Lois Weis, distinguished professor of educational leadership and policy at the University at Buffalo Graduate School of Education, gave a lecture at Hamilton on Nov. 8 titled "Unequal Outcomes: how families and schools structure social and economic inequalities." Weis, the author of numerous books on race, class and gender in American education, spoke about how families and schools structure economic inequalities in a way that limits the social mobility potential of education.
Weis began her lecture by disputing the major assumptions that Americans have about how education interacts with social and economic class. We assume that schools are neutral actors in educations that process all children equally, but "nothing could be further from the truth," Weis said. Despite the common conception that "anyone can make it" in this country by working hard at their education, Weis said that both schools and families make it incredibly difficult for people to use education as a tool of social mobility. In fact, she said, the way schools and families behave tends to reproduce the very social and economic class structures from which people come.
Weis was quick to clarify that she was not making a "culture of poverty" argument, which would say that the parenting and family life of working and lower class families are somehow deficient. Rather, she said that the interaction of economic class with education makes it so that overcoming the barriers to social mobility requires "heroic effort" on the part of working and lower class families that is not required of middle and upper class families.
Today's changing global economy is a large factor in the reproduction of class structure, Weis continued. The increasing gap between the lower and upper classes is enforced by the changes in skills and techniques of production in the new economy. This era is the opposite of the "great compression" that occurred after World War II with the GI Bill and the emergence of the American middle class, Weis said. The experiences that many of today's adults had with upward mobility - being one of the first members of their family to go to college or own their own home, for example - happened in a certain historical context that is vastly different from today's, she said.
Research on family structure and behavior has shown that social class has a difference on what is called the "cultural logic of child rearing," Weis continued. Middle and upper class families tend to practice what researchers call "concerted cultivation" of their children. This strategy of child rearing is based on stressing the personal skills and attributes in a child that will best position them for educational and career success in the distant future. "Concerted cultivation" creates a frenetic pace for families, Weis said, and creates an emphasis on individual performance. Middle and upper class families today are largely child-centered, with parents spending a majority of their time and energy on their children.
Meanwhile, working class and poor families tend not to rear their children in this same way. Instead, they focus on what Weis called "accomplishment of natural growth." Rather than emphasizing the cultivation of individual talents and positioning for later success, these families emphasize love and support for children's natural inclinations. These working class and poor families also tend to have stronger interpersonal relationships with their neighbors and extended family.
Why is this important? Weis said that the different cultural logics of child rearing lead to very different attitudes in the children. Middle and upper class children who are "cultivated" tend to me more assertive and adept in negotiating within institutional structures, where lower class and poor children often grow up to be distrustful of institutions and largely passive with authority figures. In schools, this means that middle and upper class children and their parents challenge teachers and administrators to get the most benefit out of the educational system, whereas lower class and poor families often do not.
Consequently, Weis said, students of different economic and social classes can get different results even from the same educational system. At the same time, there is a material component that makes the value and resources of educational institutions vastly different for different classes.
The difference between classes in educational outcomes only gets larger in higher education, Weis said. The increasing instability and uncertainty of the economy makes middle class people anxious about their status, and they look to higher education as a marker of this status. Selective colleges confirm and promote these status ambitions by offering amenities and prestige which help to mark their students as future elites.
The likelihood of getting into colleges such as these is highly affected by a family's economic status, as the college application process itself can cost upwards of $50,000 today, Weis said. Even as the children of working class and poor families are attending college more than ever before and are doing better in college, middle and upper class families continue to widen the gap by getting into prestigious private colleges or selective programs within public universities.
When differences in material resources meet differences in child rearing strategies, the differences in outcomes are vast, Weis said. Global changes in the economy and educational system are being lived locally by the working class and poor families who are adversely affected by them. Today, she concluded, social mobility is being choked off more than ever before by economic and cultural factors.
Weis' lecture was sponsored by the Diversity and Social Justice Project at Hamilton.
-- by Caroline Russell O'Shea '07
