Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring Paperback – December 11, 2017

The pages keep falling out! Cheap publishing.

Wasn’t what I expected did he distante but glad I got it and came quick thank you

I read this book for my Masters in Teaching program and really enjoyed it! It was one of the few books I looked forward to reading every week. I majored in Anthropology in college, so this book felt very familiar in the way it treated the problems the school was having. It's an interesting look at how the schooling "system" can harm students unintentionally and how knowing who your students are and making efforts to get to know them is important beyond just the classroom, but for school administrators and just everyone else in the school. This particular school has a problem because the people who have the power (teachers, administrators, counselors, etc) are so overwhelmed that they do not show the students that they care about them. There are a few exceptions, but the idea of subtractive schooling essentially means that students are worse off going to this school, than if they drop out, so over half of the student population (at the time in 1994) was doing just that. The first chapter is difficult to get through because it uses so much academic language and every sentence counts; I think it's like 30 pages, but it took me 3 hours! But keep reading! The reading gets easier because it changes to a conversational type tone when it switches into ethnographic writing.

Subtractive Schooling was written by Angela Valenzuela after she completed an ethnographic study of schooling conditions in an inner-city Houston high school. The high school was majority Mexican and Mexican-American students. She investigated the differences between immigrant student achievement and that of U.S.-born Mexican students to understand why immigrant students consistently out perform their peers. Her study revealed cultural differences between the Anglo and Mexican understandings of what education should be, indicating that white teachers what students to care about school while Mexican students wanted to feel like their teachers authentically cared about them as people. The schooling practices tended to degrade the Mexican culture and Spanish language which has ultimately led to the subraction of culture resources of Mexican students, particularly those students who are later generation U.S.-born and have felt the impact of the dominant culture on their lives longer than recently immigrated students. This book is a worthwhile read as it gives great insight into how schooling practices themselves contribute to the underachievement of certain student groups and shows the impact that true multicultural education can have on the learning environment.

OK, I have to start out by saying that I get the whole ethnic studies thing. I majored in liberal studies and am actually pretty sympathetic to the dialogue on class/race/gender/culture politics dynamics. It's much of why I got into teaching. There is a lot of inequality and oppression in society, with poor schools as the front lines. I blog about it frequently, and live it daily in my science class at an alternative education school, where most students are poor, minority and otherwise disadvantaged.But the problem with this book, and the mentality behind it that was so in vogue 20 years ago, is that it misses larger issues in society, and ironically contributes to those problems not getting addressed. This school of thought basically believes that racism and cultural imperialism are what are keeping minority students down. Now, if you take a hugely macro view, and look at history going back centuries, yes, it does originate in active racism. But the problem today is not racism, or biased teachers, or biased curriculum. It is a lack of human and social capital development. Minorities are not disproportionately failing in school, in prisons, or stuck low paying jobs because of discrimination. They are there because of a structural inertia that has sapped their communities of social resources for so long that children are growing up without the kind of cognitively rich and stimulating, loving environments that create successful adults.This isn't about their culture (well, mostly - there is an issue of identity and defiance there, but it is rooted in larger structural impediments). Black or Hispanic culture is perfectly suited for academic, middle class success. The ethnic studies school from which Valenzuela hails actually has more in common than it realizes in the actual white cultural conservative nationalists who would denigrate minority ethnicities by blaming their lack of success on an intrinsic incompatibility with middle-class, "Western" values. This is poppycock. The lack of success isn't to do with ethnicity, but lack of knowledge and social capital with which to leverage their families out of the ghetto. When 16 year old girls get pregnant and the dads run away, and the grandmother can't offer much support, the child gets raised in a woefully inadequate household. I see this daily in my classroom.So, is it their fault? Hell no! They are completely disadvantaged and caught up in a system which is a direct descendant of racism. But it is also a natural byproduct of capitalism and the tendency for property values to create geographic ghettos, with correlative low levels of human and social capital. All the poor kids get shunted into the same schools. Their parents are struggling. They are struggling. There is stress. There is tension. Parents work crappy jobs. Kids resent society and feels like outsiders. They rebel in any way they can - which for boys often means fighting and gangs, and for girls it means having babies. For everyone it means getting high and not doing their work.But this is an old story. It is the story of the underclass. Poor minorities are no different from poor whites. Poor whites have it easier in many ways, but many of the exact same disadvantages in human and social capital play out the same way. The old ethnic school doesn't realize it undercuts this larger issue by narrowing its gaze and playing guilt politics.Look at what is happening to teachers in America today. Conservatives love to blame the government and unions, not to mention poor people themselves, instead of larger structural problems that trap the poor and hold them down. Liberals, having bought into much of the ethnic studies framing, wish to take a sort of noble savage view of minorities, and pretend that if only teachers would "care more", as Valenzuela might have put it, the achievement gap between whites and minorities in education would close. But by far most teachers do care. You wouldn't last more than a year or two in a poor school, dealing with that population of students if you didn't care. Sure, most teachers are still white. But the vast majority of us care deeply for and empathize deeply with our students.But we can't do it on our own, with budgets slashed, and class sizes ballooning. There needs to be a larger national dialogue. Not on race, or ethnicity. I think we're actually doing OK there. But we still won't talk about class, and how it sets up generation after generation of kids to fail, especially those historically discriminated against and disenfranchised. Poor schools need massive investments that will dramatically reduce class sizes and pay for enrichment activities that their community just can't afford. Poor mothers need home visits from nurses and social workers who will help guide them toward better education and parenting practices. More than anything, poor kids feel like no one outside their community cares about them, and that the world is against them. They take their frustration out on individuals, not understanding the bigger picture of what is really conspiring to force them down. But individuals are actually pretty OK. It is the system we much change, and demand that real policies be put in place that guarantee more help for struggling communities.[...]

It was delivered in the condition stated as promised. I find it useful for class.

I like the concept of this book, but unfortunately Valenzuela repeats a lot of her information. The first chapter or so is very research heavy, which is sort of annoying. I liked understanding the story behind this book and I wish there was more of that. I had to read this book for my Master's in Teaching program. I don't recommend reading the whole book, but some chapters were eye opening. (Note: if you don't like authors jumping back and forth between another language (Spanish) and English, I don't recommend this book to them since Valenzuela does a lot of that, unless you are forced to read this book by a professor).

I needed to have this book in a hurry. It arrived quickly. I purchased this one because the price was the the lowest, the condition was better than I expected for that price.