Results from three major sources argue that Dominican parents tend to view education as learning how to read and write. Tasks undertaken in school other than these are said to have no place. There is some evidence that Dominican children, at least when they first enter school, share their parents' views. Dominican parents perceive the purpose of schooling as the means by which their children can acquire a proficiency in English enabling them to get good jobs. Education is said to be seen by Dominican parents as a validation of the change of status brought about by their social mobility from the life of the campesino in the rural Dominican Republic to urban New York. While the prime reasons for migration are said to be economic, an educated child is evidence that the migration has been successful, for had it been necessary for the child to work in order to contribute to the support of his family, he could not have attended school.
Not only are Dominican parents' attitudes toward the content of education often at odds with those of the school, but discrepant values concerning the personal characteristics of teachers have been noted. Dominican parents expect the teachers of their children to be authoritarian and to maintain strict and effective discipline. Teachers who define their role in a more informal way (for example, in an open classroom) are often interpreted by Dominicans as weak and incompetent. Further, if a child acts out Dominican parents expect the teacher to take care of the matter. A teacher who calls a parent to ask for a conference, to enlist the parents' cooperation or alert them to their child's conduct is regarded as weak and unable to handle discipline. Teachers who attend to teaching reading and mathematics are valued; those who concern themselves more personally with the child are not.
It should be noted that not all ethnic groups in New York share the attitudes toward school described above. While some Puerto Ricans and U.S. born blacks, and nearly all Dominicans and Cubans, favor successful reading instruction and more formal aspects of education as the means by which their children can aspire to the middle class, others take a different view. More politically oriented sections of the Puerto Rican and black groups value verbal and social skills and denigrate school tasks as middle class "white" skills improperly imposed on a different culture. These groups appear to emphasize political and economic maneuvering in the gaining of resources. It is interesting that Cubans and Dominicans are disenfranchised while U.S. born blacks and Puerto Ricans are citizens and potentially politically potent. It seems to be the more politically secure groups which can support cultural pluralism (not surprising in view of our discussion of cultural pluralism below).
It seems clear that if we are to truly educate the child we must consider not only the ethnicity of his family background but also the ethnicity of his comprehensive social milieu-that is, the composition of his class, his peer group, his teachers, and the placement of his ethnic group in various neighborhood-defined hierarchies.
As much as we do know, further research is required if we are to achieve adequate understanding of these groups. We must first ascertain what kinds of indigenous learning situations exist for the various populations outside of school, and what are the successes of these learning situations in achieving their goals, whether the goals are self-expressed or implicit. Identification of the impact of variables like socioeconomic status, language, cultural values, income, occupation, and religion must therefore be examined. We must analyze the kinds of rewards and sanctions used in those situations and the styles of instruction in each. Data must be collected on a sufficient number of categories of educational settings to allow descriptions of the types of settings important for each of the migrant groups and the characteristics of instruction in each setting type for each group.
We must also ascertain on the macro level the effect of migration on educational processes in whatever setting they occur. Where possible, data relevant to pre-migrational instructional patterns must be collected, allowing gross comparisons of a pre-post-migrational kind. Some of these peoples have moved to new sites to stay. Others have come here to work and obtain resources so that they can return to their home country with capital to establish businesses or otherwise improve their status. Still others engage in what can only be described as circular migration, in which, for most individuals, two bases can be said to exist. It makes considerable difference to schools which pattern of migration is encountered. If children will return to their native, non-English speaking homes, there is little need for special programs to teach them English; what is needed is instruction in their native tongue. An important question is how "individuals and small groups, because of specific economic and political circumstances in their former position and among the assimilating group, may change their locality, their subsistence pattern, their political allegiance and form, or their household membership".
Then, we must discover the implicit cultural values that are relevant to schooling, specifically examining what is perceived to be important to learn and what is not. We must determine which of two variables-language or cultural values-is the most powerful predictor of school failure or success. If nationality were synonymous with ethnicity and cultural values, knowing from school records which language is spoken in the home and the birth place of the parents would allow us to easily assess which variable is more potent. But nationality and ethnicity are not the same. Only by a thorough knowledge of the family based upon ethnographic data can one hope to identify truly cultural variables.
We must begin to understand the processes whereby children learn about their own ethnicity and the ethnicity of others. The following observations from Foxworthy's New York City field notes illustrate the kinds of phenomena we need to understand more fully.
The processes of development of such images in children, and their consequences, are important areas of study which have significance far beyond the particular setting under study.
Finally, we must shed light on the consequences of stereotyping in the process of the classroom. Rosenthal's (1971) study made an empirical argument that stereotypes, in this case of a pupil's ability, could become self-fulfilling stereotypes. Gumpert and Gumpert, while acknowledging defects in the statistical analysis of the Rosenthal book, find evidence to substantiate this point.
To summarize, in order to arrive at an understanding of ethnicity we need to know more about the interaction among variables which determine the life patterns and values of these groups, how they view themselves and how they are viewed by others. With this knowledge, directives for educational planning should become clearer.
