Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Children who grow up in a poor area go to school where there are 50 kids in one class and individual attention is never given, and children of high class families will go to schools that have smaller class sizes and individual attention. Even when a poor child goes to a better schoolteachers will question if the work done is their own and also only expect hard work from the rich kids. “if you are a child of low income parents, the chances are good that you will receive limited and often careless attention from adults in your high school.” Theodore Sizer “Horace’s Compromise,” “If you are the child of upper-middle income parents, the chances are good that you will receive substantial and careful attention.” (203) These quotes from another author showcase that school in America is often times based on the social standing of the parents.

The book Unequal Childhoods describes observations made by Annette Lareau to shed light on the significance of social class and how it affects student’s learning. Lareau presents her observations by highlighting the two dominant ways of parenting that ultimately affect how successful students become as they transition into adulthood. These styles of parenting consist of Concerted Cultivation where parents put through kids through structured activities, and Accomplishment of Natural Growth where unrestrictive freedom and directives are exercised (20-22).

Lareau, in Unequal Childhoods, focuses on socioeconomic status and how that affects outcomes in the education system and the workplace. While examining middle-class, working-class and poor families, Lareau witnessed differing logics of parenting, which could greatly determine a child’s future success. Working-class and poor families allow their children an accomplishment of natural growth, whereas middle-class parents prepare their children through concerted cultivation. The latter provides children with a sense of entitlement, as parents encourage them to negotiate and challenge those in authority. Parents almost overwhelm their children with organized activities, as we witnessed in the life of Garrett Tallinger. Due to his parents and their economic and cultural capital, Garrett was not only able to learn in an educational setting, but through differing activities, equipping him with several skills to be successful in the world. Lareau suggests these extra skills allow children to “think of themselves as special and as entitled to receive certain kinds of services from adults” (39). Adults in the school system are in favor of these skills through concerted cultivation, and Bourdieu seems to suggest that schools can often misrecognize these skills as natural talent/abilities when it’s merely cultivated through capital. This then leads to inequalities in the education system and academic attainments.

In the 1997 article, “Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals” by David Labaree, Labaree describes three goals that have been at the core of educational conflicts over the years. The first goal mentioned is democratic equality, which is meant to create good citizens and enable educational access to all. The second goal is social efficiency, which creates workers and is viewed by taxpayers and employers as a goal to prepare students for market roles. Lastly is the third goal of social mobility, where individual success for attractive market roles is the main purpose. This primary goal of education has been ever fluctuating. The argument of this essay is that social mobility has now triumphed over democratic equality and social efficiency as the primary goal of education due to parents. This view of social mobility by parents is negative to due its numerous consequences, significantly the growing disparity between the wealthy and the underprivileged, and additionally, the health of children, their behavior, and the degree to which they learn educational material are all affected.

Unequal Childhoods is a book detailing an ethnographic study conducted by the author, Annette Lareau, examining the impact of how social class makes a difference in family life, more specifically in children 's lives. The key argument that Lareau makes in her study is that the socioeconomic backgrounds of individuals, especially children, will determine how children cultivate skills they will use in the future. In her groundbreaking study, Lareau utilizes a microsociological approach to examining the relationship between socioeconomic class and children’s cultivation of skills, by studying 88 different families, both middle-class and lower-class, and later conducting a more detailed and intense study of 12 families. Annette Lareau is a graduate of U.C. Santa Cruz and earned her PhD in Sociology from U.C. Berkeley. She started her career at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and previously worked as a Professor of Sociology at Temple University, Pennsylvania from 1990 to 2005 as well. She has served as a professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Annette Lareau today is a high-acclaimed sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is the Stanley I. Sheer Professor.

Socioeconomic status plays a key factor in the type of education a child receives today and ultimately functions to keep individuals in the class they are born into. Those who are part of the lower class receive the bare minimum in education with the end goal being blind obedience, while the upper class is educated in a way that encourages self-regulation, individual thought, and creativity. These vast differences in education are no mistake and are put in place for overall control.

