In beginning this dissertation with my personal experiences on the road to university, I attempted to illustrate the importance, which the personal and subjective interpretations of my existential situation had upon the educational choices that I encountered, as I was growing up in the Toronto of the 1970’s. I also introduced the notion that these interpretations - and in particular the perceptions which I held regarding the identity and roles which I could occupy - were not so much influenced by the cultural incongruities which I had to negotiate, or by my own feelings of cultural duality, as they were by my interpretations of the conflicting expectations and assumptions of my home, school and society. Finally, I also speculated on how these expectations, assumptions and identity definitions were often generated by unequal relationships of social status and power between Luso-Canadian and mainstream society, as well as by the juxtaposition of these with ethnicity and social class.

Many of these same points were also raised in the preceding pages, by the Luso-Canadians who participated in this study. In identifying the most important concerns, attitudes and practices that are affecting their community, these individuals have illustrated how the juxtaposition of certain economic, educational, social and cultural factors within the Luso-Canadian community has created a set of conditions which perpetuate their ongoing problems.

Firstly, they have illustrated how a great many of the Portuguese throughout this country are living on the social, political, cultural, educational and economic fringes of Canadian life, with the result that a whole community is thus marginalized from the affairs of Canadian mainstream society.

Secondly, they have suggested that there exists an intimate and reciprocal relationship between this marginalization and the ongoing educational problems of Luso-Canadian children. In essence, the individuals who contributed to this project regarded the community’s marginalized status as well as the youth underachievement problem as interrelated and interdependent realities, which are “feeding off” of each other in a self-perpetuating cycle of disadvantage. This relationship is strongly suggested through my story, in the sense that one of the factors which most strongly influenced my - and my friends’ - educational decisions in the 1970’s and 1980’s was the difficulty in conceptualizing, or identifying with, a place for ourselves as Portuguese-Canadians, outside of our community’s marginalized social and occupational “niche.”

Thirdly, these individuals have raised concerns that the community’s educational deficit is directly leading to the wholesale “social reproduction” of an entirely new generation of young Luso-Canadians, who are beginning to occupy, en-masse, the same marginalized occupational and social roles which their parents currently inhabit. Many of these people focussed on the need to deal with this educational problem by combating the community’s marginalization, through a greater educational, political and cultural promotion. It was exactly for this reason that many also lamented the fact that little, or nothing, is being accomplished, either by the various governments or the community, towards these ends.

Their concerns suggest that the way to tackle the issue of underachievement amongst the Luso-Canadian community - and possibly other minority groups - is to better understand and treat the issues that lay behind the marginalization of this group (as opposed to developing new school-based approaches). By understanding the role which the social, cultural and economic marginalization of the Portuguese in Canada plays in influencing their vision of themselves and their place in society, we may better comprehend the educational choices of their members.

Yet, one of the prevailing theories on minority underachievement, the Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance, postulated by John Ogbu (Ogbu, 1974, 1978, 1982, 1987, 1991; Ogbu & Simons, 1998) (also often referred to as “caste theory” or the “theory of castelike minorities”) plays down the importance of the marginalization issue by asserting that immigrant groups, such as the Portuguese, who have come their new lands voluntarily, are able to overcome the effects of discrimination, isolation or cultural differences and to ultimately succeed in school. Ogbu’s theory focusses mainly - and excessively - on the mechanisms by which minority groups have come to be marginalized, as well as on the communal attitudes of those minorities which have historically lived within, and been oppressed by, a dominant and hegemonic majority. In this fashion, it neglects to examine the mechanisms and the results of marginalization, in general, and in particular the power which role and identity definitions have in determining the educational choices of minority members. For this reason, it fails to adequately explain, and account for, the situation of the Portuguese in Canada.

The following section will describe how the community’s marginalized condition both gives rise to, and is itself perpetuated by, the underachievement of the community’s youth. A subsequent section will describe how the case of the Portuguese in Canada does not fit neatly into Ogbu’s voluntary/involuntary dichotomy and how their example points the way to focussing on the mechanisms of marginalization, (rather than the mechanisms, historical or otherwise, by which a group has come to be marginalized). In the last section, I will describe how the theories of Paulo Freire (1970, 1994) best explain the situation of the Portuguese in Canada, and how it describes a means of approaching the underachievement problem, by addressing the community’s marginalization.

The isolation, self-containment and segregation of immigrant communities is not a new phenomenon. Many groups who have entered this country have experienced some measure of marginalization from mainstream life, by virtue of the difficulties which they initially encountered with differences in language, customs, or inequalities of opportunities (Burnet & Palmer, 1988). Yet, over time, most of those immigrants who reached Canada before the late 1960’s (when discriminatory immigration policies were abandoned) have managed to integrate into all but the highest echelons of Canadian economic and political power. In describing the growing influence in the 1960’s of the “Third Force” of Canadians (i.e. those from neither English, nor French roots), Burnet and Palmer (1988) stated:

The fact that the government heeded the pressure of lobbyists for the other ethnic groups is an indication that those groups had already gained economic and political strength [...] Now they included senators, members of Parliament, prominent and wealthy business people, academics and public servants. (Burnet & Palmer, 1988, p. 224)

Many of these groups had been marginalized at the time of their arrival by virtue of one, or more, of such factors as: language (ex. Ukrainians); religion (ex. Jews); education (ex. Irish); or race (ex. Japanese). Yet, few of these groups who have entered this country voluntarily have experienced the same degree, confluence, or severity of marginalizing factors as that which characterized the Portuguese community.

Firstly, the Portuguese in Canada have been marginalized by the high proportions of individuals in the community with low education levels. While most immigrant groups to this country had some measure of representation from the diverse economic and educational sectors of their societies of origin, the Portuguese who have traditionally emigrated from Portugal have originated disproportionately from amongst the poorest and least educated segments of Portuguese society, mostly from the ranks of agricultural and unskilled workers (Arroteia, 1983; Rocha Trindade, 1973; Serrão, 1972, pp. 127-145). Consequently the Luso-Canadian community is today comprised of exceedingly unusual proportions of individuals with no schooling, or with only a few years of primary education, even in comparison to other immigrant communities, which have large proportions of their populations from similar origins (ex. Italians) (See Chapter 8) (Alpalhão & Da Rosa, 1980, p. 69; Anderson & Higgs, 1976, pp. 18-34). Anderson and Higgs argued this same point, in the late 70’s:

...there has been little incentive for the most highly educated persons to emigrate. Therefore the Portuguese communities in Canada are heavily working class in orientation. (Anderson & Higgs, 1976, p. 187)

More recently, one Board of Education official also described the Portuguese as “the most working-class community in Toronto” where parents setting an example for their children have little education and hold low-skilled jobs. “They can’t help their children in most subjects and often don’t have the English language” (Philp, 1995). Anderson and Higgs (1976, p. 136) further mention how the majority of Portuguese immigrants to Canada, between 1953 and 1973 had an average of 4 years of schooling. Evidence from the 1991 Canadian Census also illustrates that nearly half (48%) of all immigrants from Portugal who are living in this country had less than a grade 9 education, in comparison to 19% of all immigrants and 13% of the Canadian-born population, (Statistics Canada, 1996). Goldstein (1991, p. 24) compiled figures from the 1986 Census, to illustrate how the Portuguese had the highest proportion of individuals with less than a grade 9 education, (45.4%) of nine major ethnic groups, including Aboriginals (37.8%). Noivo (1997) also mentioned how the illiteracy of the respondents in her study was mentioned by these as their most crippling limitation and the major obstacle to their socio-economic mobility; a fact which, one of her respondents lamented, had “chained them to arduous manual labour” (p. 44). In summary, the Luso-Canadian community is one of the few minority collectives in this country which can safely be defined predominantly as a group with little or no schooling, few jobs skills, and originating from rural origins.

In general terms, the Portuguese who immigrated to this country also arrived with very few economic or material resources, in comparison to other immigrants. Alpalhão and Da Rosa (1980, p. 69) cited an internal document of the Federal Manpower Department which showed that, in 1972, while the Portuguese immigrants in Quebec represented 7% of the total landed immigrants in that Province, they had brought into this country only 1% of the total currency in the possession of immigrants. In her book on three generations of Luso-Canadians, Noivo (1997) also mentions how most of her first-generation Portuguese subjects had arrived in this country with “a meagre suitcase and some debts.” (p. 54). She described how material resources amongst these individuals had been so scarce during their first years in Canada that they had been left with little choice but to focus their lives on accumulating assets, often through holding down multiple jobs, as well as by way of intergenerational and family pooling (p. 53). According to the author, during those years, most of these people were not able to count on the material support of extended family members. In fact, one of the prime reasons for the immigration of many Luso-Canadians was to earn enough money to eventually return to Portugal, with the start-up resources that they had previously lacked (Anderson, 1974; Giles, 1997). As I have illustrated in chapter 8, and as a number of sources have also noted, the Portuguese still today possess one of the lowest average salaries of any immigrant or minority group in this country (Breton, Isajiw, Kalbach and Reitz, 1990; Goldstein, 1991, pp. 28-31; Statistics Canada, 1996).

Faced with the severe educational and occupational limitations which were inherent to their group, the Luso-Canadian first generation attempted to achieve economic security in this country by quickly focussing their lives around the purchase of a house; one part of what Noivo (1939, p. 67, 1997, pp. 71-72) termed a “family project.” The importance of the purchase of a home for the Portuguese in Canada has been described by numerous observers of the community (Alpalhão & Da Rosa, 1980, pp. 142-143; Anderson & Higgs, 1976, p. 44-46; Ferguson, 1964, p. 35; Hamilton, 1970). As Alpalhão and Da Rosa remarked:

We cannot conceive of the Portuguese family without a house, because it holds so important a place in family life. For the Portuguese, the purchase of a house and its maintenance are traditional virtues. (Alpalhão & Da Rosa, 1980, p. 142)

In a newspaper article, a community member also described the importance of home ownership to Luso-Canadians in the following way:

To understand the working habits of the Portuguese, one has to remember that they brought with them a family-centred work culture. While these men took pride in their role as the family’s main breadwinner, they also feared that they might not be able to meet the challenge. And one of the signs that this challenge had been overcome was the possession of a house and property. (Marques, 1992)

Unfortunately, entering into such a large-scale financial obligation so soon after immigration - especially within the confines of the meagre, or non-existant, economies and lower-than-average salaries of most Luso-Canadians - soon took a heavy toll on these families. Noivo (1997) remarked on the irony that, while migration and the purchase of a home became for many Luso-Canadian families a way which was seen as providing a means for their continued family life and a future for its younger members, achieving this economic project led to an exclusive preocupation with work and, consequently, to tremendous burdens being placed on the family and to comprimising their children’s future:

...most family members organize their everyday lives around their working schedules, which in many cases amount to fifty or sixty hours of work per week. Even now, several rely on constant overtime work to increase their paycheques. Others supplement their incomes by working under the table as carpenters, car mechanics, or tailors, on most evenings and weekends. All share Ana’s motivation and claim that it enables them to meet mortgage payments, to maintain comfortable homes, to provide for children, and for some, to take summer trips to Portugal. Like Ana, most vaunt their economic achievements and possessions at great length, and their reports are constantly interspersed with personal testimonies of the tremendous costs - for self and family - such achievements have entailed. (Noivo, 1997, p. 58)

The focus on home ownership limited the participation of many Luso-Canadians to those activities related to working and family obligations. One social worker commented in the early 70’s:

To Portuguese, home ownership is a symbol of security and they will sacrifice the privacy of their families in an effort to pay off their homes. (Serge, 1970)

Noivo (1993, 1997) described how these family and immigration “projects” were often so ambitious, in comparison to the start-up funds and available incomes that they resulted in extraordinary life sacrifices on the part of family members:

Thus, whereas it is next to impossible to determine the extent to which “the immigrant project” has meant adding injuries to the already onerous conditions of this [working] class, it seems unlikely to me that many non-immigrants would put up with such living conditions. In other words, we must ask how the Portuguese in Canada, who have remained largely unskilled or semiskilled and earn incomes far below the national average, manage to improve their living standards and to acquire real estate. From their reports, it appears that their relative upward social mobility is achieved by the extraordinary human costs absorbed by the first and second generations [...] Unlike Vallières’ so called “white niggers” who are Canadian-born, mine are neither indigenous nor have they come to America as forced labour; their invisible chains are tied to a minority status and an immigrant project. (Noivo, 1997, p. 59)

Very often, the life sacrifices demanded of Portuguese parents to purchase a home and succeed economically, interfered significantly with the best interests of their children’s education. People in the present study chastized Luso-Canadian parents for “not caring” about the welfare of their children, for not devoting enough time to their schooling affairs and for placing economic concerns ahead of their children’s education. Dodick (1998) cited how one ex-principal of a predominantly Luso-Canadian high school described the manner in which Portuguese parents sacrificed the educational future of their children, for their economic dream:

Most Sydney Carton parents were recent immigrants who did not value education highly. However, they did have a zeal to pursue the “almighty dollar.” Their goal was to work hard enough to be able to purchase a house in Toronto, and in time, sell their house and move back to Portugal to live a better life than the one they had left. In order to achieve this, many of them worked two or three jobs at a time and would either take their children along at night to help, or leave them at home alone. As a result, many Portuguese-Canadian students were not being given the kind of support they needed to succeed in school. (Dodick, 1998, p. 100)

The “selective migration” of the poorest segments of Portuguese society, the community’s educational and economic handicaps, the subsequent attachment to the “family project” and the ghettoization of most Luso-Canadians within low-paying, low-status jobs has had its repercussions in the widescale marginalization of the community across all social, cultural and political fronts. Many of the respondents in the present study placed the origins of such problems as the community’s lack of political representation, social integration, its failure to attend English, French and job-skills upgrading classes, and their lack of preservation of the Portuguese language and culture on the priority which many Luso-Canadians have placed on working and on home-ownership (See Chapter 9, “Roles of Community, Family & Society”). As one participant in Toronto put it:

People are not interested in learning... they are not interested in anything. Only working and fixing up [their house]...

