Biculturalism in the Classroom: Why Immigrant Children Have the Educational Advantage

            Think about a child of immigrants and his native American peer. Which child, might one suppose, perform better in school? Certainly that the immigrant child’s level of academic performance be lower than that of his/her well acculturated classmate. One would reasonably deduce that because the immigrant child faces a lot more difficulties than does the “American” classmate, as he/she has a considerable amount of substantial restraints that would hinder their abilities to do well in school. Children of immigrants face many challenges, obstacles, and barriers; for example, some come from low-income families due to the parents’ low-paying incomes, some are victims of discrimination, some have troubles learning the English language due to different mother tongue languages, and some even have the anxieties and hardships from not understanding the American youth culture. These problems can certainly cause plenty of stress and a great deal of psychological strain. Unlike immigrant children, children born to U.S born parents are relatively well established financially, are first language English speakers, and are fully involved in the American culture and lifestyle. Therefore one might expect that the child of immigrants is at a disadvantage, while the child born to native parents is at the advantage.

Studies have shown, however, that children of immigrants, also known as second generation children (Kao and Tienda 6), are likely to do just as well or even better than children who were born here in the United States in terms of income, education, personal health, and overall achievement (Dye). A commonly accepted phenomenon even states that first generation immigrant children will outperform the subsequent second or third generation immigrant children (Kao and Tienda 16). This trend is what has come to be known as the immigrant paradox, in that these groups have done well academically despite higher-than-average rates of social and economic disadvantages in their respective populations as a whole (Crosnoe and Turley 133).

Though there are outliers to the immigrant paradox, sociologist Lingxin Hao, lead author of a study from John Hopkins University that followed nearly 11,000 young immigrants all the way to adulthood, argues and says, “Not all of them [immigrant children], but more of them,” will likely succeed (Dye). In another study, the 1988 National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS), which is a nationally representative study that surveyed 24,599 eighth graders in the Spring of 1988 (followed by four follow up sessions, in 1990, 1992, 1994, and 2000) on the topics of school, work, and home experiences, the authors concluded very similar results. The study suggests that “adolescents with immigrant parents typically outperform those with U.S.-born parents on math and science tests (given in English) by 5 to 20 percent of a standard deviation” (Crosnoe and Turley 133-134). Another researcher, Garcia Coll, the Robinson and Barstow Professor of Education, Psychology and Pediatrics at Brown University, deduced from her own research that “In a time where immigrants are seen as detriments to our society and not making contributions, what this research [in a report titled The Immigrant Paradox in Children’s Education & Behavior: Evidence from New Research] is telling us is that the first generations come in with amazing energy and amazing capabilities of surmounting lack of education in parents, poverty, and language differences” (Schott). Their research has thus revealed the advantages that immigrant children may have on a scholastic level.

The question that remains: Why is it that immigrant children, those who are essentially unfamiliar with the American/English education system and endure various/multiple substantial constraints, do better than their fellow native classmates? And further, why is it that the initial achievement levels among immigrant youth declines by the third and fourth generations (Dye)? This has been a topic of much debate, with many scholars researching to find accurate correlations. One source has suggested that it us due to the “cultural tools” that many of the immigrants have from their parents (Weissbourd). However, in keeping with Weissbourd’s argument and from my own experience, I believe that Immigrant-children’s educational success is largely due to and is a direct result of their strong familial ties, which have played critical roles in instilling a sense of passion for education, appreciation of communal and familial support, and in providing a global outlook (through culture and language). Though biculturalism may seem like an educationally inhibiting and obstructive element for the average immigrant-child student (in terms of educational and financial support, as most immigrant parents cannot help with this so much), this dual-cultural identity is, in fact, rather instrumental and even beneficial to their ability to excel and thus become upwardly mobile in the educational sphere.

