哈佛研究:男女移民差距大
A new Harvard study shows that immigrant boys and girls fare very differently in the outside world.
哈佛大學一項新的研究結果表明，移民中男孩和女孩在外面世界的發展差別很大。
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."
談到學業問題，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。上週，也就是從洪都拉斯來到美國四年之後，20歲的馬撒從洛杉磯的費爾法克斯高中畢業。儘管每週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好的成績。她的姐姐馬林今年22歲，在當地的一所社區大學讀書，不久就將成爲一名有資格證書的助理護士。她兄弟們的情況就完全不一樣了。17歲的奧斯卡兩年前因爲攜帶小刀被費爾法克斯學校開除，後又從另一所學校輟學。最小的喬納森今年15歲，惹上官司後現在在青少年新兵訓練營。“這些男孩子多不走正道，”孩子們的母親蘇雅帕•蘭達沃爾德說，“而女孩子卻越發自信了。”
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。根據哈佛大學教育學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果——這項研究是同類研究中規模最大的，研究對象爲移民子女，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，但是在移民中產生這種差異的原因卻是不相同的。研究發現，移民女孩子比男孩子更善於包容不同的文化。馬賽羅•蘇瑞茲-歐羅科說，“女孩子能保留本民族文化裏的一些保護性特點”，因爲女孩子跟家庭的關係更加緊密，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校的經歷。研究發現，與女孩子相比，男孩子在接受美國年輕人文化——衣着、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展成一種敵對關係。他們還可能會面對更多的使人意志衰弱的偏見。研究中接受採訪的一位老師說，她所接受的繼續教育中的“文化意識培訓”部分把拉丁美洲男孩描述成“好鬥的”、“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餘生活經歷。由於女孩子常常處在傳統文化的氛圍之中，她們要對家庭承擔更多的責任。卡羅拉•蘇瑞茲-歐羅科說，她們常常擔當“文化大使”的角色，爲她們的父母作作翻譯，幫助他們與外部世界溝通。這產生了一種意想不到的結果：“與男孩子相比，女孩子不得不承擔起更多的責任。”我們以克里斯蒂娜伊•殷爲例。她今年18歲，四年前從韓國來到這裏，現在是費爾法克斯中學三年級學生。在全班400名學生中，她排名第九位，但她還能抽出時間給她的家人做正餐，每週六還要在她媽媽的服裝店裏幫忙。她弟弟幹什麼呢？殷說，“他在打遊戲。”
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.
哈佛大學的研究帶着一種警示性口氣：如果大量的移民男孩子在學業上繼續荒廢下去—說得清楚些，有很多人荒廢得令人難以置信—他們將冒將來在經濟上不可挽回地陷入底層社會的危險。馬撒輟學的弟弟奧斯卡•赫雷拉可能已經認識到了這一點。他最近告訴他的母親說，“我在考慮重新回到學校去。”他應該向他的姐姐們求教指導意見。