Numerous reports and articles throughout the 1960’s, 70’s and early 80’s have also described how, largely as a result of their lack of fluency in the official languages and their focus on paying off their homes, many Luso-Canadians found themselves socially and culturally isolated from the affairs of mainstream Canadian society (Alpalhão & Da Rosa, 1983b, 1980, pp. 173-187; Brazão, 1978, 1984; Hamilton, 1970, pp. 74-79; Webb-Proctor, 1985). Others, including more recent sources, also mentioned how the community displays a tendency towards “clannishness” (Anderson & Higgs, 1976. pp. 175-184) and how its members turn inwards towards the family (Anderson & Higgs, 1976, pp. 127-135; Noivo, 1997).

The Luso-Canadian community also became marginalized through the negative attitudes of mainstream society, regarding themselves and their way of life. This point was made by the participants in Quebec, who spoke at length about the stereotyping and subtle discrimination which the Portuguese experience in that province (Chapter 9 “Social Marginalization” and “Role of Peer and Societal Pressure”). This negative image, along with the isolation which has long marked the community, are also illustrated by an article in a University of Toronto, Luso-Canadian student magazine, which described the way in which Luso-Canadians are regarded by the dominant society:

I am going to give a description of the Portuguese in the eyes of the typical Canadian:

“The Portuguese are dark and short. They speak a strange language that only they understand. They live in neighbourhood in the City of Toronto - between Dundas and Bloor, Spadina and Dufferin. The Portuguese have a Portuguese market where [only] fish is sold, nothing more.

The Portuguese talk a lot and talk loudly, especially on the streetcars where they are very often seen. The Portuguese man is a labourer. He works in construction. One can see all of the Portuguese labourers going to work at six in the morning, before the rest of the world has arisen. The Portuguese woman works as a cleaning lady. She also gets up very early to go to work in the residential areas of Toronto. Oh yes, there are Portuguese women who work as cleaning ladies at night and those get up very late.

The Portuguese is not very sophisticated. [He} doesn’t like to learn English. [He] doesn’t like to live outside the Portuguese neighbourhood in Toronto. [He] doesn’t like to adapt to Canadian habits. [He] doesn’t like to study. [He] prefers to work and to earn a lot of money.”

I think that this is an exact description of the Portuguese in the eyes of the typical Canadian. It’s sad, but it’s true.

The Portuguese is an enigma. He lives in a closed world and he is little understood by Canadians. One can say that [his] image is one of the least exotic of all of the immigrant groups that live in Canada.

Maybe the image of the Portuguese in public opinion will change in the next generation when they will have time to better establish themselves. I hope so. At least the image which they now have could not be any worse. (Duckworth, 1986) (my translation)

Many Portuguese don’t want to know what is going on around them. They just want to get to the end of the week, receive their salary and send it to Portugal in order to build the “palace” that, perhaps, will never get to be used more than once a year (if they’re lucky). (Coelho, 1986) (my translation)

Noivo (1997) also described how Luso-Canadians still today remain marginalized from mainstream Canadian life:

The empirical data provided above confirms that after twenty-five or more years in the “land of opportunity” the overall socioeconomic conditions of Portuguese immigrants remain well below the national average. Moreover, this longstanding situation does not appear to be changing, as this group is not represented in Canada’s political, cultural, or economic platforms, and shows minimal participation in mainstream society. (Noivo, 1997, p. 33)

A number of reports on the mental health of community members have identified the consequences of this overiding focus on earning a living. These cited the issues of overwork, financial difficulties, isolation, lack of participation in community activities and an inclination to withdraw inward into the family as the most common stressors amongst the Portuguese in Toronto (Allodi, Fantini, & Cuming, 1984; City of Toronto, 1985; Pepplar & Lessa, N.d., 1993; Portuguese Interagency Network, 1987). Often, this marginalization, or its injuries, reveal themselves especially insidious, long-lasting or acute for women (Da Silva, 1987; Giles, 1997; Noivo, 1993, 1997; Nunes, 1986a, 1986b; Smith, 1980), young people (Bulger, 1987; Coelho, 1973, 1977; Nunes, 1989, 1991a, 1991b) and the elderly (Noivo, 1993, 1997). One report on the Luso-Canadian community concluded thus:

...at present, the quality of life for many Portuguese is far below what might be reasonably expected for Canadians in the 1980’s. (City of Toronto, 1985, p. 43)

In summary, the Luso-Canadian community is characterized both by the severity of its educational marginalization and also by the occupational, economic, social, cultural and political marginalization which this deficit has engendered. This point was highlighted by the people throughout this study, who raised issues and attitudes that evidenced the isolation and marginalization of community members (Chapter 9). This community is also characterized by the importance which community members have traditionally placed on home-ownership, as a means of securing their vulnerable economic situation.

People throughout this study placed much of the responsibility for the underachievement problem on Luso-Canadian parents. As Chapter 9 illustrates (“Role of Parents” “Role of Community”) these were accused of removing their children prematurely from school, in order to help pay off a family mortgage, of not instilling the value of education in their offspring, of failing to become involved in their children’s schooling and of not learning English or French. Others in Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg and Montreal also lamented about how Portuguese parents were not interested in their children entering into more responsible careers. As I have described above and in Chapter 4, these are common explanations, in the literature on Luso-Canadians, for the underachievement that is prevalent amongst the community’s youth.

People also attributed this problem to the prevalence of more general community attitudes which give priority to economic over educational pursuits. As one person in Toronto commented about those in his community and himself:

Azoreans do whatever they can so that they never go to school. They do whatever they can to go and work. They think that they get ahead this way but they only fall behind. When I came to this country, I went to apply to study. The school said that they would pay me $75 a week. I didn’t want to go to school. I went to work for $65.

However, some of the participants saw these attitudes as consequences of the marginalized educational and economic roles which first-generation community members have traditionally occupied, both in Portugal and in Canada. They described how parental attitudes and roles had been determined by such factors as their low education levels, low-status, low-waged economic situation, and such marginalizing factors as the lack of political representation, the lack of recognition or promotion of the Portuguese language and culture and the lack of influence of Portuguese parents over the practices in local schools (ex. the problem of discipline mentioned in Chapter 9 “Role of Schools”). As one person in Sudbury asked:

[How could I arrive here, as I did, and go to school along with my wife [...] to learn English [...] if we don’t have anyone who will help us to survive in this manner...?

[Your parents] want to do what’s best for you. But [...] we don’t have the extra money to put our kids through school. The thing is, we’re not as affluent as some cultures and I think that should be recognized.

In describing the assumed low parental expectations of Luso-Canadian parents, Ilda Januario, a parent and President of the Toronto Portuguese Parents Association also described the feeling of disempowerment and marginalization which many Luso-Canadian fathers and mothers experience, when confronted with the education system:

...it is not that Portuguese parents do not value learning instruction; the problem is that they do not feel in control of their children and the system, and therefore are not persuaded that higher education is a must for their children’s success. (Januario, 1994b, p. 2)

Januario (1994b) described many of the same issues which were raised in the present study (Chapter 9 “Role of Parents”) when she mentioned Portuguese parents’ inability to deal with the education system because of language and educational deficits, the inability of these individuals to be role models of higher education to their children and their inadequate capacity to assist their children with homework (in terms of education, time and predisposition). According to Januario, those children who have the most problems are those whose parents are the most isolated and whose fathers or mothers never appear at school (p.3).

Dodick (1998, p. 165) also commented on how the lack of educational and occupational preparation of the Portuguese at his inner-city, heavily Luso-Canadian school of study were behind their lack of involvement in their children’s school:

These inner city parents had a lack of familiarity with the Canadian education system. For example, not having strong English language skills was one reason why Sydney Carton parents did not come to the school and become more involved in their children’s education. Because of their cultural background, they had adopted what Marisa called a “teacher knows best” attitude. In contrast, the mainstream, English-speaking parents at Charles Darnay had a good facility with the English language and had gone through the Canadian education system. Hence, they were much more comfortable about becoming involved at the school level and in influencing the direction of their children’s education.

The difference between the inner-city and middle class populations were also economic. The Sydney Carton parents’ jobs were blue-collar and not highly renumerative [...] Most were so busy trying to establish themselves in a new country that they had little time to become involved in their children’s education.(Dodick, 1998, p. 165)

Dodick (1998, p. 153) further noted how the dissimilar preparation of both group of parents led to differences in access to technology between his two schools (the middle-class one had a strong internet presence, the other did not). According to Dodick, the knowledge and “conscientious leadership” amongst parents at the mainstream school made the difference.

One important piece of evidence from the present study which highlights the influence of marginalization upon parental and community attitudes was in found in the priorities that were chose by the Luso-Canadian youth meetings for resolving the community’s problems. These young people placed a much greater emphasis upon the promotion of unity and in developing a strong political participation amongst the community than did those in other focus groups. These youth felt that having a strong political voice would solve many of the community’s problems - some of them not directly related to government issues - since it would also signal the end of their isolation within this society. In this respect, it is also significant that, the young people at these meetings were often much less critical of the actions and attitudes of first-generation parents than their older counterparts. These youth were often the first to explain and attribute the community’s emphasis upon employment and the actions of some parents with regards to their children’s education as resulting from the educational and economic limitations of the first generation.

Thus, the attitudes and reactions of many first-generation Luso-Canadian parents regarding the education of their children have arisen as a result of their marginalized status, both within Portugal and in this country and by the disempowerment which this brings them.

The Perpetuation of Marginalization, Through the Intergenerational Transmission of Family Projects, Occupational and Gender Roles

While the first generation of Luso-Canadians had neither the educational resources, nor the economic freedom, to be able to assert themselves amongst the various strata of Canadian society, subsequent generations have not been as limited. These individuals speak the official languages, have some measure of economic prosperity and are more culturally integrated than their predecessors. Yet, surprisingly, there is evidence that the economic, social and political marginalization which characterized the first generation of Luso-Canadians appears to have been reproduced in various - and proportional - forms, amongst those of the second and third generations.

The issues which were raised in the present study by people throughout this nation gave evidence that the second and third generations within this community are also seen to be marginalized from the social, political and economic affairs of Canadian society and are also regarded as becoming increasingly distanced from the Portuguese community (See Chapter 9, “Role of Youth”, “Role of Community...”). People spoke about how both second and third generation Luso-Canadians are squandering the types of educational opportunities which were not available to their parents and, in the process, marginalizing themselves economically. As one person stated:

Even a tree knows better [than these young people] [...] The sun is ‘over there’, it goes ‘there’. But, someone who doesn’t know anything only thinks like this, ‘ok, I’m going to make my ten dollars an hour because my father makes ten dollars an hour and I’m going to buy a house.’ In reality, there’s no way you’re going to buy a house with that money. Not now. Your parents lived in another time. But, they [these young people] don’t know...

People also mentioned how these youth are facing a disproportional unemployment and yet are also failing to enter into job training programmes. Others cited concerns about how the younger generations display a lack of political involvement in mainstream society, well as a lack of involvement and voice within the matters of the Portuguese community. The young people in certain regions, particularly Quebec, themselves identified how they are also marginalized by stereotyping and lack of acceptance by the dominant community, in their attempts to integrate more fully in Canadian society and mentioned how many of them feel a strong sense of cultural duality. Individuals throughout the present study also described how Luso-Canadian youth were failing to learn the Portuguese language and culture and, as a result, becoming increasingly alienated from their maternal roots. This was an especially poignant concern for those in the more isolated and remote communities, where the Portuguese language and culture was not being transmitted to a new generation and where, consequently, young Luso-Canadians were culturally isolated. Finally, people raised the fact that government programmes that were designed to provide opportunities of education and employment to visible minorities were not being made available to lessen the educational problems of Luso-Canadian youth.

Other authors have raised similar alarms regarding the wholesale economic, cultural and social marginalization of the second and third generations. Bulger, (1987, p. 9) mentioned how the children of Portuguese immigrants yearned for “not only economic independence, but also social access and political participation”(my translation). Yet, she noted how their initial dual cultural and linguistic frame of reference “may become a disadvantage, or even marginalization, in particular if they belong to an economically and socially less priviledged ethnicity” (my translation) (Bulger, pp. 10-11). She described how young (second-generation) Luso-Canadians have been marginalized by their Portuguese immigrant status:

Confronted, however, with customs which have been disappearing in their country of origin and by a new way of acting that is imposed upon them, without it being part of their experience; rich in options, but indecisive as to choices, even because they lack the motivation, that is the pride of their parents; marginalized within the very environment in which they grew up and insecure as to a past that they hardly know and that, many times, they wish to forget, the youth of this second generation have difficulties in reaffirming themselves as citizens of their new country. (my translation: author) (Bulger, pp. 19-20)

Bulger concludes by affirming how this exclusion of the second-generation has resulted in great suffering for these individuals:

There have begun to appear in Canada the first testimonies of this second generation, still reticent in revealing themselves and in making themselves heard. They are documents [of human feeling] which reveal great disturbance and suffering. (my translation: author) (Bulger, p. 20)

Noivo’s (1993, 1997) analysis confirms this vision of the marginalized younger generations and illustrates how subsequent generations of Luso-Canadians have been co-opted into the family and migration projects of their parents, with the result that these have fallen into similar marginalized social and economic roles. She found that migration and family projects, were “intergenerationally transmitted” through the ethnic culture of her Luso-Canadian subjects (Noivo, 1993, p. 67). Subsequently, she concluded that the immigrant trajectories of the preceding generations ultimately determined the life course, family patterns (and continued marginalization: my phraseology) of the younger age groups.

