Resisting Assimilation to the Melting Pot:

Freyca Calderon Berumen

doi:10.46303/jcve.02.01.7

Freyca Calderon Berumen

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.02.01.7

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Abstract

The melting pot metaphor suggest that people from different backgrounds come to the United States and through the process of assimilation adapt to a new lifestyle integrating smoothly into the dominant culture. This article argues that immigrants from diverse cultural and ethnic groups that try to keep some of their cultural traditions may encounter conflict when trying to adapt to their life in the new context. The author contends for a cultural curriculum of the home endorsing family cultural values and traditions tha is overlooked by schools and educators, disregarding its potential for enhancing children’s learning process and academic achievement.

Highlights

Part of American history is explained through the metaphor that American society is a melting pot of different cultures
My argument here is that Latina immigrant mothers are the creators of a cultural curriculum of the home as theyproduce cultural and experiential knowledge while educating their children
The problem that I highlighted here is that institutions of formal education only take into account only those ways that they already indicate as valid, constructive, and significant parent involvement for educational processes, and too often neglect the aspects related to educación

Summary

Introduction

Part of American history is explained through the metaphor that American society is a melting pot of different cultures. If a person migrates to another country the transformations he or she is going to experience will be different depending on the new social, cultural, economic, and political context In this sense, as diverse groups of immigrants integrate into American society, they shape it through both a demographic transformation and constructing new ways of being and doing. The experiential and cultural knowledge (Delgado Bernal, 1998; Elenes & Delgado Bernal, 2009) acquired at home is too often disregarded as an input for the relevant to the development of the child’s learning processes Children and their mothers develop a strong bond through their daily interactions. I present a discussion of the implications to education highlighting the need to dismantle the myth of deficit around diverse families and concentrating our efforts in endorsing a variety of parent involvement recognizing them as creators of a cultural curriculum

Education and Educación

Cultural Deficit Model

Pedagogies of The Home

Implications to Education

Conclusions