Subtractive Schooling

<p><b>Provides an enhanced sense of what's required to genuinely care for and educate the U.S.–Mexican youth in America.</b></p><p><b>Winner of the 2000 Outstanding Book Award presented by the American Educational Research Association </b><br/><b>Winner of the 2001 American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Award </b><br/><b>Honorable Mention 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards </b></p><p><i>Subtractive Schooling</i> provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U.S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive virtually all-Mexican inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students' social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated U.S.-born youth.</p>