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Life & Times Transcript

12/10/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Do parents who talk up a storm give their kids a head start and does it help to count every word?

Dr. Virginia Mann>> But it was also sadly the tone of the language, the feedback, whether it was positive. Was the child encouraged? "Good job. I liked how you buttoned your dress today" as opposed to "No, get dressed. Let's go."

Val Zavala>> And then, she used to be the muse. Now she's an influential Latina artist. The amazing world of Patssi Valdez.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> Every parent wants to give their child a leg up in life and all the experts say that the more words your child is exposed to early on in life, the better off they'll be. But how do you know how verbal your child is? Well, now there's a device that can record his experience all through the day. Does it really make a difference? As Roger Cooper tells us, some parents aren't waiting to find out.

>> "All done. That's enough. Yeah, have a little more peas."

Roger Cooper>> Babies come into this world with one very powerful tool of communication. Cry, and someone will fix it. But to reach full potential, a child needs to develop much more complex communication skills. Language, the ability to speak and understand words.

>> "Yeah, turn the page. On a warm September afternoon, Gordy went back to the farm."

Roger Cooper>> Just how important is a child's exposure to language in the first three years? So important to these parents that they're trying out a new electronic device that is worn by the child all day.

>> "It's pretty small. You just pop it into the pocket. Yeah, I don't think so.

>> "We just power it on and then hit record and then slide it back in his pocket."

Roger Cooper>> We'll show you how the device works in a moment, but first, the theory behind it. For that, we went to Dr. Judy Montgomery, a professor of child language at Chapman University.

Dr. Judy Montgomery>> In 1995, they came out with a piece of research that said children who heard more conversation during the day and had access to more words from their parents turned out seven years later to have higher IQ scores, larger vocabularies and greater academic success. We were really impressed.

>> "That's a lovely fur coat you have", said the lady. "Where did you get?" "I was born with it", said Sammy.

Roger Cooper>> That research is a classic study begun in the late sixties by Drs. Betty Hart and Todd Risley at the University of Kansas. Hart and Risley did exhaustive observations of children and the words they were exposed to.

Narrator>> "Observers record how frequently certain words are used by the children. Nouns, verbs and adjectives are recorded to be keypunched at a later time."

Roger Cooper>> Dr. Risley, who is shown here, recalled being astonished by the number of words heard by children in different families.

Dr. Todd Risley>> By age four, a child from a taciturn family may have heard something in the neighborhood of thirteen million words addressed to them. A child in the average family had heard something in the neighborhood of thirty million words addressed to them. A child in a very talkative family heard in the neighborhood of sixty million words addressed to them. In other words, that amount of language experience by the time the child was four was absolutely stunning.

Dr. Judy Montgomery>> We discovered that the children who were doing so much better seven to ten years later are the ones who had the highest exposure to the largest number of words.

Roger Cooper>> In fact, some researchers say that the Hart-Risley study indicates a child needs to hear thirty thousand words a day.

Cori Moss>> "You want to come get it?"

Roger Cooper>> Which leads us back to that device being worn by nine month old Colin and ten month old Jacob. It's called LENA and it was developed by a company called Infoture in Colorado. LENA is a four hundred dollar electronic recorder that counts every word a child hears or says throughout the day. Each evening after Colin and Jacob are asleep, their parents download LENA into their computers, producing graphs that show the child's language environment that day.

Cori Moss>> "It says number of words per day. Right now, it's at twenty-two thousand two hundred seventy-three, which is in the ninety-nine percentile. Then here you can see by time. Eight a.m., we talk quite a bit. Nine a.m., a little less. Ten a.m., we tend to yak up a storm. Now over here at three p.m., I can tell that he's napping."

Roger Cooper>> Most parents using the device, like Page and Aaron McKown, say they were surprised to learn they were using far fewer words than they thought. Is it training you or him?

Page McKown>> I think it's training us definitely.

