A national ed policy trick?

“We face a critical shortfall of skilled scientists and engineers who can develop new breakthrough technologies.” -- AND -- “The failure to produce mathematicians, scientists and engineers in America is a tremendous threat to America's economic security.”

Comments like this are meant to be scary, scary, scary!

OR -- Is it that those types of comments are being launched by the corporatocracy to serve as a distraction, or a manipulation of public sentiment? The facts don't seem to jibe, and the arguments don’t make sense.

To expand your critical thinking, read the article by Beryl Lieff Benderly in the 2/22/2010 issue of Scientific American, Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?: American science education lags behind that of many other nations, right? So why does it produce so many talented young researchers who cannot find a job in their chosen field of study? Here are some excerpts, the bolding is mine:

For years, Americans have heard blue-ribbon commissions and major industrialists bemoan a shortage of scientists caused by an inadequate education system. A lack of high-tech talent, these critics warn, so threatens the nation’s continued competitiveness that the U.S. must drastically upgrade its K-12 science and math education and import large numbers of technically trained foreigners by promptly raising the current limit on the number of skilled foreigners allowed to enter the country to work in private industry. “We face a critical shortfall of skilled scientists and engineers who can develop new breakthrough technologies,” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified to Congress in March 2008.

But many less publicized Americans, including prominent labor economists, disagree. “There is no scientist shortage,” says Harvard University economist Richard Freeman, a leading expert on the academic labor force. The great lack in the American scientific labor market, he and other observers argue, is not top-flight technical talent but attractive career opportunities for the approximately 30,000 scientists and engineers—about 18,000 of them American citizens—who earn PhDs in the U.S. each year.

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At the same time, however, the U.S. annually admits large numbers of foreign graduate students and postdocs and finds itself increasingly dependent on an inherently unreliable stream of young foreign scientists, mostly in the country on short-term, non-resident visas, to do much of the routine labor that powers American research. [more of the cheap labor we adore]The American research enterprise—the indispensable engine of national prosperity and the world’s leading innovation establishment—has therefore become vulnerable, observers say, to conditions beyond its borders and its control. At the same time, experts note that recruiting sufficient amounts of the talent needed for vital defense-oriented scientific and engineering work that requires security clearances has become increasingly difficult.

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One thing that’s not in short supply are scientifically talented American students, whose academic achievements have been increasing rather than declining in recent years. “Students emerging from the oft-criticized K-12 system appear to be studying science and math subjects more and performing better in them, over time,” said Teitelbaum in Congressional testimony in November 2007. “Nor are [they] lagging far behind comparable students in economically competitive countries, as is oft asserted.” The number of Americans earning PhDs in science and technical fields has risen by 18 percent since 1985, according to the authoritative Scientific and Engineering Indicators 2008, published by the National Science Board.

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Arguments for the shortage based on the inadequacy of American education generally begin with the results of standardized tests used in international comparisons. Average scores for K-12 students in the U.S. never top those lists in either science or math (although they do in both reading and civics). On one widely cited assessment, Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS), which tested American third and eighth graders between 1995 and 2003 and American 12th graders in 1995 and 1999, U.S. students ranked between fifth and 12th in math and science—results bemoaned by many as dangerously deficient.

But a detailed study of students’ performance on TIMSS as well as on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), another widely reported international comparison test, by B. Lindsay Lowell of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Migration and Hal Salzman of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., suggests otherwise. “Their point is that the average performance of U.S. students on these comparative international tests is not a meaningful number,” Teitelbaum says. Far from trailing the developed world in science education, as some claim, “on PISA, the U.S. has more high-scoring kids in science than any other country” and nearly as many in the top math category as top-scoring Japan and Korea, Salzman says.

But crucially from a statistical standpoint, U.S. students are by far the most diverse of any industrialized country, ranging from some of the world’s best-prepared to some of the worst among the developed countries. On tests comparing the U.S., Japan and five Western European countries, for example, white Americans on average substantially outscored the Europeans in math and science and came second to the Japanese. American whites came first in reading by a wide margin. American black and Hispanic students, however, trailed significantly behind all other groups on average.

