American Conversations

7. After/Words

7 AfterlWords There's no denying that the multicultural initiative arose, in part, because of the fragmentation of American society, by ethnicity, class, and gender. To make it the culprit for this fragmentation is to mistake effect for cause. ... Maybe we should t ry to think of American culture as a conversation among different voices~ven if it's a conversation some of us weren't able to join until recently. Maybe we should think about education, as the philosopher Michael Oakeshott ... has proposed, as "an invitation into the art of this conversation in which we leam to recognize the voices," -Henry Louis Gates, "Multiculturalism" ( 1995:7) The myth of schools as meritocratic institutions, as the intennediary mechanism through which all Americans are provided equal opportunity to achieve success, functions as an important fiction, an imaginary resolution of the social contradictions inherent in a class-divided society with longstanding social divisions that fall out along racial and ethnic lines. "In a society marked by great disparities of wealth and power," note the editors of a recent collection of articles that closely examine the role of schools in reproducing societal inequities and the potential for change, "American schools have often been praised as a pathway to equality. But public education in our country has been marked by a cruel gap between rhetorical commitment to democratic ideals and practices that foster intolerance and inequality" (Levine et al. 1995:5). We have now looked at both the fragmentation of American society as a way of explaining differing community 225 Copyrighted Material 226 Chapter 7 relations to schools and the complexity and difficulty of incorporating minority voices into school "conversations." As we approach the twenty-first century, the voices of groups that have been marginalized throughout u.s. history are demanding their right to full participation in American society and to inclusion and attention to the needs of their children in schools. For Puerto Ricans, as for other "involuntary" minorities (Ogbu 1987), their relations to schools have been shaped in large measure by a history of blocked aspirations, inequitable access to a quality standard of living, and the stigmatization that accompanies their marginality in society. But while the voices of the minority community members that emerged in Arnhem's public debate reflect their differing relations to schools, at another level they also reflect their faith in the potential of the nation's schools to effect social change. Rather than dismissing schools as important sites for the future wellbeing of their children, they argue that schools can become what they have long been in popular imagination: sites that foster opportunities for all children to succeed. More than that, they envision schools as important sites in fostering the creation of a more democratic common culture. Although we cannot assess the perceptions of Arnhem's Puerto Rican community as a whole, the turnout of local Puerto Ricans at public meetings, my own interviews with a sampling of Puerto Rican parentsl and those conducted by the New York State Education Department investigators, as well as an independent study of school-family relations in Arnhem (Galdamez 1993) suggest that the community did feel alienated from the schools and were aware that they encountered barriers because of their ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. Many parents expressed a strong desire that their children not feel ashamed of being Puerto Rican, one Copyrighted Material After/Words 227 possible consequence of the negative stereotypes they and their children encountered in schools and the larger society. Lidia Perez, a long-time Puerto Rican resident of Arnhem, spoke for many when she told me with a trace of pain in her voice, "It would hurt me deeply for my kids to deny what they are, or to feel bad about what they are." Virtually all the Latino parents I talked with said they also wanted their children to keep their native language, though their reasons for doing so differed. Those with closer ties to the island thought it would make their children's lives easier when they were living in Puerto Rico; some saw bilingualism as advantageous for their children's economic prospects; many mentioned that without Spanish their children would be cut off from their Spanish-speaking relatives, and that Spanish was part of their heritage. ESL or bilingual education classes (the two terms were often conflated) were considered essential for helping non-English-speaking students make a smoother transition in school. Many...