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dissertation entitled

FAMILY-SCme RELATIONS:
HOV ENHANCED PARENTAL PARTICIPATION IN SCI-IDLING
REINFORCES SOCIAL INEQUALITY
AND UNDERMINES FAMILY AW

presented by

Maria Eulina Passoa de Carvalho

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in Curriculen, Teaching,
and Educational Policy

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FAMILY-SCHOOL RELATIONS: HOW ENHANCED PARENTAL
PARTICIPATION IN SCHOOLING REINFORCES SOCIAL INEQUALITY
AND UNDERMINES FAMILY AUTONOMY
By

Maria Eulina Pessoa de Carvalho

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Teacher Education

1997

ABSTRACT
FAMILY-SCHOOL RELATIONS: HOW ENHANCED PARENTAL
PARTICIPATION IN SCHOOLING REINFORCES SOCIAL INEQUALITY
AND UNDERMINES FAMILY AUTONOMY
By

Maria Eulina Pessoa de Carvalho

Current educational policy initiatives (Goals 2000 among them) have been
.. calling for family-school partnerships and more parental involvement in schooling,

1‘

l both in the academic work of children at home, and in shared decision making at

it school. The rhetorical promises of this policy are various and positive: enhancement

\\\in individual student achievement, family cohesion, school productivity, and
educational opportunity.

This study presents a theoretical exploration of the negative consequences of

parental involvement as a policy, especially for family life, for public instruction as a
specific practice, and for the democratic ideal of schooling. Because family material
and cultural conditions and the meaning of education are radically different for
families in different social classes, ethnic groups, and kinds of composition, the
imposition of one model of parenting and family-school relations is likely to frame
parents as subordinate actors, and simultaneously to increase the advantage of certain
parents and students, further increasing inequality of educational outcomes. In this
way, educational policy and practices, drawing on the family as a resource
subordinated to the school curriculum, creates and reinforces structures for the play of

cultm'al capital, with contradictory effects.

Different contexts of inquiry and documentary sources are addressed as
[independent essays focusing on personal exiperience, history and sociology, research
(ed policy rhetoric, and the case of homework. The analysis suggests the limits of

equity within educational policy rationales prescribing the role of family in schooling.

Copyright by
MARIA EULINA PESSOA DE CARVALHO
1997

To Maria, Dora, and Dona Antonia (my Black Grandmother),
unschooled educators of my childhood years.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank deeply my dissertation director David Labaree, and committee
members Steven Weiland, Doug Campbell, Cleo Cherryholmes, and Margret
Buchmann for all their good ideas, support, respect, care, and generosity, which
nm'tured me and my work.

I am also indebted to many colleagues, professors, and others at the MSU
College of Education.

I owe the privilege of studying at MSU to Universidade Federal da Paratba,
and to my colleagues of the Departamento de HabilitacOes Pedagdgicas and Centro de
Educacao; and to CAPES - Fundaca'o Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoa] de
vael Superior - of the Brazilian Ministry of Education, which granted me full support
during these four years. Working for a Brazilian public university, I know very well
who pays for my studies: the mass of illiterate and undereducated people who work in
various ways for the country and its privileged few, and who also produce (if they are
lucky to escape unemployment) many of the goods consumed worldwide.

In closing this learning report, and preparing to go home, I must express my
gratitude to all those who contributed to my learning. Because it all starts with

parents and family, I thank my mother, Ofelia Gondim Pessoa de Figueiredo, who

vi

taught me about justice and public ethics, and my father, Eugenio de Carvalho, who
loved poetry, medicine, music and math, and who was a truly generous person; my
grandmother Inah, for all the stories and great cuisine, and my grandfather Felix, for
his spiritual outlook; my brothers and sisters Eugenio Neto and Adriana, Edson and
Diana, Elson and Rossana for the experiences we shared together; my now teen-aged
children Daniel, Valentin, and Mafra, for their resilience, their great help cooking and
cleaning, and their tolerance of my hectic schedules (I won’t be surprised if they don’t
pursue an academic career!), and their father, Said Dana, for his friendship and
support.

Because this has to do with school, I thank Irma Paulina, my third and fourth
grade nun teacher (who was not so stern), and Dona Marlene, my 6th grade public
school teacher, who gave me mastery of Portuguese. Because a professor is before
and above all a student and a companion of his/her students, I thank Paulo de Tasso
Teixeira Mendes, Oswalso Alonso Rays, from UFPB, and Sérgio Vasconcellos de
Luna, and Sandra Sheppard, from UNICAMP, for modeling diverse forms of
scholarship. Because it is great to work with people and feel part of a collective
effort, I thank my strong women colleagues Amalita Costa Lima Cavalcanti, Emilia
Maria da Trindade Prestes, and Betania Leite Ramalho, my perfect partner Severino
Elias Sobrinho, and all my colleagues at Centro de Educacao for keeping the Spirit of
community in spite of our fervent political disputes.

Because school offers a limited kind of education, I thank Paulina Rabinovitch,

a special master and friend, for initiating me in Kurn Nye and the Tibetan Buddhist

vii

Nyingma tradition, which gave me the health and strength to stand student life and
winters in Michigan.

Because life without friendship is poor, I thank Clélia Pereira and Manuel
Quiles, for our on-going conversations about our search for meanings of life; Ly gia
Gondim, for sharing many special moments, and also my beginning here; Angela
Shojgreen and Fernando Cajas, for many discussions on education, and for the Latin-
American heart; Tania and Bosco NObrega, my sister, brother, and sangha; my
international colleagues in East Lansing who found time for sharing and celebrating,
specially Don Hones, Meg Koshimura, Carolyn O’Mahonny, and Salih Armagan;
Stephen Reiner, for welcoming me properly to America; Tracy Wardle, for housing
me at the end; and Maribel Sevilla, a newcomer, for the farewell party.

The "batucadas" and barbacues of the MSU Brazilian Community Association
were fun and heartwarming, and friends like Rosi Buschmann, Raquel Ferreira, Anita
and Luiz Hellbrugge, Sandro and Joy Pinheiro, Lisete and Washington Carvalho,
Clotilde and Wanderley Martins, Regina and Adalberto Lopes, and all their children
were precious. I was also lucky I had Tarcisio Buriti and Claudia Costa Lima to
phone-talk and visit with in beautiful San Francisco and Washington DC.

This voluntary exile was inspired by the music of Tom Jobim, Joao Gilberto,
Dorival Caymmi, Sivuca, Luiz Gonzaga, and Villa-Lobos; and the works of Paulo
Freire and Darcy Ribeiro (who both died recently) helped me appreciate my cultural
heritage and strengthen my Brazilian identity. Thanks to the Pedagogy of the

Oppressed Conference held by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, which I attended

viii

I met a twin-soul, Andy Summers, to whom I cannot really thank for being so open
and loving. And at the end, besides getting an academic degree here, 1 also found, in
California, a Brazilian Lama: Shakya Zangpo - which tells me that flying away may

be a way to root oneself deeper.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE .............................................................................. 1
CHAPTER 1
THE ARTICULATION OF FAMILY AND SCHOOL IN EDUCATIONAL
POLICY ................................................................................... 13
The family as an object of educational policy ....................................... 14
Background ....................................................................... 15
Recent research and policy ..................................................... 16
The problem .............................................................................. l9
Significance ...................................................................... 21
Analytical approach ...................................................................... 25
Conceptual framework ......................................................... 26
Questions for inquiry ........................................................... 31
Data and sources ................................................................ 33
Further analysis ................................................................. 35
CHAPTER 2
FAMILY-SCHOOL INTERACTIONS: LESSONS FROM PERSONAL
EXPERIENCE ........................................................................... 37
Discovering the problem ................................................................ 38
Parental involvement in preschool ........................................... 38
Family distance from public schools ......................................... 41
Parents as consumers in private schools ..................................... 43
Parents as producers in cooperative-schools ................................ 44
Homework and middle-class mothers ........................................ 45
Parents versus experts .................................................. 47
Rediscovering the problem ............................................................ 49
(O Parental involvement in U.S. schools ........................................ Q® 41:. -« .
(9 The price of school success .................................................. 53 \,
@Families, cultural diversity, and the meaning of school .................. 65> «a \
Summing up .............................................................................. 57

CHAPTER 3
EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION: THE QUEST

FOR EQUITY WITHIN FAMILY- SCHOOL RELATIONS ..................... 62

Family, school, and the democratic ideal .......................................... <39 «w -
Conceptual and historical overview .......................................... (Q9 <__
Common and compulsory schooling in the United States ................ 82
Functional differentiation in the constitution of the educational
system ............................................................................. 89

Education and social inequality ........................................................ 92
The role of the family in the production of school outcomes:
the cultural deficit model ...................................................... 96
The role of the educational system in the reproduction of social
inequality: social reproduction through cultural reproduction ............ 102
Symbolic capital ................................................................. 109
Symbolic violence ............................................................... 121
Possibilities and limits of educational change .............................. 140

Educational policy, equity, and the family .......................................... 145
The family is not an educational institution ................................. 149
The purposes and meanings of the public school .......................... 156
Parenting as symbolic capital ................................................. 165
Policy prospects ................................................................. 173

CHAPTER 4

RESEARCH AND POLICY: CRITIQUE OF THE GROUNDS AND

PROMISES OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT ................................... 184

<9 Parental involvement as a research problem ......................................... f8?)<—~ ~

Parental involvement within compensatory programs ..................... 187
Family background influence on student achievement .................... G) 6*-
Families as learning environments ......................................... 195

Class and cultural mismatch ............................................................ 200
Family politics and school policy ............................................ 203
Future agenda .................................................................... 207

3) <7 Parental involvement as a policy solution ............................................ 207

Rationale .......................................................................... 2’09 em
Models of school-family relations ............................................ rib 6‘“
Promises of the partnership model ........................................... 21]
Requirements and implications ........................................ 2121'
An example ...................................................................... 214

CHAPTER 5

SCHOOLWORK AS HOMEWORK: DISCUSSION OF SCHOOL AND

FAMILY PERSPECTIVES ............................................................. 218

Historic .....................................................................................

Recent research ........................................................................... 224

School pohcy ............................................................................. 225

xi

Instructional and social relevance ..................................................... 227

Articulation of homework and classwork ............................................ 229
Teachers ................................................................................... 233
Parents ..................................................................................... 235
Equity and accountability ........................................................ 241
The re-articulation of home and school ....................................... 245
Rethinking the impact of homework on school achievement .................. 247
Rethinking the impact of homework on family life ........................... 248
EPILOGUE

PERVERSE EFFECTS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT: EXTENDING
SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE TO THE FAMILY AND WEAKENING THE
EGALITARIAN IDEAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION ............................. 250

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................... 258

xii

Prologue

School doors open for parents to help.
Just a little involvement can boost education.

This is the headline of a recent article in the Detroit Free Press (8/25/1997).
According to the article it is all a matter of parental sentiment and time, presented as a
”simple and inexpensive act. " And there is "a ton of research” recommending
parental involvement - not just at home but at school - as the remedy schools and
students most need at this moment. Impediments to parental involvement are reduced
to parents’ timidity, uneasiness at school, time constraints, and lack of encouragement
from teenagers, which can be reversed by school personnel’s openness and warmth,
and the provision of a range of opportunities for parents. In addition to the traditional
fund-raising, help at special classes, sports, bands, academic clubs, and parties
participation is now invited at school governance, curriculum, and budgeting.

Needs and benefits of parental involvement are amply depicted, based on the
specialized literature. Teachers need parents, therefore the partnership idea combines
teachers’ expertise in child development and curriculum with parents’ expertise about
their own children. Young children, in particular, benefit from getting a sense that
the whole family is a part of school when their parents are around. But "middle and
high school students, and the schools themselves, need parents as much as the

elementary ones do. " Older students need parental guidance through academic

2

choices in order to take the right courses and tests to get into college.

The role of parents in face of the growing complexity oflihomewor/Ic is also
acknowledged, with emphasis ‘on the need to be supportive rather than doing the
students homework: ”Thankfully you don’t have to remember your high school
algebra to be a good parent. More important than helping solve individual algebraic
problems is encouraging students to stick with a subject that is tough, but that will
expand their range of career and life choices" (The Detroit Free Press, 8/25/97).

Parents, in turn, benefit from {networking with other parents and families. And
the whole family benefits. Being school the main external influence in children’s
lives, parental involvement in schooling builds family cohesion, as parents develop a
common language with their children. Moreover, parental involvement should be fim,
as in the case of math and science carnivals. Examples of exceptionally involved
parents are presented, typically a father who participates in the evening, while his
wife, "a stay-at-home mom, pitches in at school during the day. " The message for
“parents with jobs" is that they "will have to be more creative. "

As evidenced above, parental involvement as a policy strategy appears as a
peculiar response to a host of school and family issues, promising improvement for
schools and families, and combining institutional and individual goals, i.e. , gains in
school productivity and student success. The fact that it has become a national
educational goal - in President Clinton’s 1994 Goals 2000: Educate America Act - is
wasggys 9f itsgjlzetonisalmw in- .uytheizmaww amines. and values- As
Casanova (1996) notes, ”the value of parental involvement has become an acceptable

truism across a wide spectrum of political positions in the U. S.. Conservatives and

3
liberals, religious fundamentalists and secular families have all endorsed parental
involvement as a fundamental component of successful schooling” (p. 30). However,
it is important to distinguish between parental involvement in education as a desirable
attitude and practice of individual parents, in the interest of their child’s school
success, and parental involvement as a policy strategy designed to promote it where it
appears lacking, and as a formal incentive aiming at enhancing school outcomes in an
indirect way.

In “91.3.5 Casanova (1996) cautions, the meaning of parental involvement is
neither consensual nor is its practice necessarily positive, leading sometimes to
undesirable excesses on the part of parents (as individuals or organized groups), with
negative consequences for children, teachers, and the school community.
Notwithstanding, the general policy formula espouses a very romanticized view of
education and family-school relations, enclosing and concealing different parental role
constructions and levels of involvement related to both family and school contexts and
practices, as well as potential conflicts in family-school and teacher-parent relations,
and even among parents, associated with diversity of social class, ethnicity, family
organization, and values.

In_Epstein’s (1992, #1995) model, for instance, levels of parental involvement
range from involvement in the home (attending on basic needs, disciplining, preparing
for school, supporting school learning, and/or engaging actively in homework) to
participation in schotgacnyties and events; acting like teacher-aid (volunteering in the
classroom and/or tutoring homework), and participating in school decision-making are

considered higher (and more desirable) levels of parental involvement towards the

4

ideal of integration of family, community, and school resources. This model,
however, is based on a small number of actual successful school-family-community
partnerships, and on the characteristics of the already (and positively) involved
parents.

Accordingly, the general policy formula furthers one particular model of
parental involvement in education and schooling, judged positive from an abstract
school’s perspective, apparently aiming at counteracting parental apathy (defined as a
discrete problem), while ignoring the very dynamics of differentiation across schools
and within communities, of power struggles between parents and educators (Henry,
1996), and of ambivalence in teachers’ views (Smrekar, 1996). In seeking to
generalize such a model, it neglects the various and complex reasons why a majority
of parents are not involved in the terms or degree expected by schools and teachers, in
the first place. It also overlooks the implications of mandated and enhanced parental
involvement for schools as organizations, teachers’ work, family life (especially in the
case of those families and parents perceived as non-involved), and the democratic
equality purpose of the public school (Labaree, 1997).

Some negative effects of the policy and practice of parental involvement have
already been evidenced. A general effect may be to reinforce patterns of
discrimination based on social class, ethnicity, and gender through the creation of new
stratified structures of participation, with lower “33?..an minority mothers helping in
the school cafeteria, for instance, while upper-middle class mothers and fathers act as
classroom volunteers and school council members. The specific policing role

attributed to parents in monitoring teachers’ activities and in controlling the

5

curriculum and budget, on the other hand, is not only likely to undermine trust and
enhance competitiveness between teachers and parents, but also to set groups of
parents in competition for influence over school policies, with anti-democratic
consequences (Casanova, 1996; Henry, 1996; Smrekar, 1996).

Casanova’s (1996) ”call for prudence” regarding parental involvement takes the
perspective of the school and teacher professionalism. She poses both the need to
create bridges - because schools ”are dependent on parents to provide resources that
affect the academic performance of their students" - and buffers - ”to protect the
school from interference with the professional discretion of teachers and principals”
(p. 31).1 In this way, she retrieves the ”protective model of family-school relations”
(Swap, 1993), pointing out that what needs to be protected is the ”national interest”
and ”the greater good" against "parochial considerations" (p. 32). In contrast, most
of the discourse (of policy and research) exalts the school-family partnership ideal,
taking for granted both its desirability and viability. Though recognizing that the
partnership model is hard to implement, requiring major school restructuring, Swap
(1993), for instance, envisions parent—educator collaboration to achieve the common
mission of improving the school and supporting the success of all children, through
two-way communication, expansion of the parent’s academic role, mutual support,
and joint decision-making. But, in general, both the policy and research literature on
the issue takes for granted the perspective of parents on family-school relations and on

specific involvement in instruction, and the conditions of diverse families in fulfilling

 

‘ Casanova (1996) cites Ogawa, R. T. (1996): Bridging and buffering relations
between parents and schools. UCEA Review, 37(2), 2-3, 12-13.

their appointed role in the partnership.

I take a distinct stance regarding this matter. I am concerned with teachers’s
work and professional authority, with families’ life conditions and parents’ choices,
and with educational equity, but/[I have doubts about the viability of the partnership
mpgel Ed aboirt the justice of the mandate on parental involvement: Not that I do not
find the partnership vision desirable or parental involvement in schooling, per se, as a
sensible idea, but I do not see the social conditions necessary to universalize school-
family partnerships in terms of equal political power in defining the curriculum, a
specifically academic role for families, and shared accountability for educational
outcomes. Moreover, neither do I see school conditions for the implementation of a
range of mopportunities for all parents to help schools and further their children’s
learning, nor do I count on parents’ capability and willingness to become teachers of
their own children within the particular context of the school curriculum.

Therefore, I consider it fundamental to clarify why are schools dependent on
parents for student success, and whether they could expand on their pedagogic role
independent of family input. This requires unpacking the tacit theory of family-school
relations which informs the ideology and policy of parental involvement in schooling.
Accordingly, this theory must justify both the desirability and viability of parental
involvement in schooling. Why is parental involvement in schooling desirable and
necessary, both from the school and the family perspectives, precedes how (a choice
of strategies) to promote it; in other words, the question of how effective can this
particular policy be surely depends on the previous (theoretical) understanding.

An overview of education and family-school relations reveals two movements

7

and concepts, which might converge or diverge: one in which the school is considered
an (organic) extension of the family, and another in which the family is devised (in an
authoritarian way) as an extension of the school. The first movement corresponds to
the history of schooling as a middle class institution, originating from local initiative,
which came to constitute the prevalent ideology of family-school relations. The
second movement is related to compulsory schooling, education as acculturation or
salvation for the lower classes, and requires family cultural alignment to school.
While within the first movement family-school relations are framed in terms of
positive continuity, it is only within the second movement that they become and object
of explicit policy intervention.

Accordingly, from the school perspective there are two ways of seeing the
family: in the first case, the family is a resource for school achievement, and parental
involvement in education in the home. and school is taken for granted as natural; in the
second case, the family is deficient and in need of education, and parental support of
schooling becomes an explicit requirement for student achievement. Within this logic,
family-school relations appear as essentially convergent, and school success or failure
becomes a matter of family accountability. Hence, educational policy has tended
(implicitly and/or explicitly) to encompass the family, frequently focusing on parent
education.

An alternative view - the ideal family-school partnership - might pose the
school mission in terms of embracing cultural diversity and, thus, learning from

families, in which case the formula would be teacher involvement with families and

school-community partnerships. For teachers, in particular, this brings up problems

8

of choice and commitment in face of conflicting interests, and tensions between
bureaucratic norms and individual desires. And, fundamentally, there is the unsolved
problem of building a common culture amid cultural pluralism. While it seems
unquestionable that the school mission is to build a democratic culture, and while
schooling has staged ’cultural wars’ over curriculum, this problem is curiously absent
from the official discourse on parental involvement and family-school partnerships.

If schools need parents and bridges with families, and, at the same time,
autonomy and discretion in defining education, as Casanova (1996) asserts, can
parents’ position in relation to school escape subordination? Apparently it can, when
school is truly an extension of the family, i.e. , where there is cultural continuity
between home and school, in which case parental involvement is natural. However,
the fact that a policy is enforcing parental involvement and home-school partnerships
reveals two things. Firstly, it recognizes that parental involvement neither occurs
spontaneously nor extensively. And, indeed, the perception of the benefits of parental
involvement can be interpreted as concretely related to its exclusivity, i.e. ,
involvement pays off against others’ non-involvement, becoming a positive marker for
teachers and influencing student evaluation (Lareau, 1993). Along this line, is
parental involvement simply a main factor of student success or has student success
been constructed on the basis of parental involvement as a rare resource? Hence,
secondly, the fact that parental involvement is considered a factor of school success
suggests that instruction is organized in ways that require individual reinforcement and
extra-help out of the school’s space and time.

"As for policy effectiveness, specifically, I have a series of doubts regarding

9

parental involvement. Theoretically, how can the promise of parental involvement be
sustained? From one perspective, the fact that it has functioned (as power) for certain
groups and families, derives from its distinction (Bourdieu, 1987). But what theory
(alternative perspective) of family-school relations can promise that parental
involvement, granted its general possibility, could function (as power convertible in
school success) for all? .

On rt_lJI_e_j_)a_r'_t of schools, II doubt! schools’ organizational capacity to carry
WISCESPiPii‘} the broad and democratic terms defined. Let’s imagine that all parents
showed up in school and demanded to volunteer in the classroom, to conference with
teachers, to learn about the curriculum, to plan and discuss homework, and to
participate in all levels of decision making! When I imagine this picture, I suspect
that the EQIQE more parental participation is a bluff.

On the part of families, what is the guarantee that parents (precisely those non-
involved) will respond positively to a policy call? An unfortunate consequence of
cultural imposition may be growing alienation and resistance. Hence, because it
basically depends on individual compliance, the formalization of parental involvement
into a mandate, implying its acknowledgement as a legitimate resource applied to
student learning and further evaluation, is likely to consecrate and increase
discrimination between students of involved and non-involved parents. And here the
sad consequence is punishing students - with more or less subtle pressures and,
ultimately, with low grades - because of their parents’ shortcomings!

In my‘ account, the current policy focus on the family neglects three main

points. First, it disregards the fact that family material and cultural conditions, and

“m-

1 0
feelings about schooling differ according to social class, while proclaiming parental
involvement as a means to enhance (and perhaps equalize) school outcomes. In this
way, the partnership-parental involvement ideal is more likely to be a projection of the
model of upper-middle class suburban community schooling than an open invitation
for diverse families to recreate schooling. While the attempt to generalize a model
produced within restricted social conditions through a policy mandate is disputable
(and its enforcement certainly oppressive), parental empowerment and participation in
school reform is unlikely for the same reasons why parental involvement is found
lacking, reasons derived from the organization of social (work and family) life,
families’ diverse cultures, and the organization and culture of schools (V aldes, 1996).

Secoiil, although it appeals to the image of the traditional community school,
the pressui/e for more family educational accountability really overlooks history, as
well, as. present social donditions. A division of educational work and content between
family and school was historically constructed and is concretely maintained within the
practical organization of daily life and hierarchization of social howlwge.(FmaH:,E

.. /

the third important point omitted is that family-school relations are relations of pOwer,
andmfl £321.99 “are povgefless (Ping _1 993) (Thug in attempting to reach out and
bring in families, this model represents a confused vision of the social function and
pedagogic mission of the public school which serves the majority and variety of social
groups, as well as of the possibilities and responsibilities of families regarding school
success.

Two linked effects of this policy seem the gravest, in my view: the imposition

of a particular parenting style and intrusion into family life, and the escalation of

11

educational inequality. Insofar as there are families which cannot fulfill the requisite
parenting role, or create a learning environment in the home aligned to the school
curriculum, the likelihood that this policy will enhance inequality of learning and
outcomes seems obvious, moreover ratifying the possibility of blaming families for
student failure.

This dissertation addresses these sorts of complications and implications of
parental involvement as a policy, through an exploratory theoretical approach. It
develops a series of inquiries into a variety of literary and experiential sources -
including historical and sociological accounts, recent policy and research, and personal
reflection - focusing on discourses and arguments on the construction of schooling and
educational inequality, and patterns of family-school interaction, within the articulation
of family, social class, educational policy, and specific instructional practices which
draw on family cultural capital, the most obvious example of which is homework. In
this way, it does not present fresh empirical data on particular instances, but rather
looks at some of the knowledge that is already available and may illuminate general
tendencies: Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) theory of cultural and social reproduction
via education; Coleman’s (1966, 1967 , 1987) discussion of the roles of families and
schools in American education; important qualitative research contributions to the
understanding of family-school relations, such as the studies by Lareau (1991), Henry
(1996), and Smrekar (1996); and the rhetoric of research and policy, as representative
of actual or desirable practices in this camp. In short, it represents an effort to
understand the origins, meanings, and effects of parental involvement as a requisite of

schooling, and particularly as a policy ’solution’ for low achievement and even

12

inequity in the American educational scenario.

Chapter 1

THE ARTICULATION OF FAMILY AND SCHOOL

IN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

This dissertation explores rationales and implications of family-school relations
as defined under the current call for parental involvement, family-school partnerships,
more homework, and parental education in US schools. Specifically, I analyze how
the educative roles of family and school, the meanings of a public school, the role and
scope of educational policy toward the family, and their implications (for parents,
teachers, students, and educational goals and outcomes) are framed by policy
discourses and grounded by related theoretical and empirical literature.

As a framework for literary and documentary analysis, I draw on Bourdieu &
Passeron’s (1977) concept of cultural capital as the medium of family-school relations,
and an implicit element of educational policy. Cultural capital, as the outcome of
family and class socialization, is the (variable) medium of educational achievement,
which may be exchanged for (or merely confirm previous) social and economic

positions. Wy educational input, has been explicitly

 

 

 

 

—" fl..— ”-0-. “M-

 

 

pointed out and called on as a resource for school success in recent research and

policy literature in the [LS (Hendogon &.Berla, 1995). The diversity of family

H‘H“

 

material and cultural resources and the way specific instructional practices capitalize

on them, however, has not been acknowledged except in compensatory, short-range

13

1 4
policies. Along this line, I pose educational policy - specifically drawing on the
family as a resource subordinated to the school curriculum and practices - as an
important set of structures (discourses and practices) for the play of cultural capital,
with contradictory effects.