But scientists are not generally recruited from the average students, Salzman notes, but from those with the top scores, of whom America has large numbers. Compared with the products of Asian secondary schools, American students “are free thinkers,” says Vivek Wadhwa of Duke and Harvard Universities. “They didn’t spend the last 12 years of their lives memorizing books…. They’ve spent the last 12 years dealing with real problems and solving them. [In America], you can walk up to your teacher and tell her that she’s wrong or he’s wrong.” In Asia, he continues, “you wouldn’t dare do that.”

Raising America’s average scores on international comparisons is, therefore, not a matter of repairing a broken educational system that performs poorly overall, as many critiques suggest, but rather of improving the performance of the children at the bottom, overwhelmingly from low-income families and racial and ethnic minorities. This discrepancy, of course, is a vital national need and responsibility, but it does not reflect an overall insufficient supply of able science students.

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Spot shortages may exist in certain limited fields, especially those that are new or that require citizenship for security clearance. But in general, writes Harvard’s Freeman, “the job market for young scientists and engineers has worsened…relative to… many other high level occupations, which discourages US students…[but] the rewards are sufficient to attract large immigrant flows, particularly from less developed countries,” in a study published by National Bureau of Economic Research.

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Recruiting abroad "benefits the country by tapping a large and relatively inexpensive pool of talent at the cost of reduced incentives for native-born individuals to go into science and engineering,” he writes. His Harvard economics colleague, George Borjas, for example, has demonstrated that inflows of foreign students and scientists do, indeed, depress opportunities and incomes for both Americans and foreigners.

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And from an Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) abstract on a 2005 paper published in the Phi Delta Kappan, “Is the United States Really Losing the International Horse Race in Academic Achievement?”:

It is widely believed and lamented that U.S. students perform poorly on international comparisons of academic achievement. For example, Edward Silver reports that U.S. seventh- and eighth-grade students performed poorly on the mathematics section of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS 1995) and that this indicates "a pervasive and intolerable mediocrity in mathematics teaching." Likewise, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education attributed the reportedly poor performance of U.S. middle- grade students on the TIMSS 1995 mathematics assessment to the ineffectiveness of mathematics education. Such perceptions have led to grave concerns about the future economic competitiveness of the U.S. For example, Rita Colwell, the former director of the National Science Foundation, has stated that if the U.S. is to maintain its position in the world economy, it is critical for the nation's students to achieve at high levels in mathematics and science. The results of international assessments of student achievement are far more nuanced than the headlines lead citizens to believe. Having examined six comparisons of performance--in various subjects and at various levels--by students in the U.S. and other industrialized nations, Mr. Boe and Ms. Shin conclude that the dire pronouncements about America's standing are greatly exaggerated. Their examinations are described in this article.

Why can't these legitimate points get adequate national attention and traction? Why would the extremely smart Bill Gates and others want to spread misinformation?

Perhaps the CEO oligarch-types, now in charge of U.S. public education, might actually want to see a glut of highly educated American scientists produced, so they can eventually pay them even less. This would reduce their dependence on the cheap foreign workers they prefer to currently employ.

And remember, the CEO oligarchs are a big piece behind the starvation and privatization of U.S. public education. The "create-a-crisis" approach is a well-documented neoliberal tactic used to create panic and fear, so drastic changes never thought possible before, can be slipped by the citizens who have been emotionally-destabilized. It happens all the time; just read Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.

In this instance, global lies about public education inadequacies are being used to build suspicion and mass anti-public education public opinion -- it costs too much money, all the teachers are lazy, the schools are failures and need to be abolished, and everything is the unions' fault. In such a milieu, the structure can be more easily destroyed. To learn more, read the work of Gerald Bracey who passed away in October 2009, some of which is here:

• Believing the Worst About Schools: A Lack of Logic From Sputnik to Tough Choices
• Education Hell: Rhetoric vs. Reality
• On Education, Obama Blows It

Gang Awareness Workshop: Commentary and Summary

Part 1: Commentary

On April 12, 2008, I attended a Gang Awareness Workshop in the gymnasium of St. Anthony’s Church, located near E. 15^th Street and 16^th Avenue in Oakland’s San Antonio district. Several weeks ago, this church was the site of a funeral for a 15-year-old Latino boy who was killed by the police for allegedly refusing to drop a gun. On the day of his funeral, mourners at the church were the intended targets of a drive-by shooting. A 13-year-old was shot. Gang affiliations are attributed to these incidents.

