The New York Daily News runs a story on the success of immigrant children. This sounds all well and good but I personally was left with a sense of glass-half-full dismay. Here is how the story starts:
Ask 13-year-old Amarnath Kuppannan and his 10-year-old sister, Aarthi, what they want to be when they grow up and they respond in unison: “A doctor.” Both youngsters, the New York-born children of Indian immigrants, spent their summer at the Elite Academy on 39th Ave. in Flushing.
I fought back nausea at the fact that yet another generation of immigrant kids would be brainwashed down certain paths, and I continued to read trying to focus on the overall positive message in the article.
Starting at 8:30 a.m. and some days finishing as late as 2:30 p.m., the youngsters were drilled and quizzed four days a week in higher mathematics and the complexities of English grammar and composition.
But who am I to judge these parents’ ambitions for their children? As the article points out the father is from a rural Indian village and didn’t get educational opportunities. The article lauds the success of New York’s immigrant children:
A dramatic 62.4% of New Yorkers younger than 18 are foreign-born – the so-called 1.5 generation who come here as children and are reared and educated here.
“These immigrants and their children are the future,” said Prof. John Mollenkopf, director of City University’s Center for Urban Research. “How well they do is critical.”
It seems that the future is in good hands.
“Foreign-born students outperform native-born students on traditional measures of academic achievement,” according to a 2003 study by New York University’s Taub Urban Research Center. “Immigrants have higher reading and math scores … despite their higher poverty rates, limited English skills and newness to the U.S. schooling system.”
Immigrants seem to do better in school because they work harder and are more ambitious. Unfortuntely the children of immigrants don’t tend to do as well.
Actually, and I should probably do some surfing for the reference, (but what the heck, it’s only a post comment), I believe the trend is that children of immigrants do well educationally. However, subsequent 2nd and/or 3rd generations are more in line with national averages for performance on education metrics.
I should probably clarify that I meant 3rd and later generations do more in line with average. One example can be found in this abstract: http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/rec_survey_report/detail.asp?id=0125350
excerpt: in terms of mean GPA and average standardized test scores in math, science, reading, and social studies second-generation Asian American students fared the best; third-or higher-generation Asian students generally performed the worst; and the first generation was somewhat in between.
I suppose the children of immigrants are raised with the values of their parents.
Asian students tend to do well because they’re highly motivated to succeed academically. I suppose the Asians that are raised in the United States and assimilated into mainstream culture aren’t as motivated.
Indian-American kids aren’t as motivated as their parents, but even they do fairly well.
I wonder if this next generation will do as well.
PMC, the point I was trying to make, albeit poorly, is that second generation immigrants seem to generally do better than both first generation and third generation immigrants. This is just speculation, but I would guess that it’s probably that second gen’ers tend to have the same ambition/drive instilled in them, but have more resources (i.e. better command of English, better cultural integration) at their disposal to excel.
I guess that stuff my dad is always saying about us getting the best of both worlds may be true after all!
Unfortuntely the children of immigrants don’t tend to do as well.
part of it might be regression to the mean.
Both of you might be correct.
or…all of you may be wrong.
:>
Say what you will about what these kids are being subjected to, but these children of immigrants, first generation Indian-Americans, will be America’s saving grace in a world that is becoming increasingly competitive.
But will still always be ‘foreign’.
Abhi – Definitely some valid comments there as far as the article. I can understand the Parents mentality into determining their children’s path into Medicine though I definitely feel its sad that these children dont have the exposure or opportunity to discover different worlds – especially Media/Entertainment
Coming from a Family thats completely diversified I really value such diversity in careers.
P.S. I just discovered this site – great work !
Maybe this is completely obvious, but why do Indian parents push their kids into medicine?
Is it the alleged prestige? The fact that people will always need doctors? Transportability of skills?
(I will admit that I don’t want to ask my parents this for fear that Dad will AGAIN bring up the possibility of sending me to India for med school!)