| content | sioc:content | While education is widely considered an essential component of one’s social development and a primary opportunity for social mobility across all American families, it is particularly important in traditional Chinese culture. Educational success is seen as a duty and obligation to not only one’s self but their entire family. As Min Zhou points out in her article, “The Ethnic System of Supplementary Education: Nonprofit and For-Profit Institutions in Los Angeles’ Chinese Immigrant Community,” many Chinese parents facilitate their children’s education because they are “keenly aware of their own limitations as immigrants and the larger structural constraints, such as limited family wealth… lack of access to social networks connecting to the mainstream economy and various social and political institutions, and entry barriers to certain occupations because of racial stereotyping and discrimination” (233).
As such, it’s clear why education formed such an integral role in Chinatown’s community. Even with decades of policies barring Chinese immigrants from attending American public schools, many turned to homeschooling, religious institutions, or creating their own Chinese education schools. And once public schools were open to Chinese Americans, they became pillars of the Chinatown community.
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