According to Noivo (1993, p.69) the first generation was “unilingual, illiterate and socially isolated.” This generation endured the privations of their marginalized social niche, in order to fulfill their “family” and “immigration” projects, for their own and their children’s benefit. Yet, the author noted that “...the dreams of the ‘successful, happy family’ [were] relegated to the realm of fantasy, as the next generation replicated many aspects of the previous one’s life” (Noivo, 1997, p. 134). She particularly noted how many of the second-generation people that she interviewed reproduced the same gender-roles, resource-pooling and economic habits of the first. Noivo remarked:

As for the presumed value differences between the younger and older generations, as much as many ethnic families appear to display distinct values, they may in fact be exhibiting different cultural manifestations of the same values. (Noivo, 1997, p. 24)

In reproducing these economic habits and gender roles, the second generation also inherited the family and migration projects and all of the sacrifices which attaining these goals represented for their parents and their family:

...when, in addition [to projecting their contradictions] an economic project, whose attainment involves intergenerational cohesion and adherence to familial practices, is imposed on the family by immigrants, the repercussions and burdens become colossal. (Noivo, 1997, p. 30)

The author noted that the second generation, while not necessarily disadvantaged by virtue of language or functional illiteracy, nevertheless continued to be isolated by virtue of the economic and gender roles, and these family projects, which are transmitted to them intergenerationally, as well as by the low educational and occupational status which their adoption often produced. Only four of the ten individuals that she interviewed had pursued secondary-level studies (p. 56). She mentioned how, from the time the second generation of those in her study had began to work, they had been obliged to submit their earnings to their fathers; a factor which had represented a “considerable contribution to the family economy” (Noivo, 1997, pp. 66-67). This requisitioning of their children’s paycheques by those of the first generation has been described by other sources (Bulger, 1987; Coelho, 1973; Da Cunha, 1977; Hamilton, 1970) This resource pooling was also cited by members in the present study as a common practice of the first generation, and one which was seen as leading directly to the lack of promotion of education by these parents. As one person in Toronto mentioned:

There are many people who are not interested in their children going to school. They would rather see their children come through the door with $100 or $200 a week...

Noivo also mentioned how some of the first-generation parents had even attempted to delay the marriage of their children, in an effort to not lose this extra income (pp. 67-68). She noted how the younger generations were well aware that this opposition to their marriage was economically motivated. In fact, some of the young people in her study began their married lives with very little financial support from their parents. In this type of situation, marriage was cited by many of her participants as a calculated economic partnership, although one which eventually placed many women in a financial dependency with their husbands that was similar to the one which they had encountered under their parents (pp. 70-72). The author concludes the following about marriage amongst the first and second generations:

For men and women in both [first and second generation] groups, marriage represents material protection and security without which home ownership and financial welfare would be impossible to achieve. (Noivo, 1997, p. 75)

Noivo concluded her examination of the second-generation by stating that “very few [of these] have actually fulfilled the [economic and educational] aspirations of the first generations” and that most continued to rely substantially on the financial resources of their elderly parents (Noivo, 1997, p. 134). The author also described this generation as suffering from “lack of self-worth, social respect and dignity,” mostly because of their self-admonishment regarding their and their children’s low educational and occupational levels (Noivo, 1997, p. 88). Noivo’s (1993, 1997) second-generation parents considered themselves to have failed in their lives, occupationally, and at not having been able to convince their children of the need for a good education.

Noivo described the third-generation as living in a situation of “indolence” (Noivo, 1997, p. 93); one which was characterized by an illusory material prosperity, which had been wrought from the overwhelming human privations of the first two generations. The author remarked on how thirteen of the fifteen, third-generation members which she interviewed were economically dependent on their parents and receiving weekly allowances, which provided them with social and material conditions that resembled middle-class patterns, (Noivo, 1997, p. 90). The majority were neither pursuing an education nor acquiring marketable job skills (p. 94) and were seen as “floating towards a rather uncertain economic future,” utterly oblivious to both their vulnerable educational as well as their economic position (Noivo, 1993, p. 71). Yet, many of these also resented their parents for sacrificing their lives in unsatisfying manual jobs and for placing - what they felt was an excessive - pressure on them to succeed in school. As a result, Noivo described how intergenerational strife was rampant amongst her study group, especially between those of the second and third generations (Noivo 1997, p. 23). The author summarized the situation of the third generation:

First, a great number of third-generation members are neither pursuing an education nor acquiring marketable skills. They remain oblivious to the current trends and demands in the labour market, namely to the fact that increasing automation will result in the elimination of the kinds of jobs working-class immigrants have generally held. Second, whereas these largely unskilled working-class youths expect to get personal fulfilment and gratification from their work, they are also used to a lot of leisure time and to relatively higher consumption than their class position allows for. Many appear fervently determined “to enjoy life instead of just working hard and saving” (their emphasis). Finally, I found it appalling that no one, not even their parents, seems to realize the seriousness of the situation, or seems troubled by the uncertain occupation/material future of the third generation. (Noivo, 1997, p. 95)

The author concluded that, due to the limited education and job-skills of the third-generation, a downward social mobility is foreseeable within the Luso-Canadian community (Noivo, 1997, p. 95) She continued:

The greatest irony is that intergenerational social mobility is exactly what immigrant families migrated for and what led them to make such remarkable social sacrifices. That the material privations and social hardships endured by two immigrant groups end up acting against their very objectives seems to me deplorably cruel. (Noivo, 1997, p. 96)

Thus, one of Noivo’s most important conclusions was that, in reproducing similar values, habits and roles, the Luso-Canadians in her study brought about the conditions which perpetuated, upon each subsequent generation, the injuries (or condition of marginalization: my phraseology) of previous generations. In fact, Noivo states that when parental attitudes regarding economic roles and ways of getting ahead are transmitted to the younger generation, the latter suffer even greater consequences than their parents:

“...the consolidation of the migrant and family projects and their integenerational transmission does in fact translate into substantial added burdens for immigrant family life [...] They injure women, youth and the elderly much more profoundly and violently.” (Noivo, 1993, p. 69)

Many of these people who contributed to this study, remarked on the foolishness of young people who still believed that they would be able to buy property, or maintain their present standard of living, with their low education levels within the confines of the new global economy. Others, especially those in the larger urban centres, echoed Noivo’s observations by warning that the lack of educational and economic advancement of the younger generations of Luso-Canadians was reproducing the marginalization of the community. One person alerted:

...we as a Portuguese community... will find ourselves in the future... with a population of underdeveloped individuals, who do not have the preparation to meet the challenges of the extremely advanced society in which we live [...] we will find, for example [...] that a certain percentage of youth of Portuguese origin will not have a place in society.

The Reciprocal Relationship Between the Marginalization of the Luso-Canadian Community and their Academic Underachievement

As I have argued in the beginning of this discussion and in Chapter 8, the vast majority of the Portuguese who came to this country reached these shores with severe educational and economic limitations. The selective migration of the poorest and least schooled segments of the Portuguese population has produced a community which is characterized mainly by the disproportionate numbers of its people who originated from rural, working-class origins (even when compared to other groups from comparable geographic and cultural beginnings ex. Italians). In consequence, as Chapter 9 illustrates, the Luso-Canadian community has long been marginalized from the affairs of Canadian mainstream society in a myriad of social, political and cultural ways. Subsequent practices, such as home ownership and family resource-pooling, that were adopted by community members as a means of quickly ensuring the immediate security of the family, resulted in the intergenerational transmission of migration and family projects, gender and occupational roles (Noivo, 1993, 1997). As one person from Toronto lamented in the present study, “[Our] children today continue with this closed mentality. They don’t know anything [...] they go and copy their parents.” This transmission has also resulted in the social reproduction of the community, as subsequent generations of Luso-Canadians appear to be entering into comparable marginalized and isolated socio-economic, political and cultural roles to those of their parents.

The people who participated in this study also recognized the link between the marginalized state of the community and the abandonment of education by its children, when they identified parental attitudes and practices - which I have argued arise as a response to marginalization - as the predominant reason behind the early-school-leaving of Luso-Canadian youth, (See Chapter 9, “Role of Parental Attitudes”, “Role of Community Attitudes”).

Yet, in her analysis of Luso-Canadian families, Noivo (1993, 1997) described how the second-generation parents which she interviewed - the age group which presumably now make up the majority of fathers and mothers in the Luso-Canadian community - had very high educational expectations for their children and placed a great deal of pressure on them to succeed academically. Despite this parental encouragement, their third-generation children were still seen to be dropping out, or were failing to acquire an adequate education, even though these were reported to be living in relative material prosperity and in stable family situations.[1]

This puzzling conundrum suggests that the essential elements in the underachievement issue within the Luso-Canadian community go beyond the influence of parental expectations, to involve issues of the marginalizing context in which youth are raised, their identity and role definitions, as well as the kinds of “folk theories of success” (Ogbu, 1987) which have developed amongst the Portuguese to overcome their marginalized status. In other words, the roots of underachievement in the Luso-Canadian community are to be found in the marginalized, wider-world situation of Luso-Canadians and what this state teaches these individuals about themselves and their place in Canadian society. They are also found in the transmission of prevailing popular theories which the Portuguese have developed about themselves, and about how to survive economically (Ogbu & Simons, 1998).

Ogbu (1974) talks about this transmission in his Stockton, California study, where he describes the seeming contradiction between the stated goals of his minority parents (i.e. higher education) and what they actually communicated to their children, regarding their real-world possibilities. However, Ogbu attributed this dissonance to the discrimination that was perceived and experienced by these parents, rather than to the effects of their marginalized status.

The Effects of Marginalization on the Educational Choices of Luso-Canadian families

Noivo (1997) remarked with surprise that one of the most curious questions about the people she had observed was how the older generations of individuals had been able to transmit to the younger the very ideals and convictions which had failed them, (ex. gender or occupational roles which had not served them well). Yet, the answer to this question lies in understanding the reciprocal relationship between a group’s social situation, their marginalization and the choices that are eventually available to Luso-Canadian families and youth. This is that, their patterns of limited educational and occupational opportunities, their roles, identities, as well as the system of reciprocal rights and obligations that had been transmitted by parents to their children were themselves the very elements which had perpetuated the “conditions” and “injuries” (or marginalized state) that their own parents had suffered. In other words, these patterns were at once their way of coping within a marginalized situation, as well as, themselves, the reproducers of this same state. The economic, social, educational, cultural and political marginalization of the community gives rise to the types of responses to education issues which are evidenced amongst its members. In turn, these responses perpetuate this marginalization amongst the newer generations, by allowing the original disadvantaging social, cultural and political conditions to continue unchallenged. Ogbu, (1974) mentions this same point, when he stated that the ways which his involuntary minority parents had of “coping” with the discrimination which they encountered actually perpetuated their school failures and their continued problems (p. 81). These ways of coping are what formed the basis of the parental attitudes which I have previously discussed.

In looking at the situation of Luso-Canadian children, it is easy to see how their underachievement is produced by both the marginalized situation of their community, as well as by the ways in which their families have responded to this state of affairs.

Firstly, one point which is not often recognized in this debate is that young Luso-Canadians - although they have better language skills and more education - suffer under many of the same structural social, cultural political and economic marginalizing limitations as their parents (see Chapter 9, “Roles..”). As the individuals in this study have illustrated, the entire community - and not only those in the first generation - are isolated culturally, politically and economically. This isolation leaves the Portuguese as a group with little influence amongst mainstream society, to alter the disadvantaging policies and practices of the school system. It also leaves them with little means through which to assert their presence within this society.

The Luso-Canadian family’s weak economic situation also leaves many of these youth without many of the options which middle-class children take for granted. For example, they go through their education devoid of role models, without a sense of knowledge and experience of what is involved within the post-secondary system and without a practical knowledge of the range of alternative career paths. This is what was meant by Edgar, a third-generation participant in Noivo’s (1997) study when he lamented how his parents never helped him with his school work or guided him in choosing a career (p. 9). In this regards, the inability of parents to assist, or sometimes even accompany, their children coupled with the tremendous pressure which some of these put on their sons or daughters to succeed academically may be what is behind the reports of widespread intergenerational conflicts within the Luso-Canadian families (See chapter 9) (Nunes, 1986b).

Luso-Canadian children also don’t have access to the same occupational environments as those of the middle-class, which could allow them to experience different aspects of working life. This also leaves them without the necessary white-collar network of contacts to which to turn, when it comes time to seek out part-time or full-time employment. Luso-Canadian children also experience a great deal of pressure from their working-class peers to leave school.

In this respect, it often becomes much easier for a Luso-Canadian youth to secure an unskilled job through the readily available network of low-level job contacts of his parents - which have traditionally existed in the Portuguese-Canadian community (Anderson, 1974) - than it is for him or her to strike out on their own amongst environments that are alien to them and attempt to find a white-collar position. When this difficulty is coupled with the influences and temptations imposed upon young people by a consumption-inducing, capitalist society, the pull towards early-school-leaving becomes even greater. As one person in Winnipeg stated,

...it’s much more pleasant for a boy - if he doesn’t have a strong preparation and a source of very strong support - to go to work to have a car, than to continue studying, without having a car.

