Soccer will take precedence over homework, regularly . . . Sometimes they would go on weekend trips. They would play soccer, would be up late, and they would be tired. I like sports, but when it interferes with what the children need to do for their academics, I think it needs to be looked at again.
You can’t fight City Hall. It’s their child and they have a right to do it. Tommy Daniels was on three one-week vacations with his family this year. Then she [his mother] is concerned about his progress in math! Hey, keep him in school.
Teachers also support parents’ efforts to develop their children’s vocabulary. They all encourage parents to read to children, take children to the library, buy children books, and make sure that the children read at home. Ms. Bernstein, a fourth-grade teacher at Lower Richmond, gave her students a homework assignment of at least ten minutes of reading each night. When Ms. Stanton, who also teaches fourth grade, made a list of Christmas gifts that parents might give their children, she included books. At Swan, Ms. Nettles has a bulletin board where she lists the books that her students have read recently outside of class.
Teachers said relatively little to parents directly about the value of reasoning with children (as opposed to giving them directives). Still, there were numerous indications that educators at both Lower Richmond and Swan strongly prefer verbal interactions oriented to reasoning over directives. In their classroom interactions, these educators, like their counterparts nationwide, often use reasoning with the children, particularly in lessons. As teachers answer questions with questions12 they seek to develop children’s reasoning capacities in routine interactions. In addition, educators are generally (although not uniformly) supportive of parents’ use of “time outs” as a form of discipline.
INTERVENTIONS IN INSTITUTIONS
Teachers want parent involvement in schooling, especially parental supervision of homework. At Swan School, children must have their parents sign their homework book daily. Teachers interpret a failure to show up for a parent-teacher conference as a sign that parents do not value schooling—even though at Lower Richmond the conferences were scheduled on relatively short notice and without parents’ input regarding their assigned time slot. In emphasizing parental intervention in education, these educators mirror practices common in the profession.13 Still, educators are selective in the kind of parent involvement they prefer, as this Lower Richmond fourth-grade teacher indicates:
An unsupportive parent is one who is antagonistic with the teacher. I’ve had situations like that. And it makes the job virtually impossible. If you have a problem with the child, the parent is not supportive of you or the school’s position. And [then] the child is at odds with you and they fight you tooth and nail and they basically say, “I don’t have to listen to you; [I] don’t have to do what you say.”
A third-grade teacher from Swan School uses strikingly similar terms in expressing her concern:
[Parents have] gotten this attitude now where they question so much. The children see and hear this. Then they come to your classroom with an attitude. Not many, but you can sure pick it up right away. Some of them are very surly . . . I think a lot of it comes from home.
Although educators want parents to offer them positive and deferential support, they also feel strongly that parents should respond to their requests for educational assistance. Ms. Bernstein is frustrated by how few parents actually read to their children:
The [parents] want them to do well in school. They all say that they want their kids to do their homework. They always say that, but they don’t know how to accomplish it in many situations . . . They want to . . . They want to. But do they ever sit down and read to their child? But they mean well.
Educators at both schools believe parents should take a leadership role in solving their children’s educational problems. They complain about parents who do not take children’s problems “seriously” enough to initiate contact with educators. In short, educators want contradictory behaviors from parents: deference and support, but also assertive leadership when children had educational problems.
Moreover, by law, educators are required to intervene if a family violates state standards for child rearing. Some child-rearing practices that were commonplace throughout society in earlier historical periods (e.g., vigorously beating children) are now condemned. Regardless of their personal opinion, educators are bound by the law to turn a child over to authorities if, for example, she shows up at school with red welts on her body from being disciplined. As I show in subsequent chapters, this legal requirement put working-class and poor families in the study at risk for intervention by school officials in a way that middle-class families were not.
In sum, there is a paradox in the institutions that children and their families encounter. On the one hand, there are profound differences in the quality of services provided by institutions. On the other hand, institutions accept and promote the same standards regarding cultural repertoires. Thus, teachers placed a shared emphasis on the cultivation of children’s talents through organized activities, the importance of parental development of children’s vocabulary, and the importance of responsive and positive parental participation in schooling. As we shall see, these standards privileged the cultural practices of middle-class families over those of their working-class and poor counterparts. This pattern made it more comfortable, and easier at times, for middle-class children and their parents to achieve their wishes.
INEQUALITY
The differences in the quality of school life in Lower Richmond and Swan schools are part of a more general pattern of inequality in the broader society. A relatively small number of people, and institutions such as schools, in the population have considerably more assets than others. For example, across families, key resources are unequally distributed. Parents’ income and wealth, educational accomplishments, and quality of work life all vary dramatically. If inequality were not a powerful force in the United States, then these coveted resources would be distributed in a much more equitable fashion.
In terms of income and wealth, the richest 10 percent of families in our society own almost 80 percent of all real estate (other than family homes), more than 90 percent of all securities (stocks and bonds) and about 60 percent of all the money in bank accounts.14 One widely used indicator of inequality in income is the child poverty rate, a rate that is heavily dependent on social policy. (There are many more poor children in the United States than in most Western European countries.)15 In the United States, one-fifth of all children live below the poverty level, and the figure is approximately twice as high for Black children.16 The distribution of income and wealth became even more heavily concentrated in the hands of a few during the last decades of the twentieth century.17 Still, during the study period, one-seventh of Black Americans were making over fifty thousand dollars annually.18
Educational accomplishments are also lopsided. In the United States, just under one-quarter of all adults have completed a bachelor’s degree; the figure is a bit higher for individuals in their twenties. More than 10 percent of high school students drop out.19 Even among younger people, for whom college education is becoming increasingly common, a clear majority (from two-thirds to three-quarters) do not graduate.20 Although some studies show that, after taking into account parents’ social position, Black youth are more likely to pursue higher education than whites, overall levels of educational attainment are far lower for Black children.21 Substantial stratification also exists within higher education, ranging from community colleges to elite universities. The more elite the school, the more richly graduates are rewarded.22