Essay On Hmong Students

After the Vietnam War, in 1975, thousands of Hmong refugees immigrated to the United States, granted asylum for their participation in the war and in hope for a better future. Today, the children of those refugees and the first generations born on American soil face a variety of challenges, particularly in our public school system. In order to succeed in the Public School system and beyond to higher education, the complications of their educational situation needs to be addressed and changed.(Vang, 2004) . Little research has been done on the needs of Hmong and Hmong- American students, despite the amount that has been preformed on other bilingual students from a number of different backgrounds like Hispanics. Staggeringly, most Hmong students are classified as Limited English Proficient or LEP students. The academic challenges they face require increased attention as the number of Hmong American students continues to expand exponentially in the US public schools.

Initially, when the refugees and their children first arrived in America, primarily California but also Minnesota and Wisconsin, the American educational system identified Hmong children as LEP and placed them in English as a Second Language classes. Very few schools offered academic programs to integrate Hmong students into the society of the school and those that do, have not had any flourishing success. Due to the resulting segregation, both socially and academically, the teaching methodology for these students suffered; become haphazard and improvised. During the initial years of integration, there were very few Hmong bilingual teachers. Hmong students were placed in classes based on an expectation that they would not go on to a higher education and that their ma...

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...ubject specific instruction and programming that relates directly to Hmong culture and society. A sense of inclusion is necessary for their success.(Lee, 2001).

Studies of Hmong students are not sufficient to provide in depth and comprehensive information on the performance and education of this minority group. There are countless factors that impact the achievement levels of these students and in order to address the needs and issues, more research needs to be done. I suggest that more studies need to be done on the newly founded Charter schools which focus on the Hmong culture as well as American academics. I also suggest more studies that focus on the examination of peer pressure and gender equality issues relative to academic success involving Hmong-American students, and most especially for Female Hmong students for whom data is typically lacking (Vang, 2004) .