Though I believe it to be true that immigrant children outperform native children in the academic sphere and that this educational performance declines by the third and fourth generation, and further that these outcomes are a direct outcome of the “hardships” endured throughout the process of acculturating, I must confess why I feel this way. Much of why I am so confident in these statements is that I have found them to be true in my own personal Persian Jewish upbringing and journey. I myself am a child of immigrants. Both my parents were born in small Jewish communities in Tehran, the capital of Iran, and each of them have endured a lot to get to where they are today. My father was the first child in his family and born in 1951. Throughout his educational career in Iran he excelled in all of his studies, and by the age of 14 he made an independent decision to come to the United States to pursue a higher level of education. As the eldest child to eight siblings, my dad felt an obligation to help his parents financially. (Because of his sacrificial decision to leave his family, my father was unfortunately not even around to be there for the births of most of his siblings). Coming to America for educational purposes was a popular trend among Iranians at that time; many planned to obtain a degree and then return to Iran afterwards. Like many Iranians, however, my father did not end up returning to Iran and instead stayed in the United States to advance in his career. Moving to America meant that my father had to learn the English language, go through the high school and college application processes, find places to rent, and work a number of odd jobs to pay for those expense. But what was so important and admirable of this whole matter was that he did so alone (with no familial support). He graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University with an Engineering Degree. He is now a domestic clothing designer, manufacturer, and most importantly owner of his own company that ships women’s clothing all over the country.

My mother’s story and journey to America was not as direct as was my father’s. My mother was born in Tehran, Iran in 1965, where she had imagined herself living and thriving there with her family for most of her lifetime. However, beginning in October of 1977, there were many demonstrations against the Shah, or King, of Iran, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, who was eventually replaced by leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This time period came to be known as the Iranian Revolution, or the Islamic Revolution. Prior to the Islamic Revolution, Jews flourished. However, the Iranian Revolution sparked a lot of anti-Israeli sentiment throughout the country. My mother remembers vividly– she was 12 at the time—when the synagogue/congregational leaders, or Rabbis, began advising that the Jewish communities begin considering moving out of the country. Within a year, in late 1978, my 13-year-old mother, her parents, and two younger siblings, moved to Israel, in a small town called Kfar Saba. She too was the oldest child, and so she too played an integral role in the acculturation and assimilation of her family (she tells me stories about how she would have to sit in on parent-teacher conferences, and translate the conversation from Hebrew to Farsi for her parents!). Propelled into a new culture, my mom was forced to learn to adapt to an entirely new culture. Here, too she had envisioned herself living there for the rest of her life. After high school, she went on to a business trade school and worked in several firms throughout her 20’s. At the age of 28, however, my parents were introduced to each other (my dad was on a visit to Israel for his sister’s wedding) and eventually my father convinced my mother to come back with him and live in America. My mother agreed, and so my parents happily wed in March of 1995. Immediately after the wedding, my mother separated from her friends and family and came to live with my father where he was settled in New Jersey.

Within 10 months of my mother’s arrival to America, I was born. More importantly though, I was born into my mother’s confusion (and father’s, though he was much more acculturated by now relative to my mother) in learning yet another entirely new language and culture. Growing up with immigrant parents had many consequences for me as a child and even now as I am maturing into a young adult. Though I was born here, I felt as though I were an immigrant child, as I was extremely impressionable and I took on so much from my parents, my only role models growing up. And the only thing I had to grasp were the values, traditions, customs, language, disciplines and so on, of both my parents, who were still extremely involved in their own native Persian Jewish culture and heritage.

I began noticing that I was “different” once I went to school. My parents, who greatly valued Jewish education, decided to send myself and my siblings to Yeshiva, or Jewish education, despite the high tuition costs. Most of the children who went to the Yeshiva schools in my neighborhood were Ashkenazi Jews, meaning Jews who originated from Eastern European descent; This ancestry and history is unlike myself, a Sephardic Jew which is one whose families originated from areas around the Mediterranean Sea. The important distinction does not lie in the question of where the families originated from (though of course, that is the reason for many subcultural differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews) but rather in the timing of when they arrived. Specifically, in my community area (which is where most of the Yeshiva families lived) most of my classmates were Ashkenazic Jews who had grandparents or even parents who were born here in the United States. (This is because many Ashkenazic Jews, who were victimized in the Holocaust, immigrated here after being liberated at the end of World War II). However, most of my Sephardic friends had either parents that were born abroad, or even in some cases, they themselves were born abroad, usually Israel.

What set my Sephardic friends apart from our Ashkenazic friends was that our families weren’t yet as acculturated or assimilated to the American culture as much as they were. This posed many hardships for us: learning a new language, new American youth culture, high dependence on ourselves (because parents couldn’t help with English grammar work), and so on. These challenges had always made me feel somewhat less, or perhaps inferior, than my classmates, and at some points I was even ashamed of how still traditional my family was and how incredibly Persian we were. However, throughout the years, I’ve observed that these challenges and gaps within my culture and the Americanized culture have actually helped me. I have come to appreciate and even value the challenges I’ve grown up with, as I feel that they have made me an even stronger student and person as a result.

