Smart is not cool for many Latino students in Silicon Valley, reports the San Jose Mercury News.
Sandra Romero and Bibiana Vega do their best to shrug off taunts from fellow Latino classmates at Del Mar High School in San Jose.
The 17-year-old seniors are called “whitewashed.” Mataditas - dorks. Cerebritas - brainiacs. They’re told they’re “losing their culture” - just because Sandra has a 4.0 grade-point average and Bibiana has a 3.5.
The put-downs are clear: Smart is not cool.
And too many Latino students are choosing cool over school.
But a few miles away at Hyde Middle School, in the heavily Asian Cupertino Union School District, Tiffany Nguyen detects the opposite attitude. If you’re not smart, “you’re really looked down on,” said the Vietnamese-American eighth-grader.
In California, low-income Asian-American and white students equal or outperform middle-class Hispanics and blacks. Asian students, many of whom come from immigrant families, do better than whites in both English Language Arts and math. It’s the culture, stupid.
The trends show up on national surveys. Harvard researchers asked 90,000 secondary-school students about popularity and grades. Whites said A students were the most popular, blacks favored B students and Latinos said C students were the most popular. Earn a B, lose your friends. (Asian-Americans weren’t surveyed.)
All the Silicon Valley students interviewed said their parents expect good grades.
But families’ definition of “good grades” varies. It means “higher than a C,” said Victoria Mendoza, a Latina and an eighth-grader at West San Jose’s Monroe Middle School who nonetheless gets mostly A’s.
Thoa (Hoang) said her parents expect A-pluses, although she said she doesn’t meet that standard. “I have to bring it down a notch to be real,” said Thoa, who has a 3.6 GPA and is taking two advanced-placement classes this year.
Years ago, I asked seventh graders from Vietnamese refugee families the minimum grade their parents would accept. “A” was the lowest acceptable grade, they said. One poor kid got five A’s and a B on his report card. “What happened?” his mother asked. “You were doing so well.” I’d bet every single one of those kids has earned a college degree.
Update: Eduwonkette says there’s no solid science supporting the idea that blacks achieve less in school for fear of “acting white.”
In other words: being different (whether it’s a smart kid in a district where poor performance is the norm, or a kid who has difficulties in a district where high grades are the norm) isn’t cool.
Or being the only Black kid in a predominantly white school.
Or being a theater kid among jocks.
Or being from a lower socioeconomic class than the other kids.
Or being from a “different” religious group.
People get singled out for how they’re different, and when you’re a teenager, “different” is one of the best things to use as ammunition against a person.
The same thing was true in 1980 when my parents refused to buy me Jordache jeans even though all the other kids in junior high (well, the COOL kids) were wearing them. Not that designer jeans would have made me cool; I realize now nothing could have done that.
I suspect pretty much everyone considers junior high and high school to be times of their lives they’re glad is over.
My remembrance is that smart kids were certainly not the most popular, but there were enough kids who were smart that one could find groups of stimulating kids.
Now that all of my kids have finished high school, or are within a few months of finishing, I don’t have the impression that smart kids are at the top of the social heap, even in relatively high performing schools, one on each coast. There certainly is a culture of smart kids striving to succeed, but the upper social strata seems to involve serious athletes (and no, cross country and track, serious as they are, don’t count), with smarts probably improving the status of the athletes. Of course, it never hurt to be handsome or beautiful with a good personality.
Re something Kimberly mentions below. My high school interactions did involve mixed race groups, with the usual social group being smart and mostly caucasian but also with north Asians and Pacific Islanders in the mix. Yes, we wanted to do well, but that was not a key to the social dynamic. As it ends up, my college social group was largely similar in make-up.
Back in November, Eduwonkette published a very accessible discussion of the evidence on the “acting white” hypothesis (http://eduwonkette2.blogspot.com/2007/11/evidence-is-there-acting-white.html).
I asked seventh graders from Vietnamese refugee families the minimum grade their parents would accept. “A” was the lowest acceptable grade, they said.
You forgot to mention the fact that these parents are far more likely to go ballastic to the teacher and the principal, and to flat out bribe or pressure teachers if necessary to change their grades.
See “School of Dreams”.
In suburban schools, bright Hispanic kids have lower grades because of nonsensical homework assignments and end up suffering because they aren’t going to lousy schools that give them As just for showing up.
Grades are pointless. Drawing conclusions based on grades even more so.
Cal -
It’s not just bright Hispanic kids who get lower grades because they don’t play the game in suburban schools, it’s a set of bright kids of all races. When I was in high school, the three most intelligent students were all on the edge of flunking out. They saw straight through the games most teachers played and the absolute trash we got for homework. Put simply, they wanted no part of it.
When there was a teacher who was honest and intellectual, these kids excelled. When they got an intellectually valuable assignment, the devoured it and turned in superior work.