Once the role of educational policy in relation to cultural capital is
acknowledged as an instrument of social (re)production, a clearer picture of the
educational responsibilities, ranges, possibilities, limits, and specific articulations of
school and family may be drawn. Such clearer picture is needed for understanding and
redefining the social purposes and possibilities of the public school, delimiting the
contribution of the family in a more equitable way, and reassessing the role and

implications of educational policy.

1. The family as an object of educational policy

What makes a teacher spend precious time after class telephoning parents about
their students’ poor performance and urging them to help her instructional efforts,
instead of dealing somehow directly with those at-risk students? What are the limits
of good teaching, and what - and how effectively - can parents contribute to classroom
instruction?

The call for more parental participation in schooling basically acknowledges an
undesirable and harmful distance between family and school, and launches an array of
policy efforts to make this relationship closer. It finds ground on common-sense
knowledge of a continuity of educational roles and experiences between family and

school, as well as on teachers’ expectations regarding certain learning preconditions

15

developed in the home and the incentives certain parents place on educational
achievement.

Traditionally, to a certain extent and within certain conditions, schools and
teachers have always depended on and requested family or parental collaboration.
However, what has not been so evident is that family-school affinities and
collaboration have had a middle-class character and a social mobility accent.
Moreover, they were an organic expression of the community school and of a stage of
social development in which school played a central integrative role. Nevertheless,
educational policies enforcing parental involvement generalize one model of family-
school and school-community relations, assuming that it is the responsibility of the
family to help with instruction and whatever curricular goals, and that it is the
responsibility of the school and teachers to build or transform the community (Cibulka

& Kritek, 1996).

Background

The literature on the articulation of family and school was born under the
perspective of the school and under the interest of school success. Recent literature,
for instance, following the findings of Coleman’s Report (1966) on the importance of
family background characteristics for school achievement, has either attempted to
illuminate family child care and socialization processes which precede, support, or
”cause” educational achievement, or to propose educational interventions in the realm
of the family, in order to prevent school failure, specially of poor and minority

families (Scott-Jones, 1993).

16

Most of the literature on family influence on school achievement has appeared
in cognitive psychology, focusing specifically on mother-child interactions, teaching
strategies and language. According to Scott-Jones’s (1993) review, ”American
researchers concluded that the poor school achievement of low-income children was
due to the impoverished language environment in their homes". Low-income mothers
were less effective teachers than middle-class mothers due to such factors as "less
praise, less asking questions, less orienting the child to the task, and more non-verbal
communication” (p. 247).

The cultural deficit view of minority families and children led to a series of
intervention programs, funded under Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, during the sixties and seventies. Head Start, for instance, ”provided
not only parent-training activities but also a center-based educational component for
preschool children and parent involvement in the governance of the program.
Involvement in governance was intended to empower the low-income and minority
parents who received Head Start services. In practice, however, Head Start came to
_ concentrate on training parenting skills, as did other intervention programs" (Scott-

Jones, 1993, p. 248).

, Recent research and policy

The movement toward the family as a locus of education and school support
has gained force under the conservative political tide of the 803, with the renewed
pressures for excellence and a new quality education required for the productive

sector, and the reactionary call for ’family values’ and ’hard work’ , extending

17

accountability onto the family. Since then, parental responsibility in education has
been called on as a remedy for increasing school productivity, countering the failure
of disadvantaged groups (poor whites, blacks, latinos), and achieving both the
individual’s and the nation’s economic success (Swap, 1993).

On the other hand, progressive educators have also invested in parental
empowerment as a strategy of educational reform within "a struggle to resuscitate the
public sphere of public education” (Fine, 1993, p. 683). A few research efforts have
also attempted to illuminate teachers about home and community usages of language
and cultural differences across classes, geographic locations, and ethnicity, in the
interest of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning, specially for disadvantaged
groups, and drawing the school and home curricula closer (Heath, 1983).

The focus on family accountability is justified on the grounds of "a growing
body of research [that] suggests that increased family involvement is associated with
higher mathematics and reading scores, decreased likelihood that a student will be
suspended or expelled from school, and greater student participation in extracurricular
school activities” (National Education Goals Panel, 1995, p.3; US Department of
Education, 1987). The current research agenda on family-school interaction has also
joined the present stress on diversity (Scott-Jones, 1993; Valdes, 1996). Furthermore,
while previous research on "families as educators” mainly focused on young children,
current efforts at educational reform pose ”the need to continue to engage families in
the education of older children and adolescents” (Jackson, 1989).

Therefore, educational policies and practices have been explicitly and

massively oriented to stimulating parental involvement, drawing on family’s

l 8

“educational resources, " ”suggesting” and ”correcting” families’ educational efforts,
intervening in the family environment, dictating families’ educational activities
through homework, with the aim of empowering parents and families. Such is the
case of programs like "Family Math” and "Family Science” (Programs for
Educational Opportunity, 1995), which merge adult and child education, and promise
academic, social and emotional gains for students and parents.

The National Education Goals Report (National Education Goals Panel, 1995),
for instance, states Goal 8: Parental Participation, and its related objectives, in terms
that clearly assign parents a specific role in academic development:

By the year 2000, every school will promote partnerships that will increase
parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and
academic growth of children.

Objectives:

. Every State will develop policies to assist local schools and local educational
agencies to establish programs for increasing partnership that respond to the
varying needs of parents and the home, including parents of children who are
disadvantaged or bilingual, or parents of children with disabilities.

. Every school will actively engage parents and families in a partnership which
supports the academic work of children at home and shared educational
decision making at school.

. Parents and families will help to ensure that schools are adequately supported
and will hold schools and teachers to high standards of accountability. (p. 13,
italics added)

Apparently (and rhetorically), partnerships will fulfill a variety of desirable
(and supposedly compatible) needs: of parents and the home, underscoring
disadvantaged, bilingual, and disabled children; of academic reinforcement at home
through explicit and detailed homework policies; of parental participation in
educational decision making at school; of ’adequate’ financial support of schools; and

of high standards of accountability for schools and teachers.

19

Moreover, at school and everyday levels, homework policies have redefined
"the home as an atension of the classroom” and homework ”as an assignment to be
completed outside of school hours preferably at home. " While one of the declared
functions of homework is to ”keep parents informed and involved in their child’s
learning, " there are "consequences for not completing homework" , which explicitly
include student after-school detention (East Lansing Educational Foundation, 1996, p.
14, italics added).1

Because the obligation of parents to actively support academic learning and
homework is taken for granted, such a policy appears merely as the expression of a

desirable and generalizable practice.

2. The Problem

The educational policy focus on families, illustrated above, carries implications
that deserve careful examination:

(1) It assigns parents the obligation of providing for academic, as well as social
and emotional, growth of children, overlooking family differences in economic, social
and cultural capital that is necessary to achieve academic support from home.

(2) It imposes on parents the conception that the home should be a setting for
the explicit and intentional development of the school curriculum, and the obligation
to convert family activities into an extension of class activities.

(3) It is based on one model of family: affluent, with a full—time wife and

 

' For a complete quote on this particular middle school homework policy see
Chapter 5 .

20

mother (Thorne & Yalom, 1992), which is odd in these times of increasing maternal
employment and family economic struggle and stress.

(4) It promises to "respond to the varying needs of parents and the home, "
adopting (at least rhetorically) a social assistance model of schooling, instead of the
educational - and specifically academic - needs of children.

(5) It seems to imply the re-education of the parents as a precondition for the
education of children, amplifying the scope of obligation of the school.

(6) It suggests that schools and families have equal power in deciding the
education that is carried at school, seducing parents with the possibility of
participating in educational decision making at school, which demands time,
knowledge, and collective power.

(7) It attributes to parents, though vaguely, formal and direct - and perhaps
enhanced - responsibility in ’ensuring’ school support.

(8) It assigns parents the role of inspectors of schools’ and teachers’
accountability, inciting latent conflicts and eventually setting parenm against teachers.

(9) It attributes to ’varying’ and diverse families the establishment of high -
and common! - educational standards, moreover omitting currently conflictive issues
of content and values.

(10) It diverts the focus of educational improvement from the classroom to the
home.

Policies of parental involvement and family-school partnership, as formulated
above, seem to be grounded on ambiguous conceptions that schools can change

families and at the same time ’depend’ on families for change and improvement, and

21

that families are deficient and at the same time have an important role in responding
to school’s agenda and/or charging school’s accountability, while prescribing (through
moral rhetoric) and adopting (through teachers’ expectations) a total approach to
family accountability.

The call for more family accountability in education reduces education (a broad
social phenomenon carried by various institutions and cultural practices) to schooling,
confuses parenting with teaching, and limits schooling to economic purposes and
outcomes. Despite the fact that schools have extended their functions and assumed
affective, social and moral development objectives (Elkind, 1995; Sedlak &
Schlossman, 1985), they can always be found lacking by parents and other interested
parties (teachers, researchers, policymakers, business leaders, politicians), in face of a
variety of desirable and contradictory educational goals (Labaree, 1997). The
intriguing fact is that precisely when schools have changed toward assuming ”shared
parenting” (Elkind, 1995) they have come to charge families specifically with
academic support. Furthermore, the intrusion into the educative practices of families,
by requiring specific forms of academic support and assigning more homework,
represents an attempt at making the "home curricula” uniform, at a time when

diversity is celebrated in the school curriculum.

Significance
I see at least three important issues underlying the problematic of family-school
educational responsibilities.

The first is equity. To the extent that families are culturally different and

22

dispose of unequal cultural resources in aligning with school cultural norms, policy
that stimulates family input or parental participation in school will enhance
differentiated educational outcomes.

Indeed, the current policy discourse, on the one hand, claims the general
desirability and effectiveness of parental involvement in schooling. On the other
hand, though this is not explicit, it is likely that policy actions will target those
families ”at-risk” and those parents "in need” of parental re-education, nying to
compensate for disadvantages. But, unfortunately, the reach of educational policy is
limited by more powerful socio-economic factors, and families at risk are generally
the least likely to take advantaged and benefit from educational opportunities in the
first place. Thus, there is a chance that even compensatory policy efforts will simply
feed on the existent vicious cycle: low socio-economic conditions, low educational
achievement.

The second is the emotionally charged and conflictive character of family-
school relations regarding personal and collective interests, and the ambivalence of the
teaching role within the division of educational work between family and school and
the specific function of social differentiation performed by the educational system.

Long ago, Waller (1965) had defined parents and teachers as natural enemies,
proposing a conflict of private and public interests, in which parents are more
concerned with the individual characteristics and needs of their children than teachers
can possibly be in the context of mass public schooling. Parents depend on schools
and teachers for educating their children (as school provides for the main, legitimate

and compulsory occupation of youngsters) and on the ethics of personal and social

23

success within and via school, and therefore they are concerned that their children
might be subject to injustice and harm.

Teachers are committed to benefiting all children, but their role includes
evaluating students differentially. Hence, attributing the lacks of students to family
background excuses teachers’ performance and its effect on students’ learning,
enhancing parents’ vulnerability in turn, as parents tend to feel deeply affected by
their children’s failures. But teachers are also vulnerable in that they are concerned
with their professional standing in front of parental interference and negative
evaluation (and its eventual repercussions on the institutional evaluation of their
professional performance). Thus, there is perennial dispute of accountability in
student performance in school, most evident in student failure: did the school and
teacher fail to offer conditions of learning or did the student continuously lack family
support and could not take advantage of what the school offered?

The third issue is a nuance of the previous and a perverse effect of the current
bent of public education toward family accountability: the ideological, emotional, and
moral charge over families. AS already mentioned, a significant trend of the
educational literature and a quite common posture among teachers pose as natural and
desirable that families (parents) do the school curriculum at home, according to the
school and teachers’ requests. They advocate active parental participation in
children’s schooling and don’t consider the possibility that some parents may be
unable or even unwilling to participate. In this context, parental "choice" not to
participate tends to be seen negatively as "omission” or ”negligence. "

The fact that parental participation is taken for granted as a natural behavior,

24

or assumed and expected by the school as necessarily consensual and positive,
suggests that, when it is found lacking, efforts should be made at promoting it.
Neither implications for families nor for schools and teachers are considered. Even
when participation is positively envisioned as opportunity for individual empowerment
‘(of parents) and as a medium of institutional transformation (of schools), the price it
charges both individuals and institutions is overlooked.

In general, the rhetoric of parental involvement ranges from a more individual
to a more social perspective, but it still places the burden on the family in terms of
improving individual achievement and or schools. According to a more individual,
consumer’s choice perspective, parents should learn how to exercise parental
responsibility in terms of control of their children’s education (Berger, 1985), and
how to develop a customized relationship with their children’s school. According to a
more social perspective, parents should participate in order to reconstruct and improve
particular schools and the public school. However, both perspectives seem to ignore
the consequences of the play of cultural capital in enhancing the social advantages of a
few and the very limits of many (working class, cultural minority, single parent)
families regarding social participation.

Moreover, the ideologies of family choice, parental involvement, and family-
school partnership bear a nostalgic trace of the original communitarian school, and the
ambiguous assumption that either families have the power to transform school as a
social institution, or that schools depend principally and directly on families for
change or for success. The very diversity and various difficulties of the family as a

social institution nowadays are simply omitted.

25

If educators and policy makers are concerned with equity, with the role of
families in producing differentiated school outcomes, and particularly with the effects
that ideological and moral pressures on families may have over children, and are
willing to productively manage and minimize conflicts and emotional distress among

students, parents and teachers, they Should attend to such issues.

3 . Analytical approach

The object of analysis of this dissertation are the articulations and implications
of family-school relations as an object of educational policy understood as both
discourse and practice: specifically, current concepts, approaches, and problems of
parental involvement in schooling, as framed by policy discourses, grounded by
related theoretical and empirical literature, and reflected in my own experience as a
parent and educator. The procedure includes inquiry into a variety of literary sources
- policy documents proposing parental involvement, selected theoretical and empirical
literature on family-school interactions, current newspaper articles, anecdotes, and
reflection on personal experience. Inquiry focuses on the roles of family, school, and
educational policy, involving background issues of educational accountability, the
public character of school, and equity.

In order to explicate the analytical approach, I next spell out my assumptions
about family school relations and educational policy, the specific questions and
background issues guiding this inquiry, the kinds of evidence and sources informing
the analysis, and the plan of the dissertation.

2 6
Conceptual framework

Schools and families, as social institutions, are interrelated and interdependent,
but also relatively autonomous, as they are situated in distinct spaces and times,
respond to diverse needs of daily life, and carry specific practices toward distinct
goals, while eventually pursuing common goals. They are also singly differentiated in
terms of conditions, workings, and commitments, despite general structures and
functions. Moreover, they work within a larger social system, represented by the
state. Thus, as school and family are inserted in and affected by larger socioeconomic
arrangements, their relative power in determining individual chances is variable and
mostly uncertain.

Relationships between schools and families are complex, multiangled, and
affected by both family diverse and evolving concrete social circumstances, and
changing educational policies and practices. The reach of school policy onto the
family is necessarily limited and uneven, as it is the power of the family to influence
school outcomes. Families and children are generally vulnerable within the social
dynamics, while schools are specially powerful mechanisms of social exclusion
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Lamont & Lareau, 1988). However, a certain cultural
continuity between certain forms of families and schools will enhance the possibilities
of their mutual influence and alignment (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Lareau, 1993).

The issue of family and school educational responsibilities is a complex one,
having evolved historically in the direction of increasing extension and specialization
of the school role, and the dynamic articulations between these institutions still need to

be conceptualized within specific settings, circumstances, and practices. Bourdieu &

27

Passeron’s (1977 ) concept of cultural capital ,2 within a theory of social reproduction
via the legitimation of certain forms of symbolic power, exchanges, and conversions,
illuminates those articulations by focusing Specifically on the role of the educational
system in linking individual behaviors, cultural resources, social class, formal and
informal practices, and institutional standards.

In explaining the role of education in class reproduction within a cultural
framework, Bourdieu (1977) poses the ”namral" alignment of middle and upper class
families with school and academic culture, and the subordination of low class families
within school and high culture. In other words, the school’s curriculum and standards
(both formal and informal) represent the dominant culture and implicitly capitalize on
the differentiated cultural resources of families and individuals (the 'habitus" or
dispositions acquired in the process of primary socialization), inflating or deflating
them, while proclaiming neutrality; individuals, families, and classes dispose unevenly
of the kind of cultural capital necessary to invest in acquiring educational and social
success.

The path to educational equity, suggested by Bourdieu’s framework, depends
on school - and educational policy - assuming explicitly that it adopts the dominant
culture and that many students lack the required cultural resources to succwd in it, in

the line posed by Delpit (1988); and, consequently, ”neutralizing" as much as possible

 

2 Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) define cultural capital as ”the cultural goods
transmitted by the different family pedagogic actions, whose value qua cultural capital
varies with the distance between the cultural arbitrary imposed by the dominant
pedagogic action and the cultural arbitrary inculcated by the family pedagogic action
within the different groups or classes” (p. 30).

28

what Lareau (1993) calls "home advantage, " while offering compensatory resources
and opportunities. Along this line, educational policy should focus on maximizing the
role of school resources while minimizing the impact of family resources on learning
and achievement in the interest of social justice.

I realize that the possibility of the educational system playing the role described
above depends on its both acknowledging and exercising its relative autonomy
(making its proper political action explicit) in front of the broader socio-economic
system, which in mm depends on political circumstances. While the role of the
educational system is ultimately social reproduction (in the broad sense of cultural
conservation), social reproduction is not automatic but a complexly mediated process
which allows for certain choices in the direction of more or less equity.

Parental involvement represents a specific choice in educational policy: in the
best hypothesis, granted its viability, it extends compensatory education to the family
realm; in the worst hypothesis, by regulating the educational contribution of families,
it homogenizes family culture, and Iegitimizes parental evaluation by the school.
Along this line two questions stand out: Is parental involvement - as a strategy to
enhance academic learning and outcomes - a legitimate and effective policy? Is
parental participation in school conducive to more equity?

Policy rhetoric generally and continually affirms a commitment to improving
Ieaming for all students. Parental involvement, the case in point, is proposed as a
measure of general benefit: "Schools must inform and involve all families, including
those with different cultural backgrounds, to gain their ideas and assistance in helping

all children succeed in school” (Joyce L. Epstein, Foreword, in Swap, 1993, p. ix).

29

However, such a general directive bears implications.

On the one hand, educational policy sets one agenda for all families -
specifically about how families can contribute to the curricular goals and their
children’s school success - disregarding prior diversity of class and culture, the
differentiated cultural capital which is the currency of school success (Bourdieu,
1977). In this way, educational policy subordinates families to school, by clearly
setting the educational agenda and assigning parents the job of teacher aid.

On the other hand, families have different life conditions and arrangements,
and various views and feelings about life, education, and educational responsibility;
they respond differently to school expectations and policy mandates on schooling
depending on material and cultural circumstances, social class and individual behaviors
and values (Lareau, 1993). Therefore, families do not necessarily benefit from
"opportunities" to participate and exert influence on their children’s education, either
in school (attending parent-teacher conferences, discussing the school curriculum, for
instance) or at home (tutoring homework, for instance). Moreover, most families are
in a position of lesser power to influence school policies and practices and to take
advantage of educational opportunities for their children. The visible exception
consists of upper middle class families, which have ”privatized“ the public school
(Lareau, 1993), and set the model for all families (Berger, 1985).

If and when policy efforts fail to benefit all families and students, they harm
some of them. This is an effect of the contradictory character of policies which define
the common good in terms that generalize the desirability of a certain (presently

restricted) situation or goal (such as parental participation as an efficient mediator of

30

school success), without providing the effective means (which are ultimately beyond
their reach) to make that possibility viable for those who don’t fit in it but should aim
at reaching it.

Thus, before prescribing parental participation and implementing mechanisms
to enhance parental involvement in schooling, educational policy should attend to
important underlying questions: Does the nominally democratic state effectively
represent the interests of all families in the realm of public schooling and how can it
best represent? Can all families and children equitably benefit from schooling as it is
and how could they best benefit? More specifically: Is it possible and reasonable to
turn all families (or certain “ignorant“ or "ill-equipped“ families) into efficient
mediators of their children’s school success? Furthermore: Is it desirable and
possible from the points of view of diverse families to actively invest in their
children’s school performance? Such questions should precede and continuously
ground policy goals, designs, implementation plans, and practical decisions within the
school and the classroom.

While I acknowledge the need to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing
family-school relationships and their mutual implications, I am aware of the enormity
of such a task. My simple claim is that educators need to envision a theoretical
picture if they are concerned with the broad and subtle implications of their practices.
In this dissertation, I hope solely to offer an interpretation of the articulation of
theoretical and empirical elements in educational policy, pointing out the contradictory
role of liberal educational policy (the discourse of opportunity), particularly when it

explicitly aims at reaching the family, in building structures and enforcing practices

31

for the play of cultural capital in the process of social reproduction via education.

Questions for inquiry

What are the rationales behind present policy efforts aiming at connecting
family and school? How are the need and benefits of a close family-school
partnership characterized? Is the aim to empower the family - granting families more
control over schools and choice over instructional contents and practices? Is the aim
to make schooling more effective — subordinating families to the school agenda, and
elevating academic learning at the expense of private choices? How are the specific
educational roles of each institution depicted within the family-school partnership?
What expectations and demands are posed to the family and what implications do they
create? How is the idea of a public school redefined within the partnership model?
What is the role of educational policy toward the family? What would a close
rhetorical reading of the policy and academic literature on the subject say about these
issues?

My core analytical issue is the role and implications of parental involvement in
school within the articulation of school and family by educational policy. However,
this issue is intertwined with important background and parallel issues: the power,
both individual and institutional, to define and benefit from education and schooling;
the reach and viability of public policy, Specially in relation to the private space and
practices; the meaning of a public school, including purposes, knowledge, conditions
of learning, standards of assessment, the definition of the kind of education that can

benefit all (diverse) families, and the delimitation of parental influence and choice

3 2
within its curriculum and organization; equity, conceived strategically not only as
equal opportunities to learn within equal school conditions, but as positive
discrimination (extra and special opportunities) to compensate for unequal - previous
and external - social conditions; and the division of work and educational
accountability between teachers and parents, including the definition of teacher
professionalism.

The issues above suggest interesting questions: To what extent are family
education and schooling equivalent? Who defines education and school success? Who
contributes to and who benefits from education and schooling? On what forms and
kinds of contribution is school success dependent? Who does the educational work,
and who is accountable for school success? To what extent are all families and
parents able to contribute to school success? Should families be entitled or compelled
to contribute to schooling by means of direct work? How is teacher professionalism
affected by parental participation in instruction? What is the legitimacy, viability, and
efficacy of the educational policy reach over families? To what extent can policy
induce or regulate families’ educational efforts - for instance, change roles, practices
and values, or enhance certain practices of certain families? To what extent should
public school depend on families and parents playing a particular role? What is the
legitimate and viable range of parental involvement and choice within the context of a
public school?

I certainly do not answer each and all of such questions in this dissertation. In
posing them, my aim is twofold. First, they illustrate the complexity of the focus on

parental involvement as a strategy for enhancing school outcomes by pointing out

33

implicit relations and implications, and some of its problematic aspects, such as the
beliefs in a ’natural’ partnership between school and family, based on cultural
continuity and functional affinity, and in the general benefit of the policy reach over
families. Second, they create a necessary context of discussion: definitions or
redefinitions of the specific educational roles of schools and families imply a
reconceptualization of public education; and the question of to what extent families
should be accountable for school success, and why, refers to the limits and

possibilities of equity within educational policy rationales.

Data and sources

In this dissertation I mainly explore discourses:3 educational policy proposals
regarding family-school relations, implicit or explicit theoretical formulations on
family role in schooling, and exemplars of empirical research that provide evidence of
problems affecting those relations and justification of policy solutions aiming at
improving them. The recent call on families and parents as educators, and policy
rationales for family-school collaboration bear two dimensions: one relative to what is
happening (an empirical-interpretive aspect), and another relative to what is aimed at
(an ideological-normative aspect). Indeed, the connection between policy and research
(the translation of empirically based explanations into proposals of intervention and

strategies for action) is a discursive practice, subject to various interpretations.

 

3 Discourses are a more easily accessible object of study than practices, and allow
for the study of practices in that they always refer to practices: either as
representations of actual or desirable practices, denials or justifications of practices, or
calls for improved practices. Moreover, discourse constitutes a (relatively)
autonomous practice in its own right.

34

Moreover, both dimensions - the definitions of problems and solutions - which inform
policy proposals (discourse) and implementation (practice) are rhetorical.‘

Therefore, my data are various kinds of discourse, mainly written texts —
research findings, policy rationales, and other pertinent education literature - but also
personal experiences. Because family-school relations as an object of educational
policy encompass various angles and issues, my analysis draws on a variety of
sources: academic literature (basically sociological), both theoretical and empirical,
policy documents, school newsletters, newspapers, and eventually anecdotes. Since
the literature is vast, I focus closely on a few salient pieces: the theoretical literature
on symbolic capital and violence (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977); empirical findings on
the mediation of social class or socio-economic status in shaping parental expectations
and actions toward school and teachers, and teachers’ requirements and responses to
students and parents (Lareau, 1993); and a variety of research-based policy
recommendations regarding the role of families in student achievement, and specific
actions of teachers and parents (Henderson & Berla, 1995).

In reading part of this material , particularly the framing of the school problem
and its solution in relation to the family, I found myself rather skeptical about its
accuracy and prospect. The sources of my skepticism were my own experiences in
relation to schools, first as a child and a student within my social group, later as a
parent dealing with private schools and as a teacher educator dealing with public

schools in Brazil, and more recently as a parent handling U.S. public schools.

 

‘ Problems of interpretation antecede the conceptualization of research and the

very production of empirical evidence. Moreover, empirically based explanations are
constructed and refined by individuals with specific motivations and beliefs.

35

Reflecting on such personal experiences provided both temporal and spacial
perspective and motivation to inquire further.

