Product Description
This new edition contextualizes Lareau’s original ethnography in a discussion of the most pressing issues facing educators at the beginning of the new millennium…. More >>
Product Description
This new edition contextualizes Lareau’s original ethnography in a discussion of the most pressing issues facing educators at the beginning of the new millennium…. More >>
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.
Rating: 4 / 5
In “Home Advantage,” Annette Lareau examines the question of who gets ahead in public schooling and what causes social reproduction. Specifically, she looks to connect the social institutions of the home, the school and the occupation to see how each affects the children at a young age.
To examine this question, she goes to two schools (Prescott and Colton are the aliases). Prescott consists of mainly upper-middle class families, while Colton consists of lower-class families. Lareau finds that teachers at both schools ask the same thing of parents however, the Prescott parents become much more actively involved (to the point of annoyance in some cases) than do Colton parents. She raises the question of why this is so.
She refers to one sociologist throughout the book (Pierre Bordieu) and uses his term of “cultural capital” quite frequently.
The issue appears to boil down (at least in Lareau’s mind) to two main causes (however, the problem is too complex to be narrowed down that greatly). These causes are confidence and the “cultural captial” of each family. The Colton families usually were either high school graduates or drop outs and felt intimidated by the teachers expertise while the Prescott families felt that the teachers were the equals (if not, their superiors) and felt comfortable confronting teachers about problems they felt with their children. Besides this Lareau addresses cultural capital and the linkages between home, school and work in the book.
While this above is all fine, there were two major problems with the book. One was the glaring errors in the book (talking about typos and stuff here), this really didn’t detract from the substance of the book but I (being nit-picky like I am) found this annoying and distracting. The mistakes included using “stronly” instead of “strongly”, “they very greatly” instead of “they vary greatly” and misspelling Bordieu’s name at one point (Bordiew). While I realize that this happens in every book, the errors seemed more obvious, evident and numerous in Home Advantage.
The other problem is more serious. Lareau uses her data to imply changes to the system to end social reproduction and help fix the class issue. However, she appears to have swallowed the achievement ideology of success herself. Instead of talking about the vast social and political changes that are very likely needed to change the system, Lareau implies that a few changes to the school system will fix everything and then the great meritocracy will occur. This seems rather naive in my opinion and I think that this is the greatest detractor from the whole book.
Rating: 3 / 5
This book has a lot of valuable content, but the numerous writing convention errors is distracting to the reader.
Rating: 3 / 5