Crossing Cultural Borders: Education for Immigrant Families in America.

With the rapid increase of ethnic minorities entering industrial societies and interacting with mainstream cultures, issues of cultural and linguistic differences must be addressed. Particularly relevant to educators is understanding the process of acculturation and socialization of uprooted ethnic or low-income minority children. Such children are expected to adjust rapidly to their adoptive culture, learn the language quickly, and be clearly committed to a new set of cultural values, and tolerance for different paces in acculturation or language acquisition is limited. A deeper understanding of the nature of the transition between home and school is needed. Based on an ethnographic study, this book describes the relationship between home and school socialization, the influence of the home in the school, and the impact of the school in the homes of first generation Hispanic children in a California community. It explores the impact of cultural, community, and family setting and values on these minority children's adjustment to their new learning environment. The children's storytelling and games, for example, reveal that they increasingly use the language, concepts, and strategies learned in school while retaining their own cultural values. At the same time, parents learn through the values, knowledge, and behavior patterns the children bring home from school what the world outside is like and how the challenge of cultural change is to be faced. The book closes with a discussion of how ethnography relates to empowerment and what implications this has for educational reform. A bibliography of 126 entries is included. (CJS)