Thus, while my empirical data are experiential or second hand, my primary
data are arguments. Regarding the normative aspect of policy, I question the explicit
or implicit assumptions that guide definitions of problems, proposed actions, and
expected outcomes, and discuss their implications in the light of the available
theoretical, and empirical elements. Specifically, in mapping this rhetorical terrain, I
consider both how the available empirical findings on the role of families in school
success support certain policy choices, and how the proposed solutions are consistent
with theoretical elements. In addition, as a window into the intricacies of the family-
school educational partnership, I provide an analysis of homework as a practice of
transferring school work to the home, and its various meanings - as a policy,
curricular conception, and instructional practice - and implications for teachers and
parents.

Based on such exploratory and diversified analysis, I hope to draw and
contribute to a broad - precarious, but indispensable - framework for analyzing the
relationships between families and schools and the role of educational policy in

articulating them.

Further analysis
This study of the problematic of family-school relations and the role of
educational policy attempts to represent a series of explorations from different sources

and into various of its aspects. Due to its very breadth and complexity, I found that

36

such a study would be both more viable and interesting as an open approach, a series
of reflective promenades, starting from and returning to the central point of concern:
What (and to what extent) is fair and viable for state policy to demand from families
in terms of education nowadays and how much more, better, or different could
schools do in order to educate all children? Therefore, the chapters that follow were
written as independent but interrelated essays, each taking a distinct context of
inquiry.

Chapter 2 presents my personal experience and Ieaming about problematic
aspects of family-school relations along my life course, as a student, a professional,
and a parent. Chapter 3 elaborates on historical and sociological elements informing
the current parental involvement policy, focusing specifically on its equity
implications, mediated by social class culture. Chapter 4 deals with the articulation of
the discourses of empirical research and policy, from the acknowledgement of the role
of family in school achievement to the construction of a need for parental academic
support. Chapter 5 depicts homework as a concrete illustration of the family-school
problematic, pointing out its meanings and implications for curriculum, instruction,
teaching, parenting, and family life. Finally, in the Epiloque, I stress the functions
and perverse effects of parental involvement as a policy: the intrusion into family life

and the threat against the democratic ideal of public schooling.

Chapter 2

FAMILY—SCHOOL INTERACTIONS:

LESSONS FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

My personal interest in family-school relations derives in great part from my
own experience as a parent relating to my children’s school. Besides, as I am also a
teacher educator, I have frequently heard how teachers refer to families and parents
when they talk about students, specifically how they tend to attribute the difficulties
they experience with students to the family environment and lack of parental support.
Finally, I am a foreigner trying to make sense of diverse cultures, presently in the
US, and previously in Brazil. Over time, I have faced episodes and collected
anecdotes, across a variety of contexts, which have sustained my perception of the
problematic relations between families and schools.

So, in this chapter, I offer an idiosyncratic account and reflection on my own
involvement with the problem, as a child within my family and the schools I attended,
as a mother (and also a single parent) in front of my children’s schools, and as an
educator with a special interest in the public school. Reviewing this personal context
substantiated my initial impulse to study the issue, and making it explicit provided a

preliminary opportunity for inquiry.

37

3 8
1. Discovering the problem

I realized, for the first time, the existence of a family-school problematic when
I did a brief exploratory study in poor urban and rural elementary schools, in 1050
Pessoa, Brazil (Carvalho & Ramalho, 1983). In exploring factors of low student
achievement through interviews with principals, teachers, and mothers, an interesting
(apparently unrelated) problem that emerged was a mutual dissatisfaction and distrust
between school and family, more openly expressed by the teachers than by the
mothers, and especially evident in the rural context. Generally, mothers expressed the
expectation that students should learned in school and that teachers should take a
positive interest in their children, but seemed defensive toward school. As the
interviewers were identified with the school, rural mothers spoke very little and
carefully, while urban mothers (in whose discourse education appeared as a positive
value and a condition for upward social mobility) quickly avowed that they liked the
school and the teacher.

Family-school relations are usually taken for granted because it is believed that
schools serve families and that families need and benefit from schools. I was quite
astonished, as I approached a rural home with my colleague in 1981, two strangers
that we were, when I heard a boy announce to his mother: ”Mom, here comes the

school police. "

Parental involvement in pre-school
By then my first child was starting his school life in a private alternative

’maternal school,’ a common name for kindergartens in Brazil. Maternal schools are

3 9
usually small specialized pre-schools, or branches of large primary and secondary
schools, not day-care centers, and serve children from two to six years old.
’Alternative schools’ are the progressive ones, set in more natural settings (with big
yards, lots of trees, gardens and animals), with a great deal of outdoor activities,
thanks to the warm climate, with children playing with sand and water, and moving
freely around, all day. Pedagogically, ’altemative schools’ offer sophisticated
developmental programs based on natural-ecological approaches, explicit sensory
development frameworks, Piaget, Montessori, Freinet, ’free-arts, ’ psychoanalysis,
Emilia Ferreiro’s Vygotskyan constructivism, and anything else novel, scientific,
liberating, and appealing. These schools explicitly distinguish themselves from the
traditional kindergartens, which are criticized for doing a combination of naive
spontaneous play (not utilized as educative interventions according to a sound
theoretical framework), and mechanical preparation for literacy by mimicking
elementary school activities and pressing children to adapt to them.

In those ’altemative schools, ’ and at this age level, parental involvement was
very intense and complicated. So it was that I watched a few ’school splits, ’ and
learned of others as well. This is an interesting phenomenon: high-educated parents,
teachers, psychologists, and school administrators have (or develop, despite apparent
cultural homogeneity) different philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical
commitments; in the parents’ meetings strong disagreements are expressed over
nuances of the pedagogical practice and social values conveyed by the curriculum;
cases of some parents’ stronger influence on the school curriculum and administration

arouse rivalry among parents; cases of school interference in family routines further

40

conflicts; along time, groups polarize and it becomes impossible to compromise; as a
result, one of the groups (of parents, teachers, and owners) leaves the school and
starts a new school with an alternative theoretical and practical approach.

I attribute the intensity of middle class parental involvement in private pre-
school, in Brazil, to the early age of students, and to a central concern with their
emotional well—being. Middle-class parents who have to send their very young
children to school (a new phenomena, in itself, due to the work of the mother and/or
lack of domestic help) feel ambiguous and insecure about throwing them into the
unknown, larger world, and into relationships with strangers, and inspect the school
environment as much as they can.1 They simply can’t help it, as participation might
alleviate their anxiety and uncertainty over the values and practices their children will
encounter in school. It is understandable that they project their views onto the school
and try to influence it accordingly.2

There are two other striking aspects in this recent alternative-private school
movement. First there is the fact that homogeneous, middle and upper-middle class,

highly educated parents don’t succeed in compromising over a common educational

 

‘ It must be for this reason that relationships in the Brazilian (at least middle-
class) pre-school mimic the family by displaying much physical contact and gestures
of affection, and caretakers and teachers (also in public elementary schools) are called
aunts.

2 In subsequent levels of schooling, and as children grow older, involvement
tends to decrease. Perhaps there are less issues of concern then, as children have
grown more independent; or the kind of concern might shift from emotional to
academic matters, from which it might be easier to detach. Anyway, in Brazil,
primary school is generally seen as a world apart from home, clearly public and ruled
by its own edicts, certainly due to a historical origin of autonomy relative to families
and communities.

41

project. Second, the occurrence of the split cuts down the size of a school whenever
it grows too fast. In fact, forms and intensity of parental involvement appear to be
associated with school size, which facilitates or restrains direct, open, and collective
participation. And, as I noticed from experience, parents’ active participation in
school as a collective dynamics constitutes a complicated issue in its own right,
involving scale, parents’ resources and values, school organizational features,

openness of school personnel, and ideological affinities among parents and school

personnel.

Family distance from public schools

In Brazil, the kind of parental involvement in alternative-private preschools,
described above, in which parents fight for influence and control, contrasts with the
family-school relations prevalent in most public schools and traditional religious or
secular private primary and secondary schools, which are usually larger and more
rigidly structured. This other kind of school-family relations is one of distance and
exclusive school control over the pedagogic process. Indeed, parental participation in
the definition of the educational service has never been a cultural tradition in the
public school. In private schools parents tend to act as interested ”consumers” in
various degrees and forms, and consequently school control against parental
interference assumes an ambiguous and subtle character. The fact that school
personnel in public schools have job security might lead to ignoring families, whereas
in private schools administrators and teachers see the direct relation between their

earnings and students’ fees, assuming a position of deference toward families.

[I I ‘1‘. D.‘ a fix

42

Since the expansion of Brazilian public schooling in the 605, laments over
family disinterest (basically referring to lack of home preparation) have been
commonly heard and presented as one of the explanations for the high rates of school
failure of poor children. The rhetoric of blaming the family has been an extension of
the rhetoric of blaming the victim (i.e., the child), persisting as a defense against the
rhetoric of blaming the teacher, the main one responsible for instruction and its
outcomes. Thus, teachers constantly refer to certain fanrilies’ lack of cooperation
regarding specific problems and particular students, and parents’ absence at school
meetings, despite the widely recognized facts that poor parents are underschooled or
illiterate, and all they hear from the teachers are complaints about their children’s
”learning difficulties" and/or lack of discipline. However, in general, public school
teachers officially are not supposed to expect much from socioeconomically burdened
families in Brazil.3

Of course Brazilian progressive educators have hoped that parents’ contribution
to education, as genuine political—democratic participation, would appropriately
flourish in the context of the public school. But despite policy efforts to establish a
model of public governance of schools through parent associations in each building,
and family and community representatives at local councils of education, little has

been accomplished in terms of parental participation in the public school system. On

3 In 1985 I acted as multi-age (5-12) teacher in an after-school (4—hour daily)
ngram focusing on children literature in a slum ('favela') in Campinas, Sio Paulo.
{never met any parent or felt I needed input from families in order to work with the
Chlldren. The program had no concern with formal assessment either of children’s
PTOgress or of its performance. I mention this point because I believe that the critical
and sensitive issue in family-school relations has exactly to do with assessment and
accountability.

43

the one hand, poor and working class parents (who comprise the majority) keep away
from school, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, the retreat of the middle class
from the public school is lamented, as this group’s level of expectations and demands

is seen as an important condition to improve the quality of public education.

Parents as consumers in private schools

Since the 70s, the era of educational reforms, the Brazilian middle class has
been increasingly shifting to private schools, in the context of the so—called
’decadence’ of the public school, the result of its cheap expansion, ’de-elitization, ’
and loss of quality. A new kind of modern private school has emerged locally - and
some have spread nationally, through franchises - as a clear commercial enterprise,
basically committed to profit. These new educational enterprises contrast flagrantly
with the formerly dominant religious private schools, based on an ethics of community
service and affinity with families.

Middle-class parents have an ambiguous relation with such modern private
schools (as the fact that they are called ’sharks’ indicates), and deplore the
mercantilization of education. They certainly take advantage of the competition
among schools, but are also suspicious that schools will fake their own advertised
offers, as well as parents’ demands. Moreover, parents are aware of their own limits
as demanding consumers, for it would be disastrous to move children to a new school
whenever they find reason for dissatisfaction and do not have their complaints settled.

During the 803, due to high rates of inflation, private school consumers exerted

a tight control over school fees, demanding both regulation from the government, and

44

”transparent” budgets and "reasonable" levels of profit from each private school
administration. Yet, the very fact that parents choose and buy the best quality
education they can afford (and eventually battle over its price) limits their participation

in the process (and content) of education.

Parents as producers in cooperative-schools

While some middle class educators have lived the contradiction of defending
the public school while sending their kids to private schools, and continue idealizing
the role of parental participation in public schools, other pragmatic developments have
been going on in Brazil. As a reaction to the high cost and unsatisfactory quality of
private schools, some parents have started a new polemic movement of ’cooperative
schools, ’ in which a public school (generally a well located and conserved building) is
governed by a parent association, through an executive committee of volunteers, and
may charge direct financial contributions from parents - a monthly payment, just like
a private school.

This initiative has been the object of ideological debates over whose
responsibility it is to provide for good quality education (some arguing that it is the
State’s) and over the implications of direct financial contributions from parents (some
pointing out that it promotes differentiation among public schools). There have also
been conflicts with teachers who don’t like being subordinated to parents, and with the
Union (following after other teachers’ complaints) due to attempts to increase the
salaries of cooperative-school teachers, creating differentiated pay among state

employees. In sum, critics of the ’cooperative school’ have denounced the

45

" privatization of the public school” by some middle class parents who have returned to
the public school, but continue investing in their own interests at the level of one
particular school.

Such episodes inform that parental conceptions of educational obligation,
choices and possibilities of participation in schooling are limited, complicated, and,
moreover, dependent on concrete needs and resources related to social class. Thus,
participation aiming at influencing the quality of education requires substantial
investment of time, effort, and knowledge, implying a direct role in the production of
the service - a choice only available to some interested middle and upper class parents.
On the other hand, access to high quality education - exempt of any form of
participation - has always been possible for those who can buy exclusive, tailored, and
expensive educational services.

But parents who participate (with time and effort) in their children’s formal
education have done it primarily at home through the institution of homework, a

somewhat obscure form of partnership.

Homework and middle-class mothers

As a child growing up in Brazil in the 605, I frequented a half-day school (a
period of four hours), which remains the norm today. I spent the morning hours at
home doing homework with my brothers, around the dinner table, and was not
allowed to play before getting it done. My mother made sure we complied with the
schoolwork, but she herself did not take interest or enjoy getting involved with it.

She had a degree in Law, an unusual career for women then, had given up work to be

46

a mother and housewife, but seemed to me frustrated with her situation.

I knew other mothers in the neighborhood who took as their daily task to
supervise their children’s homework and reinforce the school program. Their method
was to check closely what had been taught the previous school day, and what their
children had or hadn’t learned well, in order to clarify, review, and drill it. They
routinely performed individual oral questioning and answering, giving immediate
feedback, and also tested their children’s learning before they left to school.‘

Differently from my mother’s generation, I had my children when I was a full-
time professional. It was very disturbing for me to leave my first child at school
when he was just twelve months old. It was hard to work, find good baby-sitters and
deal with them, leave him at home part of the day, and get good quality time with
him. Yet, soon I had two more children.

By the time the oldest was finishing elementary school, I decided to shift from
the alternative Montessorian school the three frequented to a ’traditional’ school. I
had no doubt they were very happy in that school, but I found that the oldest hadn’t
Ieamed as much as I expected - based on my own experience as a student - at the end
of elementary school. So, I judged, not without concern, that it was time for them to
experience massive dull teaching, to frequent an old building with thick walls, and
thus I chose a high-standard Marist school. My problem with homework began then.

In the Montessorian school, my children had never brought schoolwork home,

 

‘ Those were full-time mothers with university degrees, whose daughters ended
up going to medical and engineering school. As I think back, I realize that girls in
my social group, then, faced no intellectual barriers and were frequently more brilliant
and academically successful than their brothers, probably due to their mothers’
academic role at home.

47

and so they were not accustomed to doing homework. I would leave work by 11:30
on a two-hour break, in order to eat lunch with them, check their homework, and
drive them to school, just to find out that they had spent the morning playing and
watching TV. So I had to hire a private tutor to sit with them every morning and
help them do their homework independently, a goal she never accomplished, as she

became totally indispensable in my family life.

Parents versus experts

As I attended the regular parents’ meetings in the traditional religious school, I
noted a rhetoric of subtly pointing at families’ lacks and all the ’extras’ that the school
environment and its professionals provided. I also noticed an emphasis on the
psychological needs of children and teenagers and the friendliness and involvement of
teachers who were constantly listening to the students’ family problems, especially
teenagers who didn’t have anyone to talk at home. I wondered, given that, if they
had any time left to teach the academic curriculum! Besides this ’content, ’ another
aspect also called my attention in the school discourse: I felt that school professionals
(principals, pedagogic coordinators, teachers, and psychologists) talked to parents as if
they were talking to children.

Once I had a specific meeting with one of the school psychologists. I was
apparently called because my fourth grade son had disrupted the class. But then I was
told that he and another boy were caught throwing little pieces of paper which
contained obscene drawings. After informing me of the ’real’ occurrence, the

psychologist immediately started ’interviewing’ me about my family sexual education.

48

As I perceived her ’professional’ attempt to find a problem in my home, I
counteracted by pointing out that whereas in my house there were no pornographic
materials, the school lavatory walls were decorated with obscene graffiti. I offered
her my view that my son was a normal child, and I told her, "He certainly learned
that in school. " As for the inappropriate class behavior, I thought the school should
deal directly with the student and apply its disciplinary norms instead of calling me.

The school psychologist explained that they normally called parents in order to
avoid further complaints. I exposed my view that problems that are created in the
school environment, resulting from its particular patterns of organization, actions, or
omissions, should be solved by the school professionals, according to their best
wisdom. I also suggested that - while I thought it unsound to expect that parents
could prevent children’s misbehavior in school - she could make better use of her time
by intervening in the school setting and dealing directly with the problems generated
there than by calling parents to inquire about their family life, in order to explain a
kid’s behavior in a particular circumstance. On the other hand, if the school didn’t
feel quite sure about best disciplinary practices and wanted to find out about parents’
views and values, a survey would be a good start.

But surveys or other straightforward approaches to all parents were never tried
while I was there. This episode reinforced my perception that an attitude of focusing
on individual cases constructed as problematic, and of problematizing the family, is
part of school culture and practices, as I had found to be the case in the discourse of
public school teachers elsewhere (Carvalho, 1989). I view this attitude as detrimental

to focusing on the school context and improving its practices. My point is that I

49

doubt that educators, counselors, and psychologists have already studied and solved
the problems generated in the school context so well, that they are willing to extend
their expertise to help problematic families; moreover, school personnel doesn’t have
(and I see no reason why they should have) the expertise to deal with family
problems.

To the extent that what is perceived as problematic in school is not or cannot
be solved in its context (for practical, ideological, or political reasons), defining
problems as individual and familial may be seen as a defensive strategy. However,
the expert discourse does affect individuals and families, and if it does not help to
solve problems, in turn, it certainly creates new problems. For one thing, the expert
discourse can be an instrument of oppression whenever the means to solve problems

satisfactorily are not available.

2. Rediscovering the problem

Being a foreigner,’ one who speaks with an accent and addresses people oddly
in normal situations, taught me how difficult it is to live as a cultural outsider. It was
not just that I didn’t know people and had no friends, but that all my cultural capital
(good education, skills, and values) was initially worth nothing. Because of my

accent, peculiar manners, and speech style, I lacked face-value, and was often an

 

5 Perhaps I should inform about my ethnic background, according to the common
practice I found here. In my country I am white, but in the US. I never felt white,
and indeed found it easier to relate to Blacks and Browns. In filling up forms, my
first impulse was always to mark Hispanic, because I am Latin-American, but a
81:90“ thought would tell me that Brazilians of European ancestry are not necessarily

rspanrcs.

50

object of suspicion, or bluntly expected to be ignorant and inferior.‘5 I needed to work
much harder than others in order to ’convert’ my cultural background into some sort
of prevailing, conventional, local capital.

Within this context, I had the possibility to think about cultural differences and
conflicts, and some of their implications, particularly the price that is charged of a
foreigner, or any cultural outsider, in order to participate in normal social interaction.
This is especially difficult for adults who have already formed a clear adult identity.
On the other hand, my children might have suffered doubly: as foreigners in their own
right, and as dependent on - and, thus, affected by - a foreign parent mediating their
interactions with others. The fact that they avoided Speaking Portuguese in public and
criticized my accent was not random; interestingly, speaking a foreign language was

not a sign of positive distinction or valued as cultural capital in this area.

(Sf-rental involvement in U.S. schools

/ My encounter with the practices and discourses on home-school relations in the
U.S. were influenced by my cultural background and situation as a foreign, female,
single parent: amount of homework and particular instances of ’interactive

homework, ’ the discourse on the family educational role, the typical family-school

 

‘ It didn’t take me long to learn, through afflictions and humiliations, that many
White Americans, even second generation immigrants, expect third world foreigners
to defer to them. The logic (and the prevailing stereotype) seems to be that of the
immigrant who left a bad situation and marvels at the goods of America; it follows
that any different or critical attitude draws prompt antipathy, and also (as I know from
experience) ”a little lesson,” that is, punishment! Or perhaps it is part of a
competitive culture that one has to constantly prove oneself, as if people (especially
those in .power positions), as a norm, set up others within an initial flame of negative
expectatrons.

51

communication patterns and opportunities for parental involvement in the school, and
the institution of parent education.

I understand that homework is accepted in Brazil on the grounds of a short
school day, or insufficient school time that needs to be complemented at home.
Coming to the U.S., I thought my kids would attend marvelous, rich, effective,
whole-day, public schools and, consequently, would never have homework.
Therefore, I was quite surprised when they consistently brought schoolwork home. I
was appalled when I had to do my part in a 5th grade ’interactive homework’ and
confirm that I had enjoyed it! I was particularly astonished at the amount of
homework during the first middle school ’transition’ year. And I was perplex when
my signature on a high school History homework was worth 5 points extra-credit!

As a parent, I felt constrained to do my part in my children’s homework and
enjoy it. This was simply defined as my obligation by the school, and I had no choice
if I didn’t want my kids to be low achievers, since homework substantially counts
toward grades here. One teacher advised parents in a school meeting not to trust
children doing homework in their rooms (because they might stay quiet for hours
watching TV or listening to music with a headphone), and "to make sure they do it
right there at the kitchen table while you fix dinner. "

The show of personal satisfaction and efficiency that principals and teachers
put up for parents in the open-houses reminded me of private schools in Brazil. The
professional aura marked those spwdy school-family contacts, insofar as
communication was usually initiated and directed by the school personnel. The

purpose of those meetings was explicitly stated as to inform the parents about the

52

goals of each course, and about their role in helping their student understand and
reach them. Within such a frame, teachers’ discourse toward parents invariably
sounded artificial, and few teachers struck me as candid and authentic persons.

The telephone service to inform parents that their student missed a class or a
school day puzzled and annoyed me. My reaction was, "Of course I know he missed
school for he stayed home - why are you informing me of something I already know
and should know better than you?" I was unaware of my obligation to notify
promptly the attendance office of my kid’s absence, and it seemed absurd to me that
the school would employ someone to do the dull job of calling parents. It took me
some time to learn that this home-school communication policy revolves around
responsibility for truancy and is intended to protect the school.

My first experience volunteering in a school trip to the zoo with the 8th
graders was also my last of its kind. I was the only mother not to get a small group
of students to chaperon, and instead was put together with that who seemed to be the
most prestigious (and clearly the wealthiest) mother in the group of volunteers. Being
the only foreigner, I presume I was judged incompetent to accompany a group of
teenagers that included my own son.

Finally, the institution of parent education also impressed me. The very term
parenting, and the scientific, expert definitions of good parenting skills taught in the
workshops regularly offered by the school district suggested to me that public policy,
in this country, has blatantly penetrated into the private, familial, and personal realms

of life via education.

5 3
The price of school success

In the special situation of a foreign parent, I could understand the meaning of
symbolic violence. I felt imposed upon and invaded by the homework dictates; I also
felt excluded and often patronized (based on stereotyped cultural assumptions) in my
interactions with school people. It was not just that I couldn’t pay the price to get in
(learn how to socialize) and have my children get in (help them steadily with
homework): I didn’t want to! This is called cultural resistance: I disliked being
treated like an immigrant, meaning someone who has to submit to anything and
change personality completely. However, cultural resistance should not be seen as
something negative that has simply to be overcome if one wants to adapt and succeed;
indeed, cultural conservatism, in this case, doesn’t mean mere stubbomest, but also
personal integrity and survival. It has its price too: wanting to succeed without having
to adapt unilaterally and conform to the system requires struggle and negotiation,
mostly unsuccessful for the individual in the lesser-power position. Moreover, as
Schutz (1944) argued before, people in between two cultures are in a unique position
to be analytical and critical.

Now, putting my foreign condition aside, there is something to be said about
the meaning of homework as an invasion of family life, and an imposition on the
parent. Every time I had to participate in interactive homework or sign a homework
Slip, I felt like writing the teacher: "Please don’t send me homework! " As an adult, I
don’t want to submit to the teacher authority, not even for the benefit of my child,
granting that the teacher knows better what is of benefit to my child, and how best I

should employ my time at home and in relation to my child. To be sure, I don’t want

5 4
my relationship with my child to be constantly, on an everyday basis, mediated by a
school topic. I don’t want to talk school at home unless necessary, and I don’t want
to be the kind of parent who is always playing the teacher.

Moreover, I was a student myself, and had to go through all those school
subjects and tasks in my time, and don’t want to go through it all over again in order
to ’help’ my children with homework, now that I am free to read and learn only what
I like - that is, now that I know that most of the school curriculum, apart from the
basics, is useless beyond granting a vague familiarity, perhaps instilling a certain
scientific mentality, and allowing for college choices. Therefore, I conceive my role
as a parent as one of just encouraging (and sometimes, unfortunately, pressuring) my
child to experience it all (bearing its occasional difficulty and unpleasantness), a role
certainly to be shared with the teacher, whom I hope has a real passion for Physics,
Literature, or other subjects. As for the job of teaching, I want to leave it entirely to
the teacher, who should be well prepared and have good work conditions in order to
perform well.

And, finally, there is something to be seriously pondered over the price of
school success, as to whether it should amount to eliminating cultural diversity by
precluding the home curriculum,7 whatever it might be, and to saddling parents with
the obligation to teach the school curriculum at home, when they are not prepared nor
paid to do so, to say the least. There is also much to be pondered about the meaning

and place of deregulated leisure and pleasure at least in family and private life.

. 7 By home curriculum I mean the activities and conversations that make up family
lrfe and interactions.

55

Families, cultural diversity, and the meaning of school

Far from home, and aging, I was flooded by memories of my childhood
experiences.

I was sent to kindergarten when I was four years old - something unusual
having a mother at home - and went through elementary grades in an extremely strict
and repressive Catholic school. There I learned well how to read and write, and had
a terrorizing religious education. As I recall my home and community education,
though, I can see how many alternative and diverse experiences it offered as compared
to school.

I had a four generation maternal extended family. Every Sunday evening we
gathered at my grandmother’s house, full of relatives and guests, adults and children,
plus dogs, cats, and a yard full of ducks and chicken. We also visited regularly my
widowed great-grandmother, who lived in a townhouse with other old-aged relatives.
In those visits, besides playing outside, children sat in the living-room and listened to
adults’ conversations, and drank adult beverages: at my grandmother’s, coffee, and at
my great— grandmother’s, a variety of homemade fruit liqueurs.

