Washington Post education columnist Jay Mathews discusses some findings in Michael Petrilli’s book The Diverse Schools Dilemma; namely, that middle class and working class parents tend to have different parenting styles that impact education:
A middle-class, college-educated parent of any ethnicity is likely to be like me: Overscheduling children’s free time but preferring innovative instruction and informal discipline at school.
The research Petrilli cites says working-class and poor parents of any race are more likely to let their children amuse themselves as they see fit once their homework is done but tend to prefer schools with traditional teaching styles and strong discipline.
He cites the work of University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau. She and her team closely tracked 12 families of different racial and class backgrounds. They found the center of life in middle-class families was the calendar, with what Lareau said were “scheduled, paid, and organized activities for children . . . in the two-inch-square open spaces beneath each day of the month.” But despite the forced march to improvement that characterized their children’s free time, those parents tolerated a lot of back-talk and often negotiated with children about what they wanted to do. They preferred teachers who did not give orders but encouraged creativity..
Working-class and poor parents, researchers found, left their children on their own on weekends and summer days but were more likely to set strict behavior rules. Those parents tended to like teachers who were tough and structured.
As a nation, we have been arguing for many generations about the best parenting styles. Those of us who prefer lots of scheduled activities but not much discipline should remember that many members of the revered Greatest Generation who won World War II were raised the way many low-income children are brought up today. . . .
Do loose school lessons teach more than structured ones? Does regular weekend soccer practice do more for our children’s character than roaming around with their friends? I don’t know. The research doesn’t say.
If middle class and low-income parents have different methods with their kids and different expectations for their schools, how do principals and teachers serve both populations?
via Do rich and poor parenting styles matter? – Class Struggle – The Washington Post.
So when middle class teachers go with a “creative” free-form approach to teaching, working class kids end up with no structure, either at school or in their free time. Perhaps home-schooled middle-class kids tend to do so well because both their schooling and their free time are highly structured. If this breakdown is correct, poorer kids would do really well if they only had more structure in their schooling.
As I recall, though we were middle class, my school was highly structured and my free time was my own. That may have more to do with “greatest generation” parenting, times gone by, and local culture. I think it’s good to give children some space for freedom and for pursuing things they enjoy on their own, rather than scheduling every minute with sports and self-improvement lessons.
Do you think this holds true? Can you make a case for one of these parenting/educational styles over the others? Are there other possibilities?
by food critic Sam Sifton, which gives step-by-step instructions on how to do everything. From Smith’s review of the book:
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