Asian American Education

Historical Background

Asian American education can be divided into three historical periods. In the first (1850–1941), Chinese and Japanese settled mainly along the West Coast and Hawai'i. Between 1882 and 1941, state and federal laws restricted immigration, voting rights, land ownership, and educational rights for Asians in America. Persons of Asian descent born in the United States successfully challenged discriminatory citizenship regulations in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) and Weedin v. Chin Bow (1927), though courts upheld restrictions on foreign-born Asians in America in Takao Ozawa v. U.S. (1922) and Bhagat Singh Thind v. U.S. (1923).

Racial segregation of Asian Americans in public schools followed national trends in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Chinese students were barred from public schools in San Francisco in 1859. Their parents responded by opening a private “Chinese school,” which later admitted Korean and Japanese students. The California Supreme Court ruled in Tape v. Hurley (1885) that San Francisco public schools must admit Asian Americans, though the state legislature created a parallel “Oriental School” system the same year. In Hawai'i, Japanese, Chinese, and other Asian Americans were discouraged from attending schools by plantation owners, and were generally segregated from Whites until Hawai'i became a state in 1959. Asian American school enrollment matched that of Whites by 1920, and exceeded that of Whites by 1930.

The second period, between 1941 and 1965, began with wartime hostilities, which led to the incarceration of over 100,000 West Coast Japanese Americans in ten detention camps in 1942. Through 1945, tens of thousands of Japanese Americans attended ill-equipped camp schools, though some were allowed to attend a university away from the West Coast. After World War II, Asian Americans benefited from the slow integration of public schools and the expansion of postsecondary institutions. Economic growth also helped propel second- and third-generation Asian Americans into professional occupations at rates higher than the national average.

[Page 56]The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 initiated the current period of Asian American education. After 1965, immigration increased rapidly from the Philippines, China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and India. Many “second-wave” immigrants were well educated and prosperous in their home countries. However, immigrants from Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam were often war refugees with few educational credentials or financial resources. Unlike the Japanese and Chinese immigrants of the late nineteenth century, many second-wave immigrants brought children, who enrolled in public schools unprepared for linguistic and cultural diversity. Chinese Americans in San Francisco challenged local segregationist practices and limited language and course offerings in the late 1960s. As a result, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lau v. Nichols (1974) that the city's lack of bilingual programs prevented 1,800 Chinese American students from “meaningful participation” in public schools.

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