Our household had maids from the countryside, with whom we children had a
very close, affectionate relationship. We joined many of their activities. From them
we Ieamed to plant corn, beans, collards, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts; to make
fires; to roast cashews; to recognize snakes. In the beginning of the rainy season, at
dusk, we children collected fat flying ants ('tanajuras') on the unpaved streets that the
maids would stir-fry and eat. The nutritious value of "tanajuras' was never a topic in

the school curriculum. When I was ten, and dying of curiosity, one of them told me

56

how babies were born in the most simple, straightforward way, information denied by
mother and by the school.

I heard many stories as a child, before TV invaded homes. My grandmother
told stories of animals, featuring conflicts of power, astuteness, and tricks, and
"cangaceiros" - the old hands of rural bandits in Northeastern Brazil. My mother
loved to tell the stories of her maternal grandfather - the character she most admired
and who inspired her to study Law - of the people in his household, and the sugarcane
mills where she spent her vacations. My aunt Mira was a fine story teller, who could
entertain me for hours depicting life and people in the boarding school of German
nuns, where she had spent her school years. And the maids told tales about fantastic
creatures from the woods, protectors of the forest and its animals.

Every Sunday morning my father would take us children to the movies and to
the club, so that my mother would get rid of us for a few hours. Back home, we
would sit around the lunch table for hours, and have Greek theater for dessert, my
mother’s passion for a while, when she took some courses to fill her boring time as a
housewife. Both my parents did amateur theater during my childhood years, and so I
was frequently taken to the theater, and later to all the classic music concerts and art

movies in town.8

 

‘ I could say that my family had a lot to offer in terms of both cultural and social
capital, but I don’t recall my parents explicitly investing this kind of capital in my
schooling on a regular basis. My mother did invest her family social capital when she
forced the nuns to take me - the daughter of an atheist (my father) and of a couple not
married in the Roman Catholic Church - as their student. My father, who had an
individual history of upward social mobility, was more likely to talk school subjects
(especially math and science) at home, and occasionally to help with math; he had
been a brilliant student and did have high academic expectations for his children.
However, my parents neither frequented the religious or the public schools that l

57

School was a world apart, clearly limited and colorless, but strong in its
demands. It became broader when I moved to a big secondary public school, where
there was much more freedom, and a variety of boys and girls to whom to relate. I
often hung around with my classmates after school, walked downtown or went to the
movies, and visited their families out of my neighborhood and immediate social group
- and this was the most interesting part of going to school!

Thus, I was educated in and through many worlds, among which school
comprised an important, central, but definitely limited part. School and its work were
my chief obligation, weekdays’ schedules were organized around school time, but
school would also function as a bridge to other activities and people, clearly
disconnected from the school curriculum.

If I imagine my life as a child limited to the school, and my experiences
reduced to its curriculum, I can only see them impoverished. Moreover, I find no
evidence that schools have become better (more interesting and spiritually richer)

places for the education of children today, as compared to my days.

3 . Summing up

My own experience says that family-school relations and educational contexts
involve an array of complex issues - social values, institutional purposes, conceptions
of public and private, kinds of knowledge, forrrrs of Ieaming, personal meanings,

views on the role of parents and teachers - and a variety of practices, all of which,

 

attended (in the first case, because they were not part of the community, and, in the
second case, because this was not part of the school or family cultures), nor got
mvolved with curricular issues or homework contents.

58

moreover, bear change and diversity. Though educational issues and practices appear
tangled, it is important to keep clear that families and schools are distinct institutions,
situated in different spaces and times of everyday life, comprising particular
arrangements, responding to different social and individual needs, and carrying
exclusive functions. And though children move and develop principally within and
between the contexts of the two (as other forms of community have become rare), to
be sure, families’ functions are much more complex, and families are responsible for
more than school in terms of life experiences and education in the broad sense.

Nevertheless, within present social arrangements, the most viable mediation
between children and private life, as one realm, and social knowledge and the public
world, as another, still is the public school, represented by the teacher, the class-
group, and the curriculum—mass organized activities. From this perspective, any
family environment is limited, and parents are ill-equipped to exert this mediation role
effectively, as they mostly don’t have that as their main task; are disconnected from
the academic world; are not specialists in cognitive development, or academic
subjects; have diverse kinds of public participation, and their own demanding
occupations. Moreover, parents are unprepared to ’help’ teach the school curriculum
precisely the more specialized school content is, and the more remote it is from
practical social pursuits.9

Since school is a specialized institution of formal education, and since

schooling is a big public enterprise, I see the separation of family and school as -

 

9 Attempts to connect school knowledge and everyday life are doomed to be

limited, for school knowledge encompasses abstract, non-trivial, and initially non-
common knowledge.

59

more than a functional choice — a requirement for individual freedom and cultural
pluralism, and as an approach to equity. Assuring that education (as a function of the
state), compulsory schooling (as preparatory for public life), and school culture
remain separate from private life means allowing space for other forms of education,
responsive to various human needs, to flourish apart from school. And, given that
schools are also testing-credentialing institutions, limiting educational assessment to
what is publicly designated as school knowledge and offered explicitly by the school
might avoid the appraisal and discrimination of other cultures, making academic
culture more manageable by those who are not initially socialized into it.

Along this line, one of the issues that has most impressed me in American
education is the extension of schooling in day time and life time, and its penetration
into family life. On the one hand, the extraordinary development of the educational
system and the race for school credentials as a means for social mobility constitute
unique American phenomena; on the other hand, this bears upon the role of education
both in Protestant ideology and in a land of immigrants, as stressed by Arendt (1961).
And, indeed, it is possible to see a movement of family reform via school reform,
within the formalization and normalization of parental involvement in schooling,
insofar as school culture permeates everyday family practices, homogenizing the basic
make up of social life.

I see with concern this policy movement towards articulating a single agenda
for schools and families, as it basically narrows down the scope of conceivable
educational goals and practices, while loosing sight of the specificity of public

education (which cannot be conceived except in dialectical opposition to private

60

experiences). In my view, what school and family share is a division of educational
work and responsibility for children, the specific educational role of school being to
provide for a common culture (beyond cultural diversity), 3 special kind of learning
(systematic, skilled, refined), and knowledge (intellectual, significant and useful for
all social groups), through its specialized professionals, and unique collective
environment. Obviously there are many areas of human development and many
cultural contents which are not, and cannot possibly be, attended to by schools.
Schools are limited: they cannot represent all the diversity of human experience. Of
course, the challenge for the public school is to overcome social discrimination and
exclusion based on cultural diversity. However, the present call for diversity is
doubtful, as the problem of cultural pluralism cannot be solved within schools. How
is cultural diversity going to be conciliated with necessarily restrictive definitions of
school knowledge, and specially with valuation of knowledge and evaluation of
Ieaming?

So, I take the opposite direction of current educational policy addressing
families, by assuming the perspective of the family expressed by this question: How
are families going to recreate their immediate, everyday conditions of life, freely, if
they are to be converted into partners of schools, guided by expert definitions, and
occupied with academic goals? If schools and families represent distinct interests in
terms of individual and social development, if their normal interaction comprises
potential conflict as posed by Waller (1965), and if the attempt to define a common
(interinstitutional) educational agenda is likely to trigger struggle I would bet that

institutional separation is more viable than mutual involvement. The seeming

61

intrusion of schooling into the family at this point in the history of American
education suggests not only that there is actual struggle over social values and
definitions of academic knowledge, but also that the school detains the dominant
position within that struggle in detriment of the family.

Therefore, ideally, educators and policymakers must consider family
perspectives and face the issues of social purposes, knowledge, and the public
character of schooling, so that school can account better for the task of educating all

children, and families can be set free to educate their children in their own ways.

Chapter 3

EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION:

THE QUEST FOR EQUITY WITHIN FAMILY-SCHOOL RELATIONS

In this chapter I consider possible equity implications of educational policy
prescribing a family-school partnership in terms of parental involvement in schooling
and parental implementation of academic activities in the home. I frame this issue
according to the current rationale that parental involvement is a resource for
improving individual student success, counteracting minority group failure (therefore
minimizing inequity), raising educational standards and general outcomes, insuring
individual and national economic competitiveness and, moreover, building family and
community relations.

If the promises of education and schooling for human and social development
held true, we should expect more individual achievement, the enhancement and
equalization of school outcomes, and increasing social equality over time. Under this
assumption, parental commitment to students’ educational success would be natural
and all parents would be positively involved on schooling. However, demographic
evidence shows that school success does not happen for all and, furthermore, that
successful schooling does not automatically create more social equality. In this
context, parental apathy has been pointed at as an educational problem - indeed as a

justification of school failure - by teachers and policy makers, while the belief in the

62

63

power of education and the function of schooling remains unexamined. To be sure,
some parents’ apparent neglect has appeared as a problem precisely in comparison
with a certain image of positive parental involvement, one associated with school
success. Put in this way, the issue seems at once simple and intriguing: Why
wouldn’t all parents want the best (defined as educational and socioeconomic success)
for their own children? If it is all (apparently) a matter of individual (parental) effort
and commitment, how can we (teachers, policymakers, researchers) get some parents
more involved?

Even more complicated seems to be the issue of the social purposes and
outcomes of education. In 1848, Horace Mann wrote: ”Education, then, beyond all
other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of me -- the
balance-wheel of the social machinery" (Twelfth Annual Report, in Cremin, 1957, p.
87). This is one vision of the social role of education, but another understanding is
that the educational system serves to reproduce social inequalities rather than
eliminating them (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). There are two visible actors in this
drama - schools (meaning teachers and the educational structures within which they
operate) and the families (parents) of the children who attend schools. Each plays a
specific role in shaping the learning outcomes, the acquisition of credentials, and the
social outcomes of education, in the context of their interactions and of the larger
dynamics of economic, political, social and cultural life.

But what are the particular educational roles of school and family? According
to Mann’s ideal, the school, as the principal agency of education, should promote

social equality despite prior individual and family differences, in which case the role

64

of school is preponderant. As stated by the second view, the power of school has
been exerted not to minimize inequality but to perpetuate it, meaning that the school
operates on the basis of family and class differences. In contrast, educational policy is
now calling for the specific contribution of the family in enhancing and equalizing
school outcomes, in which case the role of the family is recognized as decisive.
Nevertheless, as long as either schools or families appear as more or less accountable
for school success and social equality, the specific role of educational policy in
shaping and regulating their interaction (and the ensuing educational and social
outcomes) remains off the fray. Educational policy, as a function of the state within
social organization, must therefore be assessed precisely in its power to frame the
roles and interactions of school and family.

Though we have come to think usually of education and educational policy as
restricted to school (and do not consider the private policies of families), public policy
touches the private and, in the case in point, precisely articulates families and schools

in social reproduction.‘ Along this line, educational policy deals, either implicitly or

 

‘ Social reproduction is used here in the generic sense, as practices of social
continuance, involving physical! material and cultural/ symbolic relations, and both
creation and preservation. In ”Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, "
Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) define education as ”the process through which a cultural
arbitrary is historically reproduced the equivalent, in the cultural order, of the
transmission of genetic capital, in the biological order" (p. 32). Although there is a
common reaction against this concept as one that doesn’t allow for human agency, I
tmderstand that social reproduction happens necessarily through human agency: only
by specifying what is reproduced (as there are various possible choices) can we
account for conservation and transformation, and attribute specific sense and value to
either of them as related to specific goals; and only by specifying who are the
productive actors, and whose actors are alienated from decision making, participation,
or the enjoyment of certain outcomes, can we account for human agency and
disempowerment. Borudieu & Passeron (1977) also speak of the social conditions of
existence in terms of social conditions of production and reproduction, involving

rm at a d E h AU .u o. Do ”Nu m mmm u

r

6 5
explicitly, with aims and meanings, conditions and practices of these social institutions
in defining the politics of knowledge and the social role of education. Understood as
state interventions amid social demands, as generative rules and resources within
social systems (Giddens, 1979), as discourses-practices (Cherryholmes, 1988) within
institutions, or as authoritative frameworks (goals, conditions and means) for
collective action, as well as the concrete choices of policymakers, researchers,
teachers, parents and students, whose complex combination draws courses of action
which are never the automatic realization of the official agenda, policy-politics2 is in
fact the main force within the quest for educational equity and social equality. Here I
find it necessary to stress that policies only exist as politics - as actions in pursuit of
particular interests - and that agents, such as teachers, parents and students, do politics

and exercise power in intricate, asymmetric, and contradictory ways.

 

restructuring and reinterpretations.

2 The term politics has negative connotation in common discourse, but it can be
simply defined as the practice or strategy of obtaining power or control. This sense
agrees with the concept of policy: "a judgement, derived from some system of values
and some assessment of situational factors, operating as a general plan for guiding
decisions regarding the means of attaining desired objectives. " (Dictionary of
Education, Third Edition, McGraw-Hill, 1973) Perhaps favored by my native
language (Portuguese), in which both policy and politics are the same word, I
conceive both moments - policy (calls and directives for implementation, as registered
in official documents) and politics (formal and informal practices that follow or
oppose, resist or recreate those directives) - as one complex process. Therefore, I use
policy-politics to suggest that policy is more than goals and means or frameworks and
resources and must include practices and outcomes, collective courses of action and
their broad effects. Along this line, though it usually is not formulated by teachers,
parents or students, formal policy is implemented or rejected, reproduced or resisted
by them, and therefore its conceptualization must include practice and all of its
participants. In their reactions to formal policy, actors may always, in some degree,
recreate it differently than the original intentions of those who conceived it.

66

This posed, a few points are in order. Though both schools and families are
subordinated to the state, they do not have equal power in the larger political context,
or within the particular context of their interactions. On the one hand, the authority
of an official agency (the school as a branch of the state) supersedes the prerogatives
of isolated families and individuals. Thus, insofar as the school represents the state
interest (or the interest of a generic community in front of particular communities), it
is necessarily in a position of power over families and students in enforcing policies
and practices. On the other hand, the counter-assertion of a two-way school-family
interaction doesn’t necessarily deny the differentials of power between family and
school as social institutions, and between particular families and schools according to
the class and cultural conditions of their individual members (parents and teachers) -
or, as Bourdieu (1986) would say, according to the relative value of the forms of
capital (economic, social and cultural) possessed and invested by them. In other
words, while it is true that family pressures have continually shaped school policy and
practice, concrete specification (in time and space) is required as to which families
have exerted power over schools and succeeded in shaping their educational service.
Concrete specification is needed in order to prevent undue generalizations, as it is
obvious that the power of families to influence school depends on both macro and
micro sociopolitical variables, among which are included, in particular, parental
educational levels and socioeconomic resources, and teachers’ political and
pedagogical commitments. On the other hand, it is also evident that the power of
education or school credentials hasn’t had the same practical value for all families,

therefore motivating uneven family investments in schooling.

67

Considering the complexities sketched above - particularly the ostensible,
monolithic and all-pervasive political character of schools as contrasted with the
diversity and dispersal of families, and the policy challenge of how best to link the
educational efforts of families and schools towards the egalitarian ideal - my aim is to
analyze the assumptions and implications of the current family-school partnership and
parental involvement model, within a project of improvement of school outcomes.
My initial suspicion concerns both the viability and justice of its promise. Therefore,
I pursue two interrelated questions: how this kind of educational policy is likely to
affect different families, and whether it is likely to create more educational equity or
inequity, within the understanding that these questions affect the overall quality of
education.

In what follows, I offer a reflection on some common ideas and situations,
grounded in historical and sociological perspectives, and a critique of a particular
policy trend - the current call for parental involvement - which frames family-school
relations in problematic ways. Initially, I delineate conceptions and meanings of
education, family, schooling, and family-school relations, pointing out the
construction of schooling (particularly in the United States) within ideological
perspectives of class, namely, social mobility and social equality. Next, I consider the
specific power of schools and their limits in promoting social equality, featuring
Bourdieu & Passeron’s (1977) theoretical explanation of the crucial role of the
educational system in the reproduction of social inequality by building on families’
diverse class cultures. Finally, I discuss implications of the current educational policy

framework for family-school relations, and particularly for those families which don’t

6 8
fit its parenting model advancing family responsibility for schooling.

I understand that current theoretical and policy formulations carry a typical
middle-class bias in terms of the ideology of education for upward social mobility and
consequent family adhesion to the school pedagogical project. In this way, they tend
to automatically benefit those families who are already cognizant of academic culture
and ’naturally’ perform the role expected by school, while creating automatic
disadvantage for families unfamiliar with school culture and unfit (by their very life
conditions) to meet its expectations. Moreover, in regulating family-school relations -
specifically, by defining the home as a learning setting for the school curriculum and
imposing upon the parents a certain educative (parenting) model - educational policy is
in fact extending political regulation onto the diffuse realm of the family and private
life, affecting particularly working class and lower class families. If this movement to
promote uniformity in family cultural and educational practices apparently might
facilitate instruction by enhancing the prior conditions of school achievement, it seems
like a rather odd egalitarian strategy in aiming to correct family and social (external)
differences, as well as a rather doubtful attempt to re-educate certain families,
moreover leaving the school’s internal mechanisms of discrimination untouched.

Therefore, I suggest that a policy promoting parental involvement will tend
both to exaggerate educational inequalities and to foster greater political subordination
of family to school, penetrating and annihilating whatever diversity is left in family
cultru'al and educational practices. It will certainly create more burdens for family
life, as well as additional complications for teachers and instructional processes,

pushing new demands in planning and evaluation of the articulation of home and

69

school Ieaming. In defining what most students and families lack or need to do in
order to succeed in present school and society, and pressing families to change in
order to fit the school agenda, instead of trying to compensate for family educational
shortcomings (defined in terms of school requisites) by its own means, schools
(teachers, policymakers, and educational researchers) will miss the opportunity to
redefine the specific educative function of schooling and broaden the meanings of

education by drawing on the richness of families’ diverse educational contributions.

1. Family, school, and the democratic ideal

We need to think of education, its forms and possibilities, and the educative
roles of families and parents, schools and teachers, as well as other agents, within
their historical and social contexts, in order to understand specific origins, evolution,
and variation of practices, and the production (including change and endurance) of
meanings relative to changing social needs of diverse groups. While I do not intend
to account for all of these, the picture I will sketch here suggests historical, class,
material, and cultural variations in modes of education, family organization, and
interaction between families and schools in social reproduction. Along my elaboration
I will stress a few key ideas: that meanings of education, family, and schooling are
unsettled and problematic, and related to concrete (evolving) material arrangements;
that social reproduction, education, and family intersect, evolve in articulation, but
engender their own dynamics; that forms of families and education vary across time
and social class; that families have lost their once central position in the production

and reproduction of life conditions and have become subordinated, in various degrees,

70

to institutions of work and school; that schooling is a function of the state, which
represents the interests of the powerful social groups; that education today has been
restricted to schooling and to its exchange value (Labaree, 1997); that conceptions of
education and schooling are defined and carried by professionals (such as researchers,
psychologists, policymakers, and teachers) entrusted with specific power over lay
people (such as parents); that schools were constructed within social production and
reproduction as providers of a service most (working) families cannot afford and,

therefore, need.

Conceptual and historical overview

Education, as a social institution, plays a main part in cultrual and social
reproduction’ by creating individuals who can function autonomously according to
internalized social norms and values, and adapt to specific scenarios at times produced
by social transformations. As intentional socialization linking generations and
individuals, education consists of two dimensions: a social dimension concerned with
imparting in the new generations a certain cultural heritage through the work of
various institutions, and an individual dimension involving the formation of
dispositions and views, and the acquisition of knowledges, abilities, and values. The
individual dimension is secondary to the social dimension‘ within the frame of

objective interests and power relations, be it in the microcosms of the family or

 

3 For a clarification of social reproduction, see Note 1. Indeed, all processes
involved in social reproduction, including economic production, involve education.

‘ I adopt here Parson’s concept of socialization but also assume social conflict
and contradiction in social relations.

71

elsewhere in the context of larger institutions or the institutional network.

Modes of education and social reproduction are historically and culturally
variable and arbitrary.’ Both the ways of imparting and the contents of the
dispositions and knowledges, which are socially valued and come to constitute the
process of education (the curriculum), have varied in time and space in terms of
organization and practices (where, how, for how long), contents (which knowledges
become habits, skills, school subjects), agencies and agents involved (who is
responsible for organizations and deliverance), and target-subjects (according to
categories like age, gender, class, and race). We can think of education, for instance,
as formal and informal, as an organized social effort and as individual experience, as
a plan implemented by an educator and conscientization via diffuse socialization and
participation, as the process of teaching and the experiences represented by a learner,
as knowledge and learning, as work and leisure, as performance and feeling, as self-
education and collective construction. As a multifaceted process of human learning
and development taking place within social practices, across various social spaces and
during all the course of individual life, education must initially be distinguished from
schooling, which is its current predominant mode. And although there are
knowledges and educational practices of different statuses, education must also be
recognized as the learning that occurs through random experience and general

participation in social practices. The very fact that education currently came to be

 

5

They represent cultural choices which cannot be explained in terms of natural
or rational determination, but else are grounded in and the expression of material and
power relations (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Modes of education and family
organization, for instance, represent dynamic and specific modes of interaction of
material and symbolic resources and contexts in social and cultural reproduction.

7 2
synonymous with schooling is in itself an interesting historical and sociological
phenomenon.

Historically, to educate, in the general sense of rearing or bringing up children
(Williams, 1983), hasn’t been the exclusive or main attribute either of biological
parents, families, or schools. Caring for the young, imparting the culture of the
social group (instructing them in modes of knowledge, production, relation and
participation), and preparing them for adult roles (war, citizenship, community,
family, and work) have constituted the educative tasks of various individuals, groups
and institutions (mothers, fathers, elders, teachers, extended families, clans,
nei ood, churches, schools) through a variety of arrangements. In primitive
societies, the education of children was a community task, totally informal and merged
into practical life, as it is still the case nowadays in rural areas of the third world or
for the socially marginalized groups in urban areas anywhere.‘5 In European pre-
modern times children were normally brought up by other adults rather then their
biological parents; formal education, a sign of class and cultural distinction, was then
a consequence of being born in the apex of the social scale. Montaigne, born in 1533
in France, to a family of landlords, was first cared for by a foster family, before
being ’ready’ for formal education, initially through exclusive home-tutors, and later,
from ages six to thirteen (when he concluded his schooling), at the best College in
France. This is how he expressed it:

If I had any sons I would readily wish them a fate like mine: God gave me a

 

‘ We can think of the inner city drug dealing gang and leader as an educative
community and teacher, for instance as shown in Spike Lee’s Clockers (Universal City
Studios, 1995).

73

good father. (...) From the cradle he sent me to be suckled in some poor
village of his, keeping me there until I was weaned - longer in fact, training
me for the lowliest of lives among the people: Freedom consists, for a large
part, in having a good-humoured belly.

Never assume responsibility for such up-bringing yourself and even less allow
your wives to do so: let boys be fashioned by fortune to the natural laws of the
common people; let them become accustomed to frugal and severely simple
fare, so that they have to clamber down from austerity rather than scrambling
up to it. My father’s humour had yet another goal: to bring me closer to the
common-folk and to the sort of men who need our help. (. . .) And the reason
why he gave me godparents at baptism drawn from people of the most abject
poverty was to bind and join me to them. His plan has not turned out too
badly. (Montaigne, 1993, pp. 405-406)

To a certain extent, social reproduction and education are rooted in the family,
since sexual and physical reproduction (the daily care of the body) are located in the
home and constitute their initial conditions. According to Sanders (1995), "education
is first used in English in the early seventeenth century to refer to rearing children by
paying attention to their physical needs - in the earliest years of the child’s life this
meant attention to nursing" (p. 190). That is why education was originally a gendered
word and work:

Educau'o prolis is a term that in Latin grammar calls for a female subject. It

designates the fwding and nurturing in which mothers engage, be they bitch,

sow, or woman. Among humans only women educate. And they educate only
infants, which etymologically means those who are yet without speech. . . . Men

.. . engage in docentia (teaching) and instructio (instruction). The first men

who attributed to themselves educational functions were early bishops who led

their flocks to the alma ubera (milk-brimming breasts) of Mother Church from
which they were never to be weaned. This is why they, like their secular
successors, call the faithful alumni - which means sucklings or suckers and

nothing else. (Ivan Illich, in Sanders, 1995, pp. 187-188)

The distinction between education, on the one hand, and teaching and
instruction, on the other, is pertinent in that it brings up a distinction between an

original realm of spontaneous physical and affective relations as context of child

74

growth, and another realm of intentional relations providing specific training to
function or do things in certain ways. While the first is a realm of silent nurturing,
the second is a realm of explicit (verbal and written) control, which indeed expresses a
very masculinized view of education. And while the first realm used to be more
encompassing of the whole of social relations in traditional societies, the second came
to be increasingly predominant in contemporary society, with the scientificization and
regulation of all aspects of everyday life.

The reorganization of education and family in modern times7 occurred within a
context of profound economic, political, social, and cultural transformation.8 Under
capitalism, both evolved through differentiation and specialization: "Whereas the
family once had reproductive, economic and educational functions, in modern societies
specialized institutions of work and education have developed outside the family”

(Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner, 1994, p. 118). In contrast with its earlier sense of

 

7 According to Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner (1994), "there is disagreement about
the periodization of modernity, some writers associating it with the appearance and
spread of capitalism from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, some with the
religious changes of the fifteenth century onwards which provided the basis for
rationalization, others with the onset of industrialization in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centruies, and still others with cultural transformations at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century which coincide with modernism”
(p. 270). Geographically, it was a phenomenon initially restricted to the western
capitalist hegemonic world.

' In general lines, modernity was characterized by the advent and development of
capitalist industry, democratic organization, class-based social structure, urbanization,
secularization, scientific rationalization, the social and human sciences, and national
school systems. Furthermore, its social and cultural changes entailed the separation of
Public (work and politics) and private (domestic) spheres of life; the transformation of

the family, which lost its productive function and became the locus of private life; and

a tendency to the fragmentation of experience, a commodification and rationalization
Of all aspects of life, and a speeding up of the pace of daily life" (Abercrombie, Hill,
& Tanner, 1994, p. 270).