In response to this incident and the increasing presence of Latino gangs in Oakland, this workshop was organized by City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and the OCO (Oakland Community Organization). Noel Gallo, the OUSD School Board representative for District 5, was present for a portion of the meeting. I am not aware that anyone else from Oakland's public school leadership attended. A number of parents were in attendance, mostly affiliated with St. Anthony School, a small K-8 Roman Catholic school located at the same site. Several members of the church also attended the meeting.

The information was presented by members of California Youth Outreach and its founder, Pastor Tony Ortiz. It focused on Mexican gangs in particular, but much of the content would hold true for other gangs: Black, White, Asian, Central American, etc.

California Youth Outreach (CYO) reported that they currently provide services to OUSD students at the high school level, namely at the Fremont Federation (College Prep & Architecture Academy, Mandela High School, Media College Prep and the Robeson School of Visual & Performing Arts) and at the Youth Empowerment School (also known as the Castlemont Community of Small Schools which includes Business & Information Technology, East Oakland School of the Arts and Leadership Preparatory High School). They also work with students at the Street Academy and Community Day which are OUSD alternative high schools serving very high-risk student populations.

The presentation was given in Spanish. Several handouts were given, including one for the PowerPoint presentation which was also in Spanish. English speakers were given Assisted Listening Devices (headphones with receivers) so that they could hear the interpreter. For some time I have been curious about what it would be like to use these devices. At other meetings I've been to, the attendees who have needed to use them have been the non-English speakers. I discovered that they work very well as long as the channels are set correctly and the batteries are fresh.

This was an excellent workshop. The summary which I have written is based on my notes taken at the meeting and on the limited amount of Spanish that I am able to read. It is by no means comprehensive, but it is enough to provide you with some of the important points which were covered. My hope is that that the word will spread about the need to disseminate this information to members of the community, and that presentations such as these will become commonplace.

Pressure must be placed on the Oakland Unified School District and the Oakland Police Department to join forces for the purpose of informing school staff and parents about youth gangs. With the rapid turnover of OUSD staff, and the fact that many teachers are inexperienced and coming from out of the area, presentations should be provided on an ongoing basis. Also, since the parent body is constantly changing, sets of parents should receive ongoing instruction as well. I believe that, for the best preventative measures, the middle schools should be especially targeted with this important information.

Even if everyone in the community becomes informed, gangs won’t be wiped out entirely; they have been around for many years. However, there is an urgency to aggressively deal with this issue now. Gang presence is increasing, gangs are more heavily armed than ever before, and gangs are evolving and getting more organized. Taking increased action with today's youngest adolescents will make it more difficult for gangs to acquire new members. This will help to suppress the development and expansion of these organizations.

This matter is extremely serious. These local youth gangs are directly tied to established violent prison gangs. Look at the heartbreak in Oakland caused by violent acts. Look at our homicide rate and at who is involved with those deaths. Consider the fear that many residents of Oakland are experiencing. Witness the dropout rate in Oakland’s public schools. Click on the YouTube links below to observe the presence and power of the world of Mexican gangs for yourself.*

If you are living in one of the safer neighborhoods of Oakland, this problem may feel irrelevant to you. That does not mean that it does not exist, that it is minor, or that the crime that stems from gang activity won’t seep your way. This issue is far outside of the scope of any school’s PTA, although parent groups should insist that their school’s employees have been formally trained and are actively monitoring these matters.

Responsible Oakland residents need to inform themselves, then apply pressure and keep it on. Be involved and be brave, but be smart and careful, too.

Part 2: Summary of the Gang Awareness Workshop given by California Youth Outreach on April 12, 2008

Dealing with the problem of gangs requires a response from schools, parents, police, churches, and the entire community. The goals are to

1. Distance youth from gangs

2. Get youth who are involved with gangs to leave them so they can lead a better life.

Studies reveal the trend that gangs are becoming more and more structured. They are evolving towards more serious organized crime. Gangs will continue to be involved with drugs. They use the money from their drug business to buy weapons so they can continue to sell more and more drugs.

