Mobility and the children of Langley Park's immigrant families

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 2003 by Hanna, William J

Lack of parental support can be partially explained by the limited educational achievements of parents. Nationally, about half of Hispanic American mothers did not complete secondary school (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2001b), and in Langley Park we estimate that the fraction is at least two-thirds. The film Real Women Have Curves (LaVoo & Lopez, 2002) provides a popular demonstration of the intergenerational differences with regard to formal educational planning. The character of the mother in the film went to work at 13 years of age, so she wonders why the daughter should continue in school after 18.

Classmates can be an additional factor in school success or failure. Most of the children in Langley Park's schools are themselves surrounded by children whose formal educational successes are quite limited, which pertains to fellow Hispanic Americans as well as African Americans. (Almost all of the children in the local schools are either Hispanic American or Black.) For newly arrived Hispanic immigrant children, figuring out what it means to be "American" appears significantly to be based upon African American working-class school culture (see Ogbu, 1986) and perhaps the behavior in televised novellas-neither of which emphasizes serious school commitment.

If a resource is not in the neighborhood, it may well be found nearby. However, automobile ownership in Langley Park is low and the cost of public transportation is high given family budgets. I recall asking a family why they did not participate in a community event at a Catholic church less than two miles away. The answer was that the family had no car, and public transportation round-trip for a family of five was too costly.

Characteristics of the neighborhood obviously influence residential mobility. The more attractive the characteristics, such as good schools and social networks, the more likely people are to remain in the neighborhood and work to improve it. There is a debate in sociology and other fields about the meaning of "community." Clearly, people with resources such as automobiles and computers can establish distant or even global communities; but, lacking such resources, the neighborhood provides the community in which a person can participate (see Bartik, Butler, & Liu, 1990).

Language. The Department of Education has it right: "The insufficient English language proficiency of . . . students often results in classroom failure and school drop out. Many students either are ill-equipped for higher education or lack the required skills to obtain productive employment" (U.S. Department of Education, 2000, p. 1). The Census Bureau reports that in 72.3% of Langley Park's homes, English is not the language of choice; fully 55.9% of the respondents state that they do not speak English well. (Nonresponses make these figures low estimates.) I cannot recall visiting someone's home in the neighborhood and hearing English except when a person was speaking to me, and the television in a Hispanic American home seems always set to a Spanish-language station.7 Consequently, a schoolchild is exposed to English only in the classroom on those days when s/he is in school. Summer school opportunities are limited as a result of jurisdictional funding problems and perhaps poor system management.