Made in America: Immigrant Students in Our Public Schools / Edition 1

by Laurie Olsen

Overview

Made in America is a riveting, firsthand portrait of life at Madison High, a prototypical public high school. Laurie Olsen spent two-and-a-half years in the Madison High community attending classes and interviewing teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Through their stories, we discover the contemporary version of the Americanization of immigrants -- a complex process that ultimately requires them to give up their national identities and mother tongues to be accepted in an academic and social world that then, ironically, denies them full participation. Olsen portrays immigrant students as they are "made in America" and begin to see that to become American is to take their place on the "racial map" of our nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2901595583498
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	08/01/2008
Edition description:	Tenth Edition
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Kozol

[A] strong, sensitive, and valuable book about the many subtle ethnic lines that wall off immigrant youngsters in our public schools—and, on a deeper level, the continuing existence of what Laurie Olsen rightly calls 'the dirty business of exclusion.'
—(Jonathan Kozol, author of Amazing Grace)

William Ayers

Laurie Olsen has lived her life breaking down the walls of ignorance and borders of fear, fighting for immigrant rights, tolerance, understanding, and unity. Made in America is an important book. More than a portrait of a school, this is a portrait of America.
—(William Ayers, author of City Kids, City Teachers and A Kind and Just Parent)

Jim Cummins

Made in America offers a powerful learning experience….Beautifully written and profound in its implications. I would make it required reading for every teacher.
—(Jim Cummins, coauthor of Brave New School: Challenging Cultural Illiteracy Trough Global Learning Networks)

Ronald Takaki

Out of the 'culture wars' comes Laurie Olsen's grounded study. Wonderfully avoiding the polemics and the dense theorizing that have dominated this debate…Olsen skillfully offers us an opportunity to remake America into a multicultural and more democratic society.
—(Ronald Takaki, author of A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America)