Patrique Moss>> Yeah, I think it's definitely training us. As a first-time parent, you're going through the processes. As first, especially when he's really young, you feel a little awkward talking and he's not responding back to you. But after a while, it becomes second nature. You start to realize the benefit of interacting with your child.

Roger Cooper>> Because Dr. Montgomery is on LENA's scientific advisory board, we also sought out another assessment of the device. Dr. Virginia Mann at UC Irvine specializes in childhood development and runs ABLA, a language acquisition program in Santa Ana.

Dr. Virginia Mann>> It's clever. First of all, I applaud them for doing it. It seems like a very clever device and, as a researcher, I would love to have hold of it and to put in some of my families in Santa Ana to see if we are indeed increasing the language output.

But I think what we don't know about devices like that is the cause and effect relationship. If we see a family providing less stimulation to their child, if we then say provide more, make your graph look more like this, will it actually have the effect that we desire?

Roger Cooper>> Both professors say that it will take time and research to determine if LENA is doing what parents like Cori and Patrique Moss hope it is.

Cori Moss>> I think we thought that this was more for him, but it's making us more aware of what we're not doing, so we're, you know, working a little harder.

Patrique Moss>> And, in fact, we weren't speaking to him as much as we thought. By seeing those reports and then by putting him in the outfit, you're really cognizant of the fact that he's monitoring everything you're saying and so is the device, so you tend to speak as much as you can. You tend to be a little bit more verbal.

Roger Cooper>> During the day while the Mosses are at work, the device monitors what Jacob hears from his nanny who is instructed to speak to him in Spanish. LENA can also report back on what a child experiences in daycare.

Cori Moss>> "He looks like he's going to be a frog."

Roger Cooper>> But just how many words is thirty thousand a day?

Dr. Judy Montgomery>> Well, if you read the book, "The Cat in the Hat" which we all know really well and you read it fifteen times, you'd have about thirty thousand words, so there's an opportunity.

Roger Cooper>> Professor Mann cautions that the Hart-Risley study was about more than the sheer number of words a parent speaks.

Dr. Virginia Mann>> But it was also sadly the tone of the language, the feedback, whether it was positive. Was the child encouraged? "Good job. I like how you buttoned your dress today" as opposed to, "No, get dressed. Let's go."

Roger Cooper>> But for Colin and Jacob, spending the day with LENA means there's always someone to talk to.

Patrique Moss>> Instead of emptying the dishwasher quietly as you're in the kitchen, you start talking to him about it. You know, these are forks, these are knives. You know, I'm putting them in the drawer.

Dr. Judy Montgomery>> It really encourages parents to do what they know they want to do and that's very different than relying on television or DVDs to be the parent for you.

Dr. Virginia Mann>> Anything that will make parents talk more to their children and to really think about the experience of the child that language is promoting, more power to them.

Cori Moss>> "Can you dance for me? Yeah, good dancing. See, he knows what I'm talking about."

Roger Cooper>> In Orange County, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> We've gotten used to saying Latino or Hispanic, but in reality, the largest minority group in California are Mexican Americans. Writer and Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez wants us to remember that. He says that Mexicans have been adapting, assimilating and inter-marrying for centuries, well before they started crossing the border.

These and other provocative ideas are explored in his new book. It's called "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America". Hena Cuevas talked with Rodriguez at his home in Koreatown.

Gregory Rodriguez>> I wrote a book on how the Mexican past will shape the American future. I've sought to write a thoughtful, sober, five hundred year look at the Mexican past and the Mexican American past in order to find out what their long-term influence on United States society will be.

Hena Cuevas>> And what did you find? What do you believe the impact is or will be of the Mexican Americans?

Gregory Rodriguez>> Well, in order to understand it, I have to step back just a bit. In colonial New Spain which is now Mexico, the Spaniards had sought to keep the races apart. They had set up a segregated system whereby the Indians and the Spaniards would be separate and there was no place for these mixed people, the Mestizo. Over time, what the Mestizo did was undermine a strict racial order.

