Aaron Bennett

Ed. 392

Exam #2

11-22-‘00

 

 

            There are many factors that ultimately affect a child’s education.  One of the key factors into how a student will perform in school is how his or her family value education.  If the parents of a kid value education, they will push their child to do the best that they can do.  They will work with the school to get the best education for their child that they can.  What happens when a parent values education very highly but does not have the knowledge needed to help or find help for their child?  What if they do not know that they can petition to make their child’s school better?  There are many other factors that affect a child’s education.  There are factors of racial and gender prejudice.  Stereotypes lead to preconceived notions for kids which in turn leads to differing expectations for certain kids.  There are factors related to educational opportunity in relation to the schooling available to a certain student. 

 

            The text Home Advantage by Annette Lareau brought up the complexities of parental involvement very well.  Parental involvement can take on many forms.  The white upper and middle-class parents at Prescott school were physically involved with the school.  They tended to view the teachers as equals or even of lower status than them.  The parents would recommend what they do for their child’s instruction.  Many parents, mostly mothers, were able to volunteer at the school.  That way they are helping to create a better learning environment.  They are actively involved in the school and in the education process.  This is only possible because the family has enough money so that that parent does not have to be working at that time.  The money is also available for extracurriculars and added instruction if the need exists.  The parents are also college graduates which means that they can help the students with their homework.  The parents at Colton act very differently toward their children’s’ education.  That does not mean that they care any less.  As lower class people they view the teacher as a learned professional.  They do not want to help out with homework as much because they do not want to impinge on the teacher’s territory.  The parents do not feel that they know enough and do not what to mess their kids up.  The parents also do not know enough about the bureaucracy of the schooling process.  They do not know about special programs that may be available for their needy child.  They do not know what specific courses that their child must take in order to go into a specific field or college after graduation.  Most of the parents cannot be up at the school because they have to work.  This can lead teachers to believe that the parents do not care. 

 

Amanda Lewis discussed this exact type of thing in her dissertation.  There are four certain types of capital.  These are: economic, social, cultural, and symbolic.  The economic capital decides where you can buy a house, which can lead to a better school environment.  That also means that the money is available for added instruction and extracurriculars.  In upper-class households where only one member needs to work, the other has more time to aide in the schooling of the children.  Social capital also can have an effect on the children’s schooling.  The connections and social networks that the parents have will aide them in deciding which schools to chose.  It will also affect what classes that the students take.  This is tied into the cultural knowledge.  If the parents are college educated, they will more likely know what will be required of them to get into and succeed in college.  If they do not know, they have the requisite knowledge to go find out for themselves.  The lower class parents most times have not gone to college and so do not know what is involved.  They expect the school consolers to provide that service.  The student often times just goes along with what classes their friends are in.  This is one situation where it is a definite advantage as to what type of home you come from.  These poorer parents do not know where to go for this information and would not know what questions to ask.  This is perceived as lack of interest by my school personal and the child might be place into a non-college bound track even if that is what the student would like to be in.  The symbolic capital also affects the child’s schooling.  Tests and schoolbooks might use examples that include items unfamiliar to them.  If you ask a bunch of kids from rural Northern Michigan what the four seasons are, they might answer: deer, fish, small game, and duck season.  Are they wrong?  In their social context, the answers that they gave would be right.  The meaning behind the answers is not looked at however in tests.  They would just be marked wrong and looked upon as idiots.  These four capitals work together to aide or deny a child adequate educational resources.  The parents directly affect all of these.  In that way I think that the parents are very responsible for the education of their child.  That parental involvement is not nearly the only thing that affects a child’s schooling but it is a big contributing factor, especially in the younger grades. Ms Lewis chose to focus on the racial aspects of the problem.  I thought the whole Metro2 example was interesting.  I had never thought about the problems and complexities that would come about from having a Spanish/Bilingual school.  I thought it was interesting that the middle-class white kids continued to be the high achievers, even though the Latinos were many times learning in their mother tongue.  That tells me how much that socio-economic status outweighs the racial and ethnic concerns.  Race is often attributed to a certain economic status so that the two are hard to deal with separately. 

 

            The language difference can be a big problem when trying to secure a better education.  Parents cannot argue their case effectively if they cannot speech the same language as the persons in charge.  The children themselves cannot learn effectively if they do not know the language in which the knowledge is being presented.  I heard about this problem from my grandmother who immigrated to Maine from Quebec.  She spoke only French at the time.  She had skipped a grade in school before she moved.  After she came to the United States, she was held back a grade because she was “stupid”.  She used to go home and cry every day.  This could be a reason why many foreign students are looked upon as math whizzes.  Math is the only standard subject that requires little skill in English.  Algebra is the same no matter what country you are from.  This could also be the reason why many might gravitate toward the fine arts.  That is a tricky situation since the fine arts also cost money, something most immigrants have precious little of.

