This website is dedicated to the review of Subtractive Schooling: U.S Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring by Angela Valenzuela as a part of a requirement for the course EDUC 5380 Diversity in Educational Settings through the University of Texas at Arlington. We hope you find the information helpful and Dr. Valenzuela's words inspiring as we have. To purchase this book, visit Amazon.com or SUNYpress.edu.
Purpose
Main Points
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Subtractive schooling focuses on how the students learn rather than how they are taught. Schooling takes away resources, such as language and culture, from Mexican youth. |
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Teachers need to build a meaningful and caring relationship with each student. It is important to invest in the student’s well being and have an authentic, not aesthetic, relationship. |
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Subtractive assimilation can negatively affect minorities. For example, bilingual education could be subtractive if it doesn’t value students’ first language and culture. ESL programs don’t teach native language or reinforce culture. |
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Social capital is when peer groups make use of resources. If you have a goal and can’t do it by yourself, then they might turn to their peer group to find the resources, information, and knowledge needed. These groups form norms, trust, and set expectations. |
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A positive school culture, caring relationship between teachers and students, academically supportive environment, and social capital could eliminate the effects of subtractive schooling. |
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Additive schooling is about authentic caring, equalizing opportunity, enhancing the labor market, and maintenance of the community. |
Recommendations
For teachers and future teachers:
Angela Valenzuela provides insights into the similarities and differences in the cultural backgrounds and beliefs of immigrant and U.S. born Latino youths. Through these insights, readers are invited to see how an educational system is not equipped to provide for these students a learning environment for academic success.
This book provides an eye-opening analysis from the students’ perspective of the practices in schools that contributes to the underachievement of immigrant and U.S. born youths. Insightful feelings and attitudes towards learning, education, and schools deliver the students’ perspective on their schools atmosphere, culture, and underachievement.
The author delineates the framework of educational policies and practices, which are subtractive force in that disaffects Latino students from their cultures, languages, and beliefs.
Dr. Valenzuela provides educators and future educators a vivid documentation denoting the necessity of authentic caring and the devastation of aesthetic caring.
Why other stakeholders should read this book:
Subtractive Schooling portrays the social and educational challenges facing schools and educational systems. Administrators, parents, families and community members, alike, share a role and responsibility in the solutions to these challenges. The study shows the deficiencies of a system and the cultural and educational differences and beliefs within the Latino community that would enlighten and inform all community stakeholders regarding the necessary reform in the educational system.
Author Biography
Dr. Angela Valenzuela is a professor of Cultural Studies and Educational Policy and Planning at the University of Texas in Austin. She is also the director of the TCEP and Associate Vice President for School Partnership at UT. After graduating from Stanford, she taught Sociology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. She is the author of two texts to date: Subtractive Schooling (1999) and Leaving Children Behind (2004). Her main professional focus has been and remains the equity among minority youth in schools. Currently, Dr. Valenzuela is also the director of the National Latino Education Research Agenda Project (NLERAP) which is working toward creating a "teacher education pipeline for Latino/a youth, nationally." Additionally, she is the founder and operator of an education blog named Educational Equity, Politics and Policy in Texas.
Additional information on Angela Valenzuela and her work
Full Curriculum Vitae for Dr. A. Valenzuela
Video of Dr. Valenzuela's recent discussion with pre-service teachers at San Jose State University
“Rather than functioning as a conduit for the attainment of the American dream, this large, overcrowded, and underfunded urban school reproduces Mexican youth as monolingual, English-speaking, ethnic minority, neither identified with Mexico or equipped to function competently in America’s mainstream.” (p.3)
“As Matute-Bianchi (1991) found, immigrant youth – regardless of either gender or track placement – experience school significantly more positively than their U.S.-born counterparts. That is, they see teachers as more caring and accessible and they rate school climate in more positive terms, as well.” (p. 9)
"School subtracts resources from youth in two major ways. First, it dismisses their definition of education which is not only thoroughly grounded in Mexican culture, but also approximates the optimal definition of education advanced by Noddings (1984) and other caring theorists. Second, subtractive schooling encompasses subtractively assimilationist policies and practices that are designed to divest Mexican students of their culture and language." (p. 20)
"Mexican youth continue to be subjected on a daily basis to the subtle, negative messages that undermine the worth of their unique culture and history." (p. 172)
"An authentically caring pedagogy would not only cease subtracting students’ cultural identities, it would also reverse its effects. It would build bridges wherever there are divisions and it would privilege biculturalism out of respect for the cultural integrity of their students." (p. 266)