by David Safier
As always, I preface discussions about findings from educational studies by saying they should be taken with generous helpings of salt.
That being said, studies covered in the NY Times and the LA Times indicate:
. . . 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.
The mothers tend to give birth to very healthy children who score well on cognitive tests in their first year or so, but then the gap begins to open, and it continues to widen over time.
As has become common knowledge by now, the most critical time in a child's educational/cognitive life is before entering kindergarten. It's overstating the case to say the die is cast in the first 5 years, but not by much.
There are plenty of reasons to be found for the cognitive gap. The same problems are found consistently in children of low income families regardless of ethnicity or country of origin, but it's more pronounced with this group. The parents' lower level of formal education is certainly part of the mix. The Spanish-only or mixed language household could have an effect, especially with the children living in an English speaking country.
The one reason we can eliminate with a high degree of certainty is any genetic component. These children are born with the same potential as other healthy infants, and given the right educational advantages, they will reach higher levels of educational performance than they do now, which will translate into more school success, higher incomes as adults, and so on.
These are tough issues. If the parents can learn how to stimulate their children's cognitive functions in a way that will further their success in school, and the children are given preschool environments that help the process along, the gap between these and other children will narrow. We haven't been very successful in these areas, however. It's not easy.
I'm of the opinion that lifting people out of poverty will lessen educational problems, no matter what other factors are involved, even if we do nothing else. Approaching "educational problems" by focusing too narrowly on education is never going to yield the results we hope for.
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I agree with you re: lifting people out of poverty. One out of a hundred poor kids might be a Horatio Alger success story but the rest will be left behind. There’s also the “social capital” factor. Success in life depends as much, if not more, on having the markers of being middle class as it does on education. Knowing what forks to use or about wines and other social signifiers is crucial to getting ahead. You can learn all that stuff fairly quickly but not having been brought up knowing it puts one at a tremendous social and professional disadvantage.