As my personal story illustrated, in a community whose ethnicity is predominantly defined by its rural, working-class origins, entering into post-secondary education also implies, for its children, entering into role and identity patterns which are unknown, or even hostile, to many Luso-Canadian youth (who have grown up without well-schooled role models). It is often very difficult for Luso-Canadian youth to “regard” themselves in occupational roles outside of those which their community has traditionally adopted. Furthermore, these roles may often represent for them a denial of their ethnic identity or working-class community. For example, amongst some Portuguese families, only manual work is perceived as “real” work, while studying may be perceived as a leisure activity (Da Cunha, 1977). McLaren remarked on how the roles which are promoted by middle-class teachers (his “student state”) are often a negation of the working-class identity of his Azorean students:

...the student state was the path to apathy, passionless and emotional and spiritual emptiness. It was furthermore, a denigration of their identity as a social class. (McLaren, 1986, p. 144)

For many Luso-Canadian young people, escaping from their parents’ working class status also implies the necessity of entering into social roles which may have been denigrated by either a young person or his family. Da Cunha has described how, for some in the Portuguese community, to study is sometimes regarded as an attempt to become better than one’s peers (Da Cunha, 1977). In the same proceedings of the Portuguese experience in the United States, Grove (1977) relates the testimony of a Luso-American teenager, which display many of the same points:

What use could I be to my family sitting around in school? What’s that? Don’t I want to become a doctor, lawyer, or teacher? Pardon me for smiling, but I’ve heard that question so many times... Yet, each time, I’ve never quite known how to answer it. I feel lots of respect for professional people, of course, but... I guess I find it hard to see myself doing those kinds of jobs. No one in my family expects me to take that path. In fact, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t like it. (Grove, 1977, p. 18)[2]

This young man went on to describe how his older brothers joked around with one of their cousins, who was a teacher, by saying that the latter did not really work. According to this man: “[my brothers] have to struggle for a living, see, and they just assume that being a student or a teacher is not a struggle” (Grove, 1977, p. 18).

In this respect, young Luso-Canadians must also deal with the stigma of belonging to a cultural group which is little recognized, or often denigrated, in mainstream society. For McLaren, the negation and denigration of his students’ ethnic identities was intimately linked to the twin imperatives of the school of creating “good Catholics” and “good Workers” (McLaren, 1986).

The popular notions of how to achieve success which have arisen amongst traditional Portuguese families, also often do not allow its children the conditions to prosper in school (which is their only true means of “liberation” both for themselves and from the economic and occupational marginalization of their family). For example, the people who participated in the present study described the predominant community attitudes of focussing on work - and the resulting social, political and cultural isolation - as ultimately damaging to the well-being of its members and as ultimately marginalizing from society. Furthermore, in discussing how the immigration and family projects are intergenerationally transmitted through ethnic culture, Noivo described how notions of how to succeed are also passed on from parents to children (Noivo, 1993, p. 67):

The second generation begins by participating in the projects of their parents, and thus is likely to internalize the first generation’s vision of what constitutes “a better (economic) life.” Later, as they forge their own individual family projects, those in the second generation are both prepared to undergo similar sacrifices and to reproduce comparable financial behaviour in order to buy a house and to accumulate some money. (Noivo, 1997, p. 57)

Yet, the seeds of educational failure lie within this very same transmission of these notions of success, since the abandonment of education, in favour of the “family project” leads to the future marginalization of these individuals and of their own children.

Da Cunha touches upon the main point of the preceding argument when he states that, in the North American environment, the customs of traditional Portuguese immigrants - their notions about how to succeed and how to better provide for their families - have to change, if the values that they are attempting to maintain through those customs are to be maintained:

In effect, in this new situation (the industrial society) parents don’t provide for the future of their children through inheritance, but through education. Educations has, therefore, survival value. [...] The problem here is to explain to the parents these new factors so that the custom that made so much sense for them in their country doesn’t become exploitative and detrimental to their children’s future. (Da Cunha, 1977, p. 7)

Luso-Canadian children are also often disadvantaged in scholarly pursuits by the intricate patterns of reciprocal roles and responsibilities within their families.

These work and family focussed values, habits and role patterns of first-generation Luso-Canadian immigrants arose over centuries in traditional rural Portugal as adaptations to a difficult social and economic environment. In particular, the conservative nature of family, social and economic relationships in that country were a stabilizing influence which protected individuals against poverty, disaster, exploitation and lack of opportunity. Much of this same conservative attitude is common to rural families throughout the world, who have learned to depend on family interdependency, and on tried-and-true methods to ensure their survival.

Yet, by their very nature, these adaptations of the Luso-Canadian family - and most particularly, the inability of many to adapt to new conditions - served to marginalize and limit the very people that they had been meant to protect. Da Cunha (1977) made this point in an analysis of the dropout problem amongst the Portuguese in the United States. He stated that, while behaviour - in the form of customs - is always inspired by values, many Portuguese immigrant parents did not always realize that their traditional customs had to change in their new environments, if their traditional values were to be maintained (Da Cunha, 1977, p. 4). Many of the traditions which had assured the survival and prosperity of Portuguese families within their rural areas - such as having children working alongside their parents - became exploitative and detrimental in the urban North American context (p. 5).

Noivo (1997) herself described the influence of this network of interdependencies, reciprocal rights and relationships within the Portuguese-Canadian families and how these served to perpetuate the educational limitations of its members. According to Noivo (1997), the relationship of obligations between the first and second generations co-opts each into fulfilling the others’ plans for each other. In order to overcome their weak economic and educational position, the first generation bring their children into the “family project,” at a young age and, in so-doing, often deny them the opportunity at a better education and long-term occupational position. For their part, those in the second generation then are led in their own economically limited situation, and often depend on cash transfers from their elderly parents for a measure of the financial or material prosperity which they are not able to achieve (Noivo, 1997, p. 78-87).

Other similar relationships exist within the Luso-Canadian family. Da Cunha (1977) described how, in some Portuguese families, older children who did not have the chance to study may resent their younger brothers and sisters for doing so, as the latter are seen to be living off of the work of their elders.

Noivo’s account of the situation of her third generation subjects was a similar extension of this same relationship of rights and obligations, albeit with some alterations. These young people were observed to be living quite comfortably on the avails of the arduous work of their parents, while constantly criticizing the latter for staying onward in unsatisfying jobs and for being obsessed with the accumulation of material resources (Noivo, 1997, pp. 91-96). Yet, these third-generation individuals were caught in their own marginalizing situation, of reciprocal rights and obligations, which they were hard-pressed to escape. As Noivo described it:

This generation’s perspective has already been partially disclosed by Edgar... who contended that what parents regard as facilitating conditions are experienced as traps that are hard to break away from. [...] Edgar’s discourse largely condemns his immigrant parents for failing to provide career guidance, and for providing him with the “opportunities” to become “a bum.”

Edgar and his peers were bound to their families both by the economic assistance which the latter provided, as well as by the family’s complex of reciprocal right and obligations, which their parents had inherited from the first-generation (such as their parents’ tendency to live in function of them; a belief in the supremacy of the well-being of the family unit above that of the individual; the notion that children do not leave the family home before they are married, etc.). They could not reject either of these without rejecting some basic tenets of Portuguese family life and their parents.

In summary, in living within similar economic and social roles as those of their parents, in suffering many of the same marginalizing conditions as their parents and in responding to their marginalized situation by adopting similar strategies, subsequent generations of Luso-Canadians have - in essence - perpetuated this marginalized situation for themselves and their families. Furthermore, it is difficult for many of these to escape this situation without first rejecting family ties of reciprocal obligation, ethnic self-identity patterns, as well as predetermined ideas about what constitutes work and patterns of success. Bulger (1987) described how it is often a number of simultaneously occurring marginalizing factors and considerations which influence the decision of Luso-Canadian parents towards removing their children from school:

And the young people that have not understood their status as “immigrant children,” the children of immigrants, make a sign of assent. They are docile, sometimes, at others, rebellious, as all adolescents. But the school system is complicated. Those which have difficulties in English, those get left behind. They put them in schools where they learn a trade and soon they put them to work. It’s a little bit more money to help in the purchase of the house. And in this fashion are the dreams of a better future undone. (Bulger, p. 18) (my translation)

. The effects of the educational problems amongst the community and the difficulty in overcoming this situation are evident in the attitudes of its members regarding their educational opportunities. In 1992, a survey conducted for the newspaper The Toronto Star, indicated that a higher proportion of Portuguese than other minorities felt that they had less opportunity than other Canadians to get a good education, (18% vs. 13% of other minorities) (“The Minority,” 1992). Similarly, many Luso-Canadian students feel that they do not have the capacity to acquire a university education (Larter, Cheng, Capps, & Lee, 1982).

Some of the young people in the present study also spoke of the difficulties which many young Luso-Canadians are experiencing in coping with the academic pressures of school. Yet, as Noivo (1997), McLaren (1986) and Januario (1992) described them, the reactions of some Luso-Canadian parents to their children’s difficulties - locking them in their room until they finished their homework, or imposing physical punishment - has made the school experience even more difficult for some of these students.

The fact that people in the present study identified education issues as the most crucial community problems to be addressed, provides evidence that Luso-Canadians, themselves, perceive that the community’s multifaceted problems (or its multiple levels of marginalization) are rooted in, and perpetuated by, the lack of educational progress of its members. As one person commented on the necessity of making education the main priority, above all others:

A lot of those problems that exist, we’re not going to solve - we have to stress the value of education and tell people what’s coming. Because if people aren’t prepared, its going to be a painful situation.

In many of the focus groups, people regarded the community’s lack of formal education, and the unwillingness of people to enter into further training, as being behind the lack of progress on economic, political, social and cultural fronts. People also saw this issue as being behind such seemingly unrelated topics as the lack of valuing of the Portuguese culture and language, the lack of social services, the unwillingness of community members to participate in the political process and the lack of community unity. These they believed arose from an overall incapacity on the part of Luso-Canadians to assert themselves economically and politically in the life and progress of Canadian society. This lack of education was also said to lead to the generalized “closed mentality,” which one person said existed, amongst many Luso-Canadians, and which was behind most of the community’s problems.

However, this same person also commented on the need to overcome this mentality, before the education issue, itself, or any of the community’s other problems could be addressed:

The first thing we need to do is admit we have problems, instead of hiding, (like with this education thing).

In this fashion, many of the people in this study described the reciprocal relationship which existed between the community’s marginalized condition and its continuing low education levels.

Participants particularly identified the underachievement problem, as one of the primary contributors to the community’s marginalization. They decried the lack of advancement of young Luso-Canadians into the different sectors of Canadian society as one of the leading reasons for the community’s lack of political representation, social isolation and cultural progress. They also cited as a grave cause for concern the widespread entrance of the community’s youth into the same socioeconomic roles as their parents. In this fashion, they clearly identified the underachievement problem as a major reason behind the perpetuation of the community’s marginalized status as well as the biggest threat the future survival of the community. As early as the 1970’s one community member was already complaining of the inability of Luso-Canadian youth to project themselves into the affairs of Canadian society:

They are not doing anything wrong, but they are not doing anything right, either. (Slinger, 1971)

If our children do not complete high-school... do not go to university, we are going to continue to have a Portuguese community that is the mirror image of ...the first generation. This is my biggest worry, it is seeing that the second generation is following in the footsteps of the first [...] I think that, if we do not pay attention to this, [this will turn into] a great calamity for the Portuguese community. This is the key issue that we have to discuss.

In summary, the marginalized situation of Luso-Canadians has given rise to a social and economic context where Luso-Canadian youth are provided with neither the economic or social context, nor the role and identity referents, to be able to easily visualize themselves in middle-class occupations. Furthermore, both the prevailing notions in the community about how to succeed economically, as well as the pattern of reciprocal rights and obligations of the Luso-Canadian family - both of which have arisen as a response to this marginalized status - mitigate against the adoption of strategies which go outside of established traditional boundaries of what constitutes “work” and of who is a typical Portuguese-Canadian. Finally, the fact that the Luso-Canadians throughout this study regarded the promotion of education as being fundamental to solving the marginalized condition of the community provides a clue both to the origins of academic underachievement amongst Luso-Canadians and similarly marginalized ethnic and racial minorities. It also points to the need to understand and deal with the aspects of this marginalization - of which education is just one part - as a means of reversing the school failure of these students.

The Limitations of John Ogbu’s Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance, in Light of the Case of Luso-Canadians

It is clear from the results of this study, as well as from previous work on the Portuguese in Canada, that the community’s marginalized state - and particularly the attitudes on the part of both parents and youth which this engenders - are intimately associated with the underachievement of the community’s children. As I have discussed in Chapter 5, much of the leading work on minority underachievement has also begun to focus a greater attention upon understanding the ways in which a minority group’s context within a dominant society contributes to their educational failure. In particular, one of the leading theories on minority academic underachievement, the “Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance,” developed by the Anthropologist John Ogbu (also sometimes called “Caste Theory”) has managed to fuse elements of previous micro-ethnographic and macro-ethnographic approaches into an easily understandable and coherent argument for the importance of understanding this context (Foley, 1991; Ogbu, 1974, 1978; Ogbu & Simons, 1998).

Yet, Ogbu’s theory has generally failed to account for the lowered academic achievement of the Portuguese in Canada. Under this model, Luso-Canadians - who are a voluntary minority - should not be experiencing school failure across various generations. As I will argue in the following section, Luso-Canadians display some of the same achievement patterns, attitudes and role definitions as those described by Ogbu for involuntary minorities. As I will also illustrate, this inability of Ogbu’s theory to account for the situation of the Portuguese occurs largely because his model has attached an excessive and unwarranted importance upon the mechanisms by which a minority group has come to be marginalized within the dominant society (i.e.. the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy) while simultaneously minimizing the importance of the factor of marginalization, as a determinant of “community forces” (Ogbu & Simons, 1998) and hence academic underachievement.

Thus, when we examine this theory in light of the examples provided in this project, and in light of the existing knowledge of the Portuguese in Canada, we find that the important precursor to academic underachievement is not how, or why, a group has come to be marginalized, but rather whether a group exists within a marginalized context and, most importantly, whether the popular conceptions which have developed amongst group members regarding how to succeed within this marginality include notions of education as a viable alternative (i.e. Ogbu’s “Folk Theories of Making it”).

The Voluntary/Involuntary Dichotomy and the Case of the Portuguese-Canadians

The first limitation of Ogbu’s theory is that it places an undue emphasis on the manner in which a group has come to be marginalized, (rather than upon the marginalization itself). According to Ogbu, those minorities which have moved to this country willingly, such as immigrants - whom Ogbu terms “voluntary” or “Castelike” minorities - do not experience extensive academic problems (Ogbu, 1978, 1983, 1991; Ogbu & Simons, 1998):

...immigrant minorities do not experience long-lasting school performance difficulty and long-lasting cultural and language problems (Ogbu & Simons, 1998, p. 164).