Kids think, "Why go to school?" They can easily see that they can make more money by not going to school than by staying in school. They believe they can get more out of life by joining a gang.

There have always been gangs who have fought with each other. In the past they used sticks to fight. Today’s gangs have rifles and high-powered weapons that make the violence much worse. Also, kids in gangs used to fight out of everyone else's view, in vacant lots for instance. Now they are much more bold and fight on the street near businesses, and even churches. This increases the chance that innocent people will get hurt.

Many times parents don't want to know that their children are involved with gangs. Sometimes they are too busy to be aware of it, or to deal with it. Parents wrongly think, "My child is not involved with gangs; they are just out with their friends." Workers for California Youth Outreach must constantly fight against the parents and their denial.

Schools are also in denial; they think they don’t have problems when they do. Says Ortiz, “The biggest problem we have getting this information into the schools is their denial.”

Many communities don’t identify local gangs early enough. It is very important to see the reality of what is going on, and to do something about it before it is too late and something serious has happened. People need to know about gangs and gang culture.

A criminal street gang is defined by the California Penal Code as any ongoing organization, association, or group of three or more persons, whether formal or informal, having as one of its primary activities, the commission of one or more of the criminal acts enumerated in section 186.22 (E)(1-25), having a common name or identifying sign or symbol and whose members individually or collectively engage in or have engaged in a pattern of criminal gang activity.

Gangs can be identified by certain colors that they wear, tattoos or symbols, the people with whom they associate, where they live, etc. There are three main Mexican gangs: the Norteños, the Sureños, and the Border Brothers.

Norteños are mostly from Northern California. Their symbols are the color red, the number 14 (depicted as IVX, X4, the numbers 1 and 4) and the abbreviation “Norte.”

Sureños are more from LA and are more Mexican. Their symbols are the color blue, the number 13 (depicted as XIII, X3, the numbers 1 and 3) and the abbreviation “Sur.”

Border Brothers are usually more recent Mexican immigrants. Their symbols are the colors black and white, the image of the Virgin Mary and the abbreviation “BB.”

These gangs are enemies and hate each other. They have been known to drive around and shoot at anyone they see who they think is a member of another gang. They aren’t shooting at the person – they are shooting at the color.

Sometimes, kids who are not in the gangs will have friends who are in gangs. When they are hanging out together, the good kids can get hurt. Parents must know who their kids are hanging out with.

There are different reasons why kids join gangs. Tony Ortiz explained it is because certain things are going on in their family, in their community and at their school. He says that sometimes parents are “making a living but forget to make a life.” Parents don’t always make time to see what (non-material) things their kids need. He reminds parents to remember that the most important things are the relationships, not the material things.

Five reasons why kids join gangs:

1. Protection: Early gangs were organized by kids to give protection to each other at school and after school. The friends will help them out because the parents are not there.

2. Stimulation: It is euphoric to be involved with a gang and the kids get an adrenaline rush. Kids feel that the activities they once did are boring to them now.

3. Identity: Membership in a gang gives kids who aren’t educated, don’t have enough money, or who live in the wrong part of the city a chance to be something special.

4. Recognition: Kids make friends in the gang who will recognize and accept them for who they are. The things that parents want for their children are not always the things the kids want for themselves. Also, parents need to give recognition to their kids when they do things right. Stressed parents don’t always do this.

5. Opportunity: The reason kids will take these risks is because they can get money for doing so. Membership in a gang gives kids the opportunity to get nice things like iPods and expensive clothing. Sometimes parents see their kids with these items, and know they did not buy them. This is a red flag that is warning the parents about something!

Signs of participation in a gang:

-Nicknames: The first thing the kid adopts is a nickname. Usually this is derived from a special characteristic that they have -- physical, personal or psychological, real or imagined. Many Latino parents give their children nicknames, but if parents learn that their children’s friends are calling them by a nickname that is not familiar, it might indicate involvement in a gang. Parents also need to pay attention to the quality of the nicknames that the friends use, and to ask their children about it.