Educational Researcher by Gloria Ladson-Billings looked into the ratio between education and achievement and what the gap was between them and how to fix it. According to an interview with strict economist Professor Emeritus Robert Haveman of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Economics he makes it clear by stating that “ In order to reduce the debt or gap in one being achievement you must then close the gap of the other being education” Ladson-Billings also goes on to recognize the parallel between not only your economic status when it comes to education but how well your parents did before you among many other things including your health along with your overall well being playing a factor into your education ( Ladson-Billings, Oct 2006, P 5). Additionally the first teachers of a student are their parents whom in the home are responsible for teaching their children the basic fundamentals they must adhere to within society in order to navigate throughout life.Thus giving them many opportunities to experience cultural and life development (Wilburn, Smith & Hill-Carter, 2013, P 242). This research ties into chapter three of our book where education is discussed and one such topic that Michael’s remarks upon would be annual family incomes and how depending on what is made shows what the students of the

Not many problems are black and white as they are in engineering. The determination of right and wrong is relative. Something that seems beneficial from one side may not seem so on the other. In order to reconcile such differences that pop up in the work world and in everyday life, interdisciplinary study can be a solution.

One of the realities that exist, is that the social class a family is in, has a huge impact on the education of achievement amongst their children. In the article, Gregory Mantsio cites the idea of Richard De Lone, by providing scores from the college board to examine the correlation between family income,

In this section the paper will introduce five stresses or topics supported by the scholarly articles, presenting the key findings of those articles and how they relate to the three categories of difference. The five topics, supported by the references are the effects of school inequality and

These assumptions made by the author tend to lead the reader to the idea that the author has a tone of rant in his argument. The article includes only two found assumptions. The first assumption states, “students in independent schools and wealthy suburban schools are strung-out achievement junkies with parents that drive them relentlessly with no excuses and few defenders” (Weissbourd, 2011). While evidence shows that wealthier families tend to start their children in academics at a much younger age more than a middle class family, as well as the idea that wealthier parents would rather their children go to a good college rather than become a good person; it is impossible to prove that all students that are raised in wealthy families have parents that are achievement junkies. Rather than finding factual evidence the author instead creates an assumption.

moving parts. Two or more specialties or field of study are combined to create one’s

In article “Growing income inequality threatens American education”, authors Duncan & Murnane (2014) speaks about the widening of gaps for educational opportunities between children of low- and high- income. By improving the educational outcomes, it will help to overcome the difficult challenges. The increase of social and economic inequality by globalization and technology has exhausted families and neighborhoods from reforming schools. When reforming schools we must focus on opportunities of more money, more choices, more accountability and new organizational structures. There needs to be a look upon the consistency and quality of experience and instruction given to the students (p.13-14). The government could provide a government-funded program that focuses mainly on children who are from a low-income family. If the government reforms the school system, it would allow the students more opportunities to expand their experience of attaining

The American education system is a prime example of an institution that has been formed around the exclusionary principles of American society and as a result the education system, which has become the preferred means of climbing the socioeconomic latter, is also an institution that works to indirectly keep poor minorities in their hierarchical place. Schools that were meant to be public facilities of education continue to be funded under the assumption that these institutions are necessary and inclusive. Although public schools are necessary, they are far from inclusive, in fact the best schools can be defined as sects. Max Weber wrote about the exclusive characteristics, benefits, and consequences of sects in terms of religious groups,

Of the three schools examined only the government school, Glenmore Park, was determined to have an Index of Community Socio–educational Advantage (ICSEA) value below the national average, with a large percentage of the distribution falling in the middle and lower quartiles (ACARA, 2016h). The two non–government schools recorded ICSEA values above the national average, with Bethany Catholic distributed fairly evenly across the middle and top quartiles, while the school population distribution for Penrith Anglican was heavily concentrated in the upper middle and top quartiles (ACARA, 2016g, 2016i).