Posted on 10/27/2009 5:21:22 PM PDT by reaganaut1
The children of Hispanic immigrants tend to be born healthy and start life on an intellectual par with other American children, but by the age of 2 they begin to lag in linguistic and cognitive skills, a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, shows.
The study highlights a paradox that has bedeviled educators and Hispanic families for some time. By and large, mothers from Latin American countries take care of their health during their pregnancies and give birth to robust children, but those children fall behind their peers in mental development by the time they reach grade school, and the gap tends to widen as they get older.
The new Berkeley study suggests the shortfall may start even before the children enter preschool, supporting calls in Washington to spend more on programs that coach parents to stimulate their children with books, drills and games earlier in their lives.
“Our results show a very significant gap even at age 3,” said Bruce Fuller, one of the study’s authors and a professor of education at Berkeley. “If we don’t attack this disparity early on, these kids are headed quickly for a pretty dismal future in elementary school.”
Professor Fuller said blacks and poor whites also lagged behind the curve, suggesting that poverty remained a factor in predicting how well a young mind develops. But the drop-off in the cognitive scores of Hispanic toddlers, especially those from Mexican backgrounds, was steeper than for other groups and could not be explained by economic status alone, he said.
One possible explanation is that a high percentage of Mexican and Latin American immigrant mothers have less formal schooling than the average American mother, white or black, the study’s authors said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Multi lingual teachers was on our Michigan stimulus wish list.
Not Nature, nor Nuture, but Bush’s fault.
This is what the government schools want. Legions of hopeless dead-enders so that scads of money can be spent on socialist “solutions” to the “problem”.
Less racial, more cultural, I’m willing to bet.
Are the children from intact (husband/wife) families? Who are the primary caregivers? Are they read to? Do they play educational/imaginative games or watch TV? How physically active are they?
So many variables.
What a co-inky-dink.
Agreed. Look at recent Asian immigrants. In those cultures, doing well in school is expected and nurtured, and it shows in the children. When whiteys used to think like that, we had the same results. As whiteys embrace the more of the ghetto culture, we start to see them decline intellectually as well.
Linguistic and cognitive skills are learned skills. But more gov’t programs won’t help to develop those skills. Children need one on one attention, not gov’t programs.
At the same time we don't really get a good sample of East Asian types. For instance you rarely encounter any of the people who are born, live and die on small farms in the middle of "Nowhere China".
Why are people (in "poverty") having children in the first place?
Is the problem instead, that entitlement programs incentivize a higher birth rate, among groups that should concentrate spending of their lower household income (among their existing family members)?
Or, in other words, the messages could instead be:
"don't have kids if you can't afford them" and
"don't expect other taxpayers (to support family choices that you make for yourself")?
Geez, it's amazing how college professors can lack common sense.
Is it that hard to figure out that because they want to "preserve their culture" they speak spanish in the home. As far as all three groups lagging behind it's as simple as books not being read and television programing being Jerry Springer and not Sesame Street. Once they start school they fall even further behind because they not only go to govt schools, they go to the worst govt schools.
...which is just fine with at least one political party.
I agree with you. If mom is an unskilled, unemployable, illiterate and dad digs a mean trench, and has also never deciphered the art of reading, it’s a pretty good bet there not a lot of reading to the children.
I always feel really bad for the people who got a crappy culture when all the “cultures” were handed out. Damn these cultures that hold people back. If only “culture” wasn’t an outside force that somehow dictates how entire groups of people behave...if only people had some control over the “culture” that is created entirely by themselves. If only...then they’d have one less thing to blame failure on.
How about IQ? Not pC to even ask...
Thanks for the comment, and welcome to FR.
I guess beans, rice and tortilla’s aren’t brain food.
Having had a Mexican sister in law...I can tell you that they relate to kids differently. Some good, but the uneducated ones don’t do much to stimulate communications and reading skills.
They demand it.
ping
I agree with that message. If that were the message to people, I think people would continue to have children, but they would take more responsibility and put more effort into their children's education.
I agree, groups create their own cultures. A low-IQ group is not going to emphasize education.
If you don't want your daughter to become a skilled pole dancer, don't come here.....sarc off
Isn't that just the s**t?
And the dummies will continue to firehose (our) cash at the faintest indication that it might be something, anything, other than the mexican hispanics are simply not up to the job and are outclassed by other (GASP!) races.
I attended school in a rural district that was approximately 50/50 white/hispanic. The white students are about what you’d expect. A pretty even mix of low/average/high achievers. The hispanic students broke down into two groups. About 1/4 of them were extremely bright. Among the brightest in class. The rest fell off into the lower 1/3.
The common denominator among the high-achieving hispanics? Nearly all of their families were farm-owners, with roots in the area running back 100 years or more in some cases. If you asked them, they identified as having Spanish, rather than Mexican roots (even if they did, in fact, have Mexican ancestry). Although, the extent of those roots had been watered-down down over the years to attending Catholic church, and eating spicy food. Functionally, they were a part of the local farm culture, and of the highest economic layer in the area.
Those from families who had more recently immigrated were another story. A few, whose parents emphasized assimilation did pretty well at an early age, only to fall off horribly starting in Junior High. Was IQ really the deciding factor? I don’t think so. They did well-enough in the early grades, and were as precocious as any normal white kid. Their educational drop-off usually coincided with them deciding to no longer hang with other cultural groups within the school. They would quit associating with the whites and other high-achieving hispanics. They started identifying more closely with the Mexican culture, and their educational progress stymied. They became insular, refusing to mix with other groups, and a good number of them affected Mexican accents (even those born here who had no trace of an accent before).
But I’m with you on one thing... We should not be importing masses of poverty-stricken social sponges hell-bent against assimilation.
BTTT!
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