This is because, in regarding themselves as visitors in their new countries, as well as in looking back upon the normally less favourable economic conditions from which most have emigrated, these groups are thus more willing to struggle to overcome the existing cultural differences, structural barriers and discrimination which afflict most minorities within a dominant context. On the other hand, those minorities who have been conquered, colonized or enslaved, such as African-Americans and American Indians - whom Ogbu calls “involuntary” or (previously) “castelike minorities” (Ogbu, 1978, 1983, 1991; Ogbu & Simons, 1998) - regard the dominant society and many of its institutions as inherently discriminatory and often hostile to their group identity. They often perceive their schools to be inferior to mainstream schools and regard with suspicion the attempts of these institutions to inculcate elements of the dominant culture within their children. They further transmit to their children the belief that the discriminatory practices of the dominant society will not allow them upward social or occupational mobility. In this fashion, involuntary minority students fail to strive for academic success, since they do not perceive an ultimate benefit to their school work. These groups also develop “folk-theories” of success, and ethnic group identities, which are often in opposition to those of the mainstream (Foley, 1991; Ogbu & Simons, 1998).

Yet, despite the explanation which Ogbu has given, if we examine the case of the Portuguese in Canada and in the U. S. who - under Ogbu’s classification would fall into the voluntary minority category - suffer from many of the same academic problems as the black and Aboriginal communities in Canada, both of which are involuntary groups (See Chapter 3, The Literature on Luso-Canadian Underachievement). Luso-Canadians have been dropping out in disproportionate numbers, studying at lower levels, filling the ranks of Special Education classes and having reading and language problems for almost 30 years. Furthermore, as Chapter 3 and 9 of the present study have illustrated, not only are Luso-Canadians underachieving in disproportionate numbers, but this underachievement also appears to be occurring in subsequent generations; with the consequence that, the community is now experiencing a “social reproduction” of its working-class, low-waged, low-status position in Canadian society. This fact was made evident through people’s comments throughout the focus groups (Chapter 9 “Educational Marginalization”), as well as in Noivo’s (1993, 1997) study of three generations of Luso-Canadians. This author concluded that social reproduction and, in fact, downward mobility, was occurring in the Luso-Canadian community:

...a decline in the socio-economic standing of the third generation looks imminent. As much as it is generally presumed that Portuguese-Canadian youth will move up the social ladder, my findings suggest the contrary. Despite the material resources parents make available, or the so-called facilitating conditions, and contrary to the aspirations and dreams parents hold for their offspring, except for official language fluency, most interviewed third-generation members are not acquiring more skills or qualifications than the older generations have.. Based on this, it is questionable whether these youth will even achieve an economic situation as satisfactory as that of the two older groups. (Noivo, 1997, p. 95)

Not only are children of Portuguese descent underachieving in Canada, but they are also reported to be experiencing patterns of low achievement in such countries as the United States (Becker, 1990; Da Cunha, 1977, 1986; Miller, 1977; Pereira, 1985), France (Neto, 1985; Bottani, 1987) and Luxembourg (Bottani, 1987). In fact, in Becker’s (1990) study of one New England school, the Portuguese had the highest drop-out rate in her school of study and were held in lower esteem than the black students, by both teachers and students alike.

Ogbu also states that the key to differential school performance between minorities lies in understanding the differences in the community forces which shape the responses of these groups to discrimination (Ogbu, 1998, p. 161). Yet, if we examine some of these factors constituting these community forces, then we can also see that the Portuguese in Canada display many of the same attributes, opinions and role definitions which Ogbu has attributed to involuntary minorities and, thus, that their underachievement is not explained by the model which Ogbu has described for voluntary minorities. I will illustrate this through an analysis of some of the attitudes and practices which Ogbu observed in his Stockton California study, upon which most of his work is based (Ogbu, 1974).

In Ogbu’s analysis, the fact of being a voluntary minority often predisposes voluntary groups (immigrants) towards a positive attitude regarding education, while involuntary minority parents are said not to place such a high value on the benefits of schooling (Ogbu, 1974, 1987). In Ogbu’s (1974) study, in the working-class, ethnic-minority Burgherside community in California, those who lived outside this neighbourhood felt that Burgherside parents did not value education (p. 71). Ogbu further mentioned how, for some Mexican households in Burgherside, it was more important to put their children to work instead of allowing them to stay in school (Ogbu, 1974, p. 60).

As we have seen in the results of the focus groups, as well as through the literature review on Portuguese-Canadian underachievement, these similar observations have been made both inside and outside the Portuguese community. A common belief amongst community members and observers has been that many Luso-Canadian parents do not place a high priority on education and that many have used their children to supplement the family income (See Chapter 4, Ch. 9 “Role of the Community”, “Role of Parents”).

Ogbu (1974) also mentioned that his Burgherside second-generation parents - who suffered the educational consequences of their parents low education levels - also considered themselves a “lost generation,” primarily because they had not been able to take advantage of the educational opportunities which had been made available to them (Ogbu, 1974, p. 62).

Many of the second-generation parents in the present study lamented their own lost opportunities, as well as those of others in the community. One person in Winnipeg remarked on “those mothers who dedicated themselves to the factory... their children today are doing what their mothers did.” Still other people have severely criticized younger members of the community for failing to take advantage of the opportunities which their parents never had. For example, one person in Toronto lamented the fact that many Luso-Canadian children still continue with their parents’ “closed mentality.”

Noivo (1997) also described how the second-generation parents in her study have failed to fulfil the aspirations of their parents, (p. 134) and how they blame themselves for their own, as well as their children’s, low educational and occupational levels (p. 88).

Despite the attitudes of those in the second generation and their lost educational opportunities, Ogbu noted that for the third generation a “good education was generally seen as indispensable” (Ogbu, 1974, p. 59).

In the present study, this view was continually reinforced by people who felt that the community’s youth was heading towards an uncertain and difficult future, without an adequate education. As one person in Toronto mentioned, these youth “will not have a place in society.” Noivo (1997) also mentioned how the second-generation individuals in her study had high educational expectations for their children, how they treated them like “super-pets” (p. 90), in an effort to instil in them the value of the education which they had failed to achieve and how they showered them with gifts, in exchange for their devotion to school (Noivo, 1997, p. 90). As one of Noivo’s subjects remarked:

“If our children concentrate all their efforts on studying, we are ready to give them all that they want. I’m glad to give my daughter expensive clothes and all that she wants so that she won’t work part time... I don’t even want her to wash a single dish. We [parents] are working for her, all she has to do is to become somebody; that will make us happy.” (Noivo, 1997, p. 90)

Concerning the attitudes of involuntary minority children, Ogbu describes how students in his Burgherside community failed in school, not because they were less capable, but because they did not even try to succeed:

Burghersiders do not fail in school because, although they try, they cannot do the work; that is, they do not fail because they do not have the ability. Rather, Burghersiders fail in school because they do not even try to do the work. They are not serious about their schoolwork, and therefore make no serious effort to try to succeed in school. (Ogbu, 1974, p. 97)

The evidence from the present study is contradictory regarding this point. The young people in across most of the focus groups emphasised the importance of education. Many of these even described their own struggles in maintaining good grades or in attempting to move to higher academic levels. However, people also made it clear that there were many others - mainly from amongst those who did not participate in the focus groups - who had little or no interest in furthering their education.[3] One young person from Brampton Ontario described the prevailing attitude amongst the Luso-Canadians in her school:

...you either drop out within high-school, or you drop out after high-school [...] Everyone is too worried about... buying a car [...] a full-time job [...] So no one really thinks about school.

Noivo (1997) gives evidence of the wide extent of this attitude amongst many Luso-Canadian youth by describing the third generation’s lack of interest in school and in their future. The author mentioned how nine of the fifteen, third-generation individuals whom she interviewed were either:

...“living in a torpid state of indolence, confusion, and boredom or occasionally taking up temporary manual jobs in order ‘to increase their pocket money or to buy something more costly.’” (Noivo, 1997, p. 93)

Yet, Ogbu (1974) mentions how his students did not try because, although they had high educational goals, they also did not feel like they would be able to attain them (pp. 77-79).

In the present study, dropping out amongst some Luso-Canadians was also seen as a reaction to the difficult demands and “pressures” of school (Ch. 9 “Role of Peer and Societal Pressure). According to one young man Luso-Canadian students “.. just get sick of it [...] they get sick of it and so, the easy way out is just to drop out.” Previous Toronto Board of Education Reports have also described how Luso-Canadian students were one of the two groups that were least likely to feel that they had the ability to succeed in University (Larter, Cheng, Capps & Lee, 1982).

Ogbu’s Burgherside students further mentioned that they did not want to grow up to have the same unskilled jobs and status as their parents (P. 72).

In Noivo’s (1993, 1997) study, some of her third-generation informants also complained bitterly about their parents’ restricted occupations or lifestyle. These mentioned how despite their lack of education and marketable skills, many felt that they would not have to endure these kinds of limitations themselves, in order to maintain their present standard of living (pp. 90-95). Noivo remarked how these young people had little appreciation of the barriers which their parents had overcome and how they also had no conception of the future consequences of their own lack of education and job skills:

That people like Edgar cannot understand their parents’ early life conditions and the structural factors explaining their limited education, language, occupational, and social skills is appalling and disturbing. (Noivo, 1997, p. 91)

Finally, Ogbu described how the Burgherside parents did not like for their children to have kinship and marriage arrangements with people outside their group (Ogbu, 1974, p. 53). In the present study, people in the youth focus groups also complained about how some Luso-Canadian parents don’t like for their children to have romantic involvements with those outside the community (Ch. 9 “Roles of Parents”). Noivo (1993, 1997) also described how the second-generation individuals in her study often enforced ethnic endogamy on their children

Ogbu also writes about the importance of “folk” theories of “making it” to the creation of alternative patterns of success amongst involuntary minorities (Ogbu, 1974, p. 16; Ogbu & Simons, 1998). For some involuntary minorities, their collective experiences with the opportunity structure of the dominant society has convinced them that they will not be able to overcome racism and discrimination and achieve a higher socioeconomic status. Thus, they develop alternative paths to economic success, some of which may be destructive to either family life, or the community (ex. selling drugs).

As was evident in Chapter 9, one of the predominant reason which participants cited for the underachievement in the community was that Luso-Canadians were removing their children from school, or dropping-out themselves, in disproportionate numbers in order to realize their own folk theories of success, in the form of home ownership and - sometimes - owning a small business. For the Portuguese with origins in the rural areas without any available educational options, these goals were not only a means of financial stability, they were traditionally regarded as the path of economic and social mobility and a way out of their marginalized status. Goldstein (1991) describes how home ownership amongst Portuguese immigrants is a means of attaining not only economic security, but also the social positioning that these individuals have been denied through their lack of educational and occupational status:

While adult immigrants with little previous education and financial responsibilities to their families may not be able to change their social status by obtaining a university education, they can, however, change it through economic mobility. Material success, most conspicuously symbolized by home ownership, is the means by which people can achieve social status. And in the pursuit of social status, the cultural practice of enlisting the assistance of family members has been directly transplanted from Portugal. (Goldstein, 1991, p. 176).

One Luso-Canadian student illustrated the importance which the accumulation of material wealth, and particularly a home, holds for many people in the community:

...what I see is a community with values that are very different than those which I would like. I see a community that is very concerned with money and material things. I see a community which has strength to work to have “a big car”, “a big house” and “a big picnic” in the park on Saturday. (Marques, 1986) (my translation)

Another student related the life story of a man from São Miguel, Açores, whose lifelong dream was to be a property owner and businessman. The latter emigrated to Brazil, in 1949, where he worked in a hotel, then moved to Canada in 1961, where he purchased a “pool hall” (where his wife and daughter were put to work) and a mini-market (which he and his son ran). Finally, after working “without rest,” he opened the Hotel Canadiano in his homeland of Ponta Delgada:

As always, this is a family business. The son is the manager of the hotel, the daughter the receptionist and he and his wife do everything so that things run smoothly. Today, my uncle is a happy man, with his dream realized. (Costa, 1986, p. 7)

One Luso-Canadian explained how home ownership became a symbol of social status largely because of the traditional inequality in land distribution in Portugal.

Coming from a society in which wealth was established on land and where their own poverty had resulted from the inequalities of the landholding system, the Portuguese always manifested a very strong desire for home ownership. All family members pursued this goal with stubborn determination and the costs included the initial segregation as well as their children’s education. (Marques, 1992)

According to Noivo (1997, p. 47), for Portuguese males, migration (and its ultimate trappings of success) also symbolized a risky competition through which their personal character and abilities were proven:

In attaining the aimed economic success of their forefathers, they would gain social prestige and demonstrate their manly integrity as family providers from afar. (Noivo, 1997, p. 47)

As I have argued in one of the previous sections, for many of the Luso-Canadian young people who contributed to the present study, abandoning their parents’ folk theories of success often represents entering into an unknown territory, where the patterns of conduct, roles and identity definitions are completely unknown to them. For this reason, many young Luso-Canadians have adopted their parent’s economic and life goals. As one young person in Vancouver stated in the present study:

My dream is to have a house, to provide for my children and, that’s it... to be secure [...] I can’t say... “look at Mister H,” because I don’t know what he does... I can’t say “look at the Consul” [a community role model] because I’ve never seen him...

The similarities between the experiences, attitudes and practices of Ogbu’s Burgherside parents and Luso-Canadians are apparent. Yet, under Ogbu’s theory, Portuguese-Canadians should neither think nor act in the way they do. Nor should they be failing to succeed in school. Despite this inconsistency, the discrepancies in Ogbu’s theory do not invalidate most of his idea. They merely point the way to examining the importance of Ogbu’s “community forces” from a different perspective.

