2/29 Reading

References: "Made in America", Intro through Chapter 2

First off, "Made in America" is a very eye-opening book. I had heard good things about it from the other practicum students from last semester, and I can definitely tell that they are right. What I really liked about this book is that the author picked a very common, normal high school where these problems are rampant. The comments that people make in this text are just appalling at times, heart-breaking at others. I know that I come from a very middle America, white background and my slightly conservative Italian/Polish family thinks I am a bit of an alien for caring so much about racial and ethnic issues; when my parents make comments about other races and I catch myself making comments without thinking, I have to cringe. It is really difficult to break out of that thinking when you have experienced it for so long! I think we just have ideas engrained into our heads from birth, and I know especially when I came into college, I have grown exponentially every year in personal and intellectual development.
I thought that this book was very thoroughly researched and by a woman who does an excellent job in explaining her point of view. I think that she picked the perfect people to interview for this book, because they say so many things that we have learned about in our TESOL classes and really prove that this country has a long way to go. In Chapter 1, the author mostly describes the makeup of the community in California where the book takes place, and then described how the changes occurred by way of looking at the past yearbooks for the high school. I thought this was a very telling way to demonstrate how the diversity in the community has changed over the decades. It gives the reader a great overview of the political and social climate of this California community.
In this post, I am going to choose a few specific quotes from this book that really stuck out to me, and explain why I chose them.

1) "...there had been some student who had taken off his turban because he couldn't take the pressure anymore" (pg. 39). The students in the ESL classes that the author observed used this as a metaphor for being forced to assimilate to American culture. It is amazing that the students have pressured someone so much that they have to remove something that makes them different from everyone else. It brings to memory a moment when I was talking to my dad about my ESL classes when I began taking them, and he said jokingly and fondly to me, 'How did I ever get such a tolerant daughter?'. My parents grew up in the 60's and 70's, a hugely important and changing environment in the United States; the Civil Rights Movement was in full force. My grandparents grew up in the 30's and times were even more different then! My parents had grown up with religious and ethnic intolerance, and that was all they knew. The Civil Rights Movement shook everything to the core with them and they learned how to assimilate to a newer society. I wish that people would take cues from these movements in history and learn that people are not what the media portrays them to be. No one is a stereotype.

2) "Skin color, religion, and language seem to define being 'American' or not" (pg. 40). Whoa. This is a singularly strong statement and probably stuck out the most to me out of this book so far. It surprises and enrages me to a certain extent. What does being American even mean? I honestly do not know! I feel that we are such a rapid-fire, ever-changing society in which fads come and go in like a week. I feel that students coming in from other countries see us from the media as well. When I was talking to a friend that I know here from Malaysia, he said that he thought Americans were all basically hillbillies like he saw on television from old reruns; he said that he was also surprised at the amount of diversity that exists here. He said that in Malaysia, he only saw TV and media about white, middle-class America and did not realize the amount of African-American people that lived here and the racial categories that exist in this country because of it. They are under the same delusions (for lack of a better word) that we are under about their countries. We do not have a clue about what goes on in the outside world; our media only covers local or regional news at best. European countries get news from every single country in the world! We are only aware of what exists in our little bubble and it saddens me that everyone seems perfectly fine with that.

3) "Most Americans like free time...they go outside and have fun. I always see most immigrant people in the library because they sit and study there. They want to do good in school" (pg. 48-49), and also "I can't believe that Americans have very good conditions about education but they don't want it" (pg. 49). Believe me, this is totally preaching to the choir for me. I cannot believe every day at the amount of people (even at this university!) who completely take education for granted. I am always a person who approached school as something of utmost importance and I take it very seriously. I often do not allow myself to have fun as much as I want to because I feel a huge responsibility to do well. Most people when I was growing up thought I was 'weird' or a 'freak' because I wanted to read all the time and not be as social as everyone else, but honestly, it did me good in the long run. I met people in high school who were exactly like me and could relate to my feelings, and all of my immediate and close group of friends are all almost college graduate and about half are going on to graduate school. We have fun as much as anyone else, but we all understand how serious school work is. I do not think high schools do a good job of emphasizing the importance of education; I was extremely lucky that I grew up in a wealthy community with a great deal of resources, but others are not so lucky. The fact that teachers take school for granted too is appalling.

4) The table on page 57 of "Reasons we immigrated" and "Things we think they think about why we're here" (they meaning Americans). I feel like this list, including, work, political strife, economy...these are all things we have discussed in previous TESOL classes as reasons for students and their families coming here. I think that all American students should be shown this list and we should tell them, 'What you guys think about them is not true!' How are we supposed to blame a baby for wanting to take a job? It makes no sense. We should be proud that people want to come and live in this country, not be blaming them for wanting a better life. You do not exactly see people from the USA moving to the Congo or Serbia and there are clear reasons why. We do not get the same freedoms we do here and people think it is shocking that that stuff goes on in the world, but as I said, we live in a bubble. We are so lucky to be native Americans. Why not help people out when they get here? We're socialized into thinking that the US is the best country ever in existence and not to question what those society values are and why. I only have done that in college. I know when I am a teacher, I am going to copy this list and show it to my students. Even if I am the only person giving them awareness, at least I am making them aware at all. It's increasingly important in this changing climate to promote tolerance and acceptance in our classrooms.