75

musing, by mid-seventeenth century, "in the heart of the scientific revolution, the
word [education] had expanded to include habits, manners, and intellectual concerns”
(Sanders, 1995, p. 190), indicating the advent of schooling.

The remarkable historical transformation of the family, as a social institution
and locus of the first education, can be traced through the evolution of the word,
offered by Williams (1983). Family first meant (from the late fourteenth to mid
seventeenth centuries) household: "a group of servants or a group of blood-relations
and servants living together in one house". It also meant, in aristocratic use, a house:
“a particular lineage or kin-group, ordinarily by descent from a common ancestor” , a
sense ”extended to indicate a people or a group of peoples" (p. 131). In the modern
sense, family became "a small group confined to immediate blood relations" (p. 132).
But "there was considerable overlap, between mid seventeenth and late eighteenth
centuries, of these varying senses of lineage, household, large kin-group and small
kin-group” (p. 133). In the twentieth century, the distinction between nuclear family
and extended family expressed the split between the household sense and the kin-group
sense:

The specialization of family to the small kin-group in a single house can be

related to rise of what is now called the bourgeois family. But this, with its

senses of household and property, relates more properly, at least until the
nineteenth century, to the older sense. From early nineteenth century (James

Mill) we find this definition: ’the group which consists of a Father, Mother

and Children is called a Family’; yet the fact that the conscious definition is

necessary is in itself significant. Several late seventeenth and eighteenth
centtu'y uses of family in a small kin-group sense often refer specifically to
children (.. .), where the sense of household, however, may still be present.

(Williams, 1983, pp. 132-133, italics added)

The meanings of family expressed interesting class connotations. While the

7 6
bourgeois family was "the isolated family as a working economic unit, " there also
appeared “a distinction between a man’s work and his family: he works to support a
family; the family is supported by his work. It is more probable, in fact, that the
small kin-group definition, supported by the development of smaller separate houses
and therefore households, relates to the new working class and lower-middle class who
were defined by wage-labour: not family as a lineage or property or as including
these, and not family as household in the older established sense which included
servants, but the near kin-group which can define its social relationships, in any
positive sense, only in this way. " As for the middle class, family "combined the
strong sense of immediate and positive blood-group relationships and the strong
implicit sense of property” (Williams, 1983, p. 133).

Education, in its forms and contents, has also expressed class connotations.
During pre-modem times, when the space of formal education was very narrow in
social life and mainly restricted to the dominant class, the space of socialization and
informal education through ’familiarity’ and community work and life was broad and
diffuse; then, for the majority of individuals, education had a concrete content, and
oral and practical culture was its vehicle. Within the modern secular trend toward
social and functional differentiation and bureaucratization, families lost functions and
came into relationships with ”specialist organizations through which they can be
supplied with goods or services that they themselves no longer produce” (Bidwell,
1991, p. 190). The transformation of the mode of economic production precipitated
drastic changes in family life and in the mode of education, bringing in the

organization of the educational system, as we know it today:

77

This story of differentiation begins with the movement of economic production
out of the household, away from the control of kin-based groups and into
markets. Then, in large part as a result of the economic disablement of the
family, one functional activity after another is stripped from the household,
moving from the primary control of the family to the control of formal
organizations and their increasingly professionalized staffs. This process is

very clear in the case of education. (Bidwell, 1991, p. 190)

In this context, the constitution of modern schooling is connected with the
emergence of a middle class or, perhaps more precisely, with the constitution of the
small bourgeoisie which made use of education as a sign of distinction, meaning both
identification with the upper class and distance from the lower classes. Bidwell (1991)
illustrates this point with the account by the social historian Lawrence Stone on the
”educational revolution” during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England:

Middle-class families wanted their children to be educated, but they lacked the

land and large inheritances that could support an enclosed, multifunctional

household in which a child’s education could be accomplished. Thus, the rise
of the middle class created a market in which charitable schools were turned
into grammar schools, beginning a sustained, market-driven process in which
formal education became a normal, lengthening life-course stage for the bulk

of the English male population. (Bidwell, 1991, p. 190)

In this way, education was separated from the household and "elite boarding
schools, supported by endowments and by tuition fees from parents, came to be
known as ’public’ schools, in contrast to the other principal means of schooling,
which was the private tutor” (Coleman, 1987, p. 32). This movement, starting as
early as the fourteenth century in England, inscribes the public school originally as an
arrangement to provide collective (as opposed to individual, exclusive) instruction to
boys from many families in a specific public (in the sense of common, shared) setting
which still recreates the household in its unique regime of total living experience.

However, "for all children other than those of the elite, schooling was even more fully

78

lodged in the family. It was schooling via the household’s productive activities and
via a system in which children and youth learned trades, other than that of their
household, in nearby households” (Coleman, 1987 , p. 32).

Within a specialized division of the work of social reproduction, and the
deepening chasm between public and private life, families and homes - at least,
clearly, those at the upper socioeconomic levels - were redefined within the confines
of sexual, physical, and psychic reproduction, as the exclusive domain of affection
and intimacy. Schools took charge of the reproduction of erudite (dominant) culture,
sociopolitical values, and work training, assuming ideological and economic purposes.
Gradually, as families became nuclear, secluded, and fathers and mothers left the
home for the workplace, a movement that reduced their social and cultural
reproductive frmctions to a minimum, schooling grew as a systematic and extensive
mode of education, indeed as the central context and dimension of individual
development, assuming additional social and emotional goals. Moreover, with its
increasingly distinctive and exclusive practices, through which special knowledges and
skills were granted access and/or developed, the modern school came to constitute a
stage of mediation between the private and the larger public worlds (Arendt, 1961).

The institution of a state-supported system of mass compulsory schooling in the
late nineteenth century finally represented, according to a British historian, "the
triumph of public over private influences as formative in social life and individual
development; in particular, it tardily recognized the obsolescence of the educative
family, its inadequacy in modern society in child care and training" (F. Musgrove, in

Tyack, 1976, p. 363). A similar perspective was spoused in Sociology by Durkheim

79

(Bidwell, 1991) in terms of the superior fit of the role of the school in socialization
for modern life, as compared to the family. And, indeed, from both macro and micro
perspectives, the advent of mass schooling represents a solution to social reproduction
and individual education within the new urban-industrial order, substituting for the
family and the near community. Concretely, the provision of schools responded to
needs of care, training, and liberation of children - a solution for both the leisure of
the well-off and the exploitation of the many poor - as child labour was eradicated,
ingress of the young in so—called productive work was increasingly delayed, and
employment often took both fathers and mothers away from home.

However, mass compulsory schooling recreated the meaning of the public
school in new and contradictory ways. On the one hand, the consolidation of liberal-—
democratic industrial-capitalist states demanded social reforms, among which the
creation of a national school system was strategic. Educational policy and
bureaucracy originated, then, as systematic and permanent action of the State towards
provision, orientation and supervision of the school system toward broad social ideals:
the public school assumed political-ideological and economic functions, related to
corresponding goals of citizenship and labor-force training.9 On the other hand,

access to formal education as a means of upward (individual and class) social mobility

 

9 ”The rise of the national state and, with it, the expansion of citizenship are, in
this account intrinsic to the development of the differentiated industrial society. As
functional differentiation procwds, there is a strong tendency for each of its emerging
institutional sectors to define citizenship rights or entitlements, which the state defines
and regulates. Education is among these sectors. Everywhere in the West efforts
at centralized governmental control of the schools through formal organization and
procedure are evident, driven variously by egalitarian and stratifying impulses”
(Bidwell, 1991, pp. 190-191).

80

was also an aspiration of many, based on concrete prior historical experience.10

The belief in the power of education, specifically literacy, as a means of moral
improvement and salvation also had historical hearings in Protestant Reformation. In
the process of constitution of the modern republican states, the ideal of social
equalization through education turned into one of the central tenets, along with
universal suffrage, of contemporary democratic ideology: the hopes for social
equality, freedom, political participation, and fraternity (solidarity) converged to
education as the main tool of social construction through the formation of a new
individuality. Conceived as a catalyst, education represented the means to liberate and
develop human powers and to construct a just society by transforming natural
inequalities and overcoming previous social hierarchies based on birth rights. In the
new republican regimes of the Old World, and in the emergent nations of the New
World, public education appeared as a way of precisely eliminating family and class
privileges and the extremely restricted access to the literate, erudite culture, associated
with the previous aristocratic or colonial order. Individual freedom, rationality,
ability and merit became the new beliefs and values associated with liberal-economic,
scientific and technical progress; the self-made ’man, ’ active and rational, became the
model citizen.

Thus, ideals of social progress and order, productivity and just distribution of

wealth, individual liberation and economic security initially inspired the call of

 

‘° The earlier ascension of the bourgeoisie and that of various middle-class groups
during the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, was connected to

educational expansion, scientific and technical advancement, and the constitution of
the professions.

 

81

education for all, inviting the lower classes into the democratic project: the ideological
agenda of schooling pointed at granting access to a previously exclusive knowledge,
extending the traditional canons and the bourgeoisie’s new culture -as the very
condition for both sociopolitical participation and personal enjoyment - to the masses.
The ideology of education as the great social panacea, combining socioeconomic
progress and individual social mobility, became the counterpart of compulsority, a bait
into the school, the labor-market, democratic life, insofar as it corresponded to the
aspirations of part of the lower (especially urban, working) classes to the ’ good’ life.
In a sense, the public (compulsory) school materialized a new social contract (an
exchange of interests), pretending to offer a ’neutral’ educational terrain for
acquisition of a common, non-familiar, secular knowledge which would erase cultural
and social distinctions linked to family and class, thus consolidating a new democratic
order.

However, while the universalization of schooling meant democratization of
formal knowledge or high culture, it also meant the imposition of one cultural form
over others; while it meant access to a good and service from which the lower classes
were excluded, it also meant cultural uniformization via compulsory learning of an
arbitrary knowledge. Furthermore, the organization and the functioning of the school
system limited democratization to the lower level of schooling, and set off selection
processes (based on gender, race and class) toward its higher levels. Meritocracy, as
the justification for selection and discrimination, and social mobility (as both an
individual and systemic goal) within tight limits and through specific cultural codes,

recast the ideology of education as the main instrument of social equalization.

 

82

Therefore, the meanings of the public school were recreated by the interactions
of its new diverse clientele and the specific kinds of home, family, and social class
they originated from, and the evolving organization of the enlarged, bureaucratized,
horizontally and vertically differentiated, system. The social mobility meaning that
the upward classes assigned to schooling was generalized in the ideology of education
as the great equalizer; however, as curricular differentiation and inequality of
outcomes advanced, both the social equalization and mobility ideals fell short of

meaning in the concrete experience of many underprivileged groups.

Common and compulsory schooling in thé United States

In the United States schooling also appeared as an extension of the family, and
took the form of communitarian schools organized through local initiative and control
within small religious (puritan) communities. The association of liberal capitalism
and protestantism in a ’land of opportunity’ caused rapid and intense educational
progress "while the nation was largely rural and agricultural” (Guest & Tolnay, 1985,
p. 201); indeed, according to Tyack (1976), ”even before the common-school crusade
of the mid-nineteenth century and before any compulsory laws, Americans were
probably in the vanguard in literacy and mass schooling among the peoples of the
world” (p. 359).

The motivation for the common school movement - which is interestingly
called a ’reform’ - was already the need to centralize state authority over local
schools, and ”to find an effective substitute for the mechanisms of social control and

socialization that had characterized the preurban and preindustrial small stable

 

 

83

community” (Church & Sedlak, 1976, p. 80) by instilling common values (respect for
private property and authority, value of hard work) onto the lower orders or classes.
Indwd, according to Church & Sedlak (1976), the rhetoric of education for social
progress (meaning an efficient work-force) and democracy (meaning an educated
citizenry), and of the role of school in solving social problems was also present then.
However, under the republican-protestant—capitalist ideology, the common school
seemed to have served more a particular moral than a political-democratic enterprise,
as ”schooling should stress unity, obedience, restraint, self-sacrifice, and the careful
exercise of intelligence"11 (Kaestle, 1983, p. 81); in fact, as Kaestle (1983) notes,
"both gender and racial stereotypes contradicted the value placed on equality and
perfectibility in native Protestant ideology, and both kept the schools from being truly
common" (p. 89).

It is interesting to note that the very idea of a ’common school’ carries
ambiguous connotations: a school destined to the ”generality of mankind, " but to the
”commons, as contrasted with lords and nobility" (Williams, 1983, pp.70-7l), as
well, according to the etymology of the word common. ”The tension of these two
senses has been persistent. Common can indicate a whole group or interest or a large
specific and subordinate group" (Williams, 1983, p.71). Even in the sense of
generality, common carries the same tension and a derogatory meaning:

Common can be used to affirm something shared or to describe something

ordinary (itself ambivalent, related to order as series or sequence, hence
ordinary - in the usual course of things, but also to order as rank, social and

 

“ I am not implying that moral values are not political or do not bear specific
political interests and consequences, in that they conform body and mind in certain
(exclusive) productive ways.

8 4

military, hence ordinary - of an undistinguished kind); or again, in one kind of

use, to describe something low or vulgar (which has specialized in this sense

from a comparable origin, vulgus, Latin - the common people). (Williams,

1983, p. 71)
Therefore, the common (in the sense of ordinary, second order) local school—houses
contrasted from the beginning with the higher quality, exclusive, elite boarding
schools, which continued to serve the wealthy. ‘2

The peculiarity of the educational development in this country is that schools
were created by local, parental initiative. Indeed, from 1850 to 1890, following the
common school movement, schooling evolved in the United States with minimal
coercion by the states, consistently with the liberal crwd. Apparently there was no
need to enforce the existing compulsory-attendance laws, and besides compulsion
contradicted parental rights. According to Tyack (1976), there is evidence to suggest
that the enactment of compulsory-education laws came merely to formalize what was
already accomplished fact. Tyack (1976) calls this first period in the history of
compulsory school attendance in the United States the symbolic stage.

But the beliefs in the value of education had also an economic appeal. Horace
Mann, who had claimed that ”nothing but universal education can counter-work this
tendency to the domination of capital and the servility of labor, " also offered an

economic justification for greater investment in schooling (Twelfth Annual Report,

1948, in Cremin, 1957, p. 86). Anticipating human capital theory, he argued that

 

‘2 It is also interesting to note that higher education unfolded in the United States
within the model of the boarding school, a unique case in the world. Here middle and
upper class students go away to college (moving away from the family household,
always a more costly enterprize), while lower class students attend the local
community college. Elsewhere, limited public university housing is reserved for low
income students originated from small towns or rural areas.

85

schooling contributed economic benefits both to society as a whole - through greater
productivity, and to individuals - through greater earnings, and that uneducated
individuals were "economic burdens to the community” (Tyack, 1976, pp. 378, 382).
Moreover, he claimed that education "made workers punctual, industrious, frugal, and
too rational to cause trouble for their employers" (Tyack, 1976, p. 378). later, in the
1880s, "a committee of the United States Senate which took testimony on ’the
relations between labor and capital’ found that businessmen and employees across the
nation tended to agree that schooling increases the productivity and predictability of
workers" (Tyack, 1976, p. 379).

By the end of the nineteenth century, the liberal, laissez-faire capitalist venture
had created enormous and new social problems, due to periodical crisis in production,
expansion, shifts and relocations of the wage-labor force, and overpopulation in
precarious cities. While new monopolist arrangements took shape at the economic
level, a strong regulative State materialized in various extensive social reforms aiming
at national consolidation via the incorporation of the new urban masses, including the
new immigrants. The nwd to form ’citizens’ (in the sense of subjects of the
Republican State), by teaching a common language, a national history and ideology,
thus breaking with the diverse loyalties to families and ethnic groups, religions and
regions, and other interest groups, clearly appeared at that moment as a crucial
political role of education and schooling, especially in this country where the school
system had to come to grips with localism and religious conflicts, particularly among
various Protestant denominations and Catholicism.

The effective institution of compulsory schooling in the United States is

 

86

associated with various complex factors. On the one hand, ”waves of immigration
intensified the concern over the incorporation of new groups into the polity” (Tyack,
1976, p. 366). On the other hand, according to Bowles & Gintis (1976), the
expansion of schooling also responded to labor-capital conflicts, as extreme
exploitation of workers and concentration of wealth aroused labor militancy and claims
for educational access. Says Tyack:

Advocates of compulsory schooling often argued that families - or at least

some families, like those of the poor or foreign-born - were failing to carry out

their traditional functions of moral and vocational training. Immigrant children
in crowded cities, reformers complained, were leading disorderly lives,
schooled by the street and their peers more than by Christian nurture in the
home. Much of the drive for compulsory schooling reflected an animus
against parents considered incompetent to train their children. Often
combining fear of social unrest with humanitarian zeal, reformers used the
power of the state to intervene in families and to create alternative institutions

of socialization. (Tyack, 1976, p. 363)

Thus, the function of ’political socialization’ had a clear nativist intent combined with
ethnic and religious bias: compulsory school meant to impart the ’pietist’ American
character to "the emigrant, the freedman, and the operative” (Tyack, 1976, p. 372).

It is also plausible that, in practice, school came to assume a function of
socialization for urban life and for the new conditions of work. This is
understandable in terms of the practical difficulties of disseminating the ’high culture’ ,
a culture which was produced and reproduced in life conditions very different than
those of the masses. Therefore, social efficiency became a basic goal expressed as
social (more than intellectual) discipline: teaching the future workers the attitudes
adequate to the novel mode of production, which required a steady, regular, daily

rhythm of work, one very different from those of the peasants or autonomous

8 7
craftsmen (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). After all, the great social challenges of the time
were in the economic realm, specifically in the incorporation of workers and
immigrants into the new economic arrangements, preventing social dissension and
turmoil.

In this context, ”laws compelling school attendance were only part of an
elaborate and massive transformation in the legal and social rules governing children"
(Tyack, 1976, p. 363). The definition of the needs of children (typically by middle-
class professionals) is closely connected to political definitions of economic and social
needs, insofar as children incarnate the possibilities of social reproduction. By then,
the State had clearly assumed a ’parental role, ’ as the Supreme Court of Illinois
proclaimed in 1901:

The natural rights of a parent to the custody and control of his infant child are

subordinate to the power of the State. . .. One of the most important natural

duties of the parent is his obligation to educate his child, and this duty he owes
not to the child only, but to the commonwealth. If he neglects to perform it,
or willfully refuses to do so, he may be coerced by law to execute such civil
obligation. The welfare of the child and the best interests of society require
that the state shall exert its sovereign authority to secure to the child the

opportunity to acquire an education. (In Grubb & Lazerson, 1982, p. 25)

In sum, then and now, the notion of the right of every human being to
education - meaning formal education and literacy - finds its antithesis in the
institution of compulsory schooling in the name of constructing citizenship. To that
right corresponds both the obligation of the State to guarantee equal opportunities by
providing a single good quality school for all, and the obligation of the individual and
the family to take such opportunities and put them to best use in order to accomplish

both individual and social benefits, according to a tacit social contract. On the one

 

 

88

hand, notions of individual advancement, social mobility, economic productivity, and
social stability are implicit in the democratic ideal. On the other hand, the right of
access to valued universal knowledge and techniques may eventually be the object of
coercion in the name of the protection of children and in the interest of consolidation
of the social order. In fact, compulsory schooling came to be required for those who
didn’t see the value of education or for the recalcitrant.

Therefore, in the United States, the striking belief in the power of education,
with all its economic and cultural connotations, and the typical (Protestant) call for
effort and self-improvement, both justified and continues to justify the upward
mobility of some groups (mainly white-protestant, but also Jews, and more recently
Asians) in detriment of others (generally poor, black, Hispanics, and other ethnic
minorities), and the imposition of specific practices of acculturation - variably called
salvation, character reformation, liberation, empowerment, or else, from another
perspective, colonization, domestication, oppression - over poor, disenfranchised
groups. Moreover, it is clear that there are two distinct histories of education related
to social class: one in which a class has created and seized the value of schooling
within a particular (utilitarian) conception of education, and another in which
schooling, a non-familiar kind of education, has been imposed upon a class as a means
of salvation.13 The former is the history of the credentialing system; the latter is the

history of socioeconomic exclusion and school failure which continues to feed on the

 

‘3 This is seen all the time, for instance in current welfare programs for single
teen-age mothers which reward with additional money or punish with cuts in their
checks, according to school attendance or drop—out. See, for instance, the articles by
Besharov and Gardiner, in The Public Interest, Number 122, Winter 1996; and
Goertzel and Young, in The Public Interest, Number 125, Fall 1996.

 

 

 

89

various policies of ’organized child saving’ (Cravens, 1993), currently directed to the

so—called ’at-risk’ students.

Functional differentiation in the constitution of the educational system

Tyack (1976) calls the second period in the history of compulsory school
attendance in the United States, starting at the turn of the century, the bureaucratic
stage. “School systems grew in size and complexity, new techniques of bureaucratic
control emerged, ideological conflict over compulsion diminished, strong laws were
passed, and school officials developed sophisticated techniques to bring truants into
school" (p. 359). The movement toward centralization created city boards and state
departments of education, enforcing uniform educational standards, and gradually,
throughout the first half of the twentieth century, mass education reached the
secondary school. In this process, the bureaucratic educational machine grew under a
"corporate model of governance, " and the "rational expansion and functional
specialization of the schools“ was informed by the scientific paradigm of technical
rationality; the human sciences - psychology and the new ’educational science’ -
played an important role in justifying the new reforms. Interestingly, "advocates of
these new forms of governance argued that education should be taken out of politics
and that most decisions were best made by experts" (pp. 373-374).

Tyack (1976) suggests that the structural differentiation of the schools
developed as an intrinsic part of the machinery of compulsion: "Schools developed
not only new ways of finding children and getting them into school, but also new

institutions or programs to cope with the unwilling students whom truant officers

 

90

brought to their doors: parental schools, day-long truant schools, disciplinary classes,
ungraded classes and a host of specialized curricular tracks" (p. 374). At the same
time (as a result of the consolidation of the distinct process of middle-class schooling),
a movement towards a ’new school’ took shape (attuned with a particular middle-class
educational culture), reaching its apex in the second decade of the twentieth century.

Liberal educators strongly publicized the need to revise traditional educational
principles and practices and create a new pedagogy destined to elevate spiritually
human beings and convert school into an instrument of peace and democracy. The
attack on traditional schooling focused on its non-democratic character, teachers’
verbalism, and the imposition of a static knowledge on the students; in turn,
Progressive Education was based on the emergent psychological knowledge of child
development, and aimed at shifting the unilateral act of teaching into active
participation of the students in the process of learning. Considering students’ diversity
of backgrounds, conditions, inclinations, and aspirations, the new methods should
focus on the act of learning, and attend simultaneously to the individual’s unique
conditions of development, and to differences across individuals - quite a new
challenge for mass education.

What occurred, then, was a contradictory "amalgamation of democratic ideals
and bureaucratic techniques" (Higham, in Tyack, 1976, p. 375). There was a striking
historical convergence between a conception of liberal-democratic education concerned
with individual needs, expressed in the new curricular and pedagogical arrangements,
and the function of differentiation school was called to perform. The outcome was the

creation of a unique curricular ’choice’ system, based on ’natural’ intelligence or

91

talent, and effort or merit. Indwd, the American solution for educational
democratization is unparalleled: the system embraces all and comports everyone but
grants differentiated experiences and outcomes. Gagnon (1995) calls this system one
of ”different but equal schools, " which is more encompassing than the "separate but
equal” racist system, and has well survived it.

Bowles & Gintis (1976) explain educational expansion and progressivism as an
attempt to control workers by improving social conditions and inhibiting conflict,
while legitimating and perpetuating the capitalist social relations of production. They
argue that school has performed a critical role in regulating social and economic
crisis, through its very expansion and differentiation, amplifying access but providing
differentiated and hierarchized school curricula corresponding to the productive
requirements of an increasingly segmented labor force. In this process, all are
accommodated, but differential treatment based on sex and ethnicity concretely
separates and alienates low class students. Ultimately, the rhetoric of equality of
opportrmities through education rationalizes unequal educational outcomes, further
converted in unequal income and status, justifying prior social inequalities.

Thus, the horizontal and vertical expansion of the educational system provided
for a continual and ever more complicated "mass triage, " based on race, ethnicity,
language, social class, sex, 'deportment," and intelligence (as measured by tests), all
apparently originated in family conditions (Gagnon, 1995). It did away with the idea
of a common education in various aspects and degrees, mostly with respect to access
to valued knowledge. In this way, schooling became the great symbolic institutional

mechanism of recomposition of social hierarchies in a rapid-pace changing society.

92

2. Education and social inequality

What has schooling accomplished for the entire society and for its diverse
groups so far? The development of schooling in the United States is perhaps the most
illustrative case of tremendous social equalization in terms of access, and extreme
social differentiation, in terms of school conditions (both material and curricular) and
individual and group outcomes. Indeed, as much as educational access expanded at all
levels, comparative assessment of individual and group levels of attainment across sex,
ethnicity, linguistic background or style, and social class has shown patterns of
differentiated outcomes related to these categories. Open access has not meant
equality of opportunities and conditions in the first place, insofar as horizontal
differentiation of the quality of school and curricular experiences has followed, as
exemplified by racial segregation, tracking, and striking contrasts between wealthy
subm'ban schools and depleted inner city schools (Rist, 1970; Anyon, 1981; Oakes,
1986; Kozol, 1991). But even where students presumably enjoy equal opportunities,
differentiated outcomes are produced through complex and subtle processes within the
school’s workings, through the interaction of students’ prior cultural and individual
traits with those which characterize the school’s knowledge/discourse and
norms/practices (Keddie, 1971; Heath, 1983; Michaels, 1986; Mehan, Hertweck, &
Meihls, 1986; Cadzen, 1988). Furthermore, the vertical expansion of the system has
also preserved the rarity of higher education experiences and credentials for a
restricted group (Labaree, 1997). Overall, increasingly higher levels of general
educational attainment have not affected basic social hierarchies nor made significant

difference in minimizing social inequalities.

