What is the cost of chasing the American Dream? For every immigrant’s decision to come to the United States in pursuit of better opportunities and livelihoods for their children, there is a silent concession of an “authentically” cultural upbringing.
And while the appreciation of such culture has fortunately become more and more of a mainstay here, it’s hard to argue that children of first-generation immigrant parents receive anything close to a childhood that would be experienced in their country of heritage.
But that doesn’t mean that these parents don’t try! I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that children completely losing touch with their cultural heritage is one of the most tragic potential outcomes of the immigrant experience; to this end, immigrant communities in the United States have taken the initiative to establish institutions for teaching and maintaining cultural practices and values - and I should know.
As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog post, I was, for a time, a student at my local Chinese school, a community-wide effort to instill in the children of second-generation Chinese immigrants a sort of awareness and appreciation for their “Chinese-ness.” Core aspects included celebrating Chinese holidays like the Mid-Autumn Festival and Chinese New Year, buying homemade Chinese snacks during breaks to eat during class time, and receiving surprisingly standardized curricula on Chinese language learning.
Chinese American children receiving cultural education from a Chinese school in Iowa City.
Of all the things that an immigrant parent can do to help their children “carry on” their cultural legacy, language is, by a longshot, the most effective way of accomplishing that. Intuitively, this shouldn’t be all that surprising: if it’s commonly spoken in the household, children will oftentimes develop a rudimentary “feeling” for it - as I have with Mandarin. Just as importantly, proficiency in the language will unlock vast amounts of critical literature and discourse that would otherwise be inaccessible to those who only speak English. According to a study done on Chinese heritage speaker children in Brisbane, Australia, “language and identity are inseparable… The languages we speak index, shape and redefine our ethnocultural identity” (Shen et Jiang, 2021).
So that’s it, then? As long as the parents can afford to send their children to institutions like a K-12 Chinese school, the Chinese American community can rejoice and rest easy knowing that Chinese culture in America is saved.
Except it’s not that simple.
Because even disregarding the obvious logistical and financial limitations of institutions like Chinese schools, which disproportionately bar participation from children of lower-income families, the whole thing is voluntary. Completely. Unlike laws that mandate children to go to school for a certain number of years, there are no such legal ramifications for not attending Chinese school. The motivation has to come from the parents who want their children to learn Chinese and are willing to contribute resources towards that - which is the first (and easier) part.
Naturally, it seems like the other half of this dynamic is for the children to find the motivation to attend themselves, and this is often where this whole system breaks down. After all, it’s admittedly a tough ask for a grade-school child to do, you know, more school while many of their friends are off doing non academic things on the weekends. (I can, again, speak from experience. It’s one of the main reasons I quit Chinese school myself.)
That’s because there’s a crucial part that’s missing here - the part that involves the parents going the extra step to help their children realize why things like Chinese school are so important and having them internalize that ambition to carry on their cultural heritage. If this gap isn’t bridged, the parent has to do the heavy lifting of both logistical and motivational support, and I believe this is where so many of these endeavors fall apart.
I recently had the opportunity to interview a colleague of mine, Ian Kung, who had, unlike me, managed to graduate from his respective Chinese school. According to him, Chinese school was around “60% about putting [his] mother’s heart at ease, and 40% for personal investment.” Like me, it was his mother that cared more about his attendance. Ian’s older sister had only managed to stick with the system for two or three years before quitting - a decision which he admits pushed him to not disappoint his mother with another child who couldn’t commit. Ian was well aware of the plight of other Chinese school dropouts who later turned around and lamented how their parents didn’t push them hard enough to attend, describing this thought process as “risk prevention” - preventing the risk of regretting such a committal decision.
Many of the students pictured here in this grade-school level Chinese class, including myself, eventually dropped out entirely.
I find his answers surprisingly frank and compelling - he and I shared a lot in common with our Chinese school experiences, even though we didn’t even learn the same dialect of Chinese. He, too, had learned to internalize it as just another sort of “weekend extracurricular” alongside instrument and sports practice. I think the key difference, however, was that Ian had also realized the immense tragedy of giving up such an opportunity early on.
I hadn’t.
He was able to articulate the idea of bridging the gap.
I never would have thought of my Chinese school having any sort of purpose like that.
He was able to follow through and complete his studies.
I couldn’t.
And neither could many other young Chinese kids in our shoes, it seems. Shen and Jiang’s study catalogs a slew of Chinese Australian children in Chinese schools who expressed boredom, frustration, and disillusionment with their predicaments, while others were apparently hoping to read Chinese classics like Journey to the West and journal their thoughts down in Chinese diaries.
Their conclusion? It was the children who had access to strong communities of Chinese Australians, robust access to Chinese language resources, and abundant engagement with other Chinese kids in “similar boats” who were best able to adopt a positive and constructive mindset towards learning Chinese. And that stuck with me.
Chinese school isn’t about learning which measure words fit which nouns, or which chéngyǔ is most appropriate to describe a given situation. It’s about the necessarily inner drive to become more in touch with one’s heritage. And it will cost a lot - for the parents? Time, money, and stress. For the children? Weekends and weeknights that are sacrificed for learning their culture and which would otherwise consist of simple leisure time.
But it’s a cost whose payoff - as immigrant parents and children ought to know - is absolutely worth it.
Reference:
Shen, Chunxuan, and Wenying Jiang. “Heritage Language Maintenance and Identity among the Second-Generation Chinese-Australian Children.” Bilingual Research Journal, vol. 44, no. 1, 2021, pp. 6–22., https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2021.1890650.
Комментарии