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To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (13490)	5/28/2002 3:08:29 PM
From: Neenny	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Well, what do you expect, even the Hardy Boys books have been "dumded" down over the years. Like they were a difficult read to begin with?? <rolling eyes> bsdetectorawork.com

To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (13490)	5/28/2002 4:22:11 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Well, I'm glad I didn't expend any energy on that rant. I come back from shopping to find that you've done a lovely rant for me. Cool. (those of African and non-Cuban Hispanic ancestry I recall having a discussion on Cuban students with a friend of mine from the NJ Education Dept. and some of his colleagues. There was a school with a predominantly Cuban population somewhere near New York that had won an achievement award for the umpteenth time and the group was talking about why this minority school would perform so well. Turns out that the Cubans who settled in that area were from the first wave which was the wealthy and middle class of Cuba as opposed to some of the more recent Cuban refugees who were peasants and urban poor or the Mexican campesinos. The difference according to these experts was simply the class of the immigrant. Kids from the business classes had the culture to succeed. In recent years, I've taught English as a second language to immigrants. I was surprised at how many of my students weren't literate in their home language. I could help those who knew Spanish or Korean grammar. I was at a loss with the illiterates. My grandparents were peasants when they came here, but they were literate. I can barely get my head around what it must be to be illiterate and how many generations it takes to recover from that.

To: Original Mad Dog who wrote (13490)	5/28/2002 8:41:57 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

Welcome, OMD. Good post. Well, I thought so, anyway. Of course that means someone is bound to disagree. :-) The regular process included Asians, despite the fact that many (including my wife) had emigrated to the U.S. only ten years or so earlier at a time when they spoke no English. It included Cubans, despite the fact that they faced the same language barriers and potential discrimination as Mexicans. Despite overcoming these adversities, Asians and Cubans didn't get a break because .... well, because Asians and Cubans didn't need breaks because they would get in anyway. Amazing, isn't it? It used to be claimed that certain minorities did poorly academically in this country because English was not their native language and because their cultures were so different. And then (in Silicon Valley, anyway) waves of immigrants from Vietnam and Hong Kong and India hit. And did rather well. Quite well, in fact. So well that when such was legal, San Francisco's best high school had what were effectively quotas on their numbers. Sort of like the old system that limited the number of Jews in a school. But this time in a good cause, of course. :-) Strange. Because how is it that the Vietnamese and Chinese and Indian languages and cultures are closer to the English language and American culture the their Mexican equivalent is? Or some of our own native-grown minority cultures? Never have understood this.