Two experiments conducted with 49 Chicano high school students, aged 15-17, found that balanced-proficient bilingual speakers had slower rates of cognitive information processing at the level of short-term memory than did unbalanced bilingual speakers. The groups did not differ in rates of cognitive information processing at the simpler level of…

School efforts to promote science learning were examined at two ethnically and linguistically diverse elementary schools (one urban and one suburban). The schools differed considerably with regard to students' prior knowledge and background, teacher and administrator attitudes toward science education and toward the capabilities of students with…

Reviews research on maintaining and revitalizing American Indian languages, focusing on the interrelationship of language and culture; Fishman's theoretical paradigm for reversing language shift; national and tribal language policies; and examples of native language instruction at the early childhood, elementary, secondary, and tribal college…

Measures of acculturation to the school environment and to student's own culture were administered to 23 Mexican American students in grades 7-9 in a rural midwestern town. Student reading achievement on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills was not related to scores on either measure of acculturation, but was related to level of English language…

Interviews with 10 Yaqui adults educated in urban Tucson schools focused on attitudes toward formal education, struggles to maintain ethnic identity in a mainstream educational environment, and Yaqui-defined factors related to school success and failure of current Yaqui students. Major themes included hidden curriculum of school, family support…

Reviews an ethnography of the life experiences in home, school, and community of 14 Mexican American immigrant children as they struggle with acculturation processes. Argues that the authors fail to achieve an "ethnography of empowerment" that puts theory into practice and improves the living conditions of its subjects, and that this notion is…

Currently the only Hispanic company that rotates productions daily, New York-based nonprofit Repertorio Espanol performs classical and contemporary Hispanic plays in Spanish with simultaneous English translation. To develop appreciation of Hispanic literature and culture in a new generation of theatergoers, the troupe performs discount matinees…

Profiles four youth programs. The Southwest Key Program (Texas, Arizona, Puerto Rico) offers community alternatives to institutionalization for delinquent minority youth. New Directions holistically restructures the lives of Chicago gang members. The Bruce Guadalupe Community School (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is bilingual and mandates parental…

The number of Hispanics entering the workforce between 1992 and 2005 will increase by 64 percent. Cultural diversity training can help companies produce and market products more effectively. It can reduce misperceptions due to differences in coworkers' communication styles and match services to consumer expectations. The possibility of…

Neutral summary of "The Bell Curve" (Herrnstein and Murray) by a former student of Herrnstein. Focuses on the emergence of a cognitive elite in the United States; relationships between IQ and poverty, educational attainment, unemployment, divorce, illegitimacy, welfare dependency, parenting competence, criminal behaviors, and voting; racial and…

Criticizes claims in "The Bell Curve" that a high value for heritability of intelligence constrains the extent to which environmental changes can increase intelligence. Cites adoption studies and the increasing intelligence of successive cohorts of U.S. children as evidence that intelligence can increase substantially without heroic intervention.…

"The Bell Curve" declares that studies of separated identical twins--the "purest" of "direct" methods for estimating IQ heritability--indicate a value of +.75-+.80. But, the main study cited suggests a heritability of "two-thirds" for the middle class, and Herrnstein and Murray neglect to mention numerous complicating factors in twin studies that…

The entire thesis of "The Bell Curve" disintegrates due to biased use of data, misrepresentations, and logical inconsistencies. Five basic flaws are: inferring causality from correlation, use of dubious racial categories, contradictory arguments concerning the immutability of cognitive ability and the relative contributions of heredity and…

Comments on some methodological limitations of the research base of "The Bell Curve": blind use of the normal distribution (bell curve); avoidance of nonnormal statistical distributions, which are more appropriate for some social and economic characteristics; copious use of percentiles and quintiles, inappropriate with nonnormal distributions of…

Criticizes data analysis and interpretation in "The Bell Curve:" Herrnstein and Murray do not actually study the "cognitive elite"; do not control for education when examining effects of cognitive ability on occupational outcomes, ignore, cultural diversity within broad ethnic groups (Asian Americans, Latinos), ignore gender differences, and fail…