9 3

In the sixties, following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an extensive survey was
carried out in order to assess inequalities of educational opportunity for minority
groups (African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, Native-Americans,
and Asian-Americans) in the U. S. educational system. Known as the Coleman
Report (Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1966), its findings revealed that the
achievement of the average N ative—American, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, and
African-American (in descending order) was much lower than that of the average
white and Asian-American in grades 1, 3, 6, 9, and 12, as measured by standardized
tests. In effect, ”at the beginning of the twelfth grade, these groups were, on the
average, three, four, or five grade levels behind whites in reading comprehension, and
four, five, or six grade levels behind in mathematics achievement" (Coleman, 1967 ,
p. 21). But the survey also indicated that

within broad geographic regions, and for each racial or ethnic group, the

physical and economic resources going into a school had very little relation to

the achievement coming out of it; variations in teacher salaries, library

facilities, laboratories, school size, guidance facilities had little relation to

student achievement - when the family backgrounds of the students were

roughly equated. (Coleman, 1967, p. 21)
Moreover, the ”strong relation of family economic and educational background to
achievement” increased over the school years: "at the end of school, the conditional
probabilities of high achievement are even more conditional upon racial or ethnic
background than they are at the beginning of school" (Coleman, 1966, p. 73).

Coleman (1966) interpreted these findings in the following terms:

(1) these minority children have a serious educational deficiency at the start of

school, which is obviously not a result of school; and (2) they have an even

more serious deficiency at the end of school, which is obviously in part a
result of school. (Coleman, 1966, pp. 72-73)

9 4

Altogether, the sources of inequality of educational opportunity appear to lie

first in the home itself and the cultural influences immediately surrounding the

home; then they lie in the schools’ inefi'ectiveness to flee achievement from the
impact of the home, and in the schools’ cultural homogeneity which

perpetuates the social influences of the home and its environs. (Coleman, 1966,

pp.73-74)

The determining weight of the educational and economic resources provided by
the home was also evidenced in the connection between school social environment
(resulting from family background) and variation in achievement across schools, in the
specific context of racial, class, and cultural homogeneity of both the student and
teacher bodies of U. 8. schools: ”Per pupil expenditure, books in the library, and a
host of other facilities and curricular measures show virtually no relation to
achievement if the social environment of the school - the educational backgrounds of
other students and teachers — is held constant" (Coleman, 1966, p. 73). Given this
homogeneity, ”the principal agents of effectiveness in the schools -teachers and other
students - act to maintain or reinforce the initial differences imposed by social origins”
(p. 73). Whereas ”homogeneity works to the disadvantage of those children whose
family’s educational resources are meagre” (Coleman, 1967, p. 22), heterogeneity aids
achievement: "students do better when they are in schools where their fellow students
come from backgrounds strong in educational motivation and resources. . .. This effect
appears to be particularly great for students who themselves come from educationally-
deprived backgrounds” (p. 21).

Therefore, the policy challenge then was simultaneously to desegregate the

schools (promoting cultural heterogeneity), and to provide equal opportunity for

educational performance (raising the achievement of minority groups):

95

In some part, the difficulties and complexity of any solution derive from the

premise that our society is committed to overcoming not merely inequalities in
the distribution of educational resources, but inequalities in the opportunity for
educational achievement. This is a task far more ambitious than has ever been

attempted by any society: - not just to offer, in a passive way, equal access to

educational resources, but to provide an educational environment that will free

a child’s potentialities for learning from the inequalities imposed upon him by

the accident of birth into one or another home and social environment.

(Coleman, 1967, pp. 20-21)

On the one hand, Coleman (1966) recognized the need to make the educational
program of the school more effective, for "the weakness of this program is apparent
in its inability to overcome initial differences" (p. 74). Along this line, he stated that
"equality of educational opportunity implies, not merely ’equal’ schools, but equally
effective schools, whose influences will overcome the difi’erences in starting point of
children fiom difl’erent social groups” (p. 72, italics added), pointing at equality of
outcomes. On the other hand, he was cautious to say that ”the only kinds of policies
that appear in any way viable are those which do not seek to improve the education of
Negroes and other educationally disadvantaged at the expense of those who are
educationally advantaged. This implies new kinds of educational institutions, with a
vast increase in expenditures for education - not merely for the disadvantaged but for
all children” (p. 74). Indeed, he proposed a very ingenious solution - the open
school, which I address subsequently; yet, he did not say how it would be possible to

overcome disadvantages while maintaining advantages, that is, without any specific

costs for the advantaged or redefinition of the very meaning of advantage.

96

The role of the family in the production of school outcomes: the cultural deficit
model

By calling minority children’s background knowledge and home experiences ”a
serious educational deficiency" (1966, p. 72), and by referring to their ”educationally-
deprived backgrounds” (1967 , p. 21), Coleman is clearly adopting the cultural deficit
view. According to this view, the ways of life of those who don’t belong to a
particular (hegemonic) culture are not legitimate and, therefore, are not even
recognized as a distinct culture. Likewise, it does not recognize any other form of
education different than schooling, formal learning, or the subjects and sentiments
historically constructed by the dominant classes. An alternative view contemplates
diverse cultures and respective modes of education within power relations, so that
white schooled individuals, for instance, could be considered deficient in Ebonics, or
deprived of certain knowledges foreign to their life style. Because white schooled
individuals, within prevalent social relations, have nothing to lose by not speaking
Ebonics or by ignoring a variety of knowledges typical of the experiences of
oppressed groups, they tend to be blind to (as they find themselves in a comfortable
position to deny) the culture and the mode of education of those groups.

By stating that "the sources of inequality of educational opportrmity appear to
lie first in the home itself and the cultural influences immediately surrounding the
home” (1966, pp.73-74), by curiously conceiving the home as a setting of educational
opportunity, Coleman does not explicitly distinguish between an institution (school)
expressly entrusted with the political function of providing educational opportunity and

another (family) which cannot be properly defined in terms of this function. Thus,

97

whereas sources of social inequality lie in the home and its environs, and inequalities
(previously produced) are originally "imposed by the accident of birth into one or
another home and social environment" (1967, p. 21), sources of inequality of
educational opportunity are produced at school (for instance, ability grouping,
tracking), and not by accident. In other words, original social inequality is
reproduced through the production of educational opportunities of a certain kind,
either through the provision of differentiated opportunities (again, tracking), or even
of equal opportunities for individuals who are not equally able to take advantage of
them. To attribute to the family the function of providing educational opportunity
(but opportunity of an education of a certain kind), when families vary in their
economic and educational conditions, means making them responsible for the fate of
children across the other institutions of a very complex society; to recognize the
incapacity of families (prey of social inequality) to provide equal education (the
argument for compulsory schooling), means to establish their dependency upon
effective schools. In other words, the school is the institution which mediates between
original social (family) inequality and the construction of social equality or inequality;
to imply that the family should exert such a mediation role defeating social inequality,
conversely, seems unrealistic and unfair.

This is not about inconsequential language minutia; it reveals specific
conceptions and a precise type of family-school relations: "The schools were once
seen as a supplement to the family in bringing a child into his place in adult society,
and they still function largely as such a supplement, merely perpetuating the

inequalities of birth" (Coleman, 1966, p. 75). Here Coleman recognizes the role of

9 8
schools in reproducing social inequalities, by functioning as "a supplement to the
family,” an extension of a particular type of family - a setting in which a family’s
standing is projected, advanced, fortified, continued - "in bringing a child into his
place in adult society, " into a predetermined place within a static social project. In
fact, as it was empirically demonstrated by Lareau (1993), upper-middle class families
are the ones which exert an active mediation role within the interaction between their
children’s individual traits and the school format, precisely because they are in a
condition to do so.

How could schools function differently, in order to promote equality of
educational Opportunities and outcomes? Despite some rhetorical ambiguities,
Coleman offered in the sixties a radical policy solution, a whole systenric reform,
which is especially interesting in that it anticipated many of the reform attempts that
followed and are now being implemented in the nineties.

In order to attend on the specific backwardness of minority achievement, and
consonant with the deficit view, Coleman proposed the substitution of the home
environment of the educationally—deprived by larger amounts of schooling: ”For those
children whose family and neighborhood are educationally disadvantaged, it is
important to replace this family environment as much as possible with an educational
environment - by starting school at an earlier age, and by having a school which
begins very early in the day and ends very late" (1966, p.74). Here what is basically

required are funds for special programs targeted at minorities, in order to improve the

99

education of the disadvantaged at minimum cost“ for the advantaged: "the solutions
might be in the form of educational parks, or in the form of private schools paid by
tuition grants (with Federal regulations to insure racial heterogeneity), public (or
publicly subsidized) boarding schools" (1966, p. 74).

But the reduction of the social and racial homogeneity of the school
environment was (and still is) quite a challenge. Coleman argued that ”heterogeneity
of race and heterogeneity of family educational background can increase the
achievement of children from weak educational backgrounds with no adverse effect on
children from strong educational backgrounds” (Coleman, 1967, p. 22). Because
educationally strong middle class students are the prototype, the model to be followed
(hence they supposedly would need to be in greater numbers in order to influence the
educationally weak), Coleman found a peculiar difficulty in desegregating schools and
classrooms: ”there are simply not enough middle class children to go around” (1967,
p. 22). He also saw obstacles in institutions like the neighborhood school and

tracking - which (he didn’t say) have served well the educationally advantaged."

 

1‘ Indeed, extra educational expenditure targeted at the disadvantaged means a
minimum cost for the advantaged insofar as the whole educational mode remains
untouched, which comes down to reproduction of the advantage. Of course, the ideal
situation for the advantaged would be no investment in compensatory education, and
therefore no cost.

1’ Indeed, heterogeneity could have a (so-perceived) adverse effect on white
middle class children if they became minority in a school and classroom, submitted
(even to a minor degree) to the educational and cultural standards of the majority.

The adoption by white middle class students of the speech and dressing styles of black
teens, for instance, would surely bother their parents. The equity-cultural
homogeneity relation is phrased in these terms: the findings show that "integration
aids equality of opportunity . .. Conversely, of course, greater equality of performance
facilitates integration, making ’ grouping’ or ’tracking’ within schools unnecessary”
(Coleman, 1967, p. 24).

 

 

100

Thus, the solution he envisioned was a radical and inventive school choice system:
open schools as centers of operations towards the two goals of achievement and
integration.

Coleman’s model conciliates state control and free initiative, social efficiency
and consumer choice. Open schools are ”a home-base that carries out some teaching
functions but which serves principally to coordinate [students’] activities and to
perform guidance and testing functions" (1967, p. 24). The teaching of each subject-
matter “would be opened up to entrepreneurs outside the school, under contract with
the school system and paid on the basis of increased performance by the [students]
on standardized tests. . .. The payment-by-results would quickly eliminate the
unsuccessful contractors, and the contractors would provide testing grounds for
innovations that could subsequently be used by the school" (p. 25) . While some
schools would outlast the competition, others might lose most of their teaching
frmctions: "The contract centers [would] provide the school with a source of
innovation as well as a source of competition to measure its own efforts, neither of
which it has had in the past" (p. 27). Parental choice would be a key element of the
model: "The school would find it necessary to compete with the system’s external
contractors to provide better education, and the parent could, for the first time in
education, have the full privileges of consumer’s choice" (p. 25), "as well as the
opportunity to help establish special purpose programs” (p. 27). To overcome the
problem of racial and class segregation, classes and activities could be organized on a
cross-school basis, with students from different home-base schools gathering as

members of the same team or club in a variety of interscholastic academic events.

101

Community organizations would also be able to act as contractors, offering cultural
enrichment and community action programs involving students from several schools
and diverse class and ethnic backgrounds, according to the free choice of parent or
student. Finally, state control would both prevent resegregation along racial or class
lines in the organization of the contracted-classes by regulating enrollment, and would
maintain the common standards ”always with the public school establishing the criteria
for achievement, and testing the results" (p. 26).

One interesting aspect of this model is the reduction of the educational
bureaucracy to control of educational outcomes, while parental control would focus on
the educational process, with ample choice of methods, but not of the tested contents.
Coleman (1967) recognized that the public educational system is a monopoly where
consumers lack free choice and, therefore, can only exercise their interest through
organized power, but he seemed to suggest that a better locus of consumer organized
power may be found outside the educational system. Ultimately, he diverts the focus
from issues of curricular content, school knowledge and culture.

Albeit vaguely, Coleman (1966) pointed at the need to make the educational
program of the school more effective, by reorganizing the cruriculum within schools
and adopting new instructional methods: "One of the major reasons for ’tracking’ is
the narrowness of our teaching methods - they can tolerate only a narrow range of
skill in the same classroom. Methods which greatly widen the range are necessary to
make possible racial and cultural integration within a school - and thus to make
possible the informal learning that other students of higher educational levels can

provide” (pp. 74-75). (Here, again, the problem and the solution is not content but

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method.) However, he seems to find school reform limited in face of social inequality
of students’ backgrounds: ”Thus, a more intense reconstruction of the child’s social
environment than that provided by school integration is necessary to remove the
handicap of a poor family background" (1967, p. 23).

Finally, Coleman (1966) also stresses the importance of attitudes for minorities
(the feeling of control of one’s own fate, the belief in effort over luck) in overcoming
obstacles: ”those Negroes who gave responses indicating a sense of control of their
own fate achieved higher on the tests than those whites who gave the opposite
responses. This attitude was more highly related to achievement than any other factor
in the student’s background or school. . . . The determination to overcome relevant
obstacles, and the belief that he will overcome them may be the most crucial
elements in achieving equality of opportunity" (p. 75). This reveals a choice of
individual and symbolic factors (personal qualities) over social and material factors
(institutional and economic constraints), and blindness to the stronger original
determination of the second group of factors within their mutual interaction, in the

explanation of the construction of inequality.

The role of the educational system in the reproduction of social inequality:
social reproduction through cultural reproduction

Let’s retrieve Coleman’s fundamental questions: Why are schools ineffective
to free achievement from the impact of the home? How can schools reduce the

dependence of a child’s opportunities upon his social origins?

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In the seventies, theories of social reproduction through education,“5 presenting
a macro, socio-structural view, and theories of cultural production, focusing on micro,
institutional processes of cultural imposition and individual and group processes of
opposition and resistance (Willis, 1977), offered challenging accounts of the re-
production of social inequality through and within schools.

The most encompassing and original sociological approach to the role of the
educational system in the reproduction of social inequality - and, more generally, the
intersection of capitalist schooling, symbolic production and domination - has been
offered by Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) in ”Reproduction in Education, Society and
Culture, " and further elaborated by Bourdieu (1977 ; 1986). In these works, they
present rich possibilities to think of social interactions as power-charged symbolic

exchanges” within the simultaneous play of class and individual, objective and

 

‘5 Reproductivist theories provide a structural-dynamic account of the general
process of social reproduction, illuminating particularly one way (the current plot) of
this process. The process of social reproduction always entails renewal, despite
inherent inertia, and potentially allows for transformation within the parameters of
complexly regulated collective practices. It is important to stress here that individual
agency can only be played in concert, and this play (including the part each individual
plays and the whole plot) is still mostly unconscious: it has been powerful in
recreating relations of domination and oppression through negative resistance (Willis,
1977), for instance, and powerless so far to produce radical transformation. It is also
crucial to recognize that it is not possible to change the plot (the current way) of
social reproduction without learning well its dynamics and contents. As reproduction
and transformation basically depend on both individual and collective practices of
conscientization and organization, this corresponds precisely to the need and the task
of an education which aspires to go beyond conservation of the unjust status quo.

‘7 Bourdieu (1986) proposes a general science of the economy of practices,
expanding the realm of economy to include all forms of exchange, and precisely those
which appear as disinterested: ”those forms of exchange which ensure the
transubstantiation whereby the most material types of capital - those which are
economic in the restricted sense - can present themselves in the immaterial form of

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subjective, systemic and personal interests, and to envision education as symbolic
violence (necessarily including cultural imposition, discrimination, and exclusion), and
as a main site of production of (class) cultural hegemony. Therefore, they allow us to
understand that the problematic of equality of educational opportunities and inequality
of school outcomes - and, more complicatedly, the social outcomes of education - is
not enclosed by the actions and interactions of individuals, schools and families, but is
broadly inscribed into cultural struggles rooted in (class) economic competition.

Briefly, Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) explain school’s ineffectiveness to free
achievement from the impact of the home in terms of its effectiveness to reproduce
social inequality on the basis of family and class cultural differences. Bourdieu (1986)
frames the specific role of the school in the reproduction of class hierarchies within
the complex interplay of various forms of symbolic and economic capital across
family, school, and market. Finally, Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) and Bourdieu
(1977) indicate how cultural and class reproduction works pedagogically and how the
school and the teacher keep its cycle.

The cycle of cultural and social reproduction articulates individuals and
su'uctures within capital exchanges and conversions: symbolic and economic forms of
capital, initially available in the home environment, produce and reproduce the
cultrual capital (valued knowledge and skills) which is further developed in school,
and converted into educational credentials, which in turn are exchanged by social and
economic capital (jobs and income), according to the broader rules of the market. In

this cycle, the modern educational system plays a specific role in the ”reproduction of

 

cultural capital or social capital and vice versa" (p. 242).

105

the structure of power relationships and symbolic relationships between classes, by
contributing to the reproduction of the structure of the distribution of cultural capital
among these classes. " Rather than promoting equity or social mobility," the
educational system provides a solution ”to the problem of the transmission of power
and privileges (. . .) by contributing to the reproduction of the structure of class
relations and by concealing, by an apparently neutral attitude, the fact that it fills this
function“ (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 487-488).

Thus, the function of cultural reproduction (proper to all educational systems)
is connected to their function of social reproduction: cultural reproduction legitimates
the fact of economic and class reproduction. This is so because the ”different
pedagogic actions (. . .) carried out by families from the different social classes as well
as that which is practised by the school [do not] work together in a harmonious way
to transmit a cultural heritage which is considered [by classical theories] as being the
undivided property of the whole society” (Bourdieu, 1977 , p. 488). In fact,

. .. the inheritance of cultrual wealth which has been accumulated and

bequeathed by previous generations only really belongs (although it is

theoretically offered to everyone) to those endowed with the means of
appropriating it for themselves. In view of the fact that the apprehension and
possession of cultrnal goods as symbolic goods (along with the symbolic
satisfactions which accompany an appropriation of this kind) are possible only
for those who hold the code making it possible to decipher them or, in other
words, that the appropriation of symbolic goods presupposes the possession of
the instruments of appropriation, it is sufficient to give free play to the laws of

cultural transmission for cultural capital to be added to cultural capital and for
the structrue of the distribution of cultural capital between social classes to be

 

“ We can envision social mobility at moments of economic expansion with the
eventual redefinition of cultural capital and redistribution of economic capital among
class fractions. Social mobility via education, specifically, has been accomplished (to
a limited extent) within the vertical expansion of the educational system, which
recreated social hierarchies in new and more complex ways.

106

thereby reproduced. (Bourdieu, 1977 , p. 488)

The process of education, or internalization of cultrual capital, initiated in the
family environment, consists of ”the production of the habitus, that system of
dispositions which acts as a mediator between structures and practice" (Bourdieu,
1977, p. 487). The school builds upon a prior particular habitus, hence legitimating a
certain kind of family cultural capital. It follows that the action of the educational
system is the most effective the more it involves individuals who have enjoyed a prior
familiarity with the symbolic wealth that constitutes ’legitimate’ culture in their family
upbringing.19 In this way, says Bourdieu (1977), ”the educational system reproduces
all the more perfectly the structure of the distribution of cultural capital among classes
(and sections of a class) in that the culture which it transmits is closer to the dominant
culture and that the mode of inculcation to which it has recourse is less removed from
the mode of inculcation practised by the family” (p. 493). In effect, the school at
once ensures a cultural monopoly and benefits those families that are capable of
transmitting by their own means the instruments necessary for the reception of its
message.

The problem for lower class families and their students is that, while they lack

the cultural capital to take advantage of educational opportunities, the school precisely

 

‘9 ”Indeed, it would seem that the action of the school, whose effect is unequal
(if only from the point of view of duration) among children from different social
classes, and whose success varies considerably among those upon whom it has an
effect, tends to reinforce and to consecrate by its sanctions the initial inequalities.
[Thus] .. . what is measured by means of the level of education is nothing other than
the accumulation of the effects of training acquired within the family and the academic
appggrceships which themselves presupposed this previous training (Bourdieu, 1977,
p. .

107

fails to transmit explicitly the means of appropriation of the dominant culture, thereby
creating the opportunity for their acquisition of educational credentials - and,
hopefully, for the development of critical consciousness. In this way, lower class
students tend to fail in the formally neutral academic market, and the school system
ends up reinforcing and consecrating initial social inequalities. As Bourdieu (1977)
explains, “the educational system never succeeds quite so completely in imposing
recognition of its value and of the value of its classifications [credentials] as when its
sanctions are brought to bear upon classes or sections of a class which are unable to
set against it any rival principle of hierarchical ordering" (p. 504).

On top of that, academic credentials depend on the objective sanctions of a
market dominated by the symbolic products of the educational work of the families of
the dominant classes, who also hold the monopoly of the most prestigious schools. In
reality, academic capital (a form of cultural capital) is a weak currency which depends
upon the economic and social capital which can be put to its valorization; so, whereas
the academic investments of the ruling classes cannot fail to be extremely profitable,
the diploma is utterly indispensable for those from families less favoured in economic
and social capital. Therefore, the educational system enjoys small real autonomy,
exerting mainly a function of legitimation, by converting social hierarchies into
educational hierarchies, in this way anticipating the objective sanctions of the symbolic
and economic market.

The specificity of the pedagogical action of the school - the conversion of the
primary habitus into knowledges and skills exchangeable by formal qualifications or

credentials - is further explained: As the mastery ”of the available instruments of

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appropriation and, more specifically, of the generic and particular code of the work of
art" [or any cultural object]2° is "the necessary condition for the deciphering of [and
appropriation] of the work, "

in the specific case of works of ’high’ culture, mastery of the code cannot be
totally acquired by means of the simple and diffuse apprenticeships provided by
daily existence but presupposes an education methodically organized by an
institution specially equipped for this pm'pose. It is to be noted, however, that
the yield of pedagogic communication, entrusted, among other functions, with
the responsibility of transmitting the code of works of ’high’ culture, along
with the code according to which this transmission is carried out, is itself a
frmction of the cultural competence that the receiver owes to his family
upbringing, which is more or less close to the ’high’ culture transmitted by the
colleges and to the linguistic and cultural models according to which this
transmission is carried out. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 493)

In sum, the contribution of schooling to social equalization - that is, the
provision of equality of educational opportunity for social and economic advancement
and minimization of inequality - is restricted initially by the very cultural-pedagogical
processes which produce unequal school outcomes, and Ma by the market-driven
relationship between educational credentials and economic and social rewards:

The laws of the market which fixes the economic or symbolic value, i.e. the

value qua cultural capital, of the cultural arbitraries produced by the different

pedagogic actions and thus of the products of those pedagogic actions (educated
individuals), are one of the mechanisms - more or less determinant according
to the type of social formation - through which social reproduction, defined as
the reproduction of the structure of the relations of force between the classes,

is accomplished. (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 11)

Ultimately, the school is nothing but a specific setting of social exchanges and
circulation of cultural capital in a society marked by differentiated distribution of

material and symbolic resources.

 

2° Bourdieu (1977) is focusing here particularly on theatre, concert, and museum
attendance.

 

1 0 9
Symbolic capital

In ”The Forms of Capital, " Bourdieu (1986) proposes the expansion of the
concept of capital to include various symbolic forms, also liable to "accumulation and
all its effects" (p. 241). He develops the concepts of cultural and social capital,
”transformed, disguised forms of economic capital" (p. 252), not quite reducible to it
but, nevertheless, on certain conditions, convertible into it21 - forms which "produce
their most specific effects only to the extent that they conceal (not least from their
possessors) the fact that economic capital is . .. at the root of their effects" (p. 252).
Furthermore, he describes how the conservation of capital works precisely through
conversions from one type of capital into another, and how symbolic conversions are
marked by ”the essential ambiguity of social exchange, which presupposes (. . .) a
much more subtle economy of time" (p. 252).

For Bourdieu, capital is power. He defines it as ”accumulated labor (in its
materialized form or its ”incorporated ’, embodied form) which, when appropriated on
a private, i. e. , exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to
appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (Bourdieu, 1986, p.
241). As material resources and internal powers of individuals, subject to
appropriation and assimilation, exchanges and conversions, capital is a ”force

inscribed in objective or subjective structures" (p. 241), a voucher, a password; and,

 

2‘ Bourdieu (1986) claims that the understanding of the logic of capital requires
that two opposing views be superseded: "economism, which, on the grounds that
every type of capital is reducible in the last analysis to economic capital, ignores what
makes the specific efficacy of the other types of capital, " and 'semiologism (nowadays
represented by structuralism, symbolic interactionism, or ethnomethodology), which
reduces social exchanges to phenomena of communication and ignores the brutal fact
of universal reducibility to economics“ (pp. 252-253).

 

110

most importantly, it is a structuring force: the condition of time for acquisition and
accumulation, the specific cumulative effect of inertia in reproduction, and the
existence (at any given time) of unequally distributed and diverse forms of capital
demarcate the possibilities of social practices.22 He defines symbolic capital as
”capital - in whatever form - insofar as it is represented, i.e. apprehended
symbolically, in a relationship of knowledge or, more precisely, of misrecognition and
recognition, [which] presupposes the intervention of the habitus, as a socially
constituted cognitive capacity” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 255), ergo education.

Cultural capital presents itself in three forms: (a) in the embodied state - its
fundamental form - "as long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body;" (b) in the
objectified state, as "cultural goods, which are the trace or realization of theories or
their critiques; " and (c) in the institutionalized state, a distinctive form of
objectification, as educational qualifications, which ”confers entirely original
properties on the cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee” (Bourdieu, 1986,
p. 243).

Embodied cultural capital is "external wealth converted into an integral part of

 

2’ As he says it:
Capital, which in its objectified or embodied forms, takes time to accumulate
and which, as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in
identical or expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being, is a
force inscribed in the objectivity of things so that everything is not equally
possible or impossible. And the structure of the distribution of the different
types and subtypes of capital at a given moment in time represents the
immanent structure of the social world, i.e., the set of constraints, inscribed in
the very reality of that world, which govern its functioning in a durable way,
$tgmining the chances of success for practices. (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 241-

111

the person, into a habitus" (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 244-245). Therefore, it ”implies a
labor of inculcation and assimilation, costs time, time which must be invested
personally by the investor. . .. The work of acquisition is work on oneself (self-
improvement), an effort that presupposes a personal cost, an investment, above all of
time, but also of that socially constituted form of libido, with all the privation,
renunciation, and sacrifice that it may entail” (p. 244). This can be visualized, for
instance, in the learning how to play well a musical instrument, or any intentionally
developed competence.

