ANGELA VALENZUELA SUBTRACTIVE SCHOOLING: U.S. MEXICAN YOUTH AND THE POLITICS OF CARING

Before the end of 2024, I want to highlight that this year marks the 25th anniversary of my award-winning book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring, published by the State University of New York Press.

My book was honored with several prestigious awards, including the 2000 Outstanding Book Award from the American Educational Research Association, the 2001 Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association, and an Honorable Mention for the 2000 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award.

I’m pleased to know that teachers and university professors are continuing to use this text in K-12 schools and college classrooms and that it continues to be a source of transformation for those who read it.

It is selling as strongly as ever, indicating that the dynamics I captured 25 years ago remain highly relevant today. It is also useful to researchers who want to understand differences in what I term, “subtractive acculturation assimilation,” or “acculturation,” with empirical findings on perceptions of schooling that distinguish immigrants from non-immigrant, regular-track youth in a Houston, Texas, high school where I conducted my case study research.

I have presented my text throughout the country—too many to name—and without exception, it opens a window to understanding regardless of context.

Thanks to Dr. Christine Sleeter who back in 1999, allowed my book to appear in her SUNY series, The Social Context of Education where she served as series editor, as well as for her writing of the book’s foreword. She and I are great friends and colleagues today. Thanks, as well to Bill Ayers, Jonathan Kozol, the late Nel Noddings, and the late Henry Trueba for their strong, beautiful endorsements at such a critical point in my career.

I am humbled by all it took for me to bring this text to life, paralleling, as it were, with the births and early childhoods of our two daughters, Clara and Luz, and with Emilio’s own challenges on the tenure track while teaching at the University of Houston. The late Dr. Linda McNeil was also pivotal to mine, and the book’s success. OK, I’m getting teary-eyed here. I need to post before the year ends!

Thanks for considering this for your classroom. Credible accounts that illuminate the dynamics of schooling that marginalize far too many of our youth remain necessary. Make Subtractive Schooling a holiday gift for someone you care for and love. 🩷-Angela Valenzuela

SUNY Press DescriptionSubtractive Schooling provides a framework for understanding the patterns of immigrant achievement and U. S.-born underachievement frequently noted in the literature and observed by the author in her ethnographic account of regular-track youth attending a comprehensive, virtually all-Mexican, inner-city high school in Houston. Valenzuela argues that schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways: firstly by dismissing their definition of education and secondly, through assimilationist policies and practices that minimize their culture and language. A key consequence is the erosion of students’ social capital evident in the absence of academically oriented networks among acculturated, U. S.-born youth.

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