no child left content.
“…kids from poor families might be nicer, they might be happier, they might be more polite ? but in countless ways, the manner in which they are raised puts them at a disadvantage in the measures that count in contemporary American society.”
Paul Tough writes the above in an examination, in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, of No Child Left Behind and its progress in eliminating the race- and class- achievement gaps in public schools.
The studies he describes, building up to this quote, indicate that poor families “allowed their children much more freedom to fill in their afternoons and weekends as they chose ? playing outside with cousins, inventing games, riding bikes with friends ? but much less freedom to talk back, question authority or haggle over rules and consequences. Children were instructed to defer to adults and treat them with respect. This strategy [anthropologist Annette] Lareau named accomplishment of natural growth.”
“…middle-class families she studied all followed a… strategy… which she labeled concerted cultivation. The parents in these families engaged their children in conversations as equals, treating them like apprentice adults and encouraging them to ask questions, challenge assumptions and negotiate rules. They planned and scheduled countless activities to enhance their children?s development ? piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museum.”
“Concerted cultivation, she wrote, ‘places intense labor demands on busy parents. … Middle-class children argue with their parents, complain about their parents? incompetence and disparage parents? decisions.’ Working-class and poor children, by contrast, ‘learn how to be members of informal peer groups. They learn how to manage their own time. They learn how to strategize.’ But outside the family unit, Lareau wrote, the advantages of ‘natural growth’ disappear. In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop.”
Doesn’t it seem like these aren’t mutually exclusive approaches? That you might concertedly cultivate coversation, questioning, negotiating in your children and also instill a natural respect for authority and reluctance to ‘talk back?’ It strikes me that a false dichotomy is being set up here: you either teach your children to strategize or you teach them to negotiate; to respect authority or to create their own boundaries; to manage their own time or to participate in cultural activities.
More concerning, though, is the idea that ‘nicer,’ ‘happier,’ ‘more polite,’ are traits associated with failure in modern American society. “It’s a nice thought, to bring your children up this way, but they will not be valued.” And, by implication, that No Child Left Behind is engineered to take children like this and make them more like the successful children: Mean? Unhappy? Rude? Public education, then, can solve the achievement gap, but only at the expense of your children’s attitude towards other people and themselves, their contentment. Character doesn’t count, except in poor (underachieving) families.
I wish I didn’t have to deal with all those children who are “nice, polite and respectful to adults” down here in the D. They cause me no end of problems, always being so helpful and well-mannered! Did Paul Tough or Annette Lareau ever actually encounter any underprivileged children before they decided to sit down and write?
devan. November 26th. 2006. 9:28 pm.
okay, good point. i think the part that troubles me is the “raised to respect authority” vs. “raised to question authority” deal. there’s a strong bad/good vibe going on in the article, vis those two
jnf. November 27th. 2006. 2:32 pm.
For me it seems contradictory. I didn’t read the article but reading your description leaves me feeling that something is fishy. When we equate success with treating people badly and ugly behavior, we are on a downward spiral. If it is not possible to have both civility and success, then we are lost.
mom. November 27th. 2006. 8:31 pm.