-Hand signs: Hand signs are used to greet other members of the same gang, to challenge a rival gang member, to intimidate people who aren’t in the gang, etc. The hand signs vary but they usually form letters or numbers. This is often called “throwing gang signs.”

-Graffiti: Graffiti identifies gang territory and declares allegiance. It challenges rivals. If you see a lot of graffiti in your neighborhood, there will be gang activity.

-Tattoos: Many people have tattoos these days, but sometimes tattoos affirm a person’s affiliation to a gang. For instance, someone affiliated with the Norteño gang may have one dot on one hand (stands for 10) and then four more dots on the other hand (to represent 14). They earn the dots by completing tasks for the gang. At school, kids might draw on their hands with a pen and then wash it off when they get home. If they are doing this, they are thinking about gangs. Parents and teachers need to ask, “Why do they want to put those things on their body?” Sometimes members will burn symbols into their skin with a cigarette.

-Verbal codes: These are gang expressions. Some have been adopted by mainstream culture.

-Photographs: Gang members love to take pictures of each other. We need to be looking for certain things in the pictures that kids take of one another. For example, if the people in the photos are throwing gang signs.

-Music: There is music that Norteños make, and there is music that Sureños make. The kids can download this music on their iPods and listen to it all day long. Then the messages in the music get imbedded in the kids' brains and those ideas get reinforced. This influences their emotions. See the links below to listen to some of this music.

-Technology: Web sites exist which feature and promote the gangs. Parents need to look into what is going on in their children’s rooms and on their computers.

-Age: Participation in gangs is now starting in elementary school. Kids as young as seven or eight-years-old are being taught how to throw gang signs.

Signs that a child might be involved in a gang:

• Dropping grades – for instance a child who was getting A’s and B’s in 6^th grade, but now is in the 7^th grade and has plummeting grades.
• Switching to different friends
• Missing school and cutting class
• Staying out late
• Drug and alcohol use
• In possession of unexplained money and expensive items
• Gang graffiti symbols in their room, on their clothing, and on their school papers and notebooks
• Strongly favoring one color to wear
• Using gang hand signs
• Attitude problems with parents and/or other authority figures
• Getting excited about gangs
• Moving away from family
• Sudden changes in music or clothing tastes
• Body modifications like tattoos, wounds, burns and other marks

The overall pattern of behavior is of a child needing to display an attitude which is defiant of authority figures.

Ideas for parents:

Insist that you meet their friends and the parents of their friends. You need to know who your kids are spending time with. Be alert to the possibility that the parents of the friends might be gang members themselves.

Inspect your children’s bedrooms and understand that you have the right to do so. If they resist, say to them, “I pay the rent so I go where I want in this house.”

Set limits to behavior and conduct. Be consistent. In some Latino families, the mom will say, “Go ask your dad,” and the dad will say, “Go ask your mom.” Parents need to be in agreement with each other.

Parents need to go to school and talk to their child’s teachers and counselors. They need to know when the report cards are coming out so they can watch for their child's grades.

It is all a matter of being on top of these things and then knowing what to do.

*These YouTube links demonstrate what kids might be listening to. For the full effect, read the extensive comments that viewers have made. Also, be sure to notice that there are many, many more videos to choose from. The content of the music and the imagery reveal the mentality that the uninvolved community and law enforcement must face.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlJtlvCIpf0&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8cpwrpR3po&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZKBhQLkJdc&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scy2irhG2ic&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67KHxEQGl3o&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD37_ipfCHw&feature=related

California Youth Outreach can be contacted at (408) 280-0203 or look online at www.cyoutreach.org. For CYO services in Oakland, call Henry Woods at (510) 377-5121 or email him at hwoods@cyoutreach.org.