Even though immigrant parents’ lack of education or English proficiency can be viewed as somewhat of a disadvantage, there are actually many positive outcomes, which leads me to the first benefit of being an immigrant child in an attempt to be upwardly mobile academically. The first reason for an immigrant child’s educational success is passion. Often dubbed “The Land of Opportunity”, the United States has attracted many people from around the world to immigrate to the States in hopes of making their own and their children’s lives better off, opportunities they wouldn’t have had otherwise in their own countries. Many immigrants come to the United States to seek the American Dream, to achieve success and prosperity through hard work and determination: “Immigrant families are especially optimistic about their children’s odds of upward mobility and are very resilient to the difficulties of their immigrant status” (Kao and Tienda 13). They want us, essentially, to “have what I didn’t have growing up” as my parents would say. And as Crosnoe and Turley put it, “America’s K-12 education system has long been thought key to the ability of newly arriving immigrants to realize their dream of social mobility” (130). Our parents have, as such, instilled within us a passion and determination in achieving those goals.

Furthermore, we saw the hardships that they had to go through to bring us where we are today, and so we have a greater, inner drive to want to do well. Also, because of all the hardships our parents had to go through, we immigrant children feel no sense of entitlement. In fact, we feel the opposite. We need to work for what we want, and that means putting in the effort, hours, and time. In some cases, immigrant children even feel the need to redeem their parent’s sacrifices.

In addition to instilling a thirst for education, immigrant parents will often go the “extra mile” and put their children in after school enrichment programs to compensate for their inabilities to help with, for example, English grammar homework (for most immigrant parents). Some immigrant parents who “generally have high educational expectations for their children, [will] talk to them often about their progress toward their expectations, find ways to marshal supplemental resources to help them, such as by sending them to schools after school, on weekends, and during school breaks, and make concrete plans for the future, such as by saving for college” (Crosnoe and Turley 135). Immigrant parents will even invest in musical instrument lessons for their children, because they understand that “actively learning to play an instrument can help a child’s academic achievement” (Locker). I myself was enrolled in both academic enrichments after school programming as well as had piano lessons every week for nine years.

Understanding my parents’ past and understanding their views on the value of education in being upwardly mobile, and even their insistence on afterschool enrichment programming, just motivated me to what to do well. Nothing was ever handed down to me; I had to learn to work for my results. A key demonstration of my academic success as an immigrant child is my acceptance into the Macaulay here at Baruch College. And it is even interesting to note that of the Macaulay students 18% are the first in their family to attend college, a nearly 1 to 5 ratio (Macaulay Honors College Fact Sheet)! Immigrant children have clearly made the strides to academic success, and much of that is due to the visions for the future that they inherited from their parents.

The second, next positive element that arises out of the “hardships” of being raised in an immigrant family, is the appreciation for familial and communal support that parents instill within their children. Often times, immigrants will come individually, leaving their parents, siblings, and relatives behind, to settle themselves and ground the way for their extended families to follow. They will likely move to communities with other people from their culture. These tight knit familial and communal networks are resources for immigrant youth (Crosnoe and Turley 135). They serve as support systems that can be used to propel their immigrant children forward.

Following the Iranian Revolution, many Persian Jews immigrated to Long Island or to Los Angeles. Extended families lived (and continue to live) in close proximity to each other. Living close to relatives proved to be an advantageous circumstance as these immigrants—who shared a mutual understanding—were able to help each other in many different resects, like in business or even politically. The benefits of living close to family is true of other immigrant communities as well. Weissbourd, American child and family psychologist on the faculty of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who writes for the New Republic, alludes to these benefits when he says: “over time first-generation immigrant families tend to drift from relatives and tight-knit immigrant communities into more anonymous neighborhoods where that support is lacking”. Clearly, there is much benefit and support that stems out of living within the same cultural communities.

