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By Root 1296 0

for concerted cultivation. Mr. Tier’s expectation that Ms. Driver “beat him on the head” and take a more aggressive role in guiding Wendy’s education presupposed a set of educational and social skills not typically possessed by working-class mothers with high school educations. To match Ms. Marshall’s actions, for example, Wendy’s mother would have had to engage in extensive discussions about the substantive nature of her daughter’s educational problems. This in turn would have required a familiarity and facility with terminology such as “auditory reception,” “language arts skills,” and “decoding skills,” jargon far more specialized and complex than the term “tooth decay,” whose true meaning apparently had escaped Ms. Driver. And, even had she strengthened and expanded her vocabulary, she still would have needed confidence in her ability to reconcile the conflicting views of Wendy’s teachers. In a situation with many uncertainties, confronted by experts who did not agree about the best course of action, Ms. Driver would have needed a bedrock faith in herself as the person best able to determine the right course of action for Wendy. She would have needed to set aside any worries about making mistakes and have been willing to define her intervention as being as valuable, and possibly more valuable, than what would have happened had Wendy’s education been left to the school staff only.

In other situations, such as with the cable company and her landlord, Ms. Driver displayed exactly this sense of certainty. She identified certain actions on the part of others as unacceptable and persisted as long as necessary to achieve her goals. She demanded responses from these providers. But, intimidated by the professional expertise and authority of school personnel, she did not make similar demands with educators. She did not, for example, pressure the school to review Wendy’s situation more rapidly (in third grade) or push to have her daughter placed in full-time special education (in fourth grade) or insist that Wendy not be promoted (at the end of fourth grade). Instead, she worried, waited, and wondered what “the school” would do next.

CHAPTER 11

Beating with a Belt,

Fearing “the School”:

Little Billy Yanelli

The therapist that day . . . he says well you realize that me being a therapist and working for the state or whatever that if I find out you’re beating your child that I have to report that.

Now I go through different phases with Billy. I want to be the kind of parent that never hits my kid and everything but Billy gets so out of control that maybe he does need it once in a while. (Ms. Yanelli)

When the founders of the country were raised, children were routinely disciplined by physical force. By the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first, dominant child-rearing ideology suggests the importance of reasoning with children and giving children “appropriate choices.” Compared with earlier historical times, authoritarian child-rearing methods, particularly disciplining children through corporal punishment, have fallen out of favor.

Yet compliance with professional standards varies systematically rather than randomly. Parents who use belts are at risk for being considered abusive much more than parents who engage in verbal abuse of children (i.e., a mother who tells a child “I don’t want to be your mother anymore”). Schools, as arms of the state, selectively enforce child-rearing standards. This has important consequences for the comfort, trust, and experience of family members in these institutions.

In a white working-class neighborhood with narrow streets and narrow houses, “Little Billy” Yanelli lives with his mother and father (who are unmarried). They reside in a small two-bedroom brick house in the city. The front door is just a few steps from the curb and opens immediately into a small living room. The living room is dominated by a huge television with an extra-large screen that takes up most of the wall; the television is always on. With a sofa, recliner, love seat, and coffee table,