Schools prepare children to occupy particular rungs on the social ladder (Journal Article)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read the article earlier today and was trying to make sense of why the teaching methods are so different and it hit me that it has to do with student preparedness rather than a system that is trying to keep everyone in their SES place. If the student body is not prepared and doesn't have family support then the teachers and school will have to work to meet the needs of that population. They can't ask unprepared children to contemplate higher level thinking activities when the kids don't understand the basics. The teachers need to instill tight discipline as many of these kids don't have good role models at home and are more likely to act out.

On the other side, the super wealthy have generally speaking very well prepared children. If a child struggles in an area, the parents generally have the education to help their children or hire tutors. The teachers therefore are teaching to kids that have a solid foundation and are building upon the higher level foundation that the kids already have.

A good analogy is the difference between taking calculus class and an applied engineering class. In the calculus class you are learning the basics. In the engineering class, you learn the why. However, you can not understand the why before you understand the basics. Unfortunately for schools that serve poor children, they can never get past the basics.

Hmmm. But some of the posts here include examples of kids who are already excelling yet school officials steer kids in what are contradictory directions based on their achievement to date. That's what drives me nuts - these examples aren't kids with mismatched skills and goals - but a system that can't recognize their accomplishments and steer them accordingly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's why I homeschool. I don't want my kid in a box.

But they will be in a box. The "home-school-ed" box.

And "boxed in" from any outside influences - it's like the opposite of getting positive exposure - it's getting none at all.

Home schoolers today have a huge network and many opportunities to socialize.

+1! New poster here: not only are there many home school support groups and coops in DC, but many museums and other NGOs offer programs specifically for homeschoolers, so socialization is not an issue at all (in my experience anyway).

[Anonymous]

Another factor to consider when thinking about the very different teaching styles found across the economic spectrum is the educational background of the teachers themselves and how that might influence what they think that it means to educate a child. There is another article based on these same observations by the author where she notes that the type of college attended and the professional achievement of the teacher's spouses at the upper income schools was higher than at the lower income schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That's why I homeschool. I don't want my kid in a box.

I thinking homeschool is a good option but the fact is I don't believe that it's a substitute nor can a parent replicate what the article labels the executive elite schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nobody at my white, upper-middle class kid's DMV-area public school suggested DC should attend an Ivy, either. The counselor didn't stand in DC's way and presumably wrote a decent rec, because DC got in.

I get the impression that the default, for a lot of area public and private school counselors, is public universities and 2nd-tier privates. Perhaps this comes from unfamiliarity, because we saw some cluelessness wrt the Ivy's language and math requirements. Another issue may be trying to lower expectations: DC's friends at a Big 3 talk about being steered away from Ivies, perhaps because of the intense competition from classmates. Perhaps, also, counselors assume that most families want to max out merit aid, so maybe it's not all coming from a bad place.

My experience with a private school is almost no one applies to state schools, except maybe UVA or UMD or Michigan and no one seems to care about merit aid. It's all full pay at private colleges.

[Anonymous]

Here is her other article: http://www.jeananyon.org/docs/anyon-1981.pdf
I was particularly interested in the different ways that the students responded to her question, "What is knowledge?"
One thing that I think has changed is that our most elite schools share a lot more in common now with the school that she terms "affluent professional" in that the best lower schools have a strong creative component.

[Anonymous]

This happens in college too. I majored in Chemical Engineering and did my husband. DH went to an ivy and everyone in his class was encouraged to go to grad school, med school or law school. Few people he graduated with went on to work in industry. DH has a PhD and most of his grad school friends went to undergrad at other Ivys or very top-20 name brand schools. I went to a selective private school in the Midwest highly ranked for ChemE. About half my class went to grad school or professional school. The other half went into industry - a combination of R&D and management track jobs as well as banking and consulting. Only a few people from my class went to work, in hard hats and boots, in a chemical plant and then it was for major companies like P&G, GE, and DuPont. When I started working in consulting I met another ChemE who graduated from a state school with a mediocre ranking. She was shocked I didn't know how to repair an industrial pump or disassemble a distillation column or do other hands on things. Most people she went to school with went to work in chemical plants and for small companies. She was the top of her class and she went into business consulting.

Something to think about when you pick a college with your kid. Make sure to ask for a list of companies that interview on campus and hire - and how many they hire each year. Make sure to ask how many kids go to grad school - and which grad schools.

Lastly as much as the instruction in the article was so slanted to be almost comical, where kids end up is also a factor of what they are exposed to. DH grew up outside NYC in a a town where most dads work on Wall St and most moms stay home. His peers thought he was nuts to go to engineering schools and now many people from HS are on finance. I grew up in the middle class in a small Midwestern state school college town. I picked engineering because it was a high status job where I'm from and I liked STEM. Had I ever met a PhD economist or a finance exec/banker I likely would have done that instead.

[Anonymous]

22:12 I totally agree with you about the exposure element. A child growing up in Ward 3 will have exposure to a vast array of high SES occupations and that broadens their horizons immeasurably.