English 120-098
Portfolio
Project 2 - Education Causing Immigration
Introduction-
Immigration is the permanent movement of individuals to a foreign country. These individuals are called immigrants. Although immigration can happen in any country we are specificity going to talk about Mexican immigrants coming to North America. A lot of the time we hear that these immigrants abandon their country and move to America so that they can have a better life and a better future for their children. Even though that may not be the only reason immigrants feel the need to leave their countries and move, that is the main reason of why they do so. There are a variety of other reasons as well, such as; lack of access to resources, to find work, family reunification, retirement, escape from prejudice, conflict or natural disaster, simply to change their quality of life, or to get a better education. In this research we will learn why immigrants come to America for a better education by really focusing on the differences in Mexico's education compared to American education, the success of education in both countries, and how this plays an effect on immigration in America.
Successes-
The education success rate of students in Mexico is low compared to the educational success rate in America. In the Mexican system most students don't attend secondary schooling. (Secondary schooling is middle school, and high school) Of those students who do continue to secondary school only 45% actually graduate, were as 69% of Americans graduate. The diagram below illustrates many different aspects of the success rate in Mexico to the other OECD countries. The OECD (The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) is a group of 30 countries that discuss and develop economic and social policy.
The following graphs, although not as in much detail as the one before, show that the United States education is ranked higher than Mexico's. The first graph shows the spending per student in each different OECD. As we can see the United States is ranked higher than Mexico. The next graph shows the Educational Attainment by OECD and again the US is ranked higher than Mexico. The last graph shows a comparison of the US, UK, and the average OECD. For this we will ignore the UK because we are only interested in the US compared to the OECD because we compared Mexico to the OECD earlier.
Differences-
The Mexican and American education systems have some similarities but also quite a bit of differences. Just looking at the K-12 grade levels we can see some of these differences. One of the first differences is the division of these grades. The typical American division is 5-3-4 or 6-2-4, which means the students are in elementary school 5-6 years, middle school 2-3, and high school 4 years. In Mexico this division is different. Their system is broken down by 6-3-3, which has the same meaning as American system, 6 years in elementary, 3 years in middle school, and 3 years in high school. Another difference is that in Mexico it is mandatory that the student finish grade school but they are not obligated to go to middle school were Americans are obligated to at least go to school up until 12th grade. After grade school, for the Mexican education, the books are no longer free and have to be paid for if the student wishes to continue in school, which contributes to the dropout rate. However, this is not so true in the American education system, the books are free to students who are enrolled in school all the way until 12th grade. When looking at high school there are different paths that each of these educational systems take, such as the American system uses high school to get the students ready for the success in college. As for the Mexican system there are two approaches that they take. Those are preparing the students for college or preparing the students for work. In Mexico the students who wish to proceed to college choose the academically focused classes and those who wish to just begin work choose the technical classes.
Conclusion-
In conclusion the American education system has a better success rate compared to Mexico. After seeing these comparisons, from the diagrams to the statistics that I have provided, we are able to tell that the United States education system is better than the Mexican education system. We were able to see that America didn't just blow the Mexican education system out of the water but we do lead in most of the statistics taken. Meaning that in the US people can get a better education thus a better future. This is what is drawing the attentions of the immagrants. They are so badly wanting to have a better life and to do that they know that they need a better education. All of this has an effect on the immigration that goes on in America because many immigrants come to America in hopes of obtaining a better education. A great number of these immigrants come to America with the understanding that the education that they will can receive is far greater than they might have obtained in their homeland. Even though education doesn't always lead to success, having an education definitely helps in the pursuit to success.
References:
"State Language Data - US." Migrationpolicy.org. Web. 03 Apr. 2016
Vernez, Georges, Allan F. Abrahamse, and Denise D. Quigley. How Immigrants Fare in U.S. Education. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1996. Print.
"Education in Mexico." Education in Mexico. Web. 03Apr. 2016.
In this diagram the success of Mexico's education is broken down into different parts. It explains the percentage of money on education from the GDP, the annual spending per student, the graduation rate, years in education, enrolment, percent of people not employed or educated, the number of hours teacher spend teaching, and the average number of students per teacher in each class. In most of these aspects Mexico is not doing as well as the average of the OECD. Mexico is struggling in spending on education, annual spending per student, graduation rates, years in education, people not employed or educated, and the average of students per teacher. However Mexico is excelling in unemployment by education level, enrolment, and hours spent teaching. Although Mexico did have great success in these aspects they had more negative statistics than they did positive ones.