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A new Harvard study shows that immigrant boys and girls fare very differently in the outside world.
哈佛大學(xué)一項新的研究結(jié)果表明，移民中男孩和女孩在外面世界的發(fā)展差別很大。
When it comes to schooling, the Herrera boys are no match for the Herrera girls. Last week, four years after she arrived from Honduras, Martha, 20, graduated from Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. She managed decent grades while working 36 hours a week at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Her sister, Marlin, 22, attends a local community college and will soon be a certified nurse assistant. The brothers are a different story. Oscar, 17, was expelled two years ago from Fairfax for carrying a knife and later dropped out of a different school. The youngest, Jonathan, 15, is now in a juvenile boot camp after running into trouble with the law. "The boys get sidetracked more," says the kids' mother, Suyapa Landaverde. "The girls are more confident."
談到學(xué)業(yè)問題，身穿赫蕾拉美侖美奐時裝的男孩根本無法與穿同樣時裝的女孩相比。上周，也就是從洪都拉斯來到美國四年之后，20歲的馬撒從洛杉磯的費(fèi)爾法克斯高中畢業(yè)。盡管每周都要在肯德基快餐店工作36個小時，但是她還是取得了相當(dāng)好的成績。她的姐姐馬林今年22歲，在當(dāng)?shù)氐囊凰鐓^(qū)大學(xué)讀書，不久就將成為一名有資格證書的助理護(hù)士。她兄弟們的情況就完全不一樣了。17歲的奧斯卡兩年前因為攜帶小刀被費(fèi)爾法克斯學(xué)校開除，后又從另一所學(xué)校輟學(xué)。最小的喬納森今年15歲，惹上官司后現(xiàn)在在青少年新兵訓(xùn)練營。“這些男孩子多不走正道，”孩子們的母親蘇雅帕•蘭達(dá)沃爾德說，“而女孩子卻越發(fā)自信了。”
This is no aberration. Immigrant girls consistently outperform boys, according to the preliminary findings of a just-completed, five-year study of immigrant children—the largest of its kind, including Latino, Chinese and Haitian kids—by Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Though that trend holds for U.S.-born kids as well, the reasons for the discrepancy among immigrants are different. The study found that immigrant girls are more adept at straddling cultures than boys. "The girls are able to retain some of the protective features of [their native] culture" because they're kept closer to the hearth, says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, "while they maximize their acquisition of skills in the new culture" by helping their parents navigate it.
這非常合乎常規(guī)。根據(jù)哈佛大學(xué)教育學(xué)研究生院的馬賽羅和卡羅拉•蘇瑞茲-歐羅科剛剛完成了一項歷時五年的初步研究結(jié)果——這項研究是同類研究中規(guī)模最大的，研究對象為移民子女，其中包括拉丁美洲人、中國人和海地人，移民女孩子的表現(xiàn)一貫比男孩子出色。雖然這種趨勢在美國出生的孩子中也存在，但是在移民中產(chǎn)生這種差異的原因卻是不相同的。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，移民女孩子比男孩子更善于包容不同的文化。馬賽羅•蘇瑞茲-歐羅科說，“女孩子能保留本民族文化里的一些保護(hù)性特點(diǎn)”，因為女孩子跟家庭的關(guān)系更加緊密，所以在幫助父母跨越這一新文化的過程中，“她們最大限度地獲取了新文化的技能”。
Consider the kids' experiences in school. The study found that boys face more peer pressure to adopt American youth culture—the dress, the slang, the disdain for education. They're disciplined more often and, as a result, develop more adversarial relationships with teachers—and the wider society. They may also face more debilitating prejudices. One teacher interviewed for the study said that the "cultural awareness training" she received as part of her continuing education included depictions of Latino boys as "aggressive" and "really macho" and of the girls as "pure sweetness."
我們再來考慮孩子們在學(xué)校的經(jīng)歷。研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，與女孩子相比，男孩子在接受美國年輕人文化——衣著、俚語以及對教育的蔑視等——方面面臨更多的來自同齡人的壓力。他們會受到更多的懲戒，因此，他們跟老師以及外界社會更容易發(fā)展成一種敵對關(guān)系。他們還可能會面對更多的使人意志衰弱的偏見。研究中接受采訪的一位老師說，她所接受的繼續(xù)教育中的“文化意識培訓(xùn)”部分把拉丁美洲男孩描述成“好斗的”、“真正大男子主義的”的人，而對女孩子的描述是“清純可人”。
Gender shapes immigrant kids' experiences outside school as well. Often hailing from traditional cultures, the girls face greater domestic obligations. They also frequently act as "cultural ambassadors," translating for parents and mediating between them and the outside world, says Carola Suarez-Orozco. An unintended consequence: "The girls get foisted into a responsible role more than the boys do." Take Christina Im, 18, a junior at Fairfax who arrived from South Korea four years ago. She ranks ninth in a class of 400 students and still finds time to fix dinner for the family and work on Saturdays at her mother's clothing shop. Her brother? "He plays computer games," says Im.
性別也決定了移民孩子的課余生活經(jīng)歷。由于女孩子常常處在傳統(tǒng)文化的氛圍之中，她們要對家庭承擔(dān)更多的責(zé)任。卡羅拉•蘇瑞茲-歐羅科說，她們常常擔(dān)當(dāng)“文化大使”的角色，為她們的父母作作翻譯，幫助他們與外部世界溝通。這產(chǎn)生了一種意想不到的結(jié)果：“與男孩子相比，女孩子不得不承擔(dān)起更多的責(zé)任。”我們以克里斯蒂娜伊•殷為例。她今年18歲，四年前從韓國來到這里，現(xiàn)在是費(fèi)爾法克斯中學(xué)三年級學(xué)生。在全班400名學(xué)生中，她排名第九位，但她還能抽出時間給她的家人做正餐，每周六還要在她媽媽的服裝店里幫忙。她弟弟干什么呢？殷說，“他在打游戲。”
The Harvard study bears a cautionary note: If large numbers of immigrant boys continue to be alienated academically—and to be clear, plenty perform phenomenally—they risk sinking irretrievably into an economic underclass. Oscar Herrera, Martha's dropout brother, may be realizing that. "I'm thinking of returning to school," he recently told his mother. He ought to look to his sisters for guidance.
哈佛大學(xué)的研究帶著一種警示性口氣：如果大量的移民男孩子在學(xué)業(yè)上繼續(xù)荒廢下去—說得清楚些，有很多人荒廢得令人難以置信—他們將冒將來在經(jīng)濟(jì)上不可挽回地陷入底層社會的危險。馬撒輟學(xué)的弟弟奧斯卡•赫雷拉可能已經(jīng)認(rèn)識到了這一點(diǎn)。他最近告訴他的母親說，“我在考慮重新回到學(xué)校去。”他應(yīng)該向他的姐姐們求教指導(dǎo)意見。