A great deal of information about gangs is available online. Check out the U.S. Department of Justice Community Oriented Community Policing Services (C.O.P.S.) web site at http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=1383. Also, see http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/index.asp

An article about how innocent people are hurt: “Teens cautious on streets where people get shot for no reason,” SF Chronicle, 1/20/07, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/20/MNGP3NM6D91.DTL

Epiliogue: Immediately after this meeting I attended a beautification work day at my daughter’s high school. To document the event, I gathered a group of students together for a photo. These were nice kids who had come to school on a Saturday to help out. When the kids were in position and I was ready to take the photo, I noticed that many of them were making hand signs. I don’t know if these were real gang signs or not, but I told them, “No hand signs. I won’t take the picture if you guys are throwing hand signs.” They were obedient and put their hand signs away. As responsible adults, we need to be aware of, and to insist on, certain things from our children.

Chinese Language Basics

Occasionally, I’ve encountered school district employees who know very little when it comes to communicating with the parents of their Asian students, even when they work with large numbers of them or are in positions of importance.

I must admit that I was clueless myself when I started working at a school which was nearly 26% Asian. Fortunately, I had a wonderful co-worker named Eva with whom I worked closely for seven years. We became good friends and she taught me a great deal about the basics of Chinese language and culture. At least now I am more knowledgeable about one subgroup within the entire Asian subgroup.

OUSD’s student body is 14% Asian. The majority of the kids are from Cantonese-speaking Chinese families. The second largest sub-subgroup is Vietnamese students, followed by Khmer (Cambodian) students, then Mien and Mandarin-speaking Chinese kids, even fewer Lao and Hmong kids, and then very small numbers of others.

Asians are a significant demographic group in Oakland (15.2% in the 2000 U.S. Census, over 60,000 residents) and they make up a larger portion at many public schools. Given this fact, school employees (and any Oakland resident) could use a basic training about the culture, history and languages of these families. This posting will provide a start.

As proof of the lack of basic knowledge at high levels, I noticed errors in an important state report about OUSD which was released last November.¹

The report reads “In the past year, the district has hired additional student engagement and parent advisory specialists and parent liaisons, including Spanish, Chinese and Cambodian speakers, in an effort to enhance community and family involvement in district schools.”

It then goes on to say, “The district has continued to provide training and support to help parents elected to site and district councils understand their role and responsibilities. The handbooks for School Site Councils, the District Advisory Council, and the district and site English Learner Advisory Committees are provided in Spanish, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese.”

(If you didn’t notice any errors in the sentences above, then you should continue to read this entry.)

To start with, the phrase about “Chinese…speakers” in the first paragraph is somewhat ambiguous. Therefore, it serves as a useful departure point for explaining spoken Chinese and its variations.

Chinese is unlike many other languages because it has a very large number of distinct spoken forms. The spoken forms are so different from each other that linguists refer to them as linguistic groups rather than dialects.²

Dialects are language variations that are mostly understood by everyone who speaks that language. With English for instance, people from London, Boston, New York and Texas can all understand each other, despite their many differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.

However, the Chinese variations are so great that it is not possible for people from various regions to understand each other. A good analogy for the Chinese languages would be the Romance languages of Europe (Italian, French and Spanish). Although they are closely related, they are not totally mutually intelligible. For example, just because a person is French-speaking doesn’t mean they understand much Italian at all.

This is an important point for school district employees to know. When a teacher, or a principal, needs a “Chinese” interpreter for a parent meeting, they need to find a person who speaks the right kind of Chinese!

Cantonese happens to be the main Chinese language spoken by families in Oakland. It is also the language spoken by most of the Chinese Diaspora in overseas Chinese settlements around the world. This situation developed because the southern part of China, near today’s Guangdong Province where Cantonese is spoken, was very poor. People left their homeland in order to seek better opportunities around the globe.³

Mandarin is the main language spoken in the People's Republic of China (mainland China) and the Republic of China (Taiwan). It is the official language of both countries, despite their huge political differences.

Incidentally, Mandarin-speaking immigrants from Taiwan have tended to settled in Bay Area suburbs. Visit Milpitas or Cupertino and you’ll be likely to hear Mandarin. It is also important to know that the majority of overseas Chinese strongly identify with the Republic of China rather than with the People’s Republic of China.

