Culture Shock for Latin American Children in America

There are really two shocks for Latin-American children coming to America: First, the education system, and second, the different sort of family circumstances. Language barriers cause a lot of problems. Politicians are arguing about bilingual education, on both sides of the question. The fact is that, because their parents speak little if any English, the children have difficulty learning. In fact, "for many years, the educational achievements of most Hispanic-American students had tagged behind those of non-Hispanic students....(And) the drop out rate remains almost double the dropout rate of non-Hispanic students" (Garcia 1). This has little to do with intelligence, but everything to do with frustration and, often, economic family problems.

A second sort of culture shock comes in the case of adoption of Latin-American children. Today, the current "rage" seems to be Chinese babies. But, in cases where children from Latin-American orphanages were adopted by Americans the result was that, eventually the heritage was gone, merged into American society. In one case the adopted son of Americans, named Ricardo "announced that he was thinking of changing his name to [Richard Borz], after his dad, who is encouraging him to stick with Rico. Though he has fused into American culture, Rico has become interested in his birth land... His sixth-grade class constructed family trees and instructed the students to include a baby picture. The earliest picture Rico has of himself is at the age of 7. So he used a picture of a dark-skinned baby clipped from a magazine. He has forgotten how to speak Spanish" (Zanembo 27).

If there is one part of American culture easy for Latino children (especially boys) to quickly adopt it is baseball. There are many Hispanics among the top major league baseball players, from Sammy Sosa and Pedro Martinez to Vladimir Guerrero and Carlos Beltran (to mention only several). While South America's major sport is still what we call soccer in the U.S., Latinos take great pride in their sports successes.

One problem about culture shock is the separation many youngsters feel when it comes to their "American" counterparts. In some areas, this turns into Latino youth gangs where they feel "safe" and exert some power. However, the major problem really lies in the American education system which tends to prepare pupils for the rat race and the highly competitive business world into which they all will enter. It is here that many newly arrived Latinos will be lost. According to a teaching website, culture shock symptoms may be "Fatigue, shyness, minor illnesses, extreme anger may be signs of culture shock if recently arrived. It is temporary, normal, and the students require caring and patience" (Trayer 1). It may be normal from a teacher's point of view, but no child, being thrown into an uneasy, often incomprehensible atmosphere, feels "normal". Quick assimilation, and understanding English, may be the keys.

REFERENCES:

Garcia, Homer D.C. "Hispanic Americans" World Book Online Reference Center, 2005, World Book, Inc.

www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Article?id=ar257790

Trayer, Marie: "Culture Shock" Guide for Understanding
Hispanic Students in your Classrooms

www.helpforschools.com/ELLKBase/ tips/Guide_UnderstandingHispanicStudents.shtml

Zanembo, Alex: "A Place to Call Home; The anger, tears and frustrating runarounds of a Guatemalan adoption case" Newsweek, July 15, 2002.