Home Advantage: Social Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education

This is a very good ethnography which compares two elementary schools, one predominately working class and the other predominately upper middle class, in California. Contrary to the pernicious stereotypes which many of us entertain, Lareau found that working class parents are just as interested in education for their children as upper middle class parents. However, working class parents are predisposed to defer to the judgment of teachers, guidance counselors, and other school officials, whom they regard as professionals with special skills and insights. As a result, poor grades, assignment to a devalued group, and stern discipline for real or imagined misbehavior go unchallenged. By sharp contrast, upper middle class parents have tacitly adopted the motto "my kid -- right or wrong, smart or stupid, hardworking or lazy -- he or she will succeed." Upper middle class parents are effectively instrusive, well connected, and tend to regard teachers as pseudo-professionals, their social inferiors. Having read Lareau's account, it's easy to see why other ethnographers have found upper middle class resistance to the elimination of curriculum tracking. Upper middle class parents know how to work the system to secure advantages for their children. Some readers may judge that the quality of Lareau's ethnography would be improved had she spent as much time with working class parents as with upper middle class parents. However, the upper middle class parents were purposefully ubiquitous, while the working class parents were respectfully remote. Thus, this seeming deficiency may reasonably be construed as but a reflection of the way the world works.