For many years, Taishanese (a variation of Cantonese) was the most common Chinese language spoken throughout North America's Chinatowns, including San Francisco’s Chinatown. These neighborhoods changed to predominantly Cantonese-speaking when a when a huge wave of immigrants arrived in the 1970’s, mostly from Hong Kong.

The ethnic Chinese from Vietnam is another group to know about. They were expelled by Vietnam’s military in the late 1970’s along with scores of other Vietnamese. Many of those refugees settled in the Bay Area. These ethnic Chinese spoke Cantonese at home when they were in Vietnam, but many of them also learned Vietnamese, French, English, and Mandarin when they were growing up.

So although many of OUSD’s Asian English Learners report that they are Cantonese-speaking, there is often a great deal of linguistic versatility in their homes. Parents may not speak English fluently, but they may speak more than one Chinese language. It is also useful to know that many Chinese parents send their children to Chinese school every week to receive formal instruction about their language and other aspects of their culture.

This brings me to the error in the second paragraph.

It makes no sense for the report to state, “The handbooks… are provided in Spanish, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese.” This is because Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken languages, not written ones. It would be impossible to create a Mandarin handbook unless it was an audio version!

The written language of Chinese evolved more slowly than the spoken language. As a result, the written characters have remained nearly constant despite the variations that developed for the spoken words. It is useful to know that, although speakers of the different Chinese linguistic groups cannot understand each other verbally, they can completely communicate with each other in writing.

There are two main written forms of Chinese, traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese.

Traditional Chinese has been widely used for years among Chinese populations around the world and also in Taiwan. The written symbols represent objects or abstract notions. They occasionally stand alone as independent characters, but are more often combined to form complex characters.

Chinese is a very difficult written language to master. A person’s literacy is determined by the number of characters known, and the number of words known. For instance, a highly educated person may recognize as many as 4,000 to 5,000 characters, and 40,000 to 60,000 words.

Simplified Chinese was developed in mainland China in 1948 after the establishment of the People's Republic of China. It was created to make the written language more accessible to the general population. The characters are faster to write and easier to memorize. Simplified Chinese is virtually universal in the People's Republic of China and is spreading to other communities throughout the world.

Finally, I have one suggestion. One should be careful when using the terms “interpret” and “translate.” Interpret is an action relating to the verbal aspect of transforming the language. Translate refers to an action which is most often written. So if one is speaking properly, they would say that a Cantonese interpreter was used during a meeting, and that the handbooks were translated into Chinese.

Eventually I hope to provide you with a little basic information about the other non-Chinese Asian subgroups in Oakland, including our growing population of Mongolian immigrants. I believe that the residents in a city like Oakland should make every effort to learn about each other because it fosters respect and understanding.

Please add any other information you know.

¹ This was the FCMAT report. FCMAT stands for Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team. This is the body of specialists working for the California Department of Education who have been evaluating OUSD’s progress toward stability. The excerpts are on page 16 of the report at http://boe-webextender.ousd.k12.ca.us/attachments/9074.pdf

² Just some of the other Chinese language groups are Hunanese, Pekingnese, Taiwanese, Ammoy, Folkenese, Fukienese, Shanghainese, Gansunese, Sichuanese, Hainanese, Yunnanese, and Jiangsunese. It is more information than you probably need to know, but it gives you an idea of the complexity of the Chinese language.

³ The first wave of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. arrived from Canton in the 1850’s. They were peasants who were escaping the poverty and overpopulation of their homeland by going to California to seek gold. By the late 1860’s, thousands of laborers were being recruited from Canton (the former name of Guangdong Province) to work on the Transcontinental Railroad. Visit the Perimeter Primate posting on February 25, 2008 called "Oakland's history" to find out more.

References:

http://www.languagehelpers.com/languagefacts/chinese.html

http://www.alsintl.com/languages/Chinese.shtml

http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Chinese%20dialects

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_San_Francisco,_California

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/peopleevents/p_cprr.html

The Latino "Problem"

America has always been dependent on, and addicted to, the products and services that extremely cheap labor has provided for us. Our addiction started when we acquired, and enslaved, millions of African men, women and children.