When I consider these kids, I totally agree that grades are pointless.
A former female Japanese-American colleague of mine told me that when she was in high school, if she had brought home a report card with all A’s and one A-, her dad would not praise her but would scowl at the A- and say, “What’s wrong here?”
“You forgot to mention the fact that these parents are far more likely to go ballastic to the teacher and the principal, and to flat out bribe or pressure teachers if necessary to change their grades.”
Where are your stats for this?
I don’t know about other schools, but I do know at my school (also in the Bay Area, with majority Asian population), Asian parents would not “go ballistic” on the teachers and principal. I’d say that the Asian parents on the whole tended to be much more respectful towards authority — TOO respectful, even, to the point where everything was the kids’ fault and never the teachers’. I know that my parents chewed me out more than once and when I tried to complain about the teacher, my mom would bust out with, “You’re the child, you need to listen to her!”
Yes, the parents were over-involved, but it was hardly ever the teacher’s problem. It was more, “What is my kid doing wrong? What can she do to get better? Oh, she talks too much in class?” *death glare at cowering kid*…instead of, “I think you should change this grade…”
“Where are your stats for this?”
I mentioned a cite: School of Dreams.
I also work with a lot of Asian kids who agree unhesitatingly that the portrayal in SoD is accurate (and I work with them at a different branch of the SAT prep school mentioned in the story).
I’m sure there are some who don’t, but it’s simply wrong to ignore the fact that many parents go in and nag the teacher to death until they change the grade, and that the tendency to do this varies with race.
“t’s a set of bright kids of all races.
Oh, sure. Grades are a pathetic joke. But any really bright kid who is flunking (as opposed to getting at least a B average) has only himself and his parents to blame.
Cal, I’ve heard of School of Dreams, but it’s more of an anecdotal portrayal than anything else. Because I don’t think that book offers stats on how Asian parents are more likely to “go ballistic” on a teacher. Unless I missed that part.
While you say that you know Asian kids who agree that parents go off on their teachers, I know just as many (including myself) who say that that isn’t the case. I’m not disagreeing that Asian parents aren’t often, ah, over-involved with their children’s schoolwork, to the point where they have unreasonable expectations. But that is a different kettle of fish than leaning on a teacher to change a grade.
Let me agree with Julie as well. I usually love dealing with Asian parents because, unlike many upper eschelon white parents, they don’t come into the conference with a chip on their shoulder, having believed every word of their precious little darling’s side of the story. Usually Asian parents respectfully listen to your side of the story and if you have dotted your “i”s and crossed your “t”s they will be responsive. Most just want their child to do better in your class and are not looking for grade bumps and special modifications so their child can do less work.
This is awful, awful reporting, the stuff your average freshman staffer at a collegiate weekly would be ashamed to see by-lined. You take kids who already have less, then you give them a lifetime of less of everything that matters, then some Merc staffer comes along and says they’re “choosing cool” over success? What swill.
You found some Vietnamese kids who say smart is cool and some Latino kids who say smart is white? Wow. I’ll walk outside my door and find the opposite in two minutes. This is what passes for reporting?
Garbage such as this does not advance our understanding of the achievement gap; it perpetuates a misunderstanding of things, a horse already so thoroughly dead, and yet so thoroughly kicked as to be mutilated beyond all recognition. I need a shower after reading this.
I completely agree with TMAO, for what it’s worth.
“it’s more of an anecdotal portrayal than anything else. ”
Of course it is. But it wasn’t one or two anecdotes, but rather a systemic pattern at the school, one that is generally agreed to be the case at high end, high performing schools.
“Usually Asian parents respectfully listen to your side of the story and if you have dotted your “i”s and crossed your “t”s they will be responsive. ”
Your “usually” pretty much covers a host of other possibilities.
“But it wasn’t one or two anecdotes, but rather a systemic pattern at the school, one that is generally agreed to be the case at high end, high performing schools.”
The plural of anecdote is not data. (Okay, that was a cliche. Sorry. But it’s true.) You said specifically that Asian parents are more likely to go ballistic, and to bribe or pressure the teacher if necessary. That is a pretty sweeping generalization, and one that you should not be making unless you have some data to back that up. You say “generally agreed.” By whom? The kids you work with? Hey, like I said, I went to a high end, high performing school that had a heavy Asian population (I’m Asian myself), and that sort of behavior was not common. In fact, I can’t think of anyone whose parents behaved in that manner. Yes, they would get upset with their kids for getting below an A. But going off on the teacher? Not likely.
One school does not a pattern make.
I taught in a “downtown” school for several years. What saddened me the most was that many of my parents told me point blank that they did not want their children to be “schoolgirls” or “schoolboys”. I don’t need to see the statistics on the unpopularity of high marks in the Latino community. I lived it.