LSAT 21, Section 4, RC Passage 4, Immigrant Education

RC Passage 4 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. Tollefson takes a different approach in studying southeast asian immigration to the US. He looks at education offered in immigrant processing centers.
2. The educational programs try to split immigrants from their communities and prepare them for unskilled jobs that don’t require English.
3. These education programs have their roots in turn of the twentieth century assimilationist policies.
4. Tollefson thinks the educational programs should offer long term language and job training. Tollefson should have provided more concrete recommendations.

Analysis

This passage is a description of Tollefson’s book. The author agrees with Tollefson’s analysis. The author’s one criticism of Tollefson’s book comes in lines 59-61: the author thinks Tollefson could have made better recommendations.

Tollefson’s main point was that the philosophy behind the educational programs is flawed. They split immigrants from their communities, and they fail to prepare citizens for a long term stay in the United States.

So even if an education center does its official “job” well, the education will probably hurt immigrants.

The first paragraph gives us the context of Tollefson’s work. We see that it’s different in subject matter from other books that study immigrants, and the author describes Tollefson’s methods.