I'm arguing that essentially the Mestizo, a large number of mixed people coming to the United States, will undermine an American racial system that has been premised on the notions of purity and the bifurcation between black and white, that millions of people as they come north and choose "Other" on the census spot.

Remember on the census, there's the Hispanic and Non-Hispanic question and then there's the racial question and there's these discreet categories. I argue that about half of Mexican origin people in California put "Other" as their race. So to the Census Bureau, this is a confusion. This is a complication and they haven't been able to curtail that propensity among half of Mexican origin people in the United States.

There is some talk now of eradicating the "Other" category so that people will have to choose one of the discreet races. Now if millions of people over time check "Other", meaning there is an A, B, C and a D and if millions of people check E, it not only invalidates each discreet separate category, but it invalidates the entire system of racial categorization itself.

Hena Cuevas>> What kind of dialogue are you hoping to start with this book?

Gregory Rodriguez>> I'm hoping the book -- really, immigration -- it's impossible to talk about Mexicans and Mexican Americans without being involved in some polemical issue. This does not seek to be part of a polemic. This is a sober, wide view that is not taking a part in any contemporary debate.

Mexicans have become now the largest immigrant group in United States history. It seems to me they merit a sober, non-polemical, non-trying to prove some point or the other history of themselves, in order to understand the future of the United States.

I mean, if you look at the last thirty years, as there have been millions and millions of Mexicans coming to the United States, we don't even use the word Mexican anymore in the United States except for foreigners. We've chosen to use the generic Hispanic or Latino.

I'm saying, in order to understand any portion of this population, Panamanian, Dominican, Puerto Rican and Mexican, one must disaggregate because these are distinct national origin experiences and each has their own values and challenges and we really have to understand them unto themselves.

Hena Cuevas>> I'm sure with the book and with your argument, people are extrapolating it to kind of the immigration debate and the whole thing about assimilation. How do you think your book helps to understand the assimilation portion into the United States?

Gregory Rodriguez>> I don't seek it. I don't want it to play a part. We held the publication of this book because pretty much the immigration debate in America is idiotic. It's hyperbolic, it's highly charged racial rhetoric. I don't want to be a part of it.

But having said that, my view of Mexican American history is that of a people who have adapted, who have improvised, who even has they sought to maintain their Mexican-ness, have added, have mixed, have been creative as they've moved north. So if anything, we've tended in the media portrayals of Mexicans and Mexican Americans as to paint them as preternaturally loyal to culture and resistant to change.

In fact, the opposite is true. This is largely a Mestizo people, a mixed people, who from their very origins have been juggling origins, juggling ancestries, juggling heritages and including heritages. Mexican American and Mexican history have been a series of collisions and convergences. You hit a new group. As Mexicans came north, the Anglo American moved west. That also we have incorporated over time. Anglo Americans is part of Mexican American culture as well.

So if anything, I've given Mexicans and Mexican Americans agency in their own history. They've adapted extraordinarily well and, like the Mestizo in colonial New Spain, even though they didn't belong in the strict racial system, they found a place to exist even though they weren't allowed to. Even though they weren't welcome, they found a place for themselves. That is the history of Mestizos. That is the history of Mexican Americans, to find a place for themselves in a system in which they never fully belonged.

Hena Cuevas>> Why the title? Where did it come from?

Gregory Rodriguez>> The title comes from -- these are terms used for people who didn't belong in racial systems. These are terms used for people who didn't belong in strict neat categories. Orphans comes from a description of Mexicans as orphans, as having been stripped of both the progenitors, neither Spanish nor Indian, but orphans looking for their origins.

Mongrels was a term that Mexicans were called upon the end of the War of 1848 in which Secretary of State James Buchanan under President Polk was worried. "How do we incorporate all these mongrels?" Mexican hybridity, Mexican mixture, was a challenge to the racial order from day one in 1848.

