The adolescent quest for meaning through multicultural readings: a case study

Library Trends, Wntr, 1993 by Sandra Champion

ABSTRACT

THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES the results of a study of the role of the library media program plays in easing the adolescent immigrant's struggle with alienation, assimilation, and literary acculturation. Important factors that influenced students included a student-centered learning environment that values cultural diversity, fosters interpersonal learning, accommodates learning styles, promotes use of emerging technologies, and encourages circulation of all materials including hardware. The most important factor on literary acculturation, however, was the peer group process of meaning making (Vandergrift, 1990a). The study showed that adolescent immigrants will find and make meaning about themselves and their personal experiences by exploring, in their peer group, the journey of the archetypal hero. The study also found that students entered the group discussions as culture bearers, but, within the group over a period of time, changes took place as students noted cultural differences and similarities. Together they interacted as culture makers and ultimately emerged as new culture bearers. Their experiences indicate that: (1) one culture does not produce a typical literature that reflects all of the characteristics of its people; (2) not one book or list of books can represent a culture; and (3) literary acculturation is not transmitting heritage as a package deal or forcing the adoption of the cultural patterns of any single group but a process of personal and social change and choice caused by the individual's interaction with peers in a wide variety of literary experiences.

INTRODUCTION

The immigrant experience of the 3,006 students at Hialeah High School in Dade County, Florida, is the classic heroic story of the archetypal journey, a modern extended metaphor with each new immigrant's personal myth. Although each of their stories is different, the collective story of the student population reflects numberless similar experiences. Underlying each are common struggles: first, the struggle to know and understand the language of their new country while continuing the process of growing in their home language, and, second, the struggle to know and understand the complexities of the world in which they live while yearning to know and understand themselves. In short, no matter the ethnic origin, the student at Hialeah High School has to wrestle with both an inner and outer world in more than one language and in more than one culture. It was the aim of this study to examine the role the library media program plays in assisting young individuals in their journey and in their quest to acculturate.

Results of this case study shows that the library media program plays a vital role in assisting young people in the difficult process of literary acculturation. Major factors that influence students are:

1. A student-centered learning environment that values cultural diversity and fosters interpersonal learning.

2. A focus on similarities and differences in personal belief systems, meaning making, and the human condition rather than a focus on similarities and differences in language, culture, and ethnicity.

3. Respect for personal choice and promotion of self-esteem by arranging all print and nonprint resources in various languages in the same Dewey classification order thus ignoring the establishment of isolated special sections for language minority students.

4. Emerging technologies that: (a) accommodate learning styles, (b) reduce over-reliance on language as the single means of getting information or making meaning, and (c) remove limits of linear modes of learning.

5. A strong literature program that: (a) builds on student interest in personal myth, (b) relates it to the archetypal heroic journey in literature of diverse cultures, and (c) depends on a teaching library media specialist to form partnerships with teachers and students and to provide leadership in facilitating the peer group process of making meaning.

BACKGROUND

Refugees arrive daily in Miami seeking a new life and a quality education. When they enroll in the Date County School System, they become a part of the fourth largest system in the nation and the third largest business operation in Florida. They join 304,287 students in the district. Of these students, 227,145 are presently enrolled in various bilingual programs. It costs taxpayers approximately $80 million a year.[1] There is no federal program that aids the refugee impact on Dade County Schools. Although the metropolitan government collects the school tax for the school system, it exercises no control over its use. The seven member school board, elected by countywide vote, appoints the district superintendent who has responsibility for administration of the 278 schools in the district. The school district is divided into six regions, each with a region superintendent and administrative staff. The ethnic classification of the district's instructional staff does not yet reflect the district's 304,287 students who are predominantly Hispanic (see Figures 1 & 2).