The third benefit of growing up with immigrant parents is the contribution that immigrant parents have to their child’s sense of global outlook, especially in the realms of culture and language. Some may view the “dense” or “concentrated” cultural characteristics and aspects of the immigrant child as a negative barrier that further distances them from their American classmates. Differences in language, values, and customs could isolate an immigrant child from American classmates, but these challenges could have positive affects as well. But there are actually positive implications to this “problem”. The fact that immigrant children grow up so involved in their own culture and thus are unfamiliar with the new American culture actually works to their benefit because they are not as influenced by this American Youth Culture. Immigrant parents have instilled in their children a respect and reverence for their teachers. Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco, Harvard researchers conducting a major study of immigrant children, observed that newly arrived immigrant children “talk about how beautiful school is and how wonderful the principal is,” but within a few years of acculturating will say, “School’s boring and the principal is an idiot'” (Weissbord). A former Boston school principal even observed: “As soon as these sweet, respectful immigrant kids arrived, my whole staff would get this sinking feeling. We’d see exactly where these kids were heading, that pretty soon they’d have all the attitude of American kids” (Weissbord). A possible reasoning for this, as Temple University’s Laurence Steinberg puts it in his 1996 book Beyond the Classroom, is that as immigrant children spend more time with these new American peer groups, they over time begin to “resemble the typical American teenager, and part of this package of traits is, unfortunately, academic indifference, or even disengagement” (Steinberg quoted in Weissbord). Weissbord adds, “Peer influences, Steinberg and others argue, also drive immigrant teens to crime, drug abuse, and depression. With each subsequent generation, this argument goes, immigrant children spend less time with other immigrant children and more time with Americanized ones and, therefore, feel negative peer influences more and more strongly”.

Respect for teachers is extremely familiar within my culture. In Iran and in Persian culture, professors, teachers, and educators are regarded with lots of respect and esteem. That being said, maintaining a relationship with them is by no means an easy task. Students have to work hard to gain their teacher’s respect and trust. One has to get permission to leave the classroom, to speak in class, and even to ask their fellow classmates for a pencil. Further, the students couldn’t even look into their teacher’s eyes: “A downward gaze in Iran is a sign of respect” (Countries and Their Cultures). And for the students who do not comply with these “rules of respect,” there were severe consequences and punishments. If a student didn’t do their homework, for example, the punishments, though rare because the students were so fearful and respectful, ranged from being hit on the hand with a ruler, being humiliated and out casted in front of the class, or even just simply being ignored and not getting any attention from the teacher.

This high regard for educators is similar in other countries as well, and so this feeling of fear and awe for teachers has been instilled from immigrant parents unto their children. Thus it has been firmly ingrained in the immigrant children that he/she must respect their teachers. In a classroom setting, this student-teacher relationship would actually benefit the immigrant child. This “parenting style could explain why teachers rate the young children of immigrants more positively in behavioral domains” (Crosnoe and Turley 142), and can account for the positive and nurturing relationship that immigrant-children students have with their parents.

Another benefit of growing up with another culture is the sense of understanding for others and that further helps with their overall global outlook. Unlike people with one culture, immigrant children that grow up with two cultures are better off because they can see the world in a broader lens. This allows you to connect with more people, which makes one better off.

Other than the benefits culture contributes to in terms of regards for teachers and overall understanding of other people of diverse backgrounds, culture can sometimes be responsible for one’s second language. Knowing a second language is actually a positive characteristic: “Evidence suggests that mastering both a native language and English gives adolescents access to an array of community and institutional networks” (Crosnoe and Turley134). Further, “Having the ability to speak more than one language can be advantageous in an increasingly globalized world, as it allows for a greater number of communicative partners and better job opportunities” (Konishi and Haruka 404). Knowing another can help in many respects, which leads Crosnoe and Turley to conclude that, “fluency in multiple languages has academic advantages that likely factor into the immigrant paradox” (135).

Though growing up with immigrant parents may have posed a challenge or even highlighted the disparities between immigrant children and their fellow American classmates, the circumstance actually serves—as the immigrant paradox suggests—as an advantage for them in the educational and professional regard. The advantage is largely a consequence of strong immigrant familial ties which provide the mentality and passion for education, promote the appreciation of what the familial and communal support system can offer, and also provide the necessary cultural and language tools in gaining an overall global outlook. I find this true in my own journey, and in the journeys of other immigrant children with similar conditions. Reflecting back, I can confidently say that I am appreciative of the “challenges” and “hindrances”, as they have taught me—and other immigrant children like me– to be independent, mature, and to persevere.