Monday, November 12, 2007
Cultural capital deficit
Posted by Harold Henderson on Mon, Nov 12, 2007 at 7:06 AM
Peter Sacks in Teachers' College Record:
"As is often the case for lower-income families, Ashlea’s parents always wanted the best for her, but they were as information-poor as their daughter, even more so.
"I met Ashlea through my wife, Kathleen, who was her mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. We wanted to set up a modest college scholarship fund for Ashlea and asked her to maintain a certain GPA in school to earn it. When we broached the idea with her dad, Gary, we were shocked to learn that he didn’t know what a GPA was, let alone SATs, AP courses, or any number of details that families must master nowadays in order to prepare their children for higher education.
"Compared to other more educated and affluent parents and students I interviewed for my new book, Tearing Down the Gates (Sacks, 2007), Ashlea’s cultural deficits put her at a huge disadvantage in the education system. Our system relies heavily on the ability of families to provide the cultural capital needed for children to succeed. If parents of poor children aren’t providing them with sufficient information and resources to thrive in the American school system, then we’ve got to turn to schools to do the job."
From where I sit, this is a variation on a theme that E.D. Hirsch has been pounding away at for a few decades.
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Remember this when some kid who went to New Trier or one of the other hipster doofus high schools and whose parents went to Princeton and Vassar says "I had to earn my own way, why can't so and so earn THEIR own way".
Not even close. E.D. Hirsch and I are on opposite ends of the spectrum. By taking a small slice from an article about some findings from my book, Tearing Down the Gates, you are oversimplifying to an absurd level. I write about class and how class inequalities are perpetuated by institutions, such as schools, which reward children from affluent and well educated parents, while punishing disadvantaged children. Pierre Bourdieu, not E.D. Hirsch, would be a far more apt inspiration for my own work.
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