In the 1920s, Congressman John C. Box in Texas was very anti-Mexican, very nativist. He wanted to stop all Mexican immigration because he thought that these mongrels would only lead to a distressing mongrelization of United States society. I argue that, in many ways, John C. Box, as much as he meant it as an insult, was right.

Hena Cuevas>> How so?

Gregory Rodriguez>> The United States is mixing in and of itself.

Hena Cuevas>> Even against its own desires?

Gregory Rodriguez>> Even against its own past and its rigid systems, it's mixing. We know because some call it the "Tiger Woodization" of America.

Hena Cuevas>> Once you've wrote it and you have people read it, what would you hope to accomplish?

Gregory Rodriguez>> It's a hard question, but broadly I hope they would understand, again, the role Mexican Americans will play in the history of the United States and the need to understand that Mexican American history is an integral part of United States history.

This is not to be relegated onto a book shelf that no one reads. This is not a specialty. This is not a minority reading group material. If you don't understand Mexican American history, you will not understand the future of United States history.

Hena Cuevas>> Gregory Rodriguez, the book is called "Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans and Vagabonds". Interesting discussion. Thank you very much.

Gregory Rodriguez>> Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> Sometimes it takes an artist to know an artist, so we thought we'd ask one kind of artist to introduce us to another. Dan Guerrero is an actor, writer and producer. His father was the famous singer and songwriter, Lalo Guerrero.

When I asked Dan who one of his favorite Los Angeles painters was, he said without hesitating, "Patssi Valdez". Patssi Valdez is an internationally acclaimed artist. Her work is part of the Cheech Marin Chicano Collection. This self-portrait is featured on the catalog cover.

Dan Guerrero>> "Hey, Patssi. Anyone home?"

Patssi Valdez>> "Hi, Dan."

Val Zavala>> We tagged along with Dan Guerrero for a visit to Patssi's Silverlake studio.

[Film Clip]

Val Zavala>> Patssi's work expresses her idea of the essence of Mexican American home life, a rich environment alive with movement and deep colors.

Dan Guerrero>> Now one of your signatures, and you have many really because you're so multi-talented, but it's the swirling floor design which is so incredible. Where does that come from?

Patssi Valdez>> Well, basically, I started actually working with a healer and learning more about energy. Then I decided that I want to imbue the work with motion and movement and then I started to come up with these floors, with these swirls on the floor, and it added a lot of motion. People are always calling it topsy-turvy or turbulent, but --

Dan Guerrero>> -- well, it's not turbulent. It's very fluid.

Patssi Valdez>> No. It's just energetic.

[Film Clip]

Dan Guerrero>> This is incredible. Ceramics. When did you start this?

Patssi Valdez>> A couple of years ago. The reason I started is because I needed a break from the painting. Sometimes the painting is, I mean, really intense and very serious. So I actually just started doodling on these ceramics. They come out of a mold, so I don't sit there on a wheel, you know, throwing pots or anything (laughter).

Dan Guerrero>> (Laughter) You make it sound like a bad thing.

Patssi Valdez>> Well, it's just not my thing. I'll get too dirty. As in here, I started using real silver.

Dan Guerrero>> Can I pick it up?

Patssi Valdez>> Sure.

Dan Guerrero>> I drop it, I bought it, right?

Patssi Valdez>> I started using real silver and I have to wear a respirator and work outside. Then the firings, there's like about four firings here.

Dan Guerrero>> And you fired everything right here? You have a kiln and everything?

Patssi Valdez>> Um-hum. Because I'm adding luster, you have to fire, then gold, and fire again, so it's many layers in here. Then I started experimenting with matte gold.

Dan Guerrero>> I'm noticing something here. I know you've told me before that, well, this is one of your paintings obviously, but that's actually a kind of self-portrait.

Patssi Valdez>> Definitely a self-portrait. Actually, my uncle was a Hollywood photographer and he used to take pictures of me from early on. This is an exact photograph he took.

