Immigrants for Thursday's Class

From Education Week. This is an interesting story in a time when the battle of the borders is increasingly in the news. My in-laws were immigrants from Ireland. They came over in the 1920s and made a go of it in New York. My father in law was a bus driver and my mother in law worked at the local Catholic school. They turned out a nurse, a secretary, and a college professor. Not bad for 3rd grade educations. Nicest people in the world.

Scholars Mull the ‘Paradox’ of Immigrants

By Mary Ann Zehr

Providence, R.I.

The academic success, tendency to stay out of trouble, and physical health of children of immigrants to the United States tend to decline significantly from the first to the third generation.

That troubling pattern brought researchers together here recently at Brown University to examine a provocative question: Is becoming American a developmental risk?

More than two decades have passed since researchers began to document what they call the “immigrant paradox”: Immigrants generally do much better in American society than expected, given the challenges of navigating in a new culture, not speaking English well, and often having little money, yet their early success often is not sustained by later generations.

For more of the story go HERE.