Cultural Education
CHINESE LANGUAGE SCHOOLS
Private Chinese language schools are as old as Chinatown itself, and for good reason. Sociology professor Min Zhou writes in her work, “The Ethnic System of Supplementary Education: Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions in Los Angeles’ Chinese Immigrant Community,” that Chinese immigrant parents believed that Chinese language education could provide strong identity development and improve their childrens’ career prospects in Chinatown. However, the dominant culture initially harbored a much dimmer view: to them, these schools competed with public education and prevented assimilation into mainstream American culture.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the repeal of racist immigration and segregation policies precipitated a sharp decline for the private Chinese language school. Now that Chinese people could find jobs in mainstream America, Chinese language proficiency was only useful for finding jobs in Chinatown or returning to China. The ensuing low student and community buy-in, coupled with teachers’ low English proficiency and insistence on using ineffective curriculum and pedagogy, resulted in high attrition rates -- most students dropped out by the sixth grade).
However, the 1960s ushered in new influxes of Chinese immigrants, raising the demand for Chinese language schools. Nowadays, language schools take place after school, also offering electives in Chinese dance, cooking, performing arts, and other cultural instruction. They also host PTA and parent-run activities to allow parents to spend less time going back and forth. There, parents swap success and failure stories, picking up child-rearing strategies along the way.
Zhou elaborates that language schools therefore offer Chinese immigrants social capital and networking through offering them opportunities to (1) socialize and rebuild social ties (2) get involved in their childrens’ education within a more culturally familiar environment (3) foster a sense of civic duty (4) nurture ethnic identity and pride.
Ultimately, Chinese language schools will be around as long as Chinatown remains.
LION DANCING
Lion dance, a form of Chinese traditional dance, is a ritual used by the Chinese immigrant community to bring about good fortune. Given its iconic role in Chinese culture, Chinatown community members created programs to instruct youth in lion dancing. One lion dance team was based in Castelar Street Elementary School, a natural community hub.
Mike Fong, a participant in Castelar’s lion dance team from 1986 to 1988, found the program to be an opportunity to learn more about his heritage. “At the time, I didn’t really appreciate the significance of Chinese culture,” Fong said. “As a kid, I just wanted to be part of that lion dance team. It was fun. We performed for Chinatown Parade, Nisei Week Parade. It was such an opportunity.”
While the 1980s iteration of the lion dance team did eventually fall off, it was restarted in the early 1990s by Fungi Ng, former Castelar student and employee. “I thought it was something that was good for the kids,” Ng said. “It is part of our cultural background, and something that the parents can relate to. It is exercise and a social network. I wanted to give that back to them.”