But cultural capital is also acquired ”in the absence of any deliberate
inculcation, and therefore quite unconsciously” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 245) during the
initial period of socialization. ”The process of appropriating objectified cultural
capital and the time necessary for it to take place mainly depend on the cultural
capital embodied in the whole family” - through the automatic educative effect exerted
by all cultural goods present in the child’s environment, like books and computers,
"and all forms of implicit transmission" (p. 246) - such as the images suggested by
’parental involvement.’ Thus, cultural capital ”always remains marked by its earliest
conditions of acquisition which, through the more or less visible marks they leave. . . ,
help to determine its distinctive value” (p. 245). This is the case of linguistic accents,
social manners, dressing styles, tastes, etc., naturally acquired - without that much
effort - by immersion in social situations.

In class societies, where the distribution of capital is uneven - more precisely,
where access to the means of producing and enjoying cultural and material resources

is unequal and an object of competition - and where power asymmetries among social

 

112

groups determine differentiated values for the available resources, scarcity generates
profits of distinction for the owners of a large or highly valued form of cultural
capital.23 The advantages seemed by disfinction are "based, in the last analysis, on the
fact that all agents do not have the economic and cultural means for prolonging their
children’s education beyond the minimum necessary for the reproduction of the labor-
power least valorized at a given moment” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 245). Thus, the time
available for acquisition - "time flee fiom economic necessity” (p. 246) - is what
makes the link between economic and cultrual capital:
the initial accumulation of cultural capital, the precondition for the fast,
easy accumulation of every kind of useful cultural capital, starts at the outset,
without delay, without wasted time, only for the offspring of families endowed
with strong cultural capital; in this case, the accumulation period covers the
whole period of socialization. It follows that the transmission of cultural
capital is no doubt the best hidden form of hereditary transmission of capital,
and it therefore receives proportionately greater weight in the system of
reproduction strategies, as the direct, visible forms of transmission tend to be
more strongly censored and controlled. (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 246)
Fruthermore, says Bourdieu (1986), because it is ”linked in numerous ways to
the person in his biological singularity and is subject to [an almost invisible]
hereditary transmission, " and ”because the social conditions of its transmission and
acquisition are more disguised than those of economic capital, " embodied cultural

capital tends to be ”unrecognized as capital and recognized as legitimate competence"

 

’3 ”The structure of the field, i. e., the unequal distribution of capital, is the
source of the specific effects of capital, i. e. , the appropriation of profits and the
power to impose the laws of functioning of the field most favorable to capital and its
reproduction" (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 246). We can think here of the structure of parental
involvement, the uneven distribution of available parents across students’ families,
generating distinction - a distinction that is discernible in homework completion, and
parental visibility in the school -, and the likely agreement between teachers and
involved parents about its benefits tending to legitimate and perpetuate it.

113

(p. 245), the result of innate talent or discrete, independent effort, conferring prestige
or merit to its possessor.

Along this line, the properties of objectified cultural capital, ”are defined only
in the relationship with cultural capital in its embodied form" (Bourdieu, 1986, p.
246), for "the cultural object, as a living social institution, is, simultaneously, a
socially instituted material object and a particular class of habitus, to which it is
addressed” (p. 256). Thus, the specific appropriation of ”the cultural capital
objectified in material objects and media, such as writings, paintings monuments,
instruments, etc. , " presupposes ”the possession of the means of consuming" (pp. 246-
247), that is, embodied capital. Nevertheless, 'cultmal capital in its objectified state
presents itself with all the appearances of an autonomous, coherent universe
irreducible to that which each agent, or even the aggregate of the agents, can
appropriate" (p. 247). Such appearance of autonomy is even greater in the case of
institutionalized cultural capital:

The objectification of cultural capital in the form of academic qualifications is
one way of neutralizing some of the properties it derives from the fact that,
being embodied, it has the same biological limits as its bearer. This
objectification is what makes the difference between the capital of the
autodidact, which may be called into question at any time, . . . and the cultural
capital academically sanctioned by legally guaranteed qualifications, formally
independent of the person of their bearer. With the academic qualification, a
certificate of cultural competence which confers on its holder a conventional,
constant, legally guaranteed value with respect to culture, social alchemy
produces a form of cultural capital which has a relative autonomy vis-a-vis its
bearer and even vis-a-vis the cultural capital he effectively possesses at a given
moment in time.... In this case, one sees clearly the performative magic of the
power of instituting, the power to show forth and secure belief or, in a word,
to impose recognition. (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 247-248)

Academic qualifications work as a way to grant institutional recognition on the

1 1 4
cultural capital held and manifested by individuals, making it possible "to compare
qualification holders, to establish conversion rates between cultural capital and
economic capital by guaranteeing the monetary value of a given academic capital,
[and to establish] the value, in terms of cultural capital, of the holder of a given
qualification relative to other qualification holders and, by the same token, the
monetary value for which it can be exchanged on the labor market” (Bourdieu, 1986,
p. 248). Furthermore, the material and symbolic profits of academic qualifications
are subject to scarcity, to fluctuation "in the conversion rate between academic capital
and economic capital," and to uncertainty due to ”changes in the structure of the
chances of profit offered by the different types of capital” (p. 248).

Social capital“ is defined as ”the aggregate of the actual or potential
resources” which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less
institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition - or in other
words, to membership in a group - which provides each of its members with the

backing of the collectivity-owned capital, a ’credential’ which entitles them to credit,

 

2‘ For a different concept of social capital see Coleman (1987), who defines it as
”the norms, the social networks, and the relationships between adults and children [in
the family and in the community] that are of value for the child’s growing up” (p.
36). His notion of social capital as social values, resources, and patterns of
interaction within intergenerational relationships and communities, is not that of a
symbolic currency linked to group membership; Coleman seems to focus on discrete
structures which have educational value, whereas Bourdieu refers to structuring forces
which create value or power within a system of exchanges.

2’ Contrasting examples of such resources are the title of nobility - ”the form par
excellence of the institutionalized social capital which guarantees a particular form of
social relationship in a lasting way” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 251), and manners - "insofar
as, through the mode of acquisition they point to, they indicate initial membership of
a more or less prestigious group” (p. 256).

1 1 5
in the various senses of the word" (Bourdieu, 1986, pp. 248-249). Hence, ”the
volume of the social capital possessed by a given agent depends on the size of the
network of connections he can effectively mobilize and on the volume of the capital
(economic, cultural or symbolic) possessed in his own right by each of those to whom
he is connected" (p. 249).

In this way, the reproduction of social capital requires continual endeavor of
sociability, "which implies expenditure of time and energy and so, directly or
indirectly, of economic capital” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 250). Moreover, this work ”is
not profitable or even conceivable unless one invests in it a specific competence
(knowledge of genealogical relationships and of real connections and skill at using
them, etc.) and an acquired disposition to acquire and maintain this competence,
which are themselves integral parts of this capital. This is one of the factors which
explain why the profitability of this labor of accumulating and maintaining social
capital rises in proportion to the size of the capital” (p. 250). Moreover, ”the profits
which accrue from membership in a group are the basis of the solidarity which makes
them possible” (p. 249):

the network of relationships is the product of investment strategies,

individual or collective, consciously or unconsciously aimed at establishing or

reproducing social relationships that are directly usable in the short or long
term, i. e. , at transforming contingent relations, such as those of
neighborhood, the workplace, or even kinship, into relationships that are at
once necessary and elective, implying durable obligations subjectively felt

(feelings of gratitude, respect, friendship, etc.) or institutionally guaranmd

(rights). (Bourdieu, 1986 , pp. 249-250)

The constitution of meaningful social relationships is linked to the institution of

occasions, places, and practices which control the legitimate forms of exchange and

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guarantee the homogeneity, identity, and boundaries of a group.26 In turn, the
individual- group dynamics related to concentration of social capital creates interesting
effects of power and control through more or less institutionalized mechanisms of
affiliation and delegation.27 Thus, the concept of social capital and the images
suggested by its active maintenance - and specially its profitable use in the context of
the constitution of social groups and social identities (involving inclusion and
exclusion), and increment of social resources and status - are interesting for the
consideration of processes of group affiliation, participation, and social classification,
as well as competition and individual achievement within selective institutions, as it is
the case of the educational system. As Bourdieu points out,
[The concept of social capital addresses] . .. the principle of social efi'ects
which, although they can be seen clearly at the level of singular agents - where
statistical inquiry inevitably operates - cannot be reduced to the set of
properties individually possessed by a given agent. These effects . . . are
particularly visible in all cases in which different individuals obtain very
unequal profits from virtually equivalent (economic or cultural) capital,
depending on the extent to which they can mobilize by proxy the capital of a

group (a family, the alumni of an elite school, a select club, the aristocracy,
etc.) that is more or less constituted as such and more or less rich in capital.

 

2‘ ”This is done through the alchemy of consecration, the symbolic constitution
produced by social institution and endlessly reproduced in and through the
exchange . .. which it encourages and which presupposes and produces mutual
knowledge and recognition. Exchange transforms the things exchanged into signs of
recognition and, through the mutual recognition and the recognition of group
membership which it implies, reproduces the group. By the same token, it reaffirms
the limits of the group, i. e. , the limits beyond which the constitutive exchange . . .
cannot take place” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 250).

2" By acting as custodians of the limits of the group (for "the definition of the
criteria of entry is at stake in each new entry") agents can maintain or ”modify the
group by modifying the limits of legitimate exchange through some form of
misalliance" (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 250). Agents also compete for representation and,
in this way, capitalize on the collectively owned capital and exercise power, including
the power of expelling other members.

1 1 7

(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 256, italics added)

The reproduction of capital (and, consequently, of social hierarchies) is
effected through various strategies of conversion of the different types of capital,
albeit at the cost of some losses of capital. Conversions are understood as
institutionalized mechanisms aimed at controlling and legitimating ”the official, direct
transmission of power and privileges '2‘ by disguising ”the arbitrariness of the
entitlements transmitted and of their transmission"29 (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 254). It
follows that "the different types of capital can be distinguished according to their
reproducibility or, more precisely, according to how easily they are transmitted, i. e. ,
with more or less loss and with more or less concealment” (p. 253) - concealment and
loss tending to correlate inversely. However, contradictorily, concealment of the
"economic aspect also tends to increase the risk of loss (particularly the
intergenerational transfers)" and, besides, “the (apparent) incommensurability of the
different types of capital introduces a high degree of uncertainty into all transactions
between holders of different types” (pp. 253-254). The transmission of cultural
capital, for instance, as compared to economic capital, is subject to a more veiled but
more risky transmission, as its ”diffuse, continuous transmission within the family

escapes observation and control, " and as its "full efficacy, at least on the labor

 

2' ”Because the question of the arbitrariness of appropriation arises most sharply
in the process of transmission every reproduction strategy is at the same time a
legitimation strategy aimed at consecrating both an exclusive appropriation and its
reproduction“ (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 254).

2’ Bourdieu (1986) notes that, historically, new strategies of concealment of the
arbitrariness of transmission are created in order to face struggles to change the
prevailing social order - ”the subversive critique which aims to weaken the dominant
class“ (p. 254).

1 1 8

market, " increasingly depends on validation by the educational system, i. e. , on
conversion into a "capital of qualifications. " Similarly, exchanges of favors aiming to
conserve or produce social capital imply "the risk of ingratitude, the refusal of that
recognition of nonguaranteed debts which such exchanges aim to produce” (p. 254).

Conversions, a form of indirect transmission, require time and specific work
(including affective investment), according to a logic of minimization of both the work
and losses inherent to the process of conversion. As capital is accumulated labor-
time, so conversions also require labor-time to be effectively perfonned: ”In
accordance with a principle which is the equivalent of the principle of the conservation
of energy, profits in one area are necessarily paid for by costs in another. . .. The
universal equivalent . .. is nothing other than labor-time (in the widest sense); and the
conservation of social energy through all its conversions is verified if, in each case,
one takes into account both the labor-time accumulated in the form of capital and the
labor-time needed to transform it from one type into another (Bourdieu, 1986, p.
253). Therefore, "the different types of capital can be derived from economic capital,
but only at the cost of a more or less great effort of transformation, which is needed
to produce the type of power effective in the field in question" (p. 252). Such is the
case of certain goods and services which are not immediately attainable through
economic capital and impose secondary costs, particularly the cost of specific long-
term previous investments — investments ”not necessarily conceived as a calculated
pursuit of gain, " but likely to be "experienced in terms of the logic of emotional

investment, i. e. , as an involvement which is both necessary and disinterested” (p.

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257).30 The conversion of economic capital into social capital, for instance, requires
long-term investments in social relationships performed prior to their period of use:

an apparently gratuitous expenditure of time, attention, care, concern,
which has the effect of transfiguring the purely monetary import of the
exchange [of a gift, service, visit] and, by the same token, the very meaning of
the exchange. . .. From a narrowly economic standpoint, this effort is bound to
be seen as pure wastage, but in the terms of the logic of social exchanges, it is
a solid investment, the profits of which will appear, in the long run, in
monetary or other form” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 253).

Similarly, the conversion of economic capital into cultural capital depends on the
possession of economic capital, which enables and secures the expenditure of the time
necessary for the transmission and acquisition of cultural capital:

More precisely, it is because the cultural capital that is effectively transmitted

within the family itself depends not only on the quantity of cultural capital,

itself accumulated by spending time, that the domestic group possess, but also
on the usable time (particularly in the form of the mother’s free time) available
to it (by virtue of its economic capital, which enables it to purchase the time of
others) to ensure the transmission of this capital and to delay entry into the
labor market through prolonged schooling, a credit which pays off, if at all,

only in the very long term. (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 253)

Moreover, the most precious gain secured by capital, and especially by cultural
capital, "is the increased volume of usefitl time that is made possible through the
various methods of appropriating other people’s time” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 258) by
purchasing services and or making one’s own time more productive and profitable by

applying to it special knowledge and skills:

 

3° Bourdieu (1986) cautions against the judgment "of the choices of the habitus . ..
in terms of rational strategy and cynical calculation, " for "the most sincerely
disinterested acts may be those best corresponding to objective interest. " He admits
sincere conversions - for instance, "shifts from one genre, school, or speciality to
another . .. as capital conversions, the direction and moment of which (on which their
success often depends) are determined by a ’sense of investment’ which is the less
likely to be seen as such the more skillful it is” (p. 257).

 

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It may take the form either of increased spare time, secured by reducing the
time consumed in activities directly channeled toward producing the means of
reproducing the existence of the domestic group, or of more intense use of the
time so consumed, by recourse to other people’s labor or to devices and
methods which are available only to those who have spent time learning how to
use them and which make it possible to save time. (This is in contrast to
the cash savings of the poor, which are paid for in time - do-it-yourself,
bargain hunting, etc.) None of this is true of mere economic capital; it is
possession of cultural capital that makes it possible to derive greater profit not
only fiom labor-time, by securing a higher yield from the same time, but also
from spare time. and so to increase both economic and cultural capital.
(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 258, italics added)

Bourdieu (1986) points out that, in our democratic era, ”the more the official
transmission of capital [has been] prevented or hindered, the more the effects of the
clandestine circulation of capital in the form of cultural capital [has become]
determinant in the reproduction of the social structure" (p. 254), specially through
conversion into academic capital. Consequently, ”as the educational qualification,
invested with the specific force of the official, becomes the condition for legitimate
access to a growing number of positions, particularly the dominant ones, the
educational system tends increasingly to dispossess the domestic group of the
monopoly of the transmission of power and privileges" (p. 254).31 At the same time,
the growth in objectified cultural capital available in the environment (which
automatically increases its educative effect), combined with "the fact that embodied
cultural capital is [also] constantly increasing, " accounts for the fact that, ”in each
generation, the educational system can take more for granted" (pp. 255-256).

Nevertheless, Bourdieu (1986) stresses the relative power of the educational

 

3‘ .As Lareau (1993) demonstrated the upper-middle classes compensate for this
loss with active investments both in social capital and in specific curricular
reinforcement activities and extra-curricular additions to cultural capital aimed at
mcrementing the acquisition of academic capital.

 

1 2 1
system in determining individual destinies - in terms of acquisition of academic capital
(a diploma) convertible into economic and social capital (jobs and prestige) — insofar
as "the direct transmission of economic capital remains one of the principal means of
reproduction, and the effect of social capital (’a helping hand, ’ ’string—pulling, ’ the
’old boy network’) tends to correct the effect of academic sanctions. Educational
qualifications never function perfectly as currency. They are never entirely separable
from their holders: their value rises in proportion to the value of the their bearer,

especially in the least rigid areas of the social structure" (p. 258).

Symbolic violence

Education, for Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), is cultural reproduction: "the
process through which a cultural arbitrary32 is historically reproduced the
equivalent, in the cultural order, of the transmission of genetic capital in the biological
order" (p. 32). Based on this cultural view point, they develop the following theses:
(I) "All pedagogic action is, objectively, symbolic violence insofar as it is the
imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power" (p. 5). (2) The ”pedagogic
action necessarily implies, as a social condition of its exercise, pedagogic authority
and the relative autonomy of the agency commissioned to exercise it” (pp. 11- 12). (3)
The pedagogic action necessitates a pedagogic work of formation of "a habitus, the

product of internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary capable . .. of

 

3’ "Arbitrary" means based on judgement, whose reason is not necessarily true or
legitimate, and whose consequent (particular) choice is not a necessary choice, but one
among others (in principle) possible choices, a choice made possible in certain
conditions by the act of a specific power. See also Note 5.

 

1 2 2
perpetuating [them] in practices” (p. 31). (4) The institutionalized educational system
derives its specific characteristics from its task of self-reproduction (production and
reproduction of its conditions of existence and maintenance), a task necessary for the
realization of its essential function of cultural reproduction (inculcation and
reproduction of "a cultural arbitrary which it does not produce"), a function which
contributes to social reproduction (p. 54).

By symbolic violence Bourdieu & Passeron (1977) refer to the exercise of
"power which manages to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by
concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force, [and by adding] . . . its
own specific symbolic force to those power relations” (p. 4), therefore assuring their
reproduction.” In this light, education - all pedagogic action (in any form, informal
or institutionalized), or any relation of pedagogic communication - is "objectively,
symbolic violence, " as it consists of ”the imposition and inculcation of a cultural
arbitrary by an arbitrary mode of imposition and inculcation” (p. 6). Pedagogic
action is objectively symbolic violence in two senses: first, because its arbitrary power
is based on tangible power relations, i.e. the imposition and inculcation of a certain
cultural arbitrary (among possible others) is based on concrete social conditions
grounding the positions of the social groups or classes; second, because the

delimitation (selection and exclusion) of certain meanings ”reproduces (in both

 

3’ The notion of symbolic violence is grounded on linked assumptions: first, that
”any social formation [is] a system of power relations and sense relations between
groups or classes” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 5); second, that symbolic relations
are, simultaneously, relatively autonomous from and relatively dependent on power
relations; third, that symbolic forces or representations of legitimacy provide a specific
(and specifically symbolic) contribution to the exercise and perpetuation of power.

 

 

123

senses) the arbitrary selection a group or class objectively makes in and through its
cultural arbitrary" (p. 8). Thus, the cultural diversity that exists in a society is
hierarchized according to the positions of power of the different groups, and that
hierarchy is reproduced within institutionalized education through the privileged
transmission of the dominant cultural arbitrary.

Within a system of more or less integrated, competing cultural arbitraries, and
on the basis of specific power relations among the social groups, a dominant form of
pedagogic action emerges as "the one which most fully, though always indirectly,
corresponds to the objective interests (material, symbolic and pedagogic) of the
dominant groups or classes, both by its mode of imposition [selection of methods and
activities] and by its delimitation of what [selection of certain contents in detriment of
others] and on whom [selection of apt individuals and exclusion of others] it imposes”
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 7). In this way, the dominant system of education
(the school, nowadays, in contrast with popular, family or ethnic education) ”tends to
secure a monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence" (p. 6), in order to reproduce not
only the dominant culture but the position of dominance of a particular cultural
arbitrary (for instance, philosophy and classic languages and literature in the past, or
mathematics, natural sciences and computer technology in the present), contributing
thereby to perpetuate a particular structure of domination. Furthermore, the dominant
pedagogic action and system of education mediates the interactions among the other
(dominated) pedagogic actions and systems; as a result, "the system of pedagogic
actions, insofar as it is subject to the effect of domination by the dominant pedagogic

action, tends to reproduce, both in the dominant and in the dominated classes,

 

124

misrecognition of the truth of the legitimate culture as the dominant cultural arbitrary ,
whose reproduction contributes towards reproducing the power relations. " (p. 31)

Education presupposes pedagogic authority, "i.e. a delegation of authority,
which requires the pedagogic agency to reproduce the principles of the cultural
arbitrary which a group or class imposes as worthy of reproduction both by its very
existence and by the fact of delegating to an agency the authority needed in order to
reproduce it” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 31). Thus, pedagogic authority is "the
basis of the sociological possibility of the pedagogic action, " being ”automatically
conferred on every pedagogic transmitter by the traditionally and institutionally
guaranteed position he occupies in a relation of pedagogic communication" (p. 21):
accordingly, ”the pedagogic transmitters are from the outset designated as fit to
transnrit that which they transmit, hence entitled to impose its reception and test its
inculcation by means of socially approved or guaranteed sanctions” (p. 20); and ”the
pedagogic receivers are disposed from the outset to recognize the legitimacy of the
information transmitted and the pedagogic authority of the pedagogic transmitters,
hence to receive and internalize the message” (p. 21).“ In spite of this,

contradictorily, the agents objectively manifest, in their practice, misrecognition of the

 

3‘ "The concept of pedagogic authority clearly has no normative content since
the pedagogic authority has precisely the effect of ensuring the social value of the
pedagogic action regardless of the ’intrinsic’ value of the agency exerting it, and
whatever, for example, the degree of technical or charismatic qualification of the
transmitter" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 21). Moreover, because ”the
informational content of the message does not exhaust the content of the
communication,” and ”because the sending of a message . .. always transmits at least
the affirmation of the value of the pedagogic action, the pedagogic authority which
guarantees the communication always tends to eliminate the question of the
informative efficiency of the communication" (p. 21).

 

125

truth of pedagogic action as violence by inevitably representing its arbitrariness as
’natural’ and necessary - a misrecognition that, while being the condition for its
exercise, implies objective recognition of its legitimate authority, thus "reinforcing the
arbitrary power which establishes it and which it conceals” (p. 13). Ultimately, the
psychological mechanism of delegation of authority tends to produce in those who
undergo the pedagogic action misrecognition of the objective truth of their culture as a
cultural arbitrary, i.e. , ethnocentrism.”

However, ”the delegation of the right of symbolic violence which establishes
the pedagogic authority of a pedagogic agency is always a limited delegation”

(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 27). The autonomy of pedagogic agencies is limited,

 

3’ Authority "so strongly marks all aspects of the relation of pedagogic
communication that this relationship is often experienced or conceived along the lines
of the primordial relation of pedagogic communication, i.e. the relationship between
parents and children, or more generally, between generations” (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977, p. 19). Moreover, the contradiction between the representation and practice of
pedagogic authority is not solved by a sofi pedagogy:

The ’soft approach’ [non-directive methods, participation, dialogue] may be the
only effective way of exercising the power of symbolic violence in a
determinate state of the power relations, and of variably tolerant dispositions
towards the explicit, crude manifestation of arbitrariness.

If some people are nowadays able to believe in the possibility of a pedagogic
action without obligation or punishment, this is the effect of an ethnocentrism
which induces them not to perceive as such the sanctions of the mode of
imposition characteristic of our society. To overwhelm one’s pupils with
affection is to gain possession of that subtle instrument of repression, the
withdrawal of affection, a pedagogical technique which is no less arbitrary than
corporal punishment or disgrace. The objective truth of this type of pedagogic
action is harder to perceive because, on the one hand, the techniques employed
conceal the social significance of the pedagogic relation under the guise of a
purely psychological relationship and, on the other hand, their place in the
system of authority techniques making up the dominant mode of imposition
helps to prevent agents formed by this mode of imposition from seeing their
arbitrary character. (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp. 17-18)

 

126

first of all, by ”the social conditions for the exercise of a pedagogic action, i.e.
cultural proximity between the cultural arbitrary imposed by that pedagogic action and
the cultural arbitraries of the groups or classes subjected to it" (p. 25); insofar as
symbolic actions can work only to the extent that they encounter and reinforce
predispositions and interests, "any action of symbolic violence which succeeds in
imposing itself objectively presupposes a [prior, virtual and tacit] delegation of
authority" (p. 25) based on class-culture organic relations:

The recognition a group or class objectively accords a pedagogic agency is
always . . . a function of the degree to which the market value and symbolic
value of its members depend on their transformation and consecration by that
agency’s pedagogic action. . .. in modern societies the middle classes, and
more precisely those middle class fractions whose ascension most directly
depends on the School, differ from the working classes by an academic docility
which is expressed in, among other things, their particular sensitivity to the
symbolic effects of punishments or rewards and more precisely to the social-
certification effect of academic qualifications. (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977 , pp.
27-28, italics added)

And the market, of course, functions as an additional limitation:
In any given social formation, the sanctions, material or symbolic, positive or
negative, juridically guaranteed or not, through which pedagogic authority is
expressed, and which ensure, strengthen and lastingly consecrate the effect of a
pedagogic action, are more likely to be recognized as legitimate when they
are applied to groups or classes for whom these sanctions are more likely to be
confirmed by the sanctions of the market on which the economic and social

value of the products of the different pedagogic actions is determined.
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 27, italics added)

In effect, "by unifying the market on which the value of the products of the
different pedagogic actions is determined, bourgeois society has multiplied the
Opportunities for subjecting the products of the dominated pedagogic actions to the
evaluative criteria of the legitimate culture [ensuring the likelihood that a dominated

cultural arbitrary and the cultural attainments of individuals from the dominated

127

groups be devalued by the anonymous sanctions of the labour market, as well as by
those of the cultural and academic markets], thereby affirming and confirming its
dominance in the symbolic order" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 28). For those
many individuals who have been exposed to dominated pedagogic actions, and who
”are destined to discover that the cultural arbitrary whose worth they have had to
recognize in order to acquire it is worthless on an economic or symbolic market
dominated by the cultural arbitrary of the dominant classes” (p. 29), what is left is
blunt marginalization or the conflicts of acculturation into the dominant culture.

