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Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: a Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education

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Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: a Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education JOHN U. OGBU Department of Anthropology University of California, Berkeley HERBERT D. SIMONS Graduate School of Education University of California, Berkeley This article has three objectives. First, it describes Ogbu's classification of minorities: autonomous, voluntary or immigrant, and involuntary or nonim- migrant minorities. Second, it explains Ogbu's cultural-ecological theory of minority school performance. Finally, it suggests some implications of the theory for pedagogy. The authors regard the typology of minority groups as a heuristic device for analysis and interpretation of differences among minority groups in school experience. Ogbu has studied minority education in the United States and other societies for almost 28 years.1 During the first 15 years he concentrated on the differences in school performance between minority- and domi- nant-group students. He concluded that the differences were caused by the treatment of minority groups in society at large and in school as well as by the perceptions of the minorities and their responses to school due to such treatment (Ogbu 1974,1978). In the early 1980s the focus of his research shifted toward explaining differences in school performance among minority groups themselves (Ogbu 1987). The focus on differ- ences among minorities has generated a great deal of response from educational anthropologists and other researchers.2 Some have con- ducted important research that either supports or challenges his perspec- tive. But in reviewing these works one finds that some of his main ideas are not always understood. Among those ideas is his classification of minority groups. One objec- tive of this article is to clarify the classification. Some have interpreted his recent writing to mean that minority school performance is caused only by sociocultural adaptation. This is a misinterpretation because Ogbu has always said that "community forces" constitute one of two sets of factors influencing minority school performance (see Figure I).3 Thus, Anthropology & Education Quarterly 29(2):155-188. Copyright © 1998, American Anthropological Association. 155 156 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 29,1998 THE SYSTEM1 'COMMUNITY FORCES1 DUAL STATUS FRAME OF Societal Educational REFERENCE Policies & Practices Instrumental Beliefs about Interpretations of Schooling (e.g., Role of Credentials in Getting Ahead) Societal Rewards for Educational Relational Beliefs about or Accomplishments or Interpretations of Schooling (e.g., Credentials Degree of Trusting Schools & Those in Control; Schooling as a Process of Subordination and Control) Treatments of Symbolic Beliefs about Minorities in School Interpretations of Schooling (e.g., Is learning curriculum, school cultural practices & language a threat to minority cultural & language identity?) MINORITY EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT & ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT Figure 1 Two parts of "the problem of minority" schooling. another objective of this article is to clarify the role of community forces. Finally, we will address the issue that some have complained that Ogbu's work does not address pedagogical issues, although Ogbu has said that his work is not about pedagogy. A Brief History Phase One, 1968-1980 As we have already noted, during the first period of his research Ogbu tried to explain why minority students perform less well in school than majority students. His search for an explanation began in 1968 with his Ogbu and Simons Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities 157 Stockton, California, study (Ogbu 1974). A few years later, he published a major comparative work on the same problem in six countries: Britain, India, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States. The study dealt with the education ofcastelike minorities. He classified these minorities as castelike because in every case they were a subordinate group in a stratification system more rigid than social class stratification. In every case, the minorities were historically denied equal educational opportuni- ties in terms of access to educational resources, treatment in school, and rewards in employment and wages for educational accomplishments. Ogbu reached the same conclusion as in his Stockton study: namely, that their lower academic performance was a sort of adaptation to barriers in adult opportunity structure (Ogbu 1978). Phase Two, 1980-1997 Although Ogbu continues to study structural barriers in minority education, his research focus shifted at the beginning of the 1980s to "community forces/' which are products of sociocultural adaptation and are located within the minority community (Ogbu 1983, n.d.a). He hypothesized that the study of community forces would shed light on why immigrant minorities do well in school while nonimmigrants do less well. It is true that during his research in Stockton he had observed that immigrant and nonimmigrant minorities differed in sociocultural adaptation, but he did not explore the implications of this difference for schooling. He continued, however, to encounter the difference in the school performance of immigrant and nonimmigrant minorities in al- most all of his subsequent comparative research. Ogbu is currently analyzing the ethnographic data from a comparative study of commu- nity forces and educational strategies among African Americans, Chi- nese Americans, and Mexican Americans in Oakland and Union City, in the San Francisco Bay area. He is also revising a book for publication by the Russell Sage Foundation based on the quantitative part of the study that included some 2,400 students (see also Ogbu 1995a, n.d.b). Some of the questions that Ogbu asked himself and which others asked him include the following: Why do some minorities do better in school than others? Is it because they are more intelligent or genetically superior? Is it because they come from cultures better at educating their children? Is it because they possess languages or learning styles better suited to formal education? From his comparative research Ogbu has concluded that (1) no minor- ity group does better in school because it is genetically superior than others; (2) no minority culture is better at educating its children; and (3) no minority language is better suited for learning in school (Simons et al. n.d.). He has argued that from a comparative perspective, one cannot attribute the differences in minority school performance to cultural, linguistic, or genetic differences. This is not to deny genetic differences or to deny that cultural and language differences may have an adverse 158 Anthropology & Education Quarterly Volume 29,1998 or positive effect on minority school performance; but culture and lan- guage do not entirely determine the differences among minorities. Con- sider that some minority groups, like the Buraku outcast in Japan, do poorly in school in their country of origin but do quite well in the United States, or that Koreans do well in school in China and in the United States but do poorly in Japan. Comparative research suggests that we might discover at least a part of the explanation by closely looking at the histories and sociocultural adaptations of these minorities (Simons et al. n.d.). More specifically, to understand why minority groups differ among themselves in school performance we have to know two things: the first is their own responses to their history of incorporation into U.S. society and their subsequent treatment or mistreatment by white Ameri- cans. The second is how their responses to that history and treatment affect their perceptions of and responses to schooling. Structural barriers and school factors affect minority school perfor- mance; however, minorities are also autonomous human beings who actively interpret and respond to their situation. Minorities are not helpless victims. A Cultural-Ecological Theory of Minority School Performance Ogbu calls his explanation of minority school performance a cultural- ecological theory. This theory considers the broad societal and school factors as well as the dynamics within the minority communities. Ecology is the "setting," "environment," or "world" of people (minorities), and "cultural," broadly, refers to the way people (in this case the minorities) see their world and behave in it. The theory has two major parts (see Figure 1 above). One part is about the way the minorities are treated or mistreated in education in terms of educational policies, pedagogy, and returns for their investment or school credentials. Ogbu calls this the system. The second part is about the way the minorities perceive and respond to schooling as a conse- quence of their treatment. Minority responses are also affected by how and why a group became a minority. This second set of factors is designated as community forces (Ogbu n.d.b). Understanding how the system affects minority school performance calls for an examination of the overall white treatment of minorities. The latter includes the barriers faced by minorities qua minorities. These barriers are instrumental discrimination (e.g., in employment and wages), relational discrimination (such as social and residential segrega- tion), and symbolic discrimination (e.g., denigration of the minority culture and language). Ogbu calls these discriminations collective prob- lems faced by minorities (see Figure 2). To explain the minorities' perceptions of and responses to education, the theory explores the impact
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