Firstly, Ogbu’s theory places an overly excessive degree of emphasis on the notion of race-based discrimination, as the sole factor generating the kinds of community attitudes which he identifies as being disadvantageous to academic achievement. This is apparent even despite the fact that much of his work was based upon the comparison of involuntary communities, such as the Black- and Hispanic-Americans, to the Chinese, (Ogbu, 1974, 1983).[4] In Ogbu’s explanations, such factors as job ceilings and patterns of forced residential segregation are the main factors determining the type of community responses which are going to affect schooling.

This is especially apparent in his explanations of the differences and relationships between minority groups and mainstream society. In these explanations, “white” is always synonymous with “mainstream” and minorities are always non-white.[5] For example, in only one of many instances where Ogbu & Simons (1998) describe Ogbu’s theory, the authors provide ample evidence of this dichotomizing,

To explain the minorities’ perceptions of and responses to education, the theory explores the impact of the white treatment of the minorities. (Ogbu, & Simons, 1998, pp. 158)

This is not to deny that racism is an insidious barrier to the active participation of many minority groups in mainstream North American life. Rather, it means that Ogbu has allowed this dichotomy, as well as the involuntary/voluntary categorization to obscure the most important part of his theory: This is that the same kind of marginalization from mainstream society, which affects involuntary minorities, such as the Black- and Mexican-Americans in his Stockton study, as well as a similar set of community responses which send young people outside of the schools to seek success, affects the Portuguese in Canada and throughout the world. The situation of social, cultural, political and economic marginalization in which the parents in Ogbu’s Stockton study were living, was the essential element within the underachievement problem which he examined, within which the issue of discrimination formed only one part. Once again, we can many find similarities between Ogbu’s involuntary minorities and the Portuguese, to illustrate how this marginalization occurred.

Firstly, many of Ogbu’s minority families had very similar beginnings to the Portuguese in Canada. Ogbu mentioned how the social and economic environment where Burgherside grandparents had been raised had not included recourse to education as a life alternative and even how formal education had not been regarded as an asset:

Burgherside grandparents grew up in communities where formal education was not considered necessary for social status or for the operation of the local economy. That many Burgherside grandparents did not finish high school or go to college was not because they lacked the motivation or the intellectual ability. They grew up in communities where neither the cultural values nor the social system included formal education. They grew up expecting to carry on the same rural economic activities as had their own parents, who were not educated: farm labour, sharecropping, domestic service and homemaking (Ogbu, 1974, p. 61)

This was very similar to the description of the limited opportunity structure which characterized much of Portuguese rural life, before the 1970’s and 1980’s (Bradford, 1973). The attitudes and practices of Luso-Canadian parents and grandparents were shaped by the vulnerable economic, political and educational environment which most Portuguese immigrants of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’ had experienced in Portugal, as children. Traditionally, in rural areas, there were no avenues to which to turn, for those who desired to be anything other than a peasant farmer, or a merchant. There were no academic streams, no role models and few other options, except emigration or the priesthood, (Durães, 1987). Thus, the “folk theories of success” which resulted from these limitations then reflect these traditional patterns of economic and social mobility.

Secondly, Ogbu mentioned how the educational levels of Burgherside parents were very low. Some had never had any formal education, while others had only a few years (Ogbu, 1974, p. 60).

In the case of the Portuguese in Toronto, within the 1991 Every Secondary Student Survey, over one-third of Portuguese students reported that their parents had elementary school as their highest education (61%), the highest percentage of any group, and double the number reported for Greeks, (34%) and Italian students (34%). Adversely, Portuguese students had the lowest percentage of university educated parents (5%) (Cheng, Yau, & Ziegler, 1993). The case of the exceedingly low education levels amongst the Portuguese in Canada has already been mentioned in this study (Chapter 8). In this respect, it is also important to note that Arruda’s (1993) study which was conducted in Vancouver with an unusually large proportion of Luso-Canadians from middle-class origins, found that many of these people had not had the same difficult problems of adjustment or family conflicts which have been widely reported in the rest of the literature on Luso-Canadian family life. This would seem to indicate that the factors of higher education and economic levels mitigate against some of the marginalizing and injurious elements which afflict other working-class, Luso-Canadian families.

Ogbu also described the occupational stratification of the Stockton community. For example, the Mexican-Americans in his study were rarely found in managerial or supervisory positions (Ogbu, 1974, p. 46-49). These along with Black residents were also found most frequently amongst the unemployed. The present study has also illustrated how the Luso-Canadian community have one of the lowest rates of individuals in managerial positions, (Ch. 8), as well as how the disproportional unemployment of community members is regarded as a serious problem (Ch. 9 “Economic Marginalization”).

Ogbu mentioned the job ceilings and discrimination which his minority parents experienced as one of the prime factors which affected students’ perceptions towards the value of schooling.

Yet, this same job ceiling has also been reported by some Luso-Canadians. In a 1985 Goldfarb survey of ethnoracial groups, commissioned by a Toronto newspaper, Luso-Canadians were the least inclined to sense any prejudice or discrimination towards them as a group. However, they nonetheless felt that most of the prejudice against them was in getting skilled jobs, obtaining executive positions, management positions in government, obtaining government jobs, the wage rates they were paid and being considered for promotion (Toronto Star, 1985). Furthermore, in the 1991 Every Secondary Student Survey, Portuguese students with university-educated parents were considerably less likely than African blacks, just as likely as Canadian Blacks, and the least likely of any white group to have their parents employed in occupations which matched their educational qualifications (Cheng, Yau, & Ziegler, 1993, p. 36). In fact, these Luso-Canadian students were second only to Black students from the Caribbean in the proportions of their group which indicated that their parents worked in the “skilled” category, which is well below their level of university training (33% of the Portuguese vs. 36% of Caribbean Blacks and 26% overall).

The 1991 Every Secondary Student Survey also clearly illustrates the link between parental occupations and education levels and student success. In this report, over 90% of students from high socioeconomic background were found to be taking Advanced-level courses, while their counterparts whose parents were employed in unskilled jobs were over represented in the Basic and General levels of study (Cheng, Yau, & Ziegler, 1993; Yau, Cheng, & Ziegler, 1993). Students with parents who were skilled or semi-skilled were the largest single categories of students in General (41%) and Basic-levels (37%) of studies. Half of those students in Advanced level had university-educated parents, while approximately 40% of those students in General and Basic levels had parents with secondary schooling and 25% had parents with elementary school. Portuguese students had the highest percentage of parents (61%) in skilled/semi-skilled jobs, These students worked the longest average hours (18) of part-time work, of any group.

In a similar fashion, parental education and income levels were also seen to influence students’ academic objectives. While 77% of students from higher socioeconomic categories cited university as their post-secondary goal, only about 40% of those in lower socio-economic groups indicated this option. More alarmingly, however, a surprising number of students in the Basic and General levels did not seem to understand that their streams will not allow them to pursue university studies. Amongst those taking General level courses 15% aspire to enter university, while 36% of those taking Basic level studies also look towards this option (Yau, et. al., 1993, p. 10).

Besides describing how his minority parents were limited by their social and economic environment, Ogbu (1974) listed ways in which these individuals were also consequently disenfranchised from their children’s schooling process. For example, he mentioned how Burgherside parents were unsatisfied with their children’s academic achievement and how they also did not know enough about their children’s progress. He further stated how they also felt powerless to help them or to change its direction (p. 89).

In the present study, Luso-Canadian parents also complained that their local schools were unresponsive to their demands and how these were unprepared to serve working-class students (Chapter 9, “Role of Schools and Government”). Yet, they also recognized that they had neither the education nor experience to help their children (Chapter 9, “Role of Parents”). These parents tended to focus upon a perceived lack of discipline within the classroom and to blame this tendency for the fact that students were not progressing in the manner which they should. People also complained that their local schools would not allow them to take the academic action which they deemed necessary, to help their children (ex. transfer to other schools). Finally, they complained about how the curriculum in local schools ignored the contributions of the Portuguese and of other ethnic groups.

The disenfranchisement of Ogbu’s parents was not only limited to the schools. Ogbu (1974, p. 51) described how this community was marginalized from the affairs of the surrounding society, by their lack of economic and political clout. The“taxpayers” (those from the wealthier and more influential part of town) were normally the ones who were considered the final arbiters of public policies, regarded as the ones who represent “citizens,” appointed to public boards, whose opinions are given importance, more widely covered in the local media (with the exception of coverage of violations of the law).

In the present study, Luso-Canadians also complained about how their community is not represented on public boards, how their wishes are ignored by local schools and governments and how the Portuguese language and culture is non-existent for the media and the education system (Ch. 9 “Role of Schools and Government”)

In this section, I have attempted to point out some of the limitations of John Ogbu’s “Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance” (or Caste Theory) (Ogbu, 1978; Ogbu & Simons, 1998). I have illustrated that this theory does not account for the underachievement of the Portuguese in Canada who, under Ogbu’s model are a voluntary minority and therefore should not be failing in disproportionate numbers. I have also suggested that this has occured because the model places an inordinate amoung of importance on the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy and on the factor of discrimination as a marginalizing factor. Conquently, it fails to look at the fact of marginalization itself which underachieving minorities endure. In this fashion, I attempted to illustrate how the Portuguese in Canada display many of the same attributes, opinions, and role definitions which Ogbu has attributed to involuntary minorities. They also incorporate popular theories of success, which do not include reference to formal education. Finally, I have attemped to illustrate how the limitations of Ogbu’s theory point the way to examining the factor of marginalization as the important element in underachievement. I will now discuss how the ideas of Paulo Freire (1970) provide a model which can better explain the underachievement of the Portuguese in Canada, and which can lead to strategies that are designed to combat the community disempowerment which is at the root of underachievement.

As I have attempted to argue in the preceding pages, the prevailing theory on minority academic underachievement, the “Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance” postulated by the Anthropologist John Ogbu, (Ogbu & Simons, 1998) fails to account for the school failure of Luso-Canadian children within the Toronto school system. According to Ogbu’s theory, voluntary (or immigrant) minority groups, such as the Portuguese should not be experiencing ongoing academic problems. The difficulty which Ogbu’s model has displayed in accounting for the poor school performance of the Portuguese-Canadian community lies in the overarching importance which it places upon the manner in which a group has come to be marginalized within a dominant society (i.e. the voluntary/involuntary dichotomy) as well as on discrimination as a marginalizing factor, rather than upon examining the state of marginalization itself.

As I have further argued in the beginning of this discussion and in Chapter 9, the Luso-Canadian community is characterized both by the degree and the severity of its educational, economic, social, cultural and political marginalization. Therefore, I also contend that it is the fact of this isolation from mainstream society, along with the strategies which community members have developed to live within its boundaries - and not their voluntary or involuntary status - which defines the Luso-Canadian community and which has given rise to their children’s educational problems.

Thus, approaching the problem of underachievement from this perspective, necessitates recourse to a theoretical framework which describes the mechanisms of marginalization. Such a framework was provided by Paulo Freire (1970). In the following section, I will illustrate how the ideas of Paulo Freire, espoused mainly in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed best explain the underachievement of the Portuguese in Canada. I will also elaborate upon how they provide a basis for collective community analysis and action, which may begin to deal with this problem. Throughout this discussion, I will adopt the premise that the term “oppression” is synonymous with “marginalization.”

Freire’s model describes a process of education for poor and illiterate adults, which guides them towards a critical awareness of their existential situation as dominated beings, within a dominant society. However, Freire’s theory is also a philosophical analysis of the relationships between human beings and the parts which learning, knowledge and power play within these relationships. Freire’s theory is useful to the situation of the Portuguese in Canada because it describes not only the mechanisms which are used by a dominant social group (the oppressors) to maintain control over dominated ones (the oppressed), but it also explains how and why a subordinate minority such as the Portuguese acquiesces to remain within its marginalized state.

According to Paulo Freire (1970) man’s vocation is to humanize. Freire states that, human beings are involved in the continual struggle to humanize, or, as he also puts it, to “name the world” and the “word” (Freire, 1970, pp. 75-76). Also according to Freire, the process of humanizing others, or of naming them as “people,” as distinct from “objects,” is also one of humanizing oneself. For Freire, the basic issue underlying the relationship between a dominant and a dominated group is then of seeing others as authentic human beings.

Freire chose this issue of humanization as the starting point for his treatise. Yet, he went one step further and stated that humanization is also the “constant vocation” of man (Freire, 1970, p. 28). Freire felt that, what is necessary for this humanization, or as he also termed it a “naming of the world” is a true dialogue between people. He further affirmed that love is the essential foundation to this dialogue (p. 75-118).

Thus, if one accepts Freire’s ideas, one may conceive that, the fact of identifying with a a particular ethnic, family or social group, seeing oneself as one of them and extending the love of brotherhood or kinship to its members, is in essence, a playing out of one’s vocation to humanize both the people of that group, as well as oneself. This capacity to humanize those who are culturally and immediately closest to us constitutes an example of one of our most basic forms of humanization, that is, of seeing others as people, as distinct from objects.

Yet, it is also in identifying with one group or another that people often encounter dehumanization. If we accept that membership in a distinct ethnic class or social group provides security, as sense of belonging and an opportunity for humanization, then, the devaluation, discrimination or persecution of that group constitutes dehumanization. These may be regarded as a distortion of this need to humanize oneself. This is because, these attitudes are attempts to depersonalize others - in essence, to regard those who are different as non-human, as objects. As Freire states,

Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality.(Freire, 1970, p. 27)

These attitudes arise essentially in an attempt to perceive oneself as, somehow by comparison, more human. In fact, once one accepts Freire’s premise that man’s vocation is to humanize, one must then also acknowledge that humanization is possible only because its corollary, dehumanization is also possible.

