of immigrants. Integrating different cultures into the same values and thus the idea of establishing “a mutual national identity” become one of the most important aims in these years. In spite of the existence of such a political objective, to protect and maintain their own cultures, immigrants preferred alternative or religious schools for their children. Nevertheless, changing economical conditions and the rise of specialized clerks increased the significance of public schooling. In this context, intelligence tests were invented to predict what an individual could accomplish with education or training. Testing served as a tool for solving social and cultural problems by sorting children and (purportedly) allowing the educational and child welfare systems to meet the psychological needs of individuals. According to Fass, it caused a kind of segregation in education to the disadvantage of immigrant youths because the tests were culturally biased. Complementing the intelligence testing movement in the interwar period, American educators attempted to develop a comprehensive and uniform curriculum. The new curriculum included “extracurricular activities”, through which students found opportunities to prove their self-direction in social, citizenship, athletic and academic subjects. This was aimed to improve the citizenship and advance assimilation of diverse cultural groups. But the results were not always so straightforward….
    The last two centuries have been a period in which significant changes have occurred in childhood. Children of a New World presents this change strikingly to readers by using different social, cultural, and economic incidents, events, and experiences. In addition to presenting different examples about the social history of children and the cultural history of childhood in a systematic and analytical way, this book encourages us to ask new questions about how these distinctive stories fit into a larger modern transformation of childhood.

  • Immigrants' children and television

    NPR (US-based National Public Radio) pop culture piece: “On TV, Immigrants’ Kids Mine Cultural Convergence“. An interesting fun piece on the increasing visibility of visible minorities on television.

    “For these children of immigrants, it turns out, acting is a little like what they’ve done their whole lives: balancing two identities, inhabiting two worlds and living convincingly in both”.

  • The neglect of citizen children in US immigration policy

    A new study by Dorsey and Whitney, LLP for the Urban Institute raises several issues with regard to the impact of immigration policy on immigrant- and citizen-children of immigrants in the US.
    Severing a Lifeline: The Neglect of Citizen Children in America’s Immigration Enforcement Policy begins with the startling statistic that of the 5 million “illegal immigrants” in the United States, 3 million are actually children citizens, born in the USA.
    From the executive summary:

    “US citizen children are the victims of immigration laws that are out of step with the manner in which we address child welfare issues in other areas of the law. The “best interests” of the child find little or no hearing in the process of detaining and deporting undocumented parents. The hard suffered by the citizen child who loses a parent to deportation, or the citizen child who loses his or her prospective future in the United States in the interests of maintaining family unity, is thus the natural consequence of systemic shortcomings in US immigration law and policy.
    “The primary goal of this report is to reveal, and to prompt meaningful and reasoned debate regarding, the deficiencies in this country’s immigration laws and enforcement scheme relative to the interests of our citizen children”.

    The study includes a series of comprehensive recommendations for reform.

  • Role of race and ethnicity in the lives of children in history

    The US-based Society for the History of Children and Youth is holding an online discussion through their listserv, H-Childhood. Responses will help shape the next Society for the History of Children and Youth newsletter.
    Facilitators have posted two general questions that they hope will spark a good discussion. Here are the questions:

    1. What role did race and ethnicity in particular (along with class, gender, age, and region) play in the lives of children and youth of color in history? More pointedly, did race and ethnicity make for or lead to fundamentally different experiences of childhood for children and youth of color as compared to their white counterparts?
    2. Why is it important (if you think it is) to study children and youth of color in history? Will this work change our understanding of the history of childhood and youth in fundamental ways? If so, how so?

    Discussion ends April 3rd.

  • Para nuestros niños

    The US-based National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics was established to enhance educational achievement and opportunities for children of Hispanic descent and to influence US education policy.
    The Task Force is made up of early childhood educators, academics, researchers and policy makers. The website provides several interesting resources, including research reports, fact/information sheets, policy briefs and the final report of the Task Force: Expanding and Improving Education for Hispanics.

