Diversity, despite what we say, disturbs us. In the U.S., we debate linguistic rights, the need for an official language, and educational policies for language minority students. On the one hand, we believe in the rights of individuals, including (at least in the academy) the right to one’s own language. On the other hand, we sponsor a single common language, monolingual and standard, for full participation and communication in both the academy and in U.S. society.
In Diverse by Design, Christopher Schroeder reports on an institutional case study conducted at an officially designated Hispanic-Serving Institution. He gives particular attention to a cohort of Latino students in a special admissions program, to document their experience of a program designed to help students surmount the “obstacle” that ethnolinguistic diversity is perceived to be.
Ultimately, Schroeder argues for reframing multilingualism and multiculturalism, not as obstacles, but as intellectual resources to exploit. While diversity might disturb us, we can overcome its challenges by a more expansive sense of social identity. In an increasingly globalized society, literacy ideologies are ever more critical to educational equity, and to human lives.
DIVERSE BY DESIGN
Literacy Education within Multicultural InstitutionsBy CHRISTOPHER SCHROEDER UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2011 Utah State University Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-87421-806-0 Contents
Acknowledgments.........................................................................ixPreface Tim Libretti...................................................................xiDifferent Standards: Prologue...........................................................xxvIntroduction............................................................................1Different Standards: Part I.............................................................291 The Most (Ethnically) Diverse University in the Midwest...............................33Different Standards: Part II............................................................672 Proyecto Pa'Lante Students............................................................73Different Standards: Part III...........................................................1113 One of Their Teachers with Neida Hernandez-Santamaria................................1154 Marked for Life Sophia López....................................................1425 Language, Ethnicity, and Higher Education Angela Vidal-Rodriguez.....................163Different Standards: Part IV............................................................1756 Practices, Policies, Philosophies, and Politics.......................................181Different Standards: Conclusions........................................................2137 An Afterword and a Reminder Victor Villanueva........................................220References..............................................................................224Index...................................................................................237About the Author........................................................................239
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION I admit I was surprised.
At the time, I acknowledged, if not agreed with, the complaints of colleagues who, when they looked from behind podiums, perceived problems. More than eight in ten of us, according to a survey in the Chronicle of Higher Education, believe that high-school graduates are unprepared or only somewhat prepared for college, and four in ten of us believe our first-year students are not well prepared for college writing (Sanoff 2006).
Although this perception is shared by only one in ten of our public high-school counterparts, these concerns seem more than merely professorial perceptions, as recent national reports suggest. After all, fewer than six in ten adults read books not required for school or work, and almost two in ten seventeen-year-olds never or hardly ever read for fun. At the same time, fewer than five in ten high-school seniors write three or more pages in their English classes maybe once or twice a month, and almost four in ten are never or hardly ever given such assignments while nearly all elementary students—those who will soon be in our classrooms—spend three or fewer hours on writing assignments each week, which is just a fraction of the time they spend watching television (National Commission 2003; National Endowment 2004).
These and other conditions lead some, such as the University of Delaware English professor Ben Yagoda (2006), to see, in problems of linguistic usage and style, signs of what he calls "unfortunate cultural trends." In an article for the Chronicle, he identifies, as characterized in the subtitle, the seven deadly sins of student writers: dangling modifiers, omitted or unnecessary commas, improper semicolons, wrong words, and plural pronouns with singular antecedents, as well as problems produced by spell check. These, he suggests, reflect not only a general neglect of grammar in secondary and primary classrooms but also "the shocking shoddiness" of student work, as well as a limited experience with reading good writing, which forces students to rely upon "the archive of conversations that are in their heads" that, he believes, are inadequate (1113).
College students, in other words, are generally unprepared, and specifically in writing. They don't read and write, and these and other conditions, such as their lack of concern and experience, produce writing that more resembles speaking. While I might not have presented the problem in the same "literacy and culture are falling" way, I certainly couldn't contest such accounts—even though I am more convinced by other explanations, such as the argument that the media and schools pose challenges to conventional intellectual traditions, particularly print-based ones (e.g., Aronowitz 2008, 15–50).
If, however, these accounts are accurate, then such explanations have to be all the more accurate, conventional wisdom suggests, for students with fewer educational and economic resources, such as those at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), the ostensibly most (ethnically) diverse university in the Midwest. In fact, new NEIU faculty are warned, in a session at faculty orientation, that NEIU students differ from their college counterparts in more than ethnicity:
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At the same time, other differences, we are told, help predict their classroom performances:
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For these and other reasons, NEIU students, we are also told, are less likely to return and to graduate than their peers at comparable institutions:
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If, according to our colleagues across the country, college students are generally underprepared or unprepared, then surely NEIU students who face greater challenges, my NEIU colleagues and I are told, must be even more so.
Or so I thought.
Diversity, despite what we say, disturbs us. According to Robert Putnam (2007) of Bowling Alone fame, those of us who live in diverse communities participate less in community projects and contribute less to charities, are less confident of local leaders and in local news programs, and have fewer friends and more television time. These conditions, Putnam maintains, are not the result of poor race relations or ethnic hostility as much as a general withdrawal from social life, a distrust of our neighbors no matter their skin color or facial features. After testing every other possible explanation, Putnam concludes that U.S. Americans, in both attitude and behavior, are uncomfortable with diversity.
This condition seems a strange situation for a country so connected, even before its inception, to immigration-after all, human civilization did not originate here. And by all accounts, this condition seems to be increasing and expanding. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of immigrants in U.S. households increased by 16 percent, and these new immigrants are bypassing traditional entry points, such as New York and California, and are selecting locations, such as the upper Midwest, New England, and the Rocky Mountain states, that typically receive little new immigration (Lyman 2006). Perhaps nowhere are these conditions more clear than college classrooms. While the total enrollment in U.S. higher education increased by 1.6 million students (+11.2 percent) between 1991 and 2001, the minority enrollment increased by 1.5 million (+51.7 percent)—those categorized as race/ethnicity unknown doubled during the same period—while the white enrollment decreased by 500,000 (American Council 2005).
This strange...
