Unequal Childhoods - Annette Lareau [21]
Teachers also promote the concerted cultivation of their own children through a busy schedule of organized activities. Lower Richmond teacher Ms. Stanton had a daughter enrolled in a fourth-grade suburban school relatively close to Swan School. Her daughter’s program of activities is similar to that of the other middle-class children in this study: art lessons, dance lessons, music lessons, Sunday school, youth church choir, and horseback riding were regular weekly events. Another third-grade teacher reported that she has all of her children enrolled in Catholic instruction (CCD), Scouts, Little League, piano lessons, and swim team. Through their actions at home, teachers demonstrate their commitment to the logic of child rearing of concerted cultivation.
Still, teachers complain about children being overscheduled and about concerted cultivation diminishing children’s school experience through exhaustion or absence. As a teacher at Swan complained:
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