Subtractive Schooling: US-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring

This book takes the reader on an intimate journey into the lives and minds of Mexican-immigrant and Mexican-American students, their teachers, counsellors, and administrators at Seguin (public) High School in Houston’s East End community. (‘Seguin’ is a false name) This private tour allows the reader to see first-hand why the Mexican immigrants fare better academically than their US counterparts, who generally end up dropping out of school or failing to graduate. Yet it also makes clear why even the immigrant students are usually unable to fulfil their academic potential. Similarly, the reader can behold reasons for divisiveness between Mexican-immigrant and Mexican-American students, as well as for occasional ‘unity in resistance’ (p. 227). Lastly, the reasons that teachers, counsellors, and administrators do not, on the whole, prevent failure, loss of potential, divisiveness and resistance stare the reader in the face with stark shamelessness and a challenge to defy them (the reasons). It is primarily through the recorded, spoken words of Mexican-immigrant and Mexican-American students, as well as of their teachers, counsellors and administrators that Valenzuela lets us be privy to the reason for these students’ failure, loss of potential, divisiveness and resistance. In other words, it is through first-hand, qualitative, ethnographic evidence that Valenzuela mainly proves her concept of ‘subtractive schooling’ to be the root of problems at Seguin High. Valenzuela supplements her ethnographic, qualitative research with quantitative research as well, namely a survey of Seguin’s whole student body to ascertain the role of ‘generational status’ in the ‘varying levels of achievement’ (p. 8). She carried out the entire study, inclusive of quantitative and qualitative research, in the period between 1992and 1995.Her theoretical framework, as will be seen further, is based on and builds from the literature on subtractiveassimilation, caring and education, and social capital theory; the framework explains the differences in academic achievement between Mexican-American and Mexican-immigrant students at Seguin High. Building on the concept of ‘subtractive assimilation’ (Cummins, 1984, 1986 and Gibson, 1993) (pp. 25–27), which broadly denotes the negative effects for minorities of learning processes that involve cultural assimilation to the dominant culture, Valenzuela creates the narrower concept of subtractive schooling (pp. 27, 30–32). This, as she explains it, is the institutionalised process of organising the school’s curriculum and tracking system so as to take away the linguistic, cultural, ethnic and political/historical identities and resources of those students whose language, culture, ethnicity and history are different from the dominant culture’s. Subtractive schooling also necessarily involves a clash between students and teachers, counsellors and administratorsover the definition of ‘caring’ (and simultaneously of ‘education’). Such a clash leads to alienation and disaffection between Mexican-American students and teachers, counsellors and administrators and between Mexican-American and Mexican-immigrant