  • New York Times series on immigration: Teaching newcomer children

    Beginning today, the New York Times will run a series on immigration, inviting a national debate on the topic in the United States. The first installment is a discussion on how best to educate immigrant children. To be followed up this Sunday.
    The series will be interactive, inviting comments from readers and includes a searchable database of the history of ethnic diversity in each school district and an interactive map showing census data on settlement over the past century.
    Today’s stories include: 

    Robert Linquanti comments on “No Child Left Behind: Pros and Cons”. Linquanti is with WestEd research agency in San Francisco.
    Chicago superintendent Roger Prosise writes a piece entitled “For Bilingual Education, You Need Bilingual Teachers”
    Co-directors at NYU Immigration Studies, Marcelo Orozco and Carola Orozco write on “Teach in Two Languages”.
    A California principal, Linda Mikels counters with a piece entitled “No, Teach in English”.

    Looks like a fascinating series. Follow it online at the New York Times “Room for Debate” webpage.

  • On becoming American: The developmental risk to immigrant children

    Brown University is holding a conference on the “Immigrant Paradox”, the notion that in spite of the challenges faced by immigrant children, research shows better behavioural and educational results than children of immigrants who have been in the United States for generations but that any developmental gains may deteriorate as children become more integrated in US culture.
    The Immigrant Paradox in Education and Behavior: Is Becoming American a Developmental Risk? will be held from 8:30am to 5pm at Pembroke Hall, Room 305, March 6-7, 2009.
    The conference is open to all. For more information, visit the conference website.

  • Social Policy Report: Children in immigrant families

    The Society for Research in Child Development has released a Social Policy Report entitled “Children in Immigrant Families: Looking to America’s Future”. From the Abstract:

    Children in immigrant families account for nearly one-in-four children in the U.S. They are the fastest growing population of children, and they are leading the nation’s racial and ethnic transformation. As a consequence, baby-boomers will depend heavily for economic support during retirement on race-ethnic minorities, many of whom grew up in immigrant families. Because the current circumstances and future prospects of children in immigrant families are important not only to these children themselves, but to all Americans, this report uses data from Census 2000 to portray the lives of children with immigrant parents and highlights policy and program initiatives that will foster the future success of these children.

  • The influence of culture on early childhood

    Zero to Three has release a comprehensive overview of the influence of culture on early childhood in the US. The Changing Face of the United States: The Influence of Culture on Early Child Development, by Beth Maschinot, PhD, with funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Bernard van Leer Foundation posits a new definition for understanding culture in the context of early childhood as:

    Culture is a shared system of meaning, which includes values, beliefs, and assumptions expressed in daily interactions of individuals within a group through a definite pattern of language, behavior, customs, attitudes and practices.

    This reworked definition of “culture” provides a way of expanding the discussion and extending it to young children and families. The report challenges early childhood practitioners in reexamining how useful traditional research studies have been in helping better understand “culture”.
    The report summarizes the findings of a 2007 literature review, conducted by Zero To Three and offers information and resources for early childhood practitioners on how to address the needs of a growingly diverse population. The report suggests that “differences in parent-child interaction styles between ethnic groups may be a function of the group’s place in wider society rather than a cultural difference per se”.

  • Women's Refugee Commission

    News: The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children is changing their name to The Women’s Refugee Commission. 
    The Women’s Refugee Commission is a US-based advocacy organization that seeks to: “improve the lives and defend the rights of refugee women and children, including the internally displaced, returnees and asylum seekers” and works in:

    • Assessing and monitoring the situation of refugee women and children through research, field visits and consultation 
    • Identifying and documenting the widely overlooked problems and issues that affect refugee women and children
    • Developing and promoting policies and practices that will lead to real on-the-ground change by advocating to policy makers, key organizations, donors and the public to ensure their implementation.

    Source: Women’s Refugee Commission ‘About Us’.