In much the same fashion, when one extends this idea to the level of communities or societal groups, one can see how a dominant society needs a subordinate society, for the perpetuation of its position as a dominant group. The idea, or existence, of a dominant group is inherently founded on the existence of groups which are socially subordinate. Furthermore a dominant society - since it is composed of individuals who, themselves, are exercising their vocation to humanize and to be more human - will act in the same fashion as an individual. In fact, throughout his book, Freire does not indicate whether he is describing the individual or the collective: The “oppressor” and the “oppressed” are never identified as either one or a group of people.

Thus, for those within a dominant society to keep alive their view of themselves as human beings, it is often necessary to develop and perpetuate “dehumanizing” practices, policies and attitudes, which promote the inferiorization of subordinate groups and their cultures and which serve to maintain those of economically, racially, ethnically or socially different groups in a subordinate position.

Within the relationship between “oppressors” and “oppressed,” education is often an effective means, or mechanism, of assuring this continued domination. It is a means through which the masses within a minority population may be taught a cultural and philosophical “norm” which is acceptable to the dominant group. As Freire stated,

The educated man is the adapted man, because he is a better ‘fit’ for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquillity rests on how well men fit the world the oppressors have created, and how little they question it. (Freire, 1970, p. 63)

Freire’s idea’s were echoed by a priest with whom McLaren (1986) spoke, who stated that the school system saw a danger in their Luso-Canadian students and what they represented:

I don’t think the schools are threatening the Portuguese kids, I think the schools are threatened by the Portuguese. I think the teachers are threatened. (McLaren, 1986, p. 77)

What lies, then, at the heart of the discrimination or persecution of one group by another, or even at the heart of an education system which seeks to mold its minority groups into a procrustean norm is, in essence, a process of dehumanization. For example, the education of working-class minority children, within a school system that is controlled, administered and staffed by individuals from a dominant mainstream culture is - throughout all areas of the world - inherently a process of “dehumanization” (such as Freire (1970) has described it). This is because, the attempt to assimilate these students into a middle-class cultural and behavioural pattern is, quintessentially, the struggle to negate that which renders another human being, or group, as unique; that is, his or her culture, language, historical experiences and the particular way in which he or she views the world. A number of educators have provided evidence of this reality. Richard Rodriguez stated of his schooling experiences:

What I am about to say to you has taken me more than twenty years to admit: A primary reason for my success in the classroom was that I couldn't forget that schooling was changing me and separating me from the life I enjoyed before becoming a student, [italics in original]. (Rodriguez, 1982, p. 45)

Similarly, Peter McLaren described the school which he studied as a “concrete and formica womb” where Azorean working-class students “were processed,” through a culture of pain (McLaren, 1986, p. 162), where they were stripped of their mystery, where teachers attempted to eradicate their dangerous “primal condition” (their culture) and where the imposition of the “student state” was a denigration of their identity as a social class (p. 35). The main mission of the teachers in his school was to produce “good Catholics and good workers.” (p. 175). McLaren also made the point that their strategy for doing this was essentially by and by instilling middle-class culture within these students.

The strategies and tactics chosen by the teachers to enforce the symbolic order of the school were those that corresponded most closely to middle-class mores.(McLaren, 1986, p. 221)

...to be a Catholic student meant to acquire the ideology of the professional (educational) ruling class - an ideology “trapped” in the symbolic traffic of the ritual structures. (McLaren, 1986, p. 209)

Ivan Illitch called schools the equivalent of powerful churches that were the repository of society’s myth, the institution of that myth’s contradiction’s and the locus of the ritual which reproduces and veils the disparities between myth and reality (Illitch, 1970, p. 54). He continued:

The totally destructive and constantly progressive nature of obligatory instruction will fulfil its ultimate logic unless we begin to liberate ourselves right now from our pedagogical hubris, our belief that man can do what God cannot, namely, manipulate others for their own salvation. (Illitch, 1970, p. 73)

One of McLaren’s students described the pain and self-loathing which this process inflicts upon students:

I wouldn’t mind learning so much if we could just feel good about living.” (McLaren, 1986, p. 154).

Freire recognized that the attempt to assimilate, or to negate uniqueness, is an act of what he terms, the “oppressor” and is an act whereby other human beings are tuned into objects:

Any situation in which “A” objectively exploits “B” or hinders his pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person is one of oppression. Such as situation in itself constitutes violence, even when sweetened by false generosity, because it interferes with man’s ontological and historical vocation to be more fully human. (Freire, 1970, p. 40).

Referring to the case of minority children in Britain, Madan Sarup makes a declaration in the book The Politics of Multiracial Education which explains the point above “If you ignore the background, race and culture of black and Indian children, you are rejecting them and their identity” (Sarup, 1986, p. 10).

In the face of inferiorization by a dominant social group, a minority consciousness is reaffirmed, in a parallel manner to the way in which the vocation for humanization is constantly affirmed by the negation of dehumanization. As man struggles to affirm his humanity in the face of oppression, so does the group also seek to affirm its culture – the expressed manifestations of the humanity of its members – as a means of protecting its people from dehumanization. This same message, that one’s humanity is intrinsically tied to a sense of cultural identity, was communicated by a young participant in Feuerverger’s (1991) study on heritage language and ethnic identity:

I feel that learning your ethnic language at school makes you feel like a whole person. You don’t have to feel ashamed of your culture, on the contrary, you can feel that you are as good as anyone else.(Feuerverger, 1991, p. 14)

Similarly, one individual in the present study from Ottawa-Hull also commented on the essential link between the cultural affirmation of the Portuguese in Canada and the asserting of their humanity:

There is a very great need to really assert our presence; or, in other words, to say ‘we are living, we are here, there is much which has to be done.’

As scholars like Cummins, (1988, 1989, 1996), McLaren (1986), Becker (1990) and Januario (1992) have illustrated, the processes at work in the attempt at the “dehumanization” of members of minority groups who live within dominant societies are often subtle and insidious and they often operate simultaneously at the level of the wider society, as well as within the policy and practices of our education system. I will now present some of the factors which Freire has identified as being either markers or tools of oppression (marginalization), in order to illustrate the manner in which this model accurately describes the forces that are at work in perpetuating the marginalization of the Luso-Canadian students.

Firstly, Freire mentions how “oppression” is perpetuated amongst subordinated minorities by an educational practice which he called “banking education” (Freire, 1970, p. 57) and what Cummins (1989, p. 59) has termed “transmission.” This is the simple transmission of knowledge, from teacher to student without critical dialogue or consideration of reality. “Banking education” is made possible by an attitude of cultural and social superiority over the dominated group, amongst the members of the dominant class. Freire describes this,

The one who is doing the decreeing defines himself and the class to which he belongs as those who know or were born to know; he thereby defines others as alien entities. The words of his own class come to be the “true” words, which he imposes or attempts to impose on the others: the (sic) oppressed, whose words have been stolen from them.” (Freire, 1970, p. 129)

McLaren (1986) provided a description of the type of “banking” education which was occurring in his school of study. He observed how his Azorean student were “like prisoners in iron cages” (p. 112) and how they were “reduced to mere spectators” (p. 117) by the type of teaching instruction which was being delivered. He mentioned how his students did not want to recite texts, but rather wanted to create them (p. 170). According to McLaren, this was not the result of mishandled teaching techniques but, rather, a system of instruction where the implicit message was much more important than what was being taught. Portuguese students were being conditioned for the complacency and servitude of the factory floor. According to McLaren (1986, p. 35), rituals were the “distilled meanings, embodied in rhythms and gestures.” to accept these rituals would be to accept their meaning. Similarly, Cummins has affirmed:

The microinteractions between educators and students not only reflect the relations of culture and power in the society, they constitute these relations and thereby embody a transformative potential. (Cummins, 1994, p. 13)

Even many of the so-called “progressive” educators fall prey to the underlying assumptions of cultural superiority, which gives rise to “Banking education.” For example, Mortimer Adler of the Paiadeia Proposal, puts forth his belief that schools should compensate for the “inequality of nurturing” which some children receive as a result of the “cultural inequality” of their homes and environments (Adler, 1982, pp. 37-39).

This type of attitude reflects one of the dominant beliefs within the literature on Luso-Canadian underachievement and was especially apparent amongst some of the teachers in McLaren’s (1986) study, as well as in much of the anecdotal material pertaining to the education of Portuguese children. Luso-Canadian youth were often regarded, even by progressive educators, as “culturally deprived” and needing to be lifted out of the negative influence of their parent’s culture.

However, while this attitude concerning the Portuguese is often held by teachers and other individuals in the mainstream, many community members often feel the same way. For example, a great number of the Luso-Canadian participants in the present study were, themselves, very critical of the attitudes and practices of those in their own community, regarding their role in the underachievement issue (Chapter 9, “Role of the Community”, “Role of Parents”). Some of these participants went as far as to state that many Portuguese parents don’t care at all about their children, or that they cared more about the paycheques which these could earn for the family.

This type of attitude amongst marginalized or oppressed minorities is well described in Freire’s mode. Freire (1970) states that the “oppressed” have a tendency towards self-depreciation since they have adopted the “oppressor” as their “model of manhood” and of humanity (pp. 29-30). According to Freire, the dominant classes set the "model of manhood" (pp.30–31), for those that are dominated: "...to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor..." (p. 33). The oppressed also hold a strong belief in the invulnerability of the dominant group (Freire, 1970, pp. 49-50).

It is clear from the results of this study, that many people in the Portuguese community have strongly internalized varying degrees of deprecating beliefs about their own group. Throughout this study, not only did the participants accuse Portuguese parents and other community members of allowing - and even encouraging - the widespread early-school-leaving of Luso-Canadian youth, but they also admonished these members for their lack of interest and participation in politics, the unwillingness of many people to learn English, their lack of integration in Canadian society and their “closed-minded” mentality. People also berated Luso-Canadian youth, for having a sense of shame and inferiority about their Portuguese identity, and for rejecting their parent’s language and culture.[6] This sense of shame is described by Bulger (1987) who recognized it as a result of “social conditioning”:

The adolescent begins to perceive this social conditioning and hides himself, humiliated, behind a strange comportment, which manifests itself in various ways, either through an excessive timidity or through the presentation of a forced “canadianism,” refusing to “be” Portuguese or to speak Portuguese. It is from this whence arises the adaptation of the name, changed over to the English phonetics and, in extreme cases, a rejection of the family and of his origins. (Bulger, 1987, p. 11)

In her study, Noivo (1977) also remarked on how the second-generation individuals in her study have internalized a sense of inadequacy of themselves and of their limited places within Canadian society:

I found that, like most parents, the second generation wants their children to acquire “cultural capital” in the form of a higher education and marketable skills, perceived as enabling them to eventually get those “good” jobs that bring economic security and social respectability. But unlike most middle-class Canadian parents, the second generation suffers the type of class injuries discussed in chapter one, namely, lack of self-worth, social respect, and dignity. These parents tend to blame themselves both for their own and for their children’s low educational and occupational levels. Because the majority see Canada as an open and mobile society based on merit and equal opportunity, many parents also feel personally responsible for and embarrassed of their children’s poor academic achievement. Like other working-class members, they interpret “their” failure to move up the social ladder as individual inadequacy and not as a structural problem. Accordingly, these parents ordinarily voice strong regrets for “having made nothing” of themselves, for “not having gone to night school,” and for “not having been given the opportunity to continue studying.” (Noivo, 1997, pp. 88-89)

These internalizations of negative beliefs about themselves within marginalized communities ultimately result in a duality of being amongst the oppressed. Freire states that this occurs because, in internalizing the “oppressor” as their model of manhood, the oppressed become “at one and the same time the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized”:

The oppressed suffer from the duality which has established itself in their innermost being. They discover that without freedom they cannot exist authentically. Yet, although they desire authentic existence, they fear it. They are at one and the same time themselves and the oppressor whose consciousness they have internalized. (Freire, 1970, p. 32)

This part of Freire’s theory accurately describes the cultural duality of Luso-Canadian young people, which has been widely reported in the literature on Luso-Canadians and which was also reported in this study. In this respect, it is also interesting to note that these reports surfaced mainly in the focus groups in Quebec,where a certain degree of denigration of the Portuguese was reported, as well as in smaller and more remote areas, where young people are isolated from contact with other Luso-Canadians.

Freire (1970) also described how marginalization is one important tools of “oppression.” This occurs in order to prevent the dominated group from critically examining their position in their society.

Within Ontario schools, marginalization is epitomized by the process of streaming weaker students into basic and general-level programmes of study, a factor which has negatively affected Luso-Canadian youth for years. This is the factor of the school system that has been the most contested by the Toronto Portuguese Parents’ Association over the years, as well as by other Luso-Canadians (Royal Commission on Learning, 1995; Toronto Portuguese Parents Association. n.d.). In a report on Ontario’s education system, George Radwanski argues that streaming is a social injustice, in that it places lower-class children into streams where the content and expectations of their education are greatly reduced, thereby perpetuating socioeconomic differences (Radwanski, 1987, pp. 153).

Another form of marginalization of Luso-Canadian children and their parents is stereotyping. Stereotyping imposes limits on those individuals, or collectives, which are feared, disliked or which pose a threat to a comfortable status–quo. It is dehumanizing, in that, it negates people their full range of human attributes and their affinities to those who are doing the stereotyping. Freire recognizes stereotyping as one mark of the oppressors;

Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons – not by those who are oppressed, exploited and unrecognized... For the oppressors, however, it is always the oppressed (whom they obviously never call 'the oppressed' but – depending on whether they are fellow countrymen or not – 'those people' or 'the blind and envious masses' or 'savages' or 'natives' or 'subversives') who are disaffected, who are 'violent'." 'barbaric', 'wicked', or 'ferocious' when they react to the violence of the oppressors. (Freire, 1970, p. 41)

The individuals in this study, especially those in the province of Quebec, mentioned stereotyping as an issue within their community, which lessened their capacity to participate in society, especially in such things as public office.

