Reading Comprehension

PT21 · S4 · P4 · Q23 Tollefson's Immigration Study

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Most studies of recent Southeast Asian immigrants to the United States have focused on their adjustment to life in their adopted country and on the effects of leaving their homelands.

Topic

The impact and shortcomings of educational programs for Southeast Asian immigrants in U.S. processing centers, as critiqued by James Tollefson.

Framework

Challenge Position / Problem–Solution

Main Point

Tollefson critiques immigrant educational programs for prioritizing quick employment and assimilation over the long-term needs and well-being of Southeast Asian immigrants, and although he recommends reforms, he does not provide enough specific strategies for implementing them. (The "Most Valuable Sentence" appears in P2, where Tollefson's main contention is explained: )

P1: Introduction to Tollefson's Focus

Most studies look at Southeast Asian immigrants’ general adjustment to the U.S., but Tollefson’s book takes a different angle by analyzing the educational programs in U.S. processing centers. He uses lots of different sources to back up his points.

P2: Critique of the Current Programs

Tollefson argues that focusing on quick employment and Western values in these programs can actually hurt immigrants by pushing them into low-wage jobs, weakening their community ties, and urging them to leave behind their cultural identities.

P3: Historical Context of Assimilationist Programs

These kinds of assimilation-focused programs have deep roots in U.S. history; they were originally designed to push European immigrants into mainstream American life around the turn of the twentieth century.

23.

With which one of the following statements concerning the educational programs of the immigration centers would Tollefson most probably agree?

Although the programs offer adequate
Out of Scope: adequate job training
Tollefson is not happy with the job training. He thinks that it overemphasizes the goal of getting the immigrants immediately employed (so it just trains them to get the lowest-level jobs ... ones that you don't even need to know English to do). He wants the programs to improve job training (even if it means publicly assisting the immigrants in the short term) so that it sets the immigrants up for a more prosperous long-term.
19% picked this
Correct
Some of the programs’ attempts
Why this is right
The most attractive reason to stop and consider this answer choice is its soft, provable wording: some Would Tollefson think that in at least one case, an educational program did something ostensibly to improve the earning power of the immigrants but it's really cutting them off from potential sources of income? Yes! He thinks that educational programs are not bothering to teach the immigrants English or train them to apply to "career-level" jobs. Instead, the programs are determined to get these immigrants employed as soon as possible, so they train them "almost exclusively for low-level jobs that do not require English proficiency". We could also support this from the 2nd paragraph where it says that educators try to "instill in the immigrants the traditionally Western principles of self-sufficiency and individual success". The educators are probably doing so to improve the earning power of the immigrants. But, Tollefson says, " these efforts ... sometimes isolate [the immigrants] from the moral support and even from business opportunities afforded by the immigrant community". That's a strong match for cutting them off from potential sources of income.
Skill tested: Non-Author Opinion · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
70% picked this
Inclusion of the history of
Out of Scope
Out of Scope: history of US immigration The passage never talks about the "history of immigration in the US", so we have no idea what Tollefson would say about this. The 3rd paragraph mentions that Tollefson's book discusses a concise history of the assimilationist movement in immigration education, which is something way more specific than "history of immigration in the US". This history is in Tollefson's book, not in immigrant educational programs.
2% picked this
Immigrants would benefit if instructors
Out of Scope: teacher-training curricula
Teacher-training courses are almost never mentioned in the passage. The end of the 1st paragraph briefly lists "visits to a teacher-training unit" among the sources Tollefson used for his book, and that's it. We never hear about any curricula developed there, nor do we hear Tollefson complain about instructors being under-prepared to teach such curricula.
2% picked this
The programs’ curricula should be
Opposite
Tollefson was complaining that the current version of these educational programs places too much emphasis on making immigrants assimilate the values/attitude/behaviors of the U.S., while encouraging them to shed some of their old traditions and identity. Tollefson would want less emphasis placed on teaching U.S. values, beliefs, and practices.
6% picked this

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