Dan Guerrero>> Really?

Patssi Valdez>> I found a little black and white in the family photo album. I just added the fissures on the floor and the ball.

[Film Clip]

Dan Guerrero>> Are you ever going to do an updated version of the little girl in the yellow dress? I mean, maybe who she grew up to be?

Patssi Valdez>> I don't know. I never really thought about that.

Dan Guerrero>> Well, you should think about it (laughter). It would be interesting.

Patssi Valdez>> It was interesting how popular she became.

Dan Guerrero>> Well, sure, and especially now that she's on the cover.

Patssi Valdez>> And she became a metaphor for a lot of Latinas somewhat in my age group. When they saw that image, they'd say, "That's me. That's me in that dress."

Dan Guerrero>> I'd like to see the little girl all grown up and especially if a lot --

Patssi Valdez>> -- dating and married (laughter)?

Dan Guerrero>> (Laughter) Oh, no. Maybe she's got a house by the sea. If it has touched so many Latinas you say who say "That was me", it would be interesting to see who you would depict.

Patssi Valdez>> Yeah, maybe we'll take her into junior high next. I don't know what I'll do, but that's something for me to think about.

Dan Guerrero>> You know what I'd like to see? Because I know you're into filmmaking, you were doing that in the Asco years. But now with the new technology, you're kind of revisiting that. Can we take a look at that?

Patssi Valdez>> Sure, definitely. Let's come over here.

Dan Guerrero>> Filmmaking today, I mean, it's a whole different world. You're not out with a camera in the streets doing these things. That's you, I know, but how are you doing this?

Patssi Valdez>> What I did is I got a lot of still photographs because I was a photographer also. So I took a lot of my still photography and then I inputted it into iMovie and I animated it and added soundtrack and these special effects. I've been making these little short films.

Val Zavala>> Patssi's adventurous nature goes back to her youth. She went to Garfield High in East Los Angeles known as a hotbed of Chicano politics. In the 1970s, she met fellow artists, Harry Gamboa, Willie Herron and Gronk. They formed an avant-garde artist group called Asco, which means nausea in Spanish. As part of Asco, Patssi was a performance artist, costume designer, photographer and a muse for her creative colleagues.

Dan Guerrero>> So let me ask you how this sweet little girl in a yellow dress becomes this wild woman?

Patssi Valdez>> Dan, I wasn't wild. I was a creative artist experimenting with costume design.

Dan Guerrero>> You're telling me those high heels aren't wild (laughter)? This was --

Patssi Valdez>> -- no. Right here, I was acting out a role because I actually had aspirations to become a movie actress. But in my youth, there were really no roles for movie actresses.

Dan Guerrero>> There are barely roles for Latinas today, let alone --

Patssi Valdez>> -- exactly, so I would act out some dramatic scene that I wished I was playing.

Dan Guerrero>> One of my favorite photographs. Tell me about that photograph.

Patssi Valdez>> Well, this was one of the last photographs that I allowed Harry Gamboa to take of me. I actually was turning thirty years old.

Dan Guerrero>> You look like a baby.

Patssi Valdez>> I went in my back yard. We cut this leaf off. My mom grew these enormous flowered plants. I just draped some cut fabric on myself.

Dan Guerrero>> It is beautiful.

Patssi Valdez>> This photograph became very popular, actually. I think Harry sold quite a few of those.

Dan Guerrero>> Thank you so much for letting us invade this beautiful little hallowed ground where you create all your fantastic images.

Patssi Valdez>> Anytime. You're always welcome back to the hood (laughter).

Dan Guerrero>> How about a week from Tuesday (laughter)?

Patssi Valdez>> (Laughter) Well, that's a little too soon. I'm leaving town.

Dan Guerrero>> Thank you.

Patssi Valdez>> Bye.

Val Zavala>> If you'd like to see more of Patssi's work, you can go to her website at patssivaldez.com. That's p-a-t-s-s-i. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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