One of stereotyping’s most subtle manifestation is the categorizing of children as “minorities”, “immigrants” or as children with “special needs.” Freire addresses himself to this type of benevolent stereotyping and identifies it as an attempt to deflect attention from the injustices inherent in a system,

Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them,” for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as individual cases, as marginal men who deviate from the general configuration of a 'good, organized, and just' society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy society, which must therefore adjust these 'incompetent and lazy' folk to its own patterns by changing their mentality. These marginals need to be 'integrated', 'incorporated' into the healthy society that they have 'forsaken'(Freire, 1970, pp. 60-61)

Much of the information within the literature on Luso-Canadian educational issues repeatedly transmits this belief (ex. Coelho, 1976; Ferguson, 1964) Sarup, in an examination of the failure of the British education system to adequately serve black youth, gives a description which is eerily similar to that which has been transmitted through the literature about Luso-Canadian youth and rebuts this manner of viewing the educational problem:

To put it bluntly, 'social pathology' was the justification for compensatory programmes. This view assumed that black pupils in British schools were 'problems': that [sic] they suffered from culture shock, negative self–images and identity crises, and that their language structures were inadequate and inhibited learning. Blame was thus placed on the students, but educational theorists went further – they traced the causes of these problems to the black families. This racist 'common sense' justified educational practices which were remedial, compensatory or coercive. It is probable that the narrow emphasis on Black Studies... merely solidified racial stereotypes.(Sarup, 1986 p. 16).

Seeing students as the problems often result in predetermined expectations, on the part of those working for the benefit of a minority population. This leads to a lack of faith in the resources of the latter, and to a self-fulfilling prophecy which perpetuates the failure of reforms. Freire describes this tendency amongst individuals of the dominant group who would help those who are dominated,

They almost always bring with them the marks of their origin; their (sic) prejudices and their deformations, which include a lack of confidence in the people’s ability to think, to want, and to know. (Freire, 1970, p. 46)

Those in the educational system often expect minority children to do poorly in school, and therefore, often allow them to do so. Radwanski laments the relegation of children of low socioeconomic backgrounds to inferior tiers of education, characterized by low expectations and ill-defined outcomes (Radwanski, 1987, p. 78) Radwanski also states,

There is strikingly clear evidence... that a sense of having been rejected or ignored by the education system is a key characteristic of dropouts. (Radwanski, 1987, p. 89)

The stereotyping and portrayal of Luso-Canadian children as problems occurs even amongst those who purport to study ways to lessen the community’s problems. As I described in Chapter 4, Peter McLaren’s (1986) analysis of the ritual system in a mainly-Portuguese inner city school is interspersed with graphic vignettes of violent or disgusting behaviour on the part of Luso-Canadian students. In a similar fashion, Dodick (1998) offered the following incident as an introduction to the cultures of Sydney Carton (a fictitious name for an inner city school with a high Luso-Canadian student population) and Charles Darnay (a school in a middle-class, English-speaking, Canadian-born neighbourhood):

One of my first impressions of the school came during my first visit there. Upon leaving the building, I saw a fight breaking out between two boys on the playground. When I tried to intervene, I was confronted by one of the boys who yelled, “Hey, who are you, a cop? Where do you come from, 52 division?” For me, this incident seemed to bring to light the harsh nature of attending school in the inner-city. This was in direct contrast to the pristine playground atmosphere at Charles Darnay where the children seemed well monitored and protected. (Dodick, 1998, p. 97)

The implicit message - either consciously drawn or not - that was communicated by the above text set the tone for the remainder of the study: This was that, there is an association between Luso-Canadian youth, their environment and violent behaviour.

Cultural negation is another device which results in the marginalization of a minority society. Freire describes this as a tendency of an oppressed class to negate the knowledge of the oppressed, in order for “banking education” to better succeed. One’s culture, is summarily deemed “irrelevant.”

In Toronto schools, this is accomplished by a lack of valuing of the language and culture of Portuguese students. This was a factor that was often raised in the focus groups (Chapter 9 “Role of Schools”). Dodick (1998) mentioned how some of the Luso-Canadian students in one of his target schools had little interest in learning about their own culture and using the Portuguese language (p. 87).

Cultural negation and a belief in the superiority of the oppressor is important in assuring the effectiveness of “cultural invasion.” Freire describes this type of action as the imposition of the oppressor’s view of the world upon those they invade ⁽Freire, 1970, p. 150). Cultural invasion is often evident in North American schools in the teaching of history, for example, the history of North American Indians. This issue was raised across a number of focus groups, where people deplored the fact that the Portuguese language and culture are not recognized, and not promoted. Most troubling to people was how the contributions of the Portuguese to world history are rarely mentioned in schools.

Cultural invasion is also accompanied by manipulation; which is another instrument for the preservation of domination. Freire proclaims, ‘Through manipulation, the dominant elites can lead the people into an unauthentic type of ‘organization’ and can thus avoid the threatening alternative” (Freire, 1970, p. 145).

Manipulation is also accompanied by attempts to divide and rule a dominated population. Freire describes this “divide and rule” as another tactic of the oppressor,

It is in the interest of the oppressor to weaken the oppressed still further, to isolate them, to create and deepen rifts among them. This is done by varied means, from the repressive methods of the government bureaucracy to the forms of cultural action with which they manipulate the people by giving them the impression that they are being helped. (Freire, 1970, p. 137)

The disunity amongst Luso-Canadians is one example of this factor at work. The seeds of disunity were sewn in Portugal by political and intellectual elites whose interests lay in the perpetuation of poverty and in preventing popular uprisings. Within the Luso-Canadian community, many people complained in the focus groups about local leaders who intrigued and fought amongst each other and who did not serve the community, except when their best interests were involved. Bulger, (1987, p. 19) also talks about how school system in Canada sometimes tries to integrate Luso-Canadian children into society, but how there is a great fear of “convivência.” Each maintains themselves isolated, defending the rituals of the clan, in a manner that is similar to Northrop Frye’s “garrison mentality.”

Tokenism and paternalism are described by Freire as another mark of an oppressor. He cautions the individual who would help the people through these means,

Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is solidary; it is a radical posture. (Freire, 1970, p. 34)

The confusing policy of Multiculturalism, the piecemeal approach to the support of the cultures of specific ethnic groups, the promotion of “community leaders” who are neither representative of the people, nor who work in the group’s best interest, are also divisive and paternalistic gestures by the host society aimed at deflecting attention from the lack of progress on important issues amongst ethnic groups. This “zoological view of ethnicity” (the valuing of ethnic identities only within the confines of their marginalized niche in society) is recognized by Sarup when he states,

Within this model cultural diversity is tolerable so long as it neither impedes progress to “integration” nor explicitly challenges the cultural assumptions of Anglo centric white society (Sarup, p. 1986, 17)

A similar complaint was voiced by the activist parents in Dehli & Januario’s (1994) study, when they described how the gains which they had made within their local schools after years of mobilizing had been only superficial.

With the preceding argument, I am not suggesting that the case of the underachievement of Luso-Canadians has arisen from the same types, or degree, of political and economic oppression that afflicted the Brazilian peasants about which Freire was writing. Freire (1988) wrote that "oppression" and "dehumanization" exist as phenomena in their own right (apart from whatever political situation might exist) In other words, people are constantly finding ways - in whatever context - to objectify others, despite the fact of this being a distortion of the struggle to be more fully human,

Concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality. (p. 27)

I have simply attempted to illustrate how Paulo Freire’s model is applicable to the mechanics of marginalization within which the Luso-Canadian community is situated. In particular, his ideas seem to account for the very self-perpetuation of social problems, such as illiteracy, violence, poverty and academic underachievement. For Freire, the existence of the ontological possibilities of "oppression" and "dehumanization" are what gives rise to certain dominating social factors, which then become the very means towards this continuing domination. In order to perpetuate domination (i.e. in order to give charity), "...the oppressors must perpetuate injustice.." (p. 29).

This is a similar point to that which I have attempted to present in this discussion. The marginalized state of Luso-Canadian families generates the very conditions and responses that perpetuate their isolation and exclusion from mainstream society. Thus, in order to address the underachievement problem, it is thus necessary to address the community’s marginalized state.

In this respect, the work of Paulo Freire (1970) also provides a blueprint for action to addresses this very issue. Freire’s models of community reflection and action, investigation of generative themes, and the awakening of critical consciousness amongst oppressed communities (Freire, 1970, pp. 75-118) is the type of empowering approach which is necessary to awaken a community whose sense of disempowerment is rooted in a myriad of traditional and present-day limit-situations.

The present project has merely provided a voice for a mostly voiceless community. However, this voice - in itself - will not constitute, nor bring about the necessary change to alter the community’s pattern of underachievement. Neither will an education programme designed - according to a “banking education” approach - to bring “enlightenment” to previously “unenlightened” parents. This project did not constitute the praxis (the marriage of reflection and action) which Freire deemed essential to a truly transformative and reality-changing exercise (Freire, 1970, p. 91). However, a follow-up project based on Freire’s methodology and designed along the lines of the Participatory Research Approach could bring the themes and transcripts collected by this project back to the community, for just such an exercise and community action. The only process which will be able to generate alternative solutions for the issues raised in this study will be one which directly involves community members in reflecting and acting upon their perceptions of the realities which limit their lives.

This kind of project will have direct implications within the newly restructured education system in this province. It could conceivably bring about a greater participation on the part of Luso-Canadian parents within the School Advisory Councils, of local schools. Secondly, recent years have seen the Provincial government taking a greater share of the power to make educational decisions away from local communities. In this respect, the role of parents in helping their children and their local schools to mitigate the inequities which are already present between schools in working-class and middle-class neighbourhoods becomes even more crucial.

Finally, a project designed to empower community members will inevitably benefit Luso-Canadian children and youth, who have been clamouring for a greater community unity and a greater voice in the affairs of mainstream society.

With regards to the implications of the present study: These will be felt more greatly and more immediately within the ranks of government, schools and the social services. Educators now have tangible evidence that Luso-Canadians are very concerned with the education of their children. Secondly, they will need to better understand and work with the community around the issues concerning the inability of schools to respond to parent’s concerns.

This report will also serve as to clarify the work of community leaders - particularly the Directors of the Portuguese-Canadian National Congress - who must now work with their own community around education and empowerment.

Lastly, this was the first time that the community had taken stock of its issues and problems, on a national scale. Governments now have at their disposal a testimonial to the concerns and wishes of a sizable portion of the nation’s population. They will also have to take stock of the real concerns and of this community.

[1] There are also a number of other reports which contradict the prevailing opinions that Luso-Canadian parents have low educational expectations, (Pinto, 1970; Cummins, Lopes, & King, 1987, p. 39). These include the questionnaire portion of the present study, which was not included in this dissertation, but which was outlined in Nunes, (1998a). However, all of these reports have sampling limitations which need to be carefully considered.

[2] Grove (1977) does not make it clear whether this proceeding is a transcript of someone else’s comments, or whether this dialogue was penned by him, in an attempt at profiling the attitudes of the “typical” Luso-American drop-out.

[3] This highlights one important limitation of the focus group method used in this study and of having conducted these meetings with local volunteers. Many of these individuals had difficulty in securing participation from amongst those young Luso-Canadians who had little interest in school-related matters. The exercise of attending a focus group was often too close to that of being in a classroom, so that these youth were not easily recruited to these meetings.

[4] In citing the example of the Chinese in the United States, Ogbu (1983) actually reinforces this notion that the essential element to school success is the factor of marginalization and the collective responses of minorities. Ogbu related that Chinese immigrants to that country in the beginning of this century, were an example of a voluntary minority that succeeded, despite facing similar discrimination to that of Blacks. Yet, he also stated that the Chinese initially desired American education as a means of achieving self-advancement back in China, or to make enough money to buy land and return to live in the landed gentry class (Ogbu, 1983, p. 187). Thus, they would be willing to endure the barriers and sacrifices of their lives, in order to achieve this goal for themselves and for their children. In essence, Ogbu is saying that the Chinese did not feel themselves, psychologically. to be residents of their marginalized situations, but were simply passing through, to an envisioned better future. Furthermore, as Ogbu himself stated, these individuals would be returning to a country where education was traditionally seen as a path to enlightenment and social mobility.

In contrast, the Portuguese, immigrated from a country where, traditionally, opportunities for advancement through schooling were virtually non-existent and where the rich and educated were often regarded with suspicion and contempt (Bradford, 1973, p. 135). As a result, Portuguese immigrants in Canada could not envision the same opportunity as Ogbu’s Chinese, nor could many realistically conceive coming to North American simply to get an education which they would then take back to an empty, impoverished land.. Thus, although many Portuguese also came to this country with the equivalent “tourist mentality,” which Ogbu described of voluntary immigrants, most of those who came with this attitude intended to return to Portugal to build a house. Few or none came to this country with the intention of getting an education. which would then be taken back with them to Portugal. Thus, Ogbu’s Chinese did not feel themselves within the same marginalized situation as the Portuguese.

[5] For example, in his Stockton California study, Ogbu (1974) had problems dealing with the “other whites” category of residents of his low-income community. These included Spanish-descended and Mexican white Americans, as well as Portuguese, (p. 38-42). Ogbu never mentioned how he dealt with this group in his study.

[6] Most of these reports concerning shame and inferiority amongst youth came from the smaller and more isolated communities, as well as those in the Province of Quebec, where participants reported a certain degree of stereotyping and denigration of the Portuguese. It would be interesting to see what the results would be of a study comparing the ethnic identity attitudes and patterns of Luso-Canadian youth living in large Portuguese communities, with those living in smaller and more isolated ones, or a similar investigation between youth in areas where different degrees of prejudice against the Portuguese was occurring.