Among other things, these slaves produced a range of pleasant commodities for our ancestors to enjoy -- tasty sugar for cakes and rum, lovely soft cotton for bed linens and clothing (sometimes dyed to a beautiful blue color with the indigo that the slaves had also grown), and heavenly tobacco for our ancestors to smoke and snort. Along the way, America became powerful and rich by delivering this stuff to the rest of the world, and in doing so we helped everyone else get hooked on all of these marvelous things.

By the time the Transcontinental Railroad needed to be built, slavery had been abolished and most slave descendants were kept “slaving away” in barely-paying, back-breaking jobs such as sharecropping. Ever inventive, American businessmen imported laborers from China, the province of Canton in particular. These workers were highly valued for a number of their qualities, including the fact that they were small -- so they did not eat as much as other types of laborers would -- but they were still incredibly hardworking and strong.

When the Transcontinental Railroad was finished in 1869, the Chinese simply weren't needed anymore. We made up our minds to decide that they were a threat to us and had our Congress pass the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This blocked further Chinese immigration for the next sixty one years.

We shunned the Chinese until World War II, but then, because they hated the Japanese at least as much as we did, we decided they could be our friends. Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943, and a select number of immigrants from China were invited into our country once again.

America has a long existing pattern of extreme dependency on cheap labor, but also an inevitable, resulting resentment towards those who provide it for us. Our current tension about Latino immigrants and the love/hate relationship we have about our outsourcing to labor markets around the world (“It’s soooo irritating to try to talk to those Indians for tech help!”) are just two more examples of our famous modus operandi.

From the upper class to the very poor, we Americans are addicted to the "high" we get when we consume the products and services that cheap labor provides to us. We have a four-hundred-year-old history of this habit -- in evidence today with the tons of crap that we feel compelled to buy and our insatiable lust to indulge ourselves in personal services, not to mention our massive out-of-control credit card debt and a planet that we have damaged. We just can't stop.

Our demand for cheap things and services that we require in order to find “happiness” is more than enormous. For example, there was a time only a couple of decades ago, that nail salons did not exist on every corner in our cities and suburbs. Even among upper middle class women, having a professional manicure was done fairly infrequently. Now, all social classes can afford frequent professional manicures from, and are dependent on getting them done by, mostly young Vietnamese women who file nails and inhale the stinky dust for cheap. Walk-in closets in the bedrooms of modest homes, once built only in mansions, are becoming standard features because they are essential to so many of us. We have to store all that stuff somewhere!

With our intense cravings, we are on a perpetual search to find a new substance (provided by cheap human capital) that will supply our "fix" and give us that blissful high. As with drug addictions, I am certain that brain scans would reveal that this response is an actual chemical phenomenon. I can feel it when I shop.

We constantly need to keep the “drug” cheap enough so we can buy it and still afford to overeat the way we like to do. We absolutely must have cheap labor. With our current set of social values, it is non-negotiable.

The problems arise when we have to face the fact that our cheap labor is human, and that they actually have human needs that have-to-be-met. Then we end up feeling resentful and pissed off towards them!

Those of us in mainstream America are perpetually ambivalent about the cheap laborers on whom we are dependent -- yes, we love them, and yes, we hate them. We just don't want to talk about this ambivalence in an honest way. If we did, we would have to face the unpleasant fact that we are the ones who have actually created the problems that we’re complaining about! Few people want to admit their shortcomings and confess their sins.

Since we’ll always want someone to clean our toilets and sew the $10 shirts that we "absolutely must have,” and I personally don't think we'll be able to tap into a labor source of little green aliens from outer space anytime soon, cloning might eventually provide the answer for us. We would need to create a smart enough -- but still sub-human -- species that could do all our dirty work like taking care of our homes and our precious offspring for dirt cheap pay.

Other than relying on cloning to solve our problems, there is hope in the efforts of Japanese companies which are developing robots that might do the trick. I saw a piece on TV recently which showed how they’ve created robots that can play the violin! Hopefully they’re also trying to develop robot maids like Rosie who lived with the Jetsons. My kitchen floor is really filthy and it’s way overdue for a good soapy scrubbing.

I recommend that you go to http://www.storyofstuff.com/ and watch the video.