 

Stacey Lee’s text Unraveling the Model Minority complicates this issue.  The Asian students are as a whole held to a higher academic standard than any other group.  Within the Asian kids, there are different sub-groups that carry with them stigmas about what their performance should be and why.  The Koreans are looked upon as more “white”.  The Southeast Asian like Vietnamese and Cambodian are looked upon as poor welfare recipients.  There is also a difference in how the children see them selves and their heritage.  Some are new immigrants and as such have strong ties to their homeland.  Others have families that have been here for centuries.  They are more American than many whites but are lumped into the Asian-American group because of their appearance.  They are expected to be the high achievers, especially in the sciences.  This stereotype may work for them in helping them get educational opportunities.

 

The attitudes of the students themselves affect their education much more than many people give credit.  These attitudes can be shaped and molded by many factors though.  The text Schoolgirls by Peggy Orenstein discusses the implications of gender on student attitudes.  Girls do not want to appear too manly and are subsequently pushed out of the sciences, and many other subjects.  They are taught to be docile and quiet.  This means that their questions often go unasked, or unnoticed if a boy is being particularly unruly and taking up the teacher’s time.  The girls do not want to like digging in the dirt and exploring thing first-hand because it might be looked upon as unladylike.  This view does a great disservice to the girls in our schools.  They think that girls are just not as good in math and sciences as the boys.  That may lead to them not trying nearly as hard.  If they do receive a good grade in a science class they often attribute it to luck or the ease of the material, not their own skill.  “’It’s not hard to get an A in here,’ she says.  ‘Basically you just have to show up.  And I still think I’ve done it wrong every day.  I’ll probably be in, like, special ed. Math next year.’” (Orenstein, p. 19)  The girls have been conditioned to view the sciences (except Biology) as unwomanly.  One of the first people to win a Nobel Prize was Marie Curie.  Madame Curie did not think women could not do science.  The women who take two or more math classes in college tend to earn equal or even more commensurate pay than their male counterparts.

 

There are other factors that we have not really covered in this course as of yet.  What about the kids who live in the boonies?  They lack the large libraries and school infrastructure that the larger schools have.  Often the examples in the books that we read are comparing “white” upper or middle class schools to poor urban ones.  This view of suburban versus urban does not get the true picture.  What about the rural students?  They have a stake in education as well.  Their parents may want the world for them, but the resources just are not there.  They cannot take calculus if they wanted to.  The class does not exist, no matter how savvy their parents might be about using the system.  These kids do not have the large libraries that urban and suburban kids do.  That wealth of outside knowledge is something that is often forgotten when people talk about educational opportunity. 

 

All of these factors come together to affect and mold each student’s educational opportunities.  Saying that parents are responsible for their child’s education is a very simplistic view to take.  Who the student is makes a big difference.  The educational opportunities may be skewed because of race, gender, religion, socio-economic status.  One cannot say one certain thing is the all-important crux that education depends upon.  Only by taking all issues into account can understanding really be wrestled with.  Often times (as in this case) the more information that we have, the more convoluted the case becomes.  It often seems that we try to remedy one situation, and another one pops up in its place or alongside it.  I am planning on teaching at the secondary level.  By that time, the students are ready to start taking responsibility for their own education.  While they cannot change the loss of past educational opportunities, they can work to correct them.  At some point the student must decide if they want to achieve.  This is a hard issue because by the time I get them, their hopes and dreams could have been dashed against the rocks.  It is part of my job to try to take the superglue to those fragments of forgotten dreams.  It is only through getting students involved in their own education can we ever achieve our ultimate goal of fostering lifelong learners.  As the trained professionals, we have the keys toward better learning.  Will the students step up to the challenge?  Will we as educators rise to meet this challenge with all of our combined might?  It is a hard war to fight, but the consequences are very dear.  The fates of this countries children rest in the educational opportunities that they are provided.  It will take the entire community, not just the teachers, to surmount this obstacle and help our students grow.   This paper would grow to immense proportions if I tried to go into great detail about how we can solve these problems.  This will be my seventh page in this paper and I have only scratched the surface of the issue.

                        Bibliography

 

Lareau, Annette.  Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Involvement in Elementary Education.  Rowman and Littleford Pub.  Lanham, MD.  2000.

 

Lee, Stacey J.  Unraveling the “Model Minority” Stereotype: Listening to Asian American Youth.  Teachers College Press.  New York, NY.  1996. 

 

Lewis, Amanda.  Race in the Schoolyard: Reproducing the Color Line in School.  University of Michigan.  2000

 

Orenstein, Peggy.  Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap.  Anchor Books.  New York, NY.  1995.