Mexican American Integration & Education Study

Second-, third- and fourth-generation Mexican Americans speak English fluently, and most prefer American music. They are increasingly Protestant, and some may even vote for a Republican candidate.

However, many Mexican Americans in these later generations do not graduate from college, and they continue to live in majority Hispanic neighborhoods. Most marry other Hispanics and think of themselves as "Mexican" or "Mexican American."

[...]

Telles and Ortiz noted that some Mexican Americans were able to move into the mainstream more easily than other minorities. Mexican immigrants who came to the United States as children and the children of immigrants tended to show the most progress, perhaps spurred by optimism and an untainted view of the American Dream.

"A disproportionate number, though, continue to occupy the lower ranks of the American class structure," the sociologists said. "Certainly, later-generation Mexican Americans and European Americans overlap in their class distributions. The difference is that the bulk of Mexican Americans are in lower class sectors but only a relatively small part of the European American population is similarly positioned."

More than any other factor, Telles and Ortiz said, education accounted for the slow assimilation of Mexican Americans in most social dimensions. The low educational levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of integration.

"Their limited schooling locks many of them into a future of low socioeconomic status," they said. "Low levels of education also predict lower rates of intermarriage, a weaker American identity, and a lower likelihood of registering to vote and voting."

Education is key to virtually everything in this country. Whether formal or self education, it has become crucial that people have the equivalent of a bachelor's degree to any real degree of success any more. Even so, it's no guarantee that you will be able to use the knowledge gained to get anywhere in life.

It should be noted that one of the great assimilation tools that the US has traditionally had was the public educational system. Peer pressure combined with a monolithic, inclusive education has taken peoples of disparate backgrounds and molded them into being 'Americans.'

My wife is an ESL student. She's taken ESL classes and they have helped her. Yet, some of the classes for ESL at the secondary school level were not aimed at bridging into English as a first language classes. It should be the goal. The singular goal. First and last and everything between goal. If for no other reason that it creates a huge parallel infrastructure that helps eat budgets and that is a disastrous thing for our underfunded educational system as it is.

Anyways, take a read. It's interesting stuff up there. I'll be hunting for a copy of the book.