Over the course of the last two weeks I have happened to have dinner at the homes of several suburban middle class families as part of a program with work. Two of them were your standard American families that have been in this country for generations and the other two were 1st generation Immigrant families, one from Lebanon and one from China.
In the non-immigrant homes the families talked very little about education (I was there as part of work in developing a youth diversion/crime prevention program). Both of them had grown children who despite having the economic and educational opportunites to go on to college had chosen not to and now worked retail jobs, etc. Not exactly losers..but certainly average people who had not gone beyond high school. I found this odd as in both these families at least one parent had gone to college and the usual trend is for the children to also complete college in households such as that.
In the two 1st generation immigrant families the parents spoke of people they knew who were "not educated" in a tone of voice that made it seem like they were speaking of people who had some sort of disease. While they did not seem to be the "typical" Asian parent everyone on ATOT talks about, thier was no doubt that no matter what thier children were going to college, and that they would see them as incomplete people without an education. In one of these families neither parent had a university education, while in the other both parents had graduate level educations. The contrast between attitudes towards education was marked, and the almost reverence and respect given to "educated" people was quite obvious.
In the non-immigrant homes the families talked very little about education (I was there as part of work in developing a youth diversion/crime prevention program). Both of them had grown children who despite having the economic and educational opportunites to go on to college had chosen not to and now worked retail jobs, etc. Not exactly losers..but certainly average people who had not gone beyond high school. I found this odd as in both these families at least one parent had gone to college and the usual trend is for the children to also complete college in households such as that.
In the two 1st generation immigrant families the parents spoke of people they knew who were "not educated" in a tone of voice that made it seem like they were speaking of people who had some sort of disease. While they did not seem to be the "typical" Asian parent everyone on ATOT talks about, thier was no doubt that no matter what thier children were going to college, and that they would see them as incomplete people without an education. In one of these families neither parent had a university education, while in the other both parents had graduate level educations. The contrast between attitudes towards education was marked, and the almost reverence and respect given to "educated" people was quite obvious.