In sum, the success of any pedagogic action is a function of ”the system of
relations between the cultural arbitrary imposed by [the dominant] pedagogic action
and the cultural arbitrary inculcated by the earliest phase of upbringing within the
groups and classes from which those undergoing the pedagogic action originate"
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977 , p. 30), implying various degreesef recognition of the
pedagogic authority of the pedagogic agency, and of mastery of the code used in the
pedagogic communication. Hence, the differential success of the dominant pedagogic
action among the receivers is a function of:

(l) the pedagogic ethos proper to a group or class, i.e. the system of

dispositions towards that pedagogic action and the agency [school] exerting it,

defined as the product of the internalization of (a) the value which the
dominant pedagogic action confers by its sanctions on the products of the
different family pedagogic actions and (b) the value which, by their objective
sanctions, the different social markets confer on the products of the dominant
pedagogic action according to the group or class from which they come; and

(2) cultural capital, i.e. the cultural goods transmitted by the different family

pedagogic actions, whose value qua cultural capital varies with the distance

between the cultural arbitrary imposed by the dominant pedagogic action and

the ““1““! ”him incubated by the family pedagogic action within-the
different groups or classes? (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p: 30)

1 2 8

Education also requires a continual36 and productive pedagogic work: "a
process of inculcation which must last long enough to produce a durable training, i.e.
a habitus, the product of internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary capable
of perpetuating itself after the pedagogic action has ceased and thereby of perpetuating
in practices the principles of the internalized arbitrary” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977,
p. 31). The productivity of the pedagogic work is measured by the degree to which
the habitus is durable, transposable, i.e. , "capable of generating practices conforming
with the principles of the inculcated arbitrary in a greater number of different fields"
(p. 33), and exhaustive, i.e. , capable of completely reproducing those principles in the
practices it generates. Hence, the accomplished form of the habitus depends on the
degree of completion of the pedagogic work” considered necessary and sufficient - in
terms of legitimate content, mode and length of inculcation - in order to produce the
degree of cultural attainment and competence by which a group tends to recognize the
successful individual — and, more than that, "the degree of legitimate competence in
legitimate culture by which not only the dominant but also the dominated classes tend
to recognize the ’cultivated man’ and against which the products of the dominated
pedagogic actions, i.e the different forms of the accomplished man as defined by the

culture of the dominated groups of classes, come to be measured objectively" (p. 35).

 

3‘ The condition of continuous inculcation for lasting transformation is related to
the inertia of the educational institution, "because it tends to reproduce, so far as its
relative autonomy allows, the conditions in which the reproducers were produced, i.e.
the conditions of its own reproduction" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 32).

37 In spite of this, ”the social definition of excellence always tends to make
reference to ’natmalness’, i.e. to a modality of practice entailing a degree of
accomplishment of pedagogic work capable of effacing awareness of all that
accomplished practice owes to pedagogic work” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 39).

 

 

129

As the object and effect of the pedagogic work, the concept of habitus - ”the
principle unifying and generating practices” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 34) —
connects objective and subjective structures, mediating the articulations and
contradictions within and between representations and practices, both in the individual
and social realms. With respect to the individual, the habitus is a system of
dispositions: "it expresses, first, the result of an organizing action, with a meaning
very close to that of words such as ’structure’; it can also denote a manner of being, a
habitual state (especially of the body), and, in particular, a predisposition, tendency,
propensity or inclination" (pp. 67-68); and, as "a system of schemes of perception,
thought, appreciation and action” (p. 35), the habitus contains ”self-discipline and
self-censorship (the more unconscious to the extent that their principles have been
internalized)” (p. 40). With respect to the social group and individual-group relations,
the habitus grounds personal and social identities, thus contributing "towards
producing and reproducing the intellectual and moral integration of the group or class
on whose behalf it is carried on” (p. 35). In this way, pedagogic work becomes a
profitable substitute for external repression and, particularly, physical coercion (a
sanction precisely to the failures of internalization of a cultural arbitrary), insofar as it
"tends to produce a permanent disposition to give, in every situation . .. the right
response (i.e. the one laid down by cultmal arbitrariness, and no other)” to symbolic

stimuli emanating from the agencies invested with the pedagogic authority which has

 

3' The ’right response’ (in terms of discourse and manners) makes the difference
between getting a ticket or a warning from the police for disrespecting a stop sign.
This is just one trivial example, among numerous, of how an agent, in assessing
behavior and dispensing (formal as well as informal) sanctions, discriminates among
individuals based on the required (’normal’) habitus.

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made possible the pedagogic work responsible for the habitus" (p. 36).

The more it is accomplished, then, the more pedagogic work tends fully to
produce ”the objective conditions for misrecognition of cultural arbitrariness, i.e. the
conditions for subjective experience of the cultural arbitrary as necessary" (Bourdieu
& Passeron, 1977, p. 37), and for concealment of ”the objective truth of the habitus
as the internalization of the principles of a cultural arbitrary" (p. 39), consolidating
group or class (ethical and logical) ethnocentrism. Furthermore, because the function
of pedagogic work is to keep order (the order of the prevalent power relations), "by
inculcation or exclusion, it tends to impose recognition of the legitimacy of the
dominant culture on the members of the dominated groups or classes, and to make
them internalize, to a variable extent, disciplines and censorships which best serve the
material and symbolic interests of the dominant groups or classes39 when they take the
form of self-discipline and self-censorship" (pp. 40-41). And, consonant with ”the
dominant ideology of the legitimate culture as the only authentic culture, i.e. as
universal culture" (p. 40), it also tends to impose on the dominated groups
"recognition of the illegitimacy of their own cultural arbitrary, " for exclusion takes its

"most symbolic force when it assumes the guise of self-exclusion” (pp. 41-42):

 

3’ In short, according to Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), the history of modern
education is the history of class cultural hegemony: ”One of the least noticed effects
of compulsory schooling is that it succeeds in obtaining from the dominated classes a
recognition of legitimate knowledge and know-how (e. g. in law, medicine,
technology, entertainment or art), entailing the devaluation of the knowledge and
know-how they effectively command (e.g. customary law, home medicine, craft
techniques, folk art and language ...) and so providing a market for material and
especially symbolic products of which the means of production (not least, higher
education) are virtually monopolized by the dominant classes (e. g. clinical diagnosis,
legal advice, the culture industry, etc.)" (p.42).

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a dominant pedagogic action tends not so much to inculcate the information
constituting the dominant culture (if only because pedagogic work has a lower
specific productivity and a shorter duration when applied to groups or classes
lower down the social scale) as to inculcate the fait accompli of the legitimacy
of the dominant culture. It may do so by inducing those excluded from the
ranks of the legitimate addressees (whether before formal education, as in most
societies, or during it) to internalize the legitimacy of their exclusion; by
making those it relegates to second-order teaching recognize the inferiority of
this teaching and its audience; or by inculcating, through submission to
academic disciplines and adherence to cultural hierarchies, a transposable,
generalized disposition with regard to social disciplines and hierarchies.
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 41)
How does cultural reproduction, and individual-group inclusion and exclusion
(as nricro-processes which continually reproduce the social classes), operate along the
process of individual and inter-institutional education? It operates by means of
successive, distinct habitus (primary and secondary, involving practical and symbolic
levels of mastery), which are produced within and through diverse forms of pedagogic
work (more or less traditional, implicit or explicit, involving practical or formal
transferability of the habitus), in the biographical and inter-generational orders, across
various educational agencies and contexts, and within the system of cultural

dominance.

Because pedagogic work is an irreversible process, the primary habitus
produced during the earliest phase of upbringing becomes ”the basis for the
subsequent formation of any other habitus“ (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977 , p. 42),
implying that the specific productivity of any secondary or subsequent pedagogic work
is a function of the distance between the habitus it aims to inculcate and the habitus
inculcated by primary or previous pedagogic work. From this perspective, any

secondary pedagogic work, such as school work, may be situated between

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maintenance or reinforcement (a mode aiming simply to confirm the primary habitus) ,
and conversion (3 mode aiming at the complete substitution of one habitus for
another). On the one hand, the differential productivity of schooling ftmdamentally
depends on early home education - ”even and specially when the educational system
denies this primacy in its ideology and practice"“° - insofar as the practical dispositions
acquired in everyday life learning, particularly through language acquisition, "more or
less elaborated symbolically, depending on the group or class, predispose children
unequally towards symbolic mastery of the operations implied” in the school
curriculum (p. 43). But, on the other hand, it also depends on the extent to which the
specific work of the school consolidates or denies (by deculturation and reculturation)
the original habitus.

Because symbolic mastery (the explicitation of the principles at work in a
practice, i.e. its theoretic codification) follows, logically and chronologically, the
practical mastery of a practice, secondary mastery tends to profit from an early and

close connection to practical mastery.“ Along this line, any mode of inculcation

 

‘° The policy of parental involvement, my object of study, apparently recognizes
the primacy of home education, but of course within the limits of a particular cultural
arbitrary. I will return to this point later.

“ As a rule, provided the condition of cultural continuity, the success of the
action of symbolic imposition depends on the degree to which pedagogic
systematization meets the principles already held by the individual in a practical state -
the ’intemal fit’ yield in understanding. Nevertheless, ”contrary to what is suggested
by certain psychogenetic theories which describe intelligence development as a
universal process of unilinear transformation of sensorimotor mastery into symbolic
mastery, the respective primary work of the different groups or classes produces
primary systems of dispositions which differ not merely as different degrees of
explicitness of the same practice but also as so many types of practical mastery
unequally predisposing their bearers to acquire the particular type of symbolic mastery
that is privileged by the dominant cultural arbitrary" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp.

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producing a habitus can be situated between an implicit pedagogy (the unconscious
inculcation of practical principles) and an explicit pedagogy (the methodical
inculcation of articulated or formalized principles). While traditional modes of
inculcation42 rely mostly on direct, repeated expression (modeling) of "a habitus
defined by practical transferability, " secondary pedagogic work aimed at symbolic
mastery is "objectively organized with a view to ensuring, by explicit inculcation of
codified forrual principles, the formal transferability of the habitus" (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1977, p. 48). Thus, in principle, the productivity of schooling (or any
secondary pedagogic work) depends on the consideration of "the degree to which the
addressees of the pedagogic message possess the code of the message, " and on the
creation of "the social conditions for communication by methodically organizing
exercises designed to ensure accelerated assimilation of the code of transmission and,
therefore, accelerated inculcation of the [specific] habitus" (p. 45) . However, the
more traditional (ergo, conservative) is a mode of inculcation, the more it tends to be
”objectively organized by reference to a limited audience of legitimate addressees
equipped with the adequate [basic] habitus (i.e. the pedagogic ethos and cultural
capital proper to the groups or classes whose cultmal arbitrary it reproduces)” (p. 45).

In fact, the efficiency of modes of inculcation "cannot be defined

 

49—50) .

‘2 In general, pedagogic work is considered the more traditional “to the extent
that it is less clearly delimited as a specific, autonomous practice, " and to the extent
that it ”is exerted by agencies whose functions are more comprehensive and more
undifferentiated, i.e. the more completely it is reduced to a familiarizing process in
which the master transmits unconsciously, through exemplary conduct, principles he
has never mastered consciously, to a receiver who internalizes them unconsciously"
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 48).

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independently of the content inculcated and the social functions which the pedagogic
work in question fulfils in a determinate social formation" (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977, p. 47). While "implicit pedagogy is doubtless the most efficient way of
transmitting traditional, undifferentiated, ’total’ knowledge, " as in the case of
apprenticeship, and while it certainly becomes ineffectual when applied to agents
lacking prior attainment, it also "can be very ’profitable’ for the dominant classes [in
the context of a system of dominant-dominated pedagogic actions and cultural
arbitraries] .. . by enabling the possessors of the prerequisite cultural capital to
continue to monopolize that capital" (p. 47).

The implicimess and unspecificity of transmission is much more visible (by
comparison) in the case of traditional societies, while less clear, but still actual, in
modern schooling. The less delimited or autonomous is the pedagogic work of the
school in relation to that of the family, the more schools can rely on an implicit
pedagogy with respect to intellectual and social discipline, since the prerequisite work
has been furthered at home (or, alternatively, in preschool). Along this line, we can
understand the evolution represented by the introduction of explicit behavioral and
instructional (including homework) contracts in current public school practice as an
effort to formally implement a specific habitus which was taken for granted in certain
homogeneous middle-class cultural contexts. We can also understand a variety of
cmricular and instructional reforms as attempts to maximize pedagogical efficiency -
though, as general prescriptions, blind to their own subjective and arbitrary elements,
as well as to the differentiated social conditions and individual habitus upon which

they act. And reforms may be seen, conversely - if not all, many, and if not in

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rhetoric, in function - as movements creating new realms of implicitness in
instructional contents and methods, as responses to other movements toward
explicimess, introduced when the mastery of the ’rules of the game’ by more
individuals threatens or effectively diminishes the effect of the selective mechanisms
of schooling related to its function of class reproduction via cultmal reproduction.‘3
The important point here is the specificity of the pedagogic work of the school,
i.e. its content-method, and its function—effect, in relation to different class-cultures.
Let’s recall that "the agents responsible for primary pedagogic work [home education]
have themselves been very unequally prepared for symbolic mastery by secondary
pedagogic work [their previous schooling] and are therefore very unequally capable of
orienting primary pedagogic work towards the verbalization, formulation and
conceptualization of practical mastery which are demanded by secondary pedagogic
work” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 49), i.e. their children’s schooling. In effect,
primary pedagogic work ”rests more completely on practical transferability the more
rigorously the material conditions of existence subject [a group] to the imperatives
of practice, tending thereby to prevent the formation and development of the aptitude
for symbolic mastery of practice" (p. 48); conversely, "primary pedagogic work
prepares that much better for secondary pedagogic work based on explicit pedagogy

when exerted within a group or class whose material conditions of existence allow

 

‘3 Will the substitution of portfolios for exams, for instance, yield more
explicimess and fairness in learning and evaluation, from the perspective of class-
culture inequalities? To what extent are portfolios just a distinct mechanism of
enforcement of new intellectual attributes, related to a novel pedagogic work, and
immune to cultural background, or are they a more efficient mechanism of selection
of rarest attributes?

1 3 6
them to stand more completely aside from practice, in other words to ’neutralize’ in
imagination or reflection the vital urgencies which thrust a pragmatic disposition on
the dominated classes” (p. 49). Therefore, "a practical mastery oriented towards the
manipulation of things, with the correlative relation to words, is less favourable to
theoretic mastery of the rules of literate verbalization [and classificatory
conceptualization] than a practical mastery directed towards the primacy of word
manipulation" (p. 50).

However, in the context of a dominant cultural arbitrary subordinating
practical mastery to symbolic mastery of practices, schooling - "the dominant
pedagogic work which uses a traditional mode of inculcation" (Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977 , p. 51) - contradictorily fails to realize the very prerequisites of its specific
productivity, tending to dispense with explicit“ inculcation of verbal practical mastery,
”the more completely practical mastery of the principles giving symbolic mastery has
already been inculcated in the legitimate addressees by the primary pedagogic work of
the dominant groups or classes" (p. 49):

It is precisely when its legitimate public is made up of individuals equipped by

primary pedagogic work with a verbally-oriented practical mastery, that

secondary pedagogic work which is mandated to inculcate above all the
mastery of a language and of a relation to language can, paradoxically, content
itself with an implicit pedagogy, especially as regards language, because it can
count on a habitus containing, in practical form, the predisposition to use

language in accordance with a literate relation to language... Conversely, in
secondary pedagogic work, which has the declared function of inculcating

 

“ Explicitness, of cornse, has to be understood under a cross-cultural framework;
it is not accomplished by mere verbal instructions (a syllabus, a detailed assignment),
because a new habitus, particularly for a novice already socialized into another
habitus, is not simply formed by telling what to do, suggesting how to do, or even
modeling.

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practical mastery of manual techniques the mere fact of using theoretic
discourse to make explicit the principles of techniques of which working class
children have practical mastery is sufficient to cast the knacks and tricks of the
trade into the illegitimacy of makeshift approximation, just as ’ general
education’ reduces their language to jargon, slang or gibberish. That is one of
one the most potent effects of the theoretic discourse which sets an
unbridgeable gulf between the holder of the principles (e. g. the engineer) and
the mere practitioner (e.g. the technician). (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 50)
Thus, the difierential productivity of schooling according to ethnic group and
social class is produced by the very aercise of its pedagogic work which at once
delimits "its really possible addressees, excluding the different groups or classes more
rapidly the more completely they lack the capital and ethos objectively presupposed by
its mode of inculcation, " and creates ”misrecognition of the mechanisms of
delimitation [bringing about] recognition of its actual addressees as the legitimate
addressees" and of the length of the inculcation actually undergone by the different
groups or classes as the legitimate length of inculcation" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977,
p. 51). In short, insofar as it does not fully produce “the conditions for its own
productivity, [the school] can fulfil its eliminatory function merely by default” (p. 51),
concealing social exclusion "under the overt function of selection” (p. 52) within the
set of its legitimate addressees, ”thereby imposing more subtly the legitimacy of its
products and hierarchies” (p. 51).

Finally, the dominant institutionalized educational system (the school)

combines, within its structure and frmctioning, the (external) function of culmral

 

‘5 As additional effects, the pedagogic work of the school, by its very exercise,
legitimates the mode of possession of cultural capital by the dominant classes - "the
cultivated relation to legitimate culture as a relation of familiarity" - and ”presupposes,
produces and inculcates . .. the ideology of the ’ gift’ as a negation of the social

conditions of the production of cultivated dispositions" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977,
p. 52).

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reproduction to that of self-reproduction. It produces and reproduces ”the conditions
for pedagogic work capable of reproducing continuously, at the least expense and
in regular batches, a habitus as homogeneous and durable as possible in as many as
the legitimate addressees as possible (including the reproducers of the institution)
[and] conforming as closely as possible to the principles of the cultural arbitrary which
it is mandated to reproduce” (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp. 56-57). In other
words, ”it produces and reproduces the necessary conditions for the exercise of its
internal function of inculcating, which are at the same time the sufficient conditions
for the fulfillment of its external function of reproducing the legitimate culture and for
its correlative contribution towards reproducing the power relations" (p. 67). As a
condition for that, it also simultaneously reproduces itself as an institution,“
reproducing through time the institutional conditions for both the performance of its
task and its own reproduction (including the production of its own agents), within the
limits of its relative autonomy, i.e. within "the limits laid down by an institution
mandated to reproduce a cultural arbitrary and not to decree it" (p. 57).
Institutionalization (meaning autonomization through delegation) implies a
series of interrelated features. It employs ”a permanent corps of specialized agents‘7

equipped with the homogeneous training and standardized, standardizing instruments

 

‘6 According to Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), this tendency towards self-
reproduction explains “the cultural backwardness of school culture" - the fact that "the
educational system tends to reproduce the changes occurring in the cultural arbitrary

that it is mandated to reproduce only after a time-lag commensurate with its relative
autonomy" (p. 61).

‘7 Specialists, nevertheless, imbued with the ”ideology of disinterestedness”
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 66).

139

which are the precondition for the exercise of a specific, regulated process of
pedagogic work" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 57). It imposes homogeneity,
orthodoxy, and routinization of the work, insofar as the institutional demands related
to the reproduction of the conditions for the exercise and reproduction of the
pedagogic work, along with "the tendencies inherent in a corps of agents placed in
these institutional conditions” (p. 58), tend to subject information and training (the
school message) to codification, standardization and systematization, "both dispensing
and preventing the agents from performing heterogeneous or heterodox work” (p.
57).“ It 'monopolizes the production of the agents appointed to reproduce it, i.e. of
the agents equipped with the durable training which enables them to perform school
work tending to reproduce the same training in new reproducers" (p. 60). It
establishes school authority, i.e. it provides the specific means of inhibiting and
invalidating the possibility of the question of the legitimacy of the school action (its

entitlement with respect to contents and methods of education),"9 by producing and

 

“ Whatever the habitus to be inculcated (“conformist or innovatory, conservative
or revolutionary"), and whatever the field, ”all school culture is necessarily
standardized and ritualized, i.e. ’routinized’ by and for the routine of the work of
schooling, i.e. by and for exercises of repetition and reconstitution which must be
sufficiently stereotyped to be repeated ad infinitum under the direction of coaches
themselves as little irreplaceable as possible" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp. 58-59).

‘9 Through school authority, "reproducing within the institution the delegation of
authority from which the institution benefits, the educational system produces and
reproduces the conditions necessary both for the exercise of an institutionalized
pedagogic action and for the fulfillment of its external function of reproduction, since
institutional legitimacy dispenses the agents of the institution from having endlessly to
win and confirm their pedagogic authority“ (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 63).
However, ”at moments of crisis when the tacit contract of delegation legitimating the
educational system is threatened, the teachers are called upon to resolve, each on
his own behalf, the questions which the institution tended to exclude by its very

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reproducing, ”by the means proper to the institution, the institutional conditions for
misrecognition of the symbolic violence which it exerts, i.e. recognition of its

legitimacy as a pedagogic institution" (p. 61):"0

Possibilities and limits of educational change

Those of us who work in and for schooling - teachers, policymakers, and
researchers, who have bought thus far into the system as to become its professionals -
wish to make it work well for all students, according to the old strain. The crucial
issue in educational policy and practice has been how to guarantee more and better
Ieaming (to increase school productivity), distributing formal education more evenly
across differentiated social groups and individuals (equalizing outcomes), so that its
material and symbolic benefits can be democratized. Yet, given the very limits of our
own cultural arbitrary as successfully schooled people, and the fact that we are

fimctionaries of the system, working within its logic, our individual actions are limited

 

functioning. The objective truth of the teacher’s job, i.e. the social and institutional
conditions which make it possible (pedagogic authority), is never more clearly
revealed then when the crisis of the institution makes the job difficult or impossible”
(p. 62).

5° The ultimate effect of institutionalization, which Bourdieu & Passeron (1977)
call ”dependence through independence, " is the misrecognition, by those who exercise
the school work and those who undergo it, of its dependence on the power relations
making up the social formation in which it is carried on: "by the mere fact of existing
and persisting as an institution, [the dominant educational system] implies the
institutional conditions for misrecognition of the symbolic violence it exerts" insofar as
"the institutional means available to it as a relatively autonomous institution
monopolizing the legitimate use of symbolic violence are predisposed to serve
additionally, hence under the guise of neutrality, the groups or classes whose cultural
arbitrary it reproduces” (p. 67 ).

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in range: as researchers and policymakers we tend to generalize partial or ideal
situations, as basic assumptions and/or goals; as teachers we try to listen to our
students (though their speech is constrained from the start by the curriculum and by
our authority), and share with them our knowledge and experiences as learners and
our commitments as educators (though our role embraces our own distinct interests),
while trying to be fair in grading them. Moreover, beyond the amplitude of our
efforts is the underlying issue of what knowledge and culture have constituted and
should constitute formal education, as learning depends on the meaning and usefulness
of the content prescribed.

According to Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), two solutions have been tried
regarding the democratization of schooling: ”the ’culture for the masses’ programme
of ’liberating’ the dominated classes by giving them the means of appropriating
legitimate culture as such, with all it owes to its functions of distinction and
legitimation" (pp. 23-24); and ”the populist project of decreeing the legitimacy of the
cultmal arbitrary of the dominated classes as constituted in and by the fact of its
dominated position, canonizing it as ’popular culture” (p. 24). However, as they
say, both these solutions disregard the implications of the system of dominant-
dominated cultural arbitraries, precisely what both ”the legitimate culture and the
dominated culture owe to the structure of their symbolic relations, i.e. to the structure
of the relation of domination between the classes” (p. 23); and, ultimately,
fluctuations in the value of the kinds of cultural capital are determined by the

economic market.

The traditional solution comes down to making the school promise true by

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realizing its proper pedagogic function: the transmission of valued academic
knowledge consonant with the dominant cultural arbitrary, or the teaching and
learning of the language of power, as Delpit (1988) puts it, which may function both
as capital and as a means of self-fulfillment. It has been carried, all along the history
of schooling, by devoted teachers, and translated into various compensatory education
and effective schools programs. However, insofar as the ample accomplishment of
the pedagogic frmction is logically seen as precisely counteracting the customary
selective function of schooling," the low or uneven productivity of the school cannot
really be explained, within this model, except by blaming the teachers or the students.
The alternative (still minor) solution has been the so-called multicultural cmriculum,
through which the dominant cultural arbitrary is apparently altered in order to fit other
views and interpretations, which might be viewed as an attempt to unbalance the
cultural relations of power by redefining cultural capital. Nevertheless, the addition of
diverse cultural perspectives just creates a ’potpourri cmriculum’ without changing
other aspects of the uaditional structure of authority and work of the school. And,
more complicatedly, within the tremendous horizontal differentiation of schooling,
related to educational and social hierachization, it is not clear what the market value
of alternative curricula can be.

In contemplating the hypothesis of democratization of education (i.e. legitimate
culture), Bourdieu & Passeron (I977) interrogate whether a type of secondary

pedagogic work ”organized in accordance with the principles of an explicit pedagogy,

 

5‘ The emergence and increase of the psychosocial functions of schooling, for
instance, have been perceived and justified in terms of helping the performance of the
pedagogic function.

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would not have the effect of erasing the boundary which traditional pedagogic work
recognizes and confirms between the legitimate addressees and the rest" - whether a
“perfectly rational pedagogic work taking nothing for granted at the outset, with
the explicit goal of explicitly inculcating in all its pupils the practical principles of the
symbolic mastery of practices which are inculcated by primary pedagogic action only
within certain groups or classes . . . would not correspond to the pedagogic interest of
the dominated classes” (p. 53). In other words, if school effectively taught the
language of power to all and especially those students particularly deprived of it,
would its discriminatory function disappear, and would the so-called deprived students
recognize the necessity and value of the dominant culture?

Their answer raises two problems. First, they point out the utopian character
of educational policy aimed at democratization insofar as ”the structure of power
relations prohibits a dominant pedagogic action from resorting to a type of pedagogic
work contrary to the interests of the dominant classes who delegate its pedagogic
authority to it" (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, pp. 53-54). Indeed, solutions like
compensatory education or critical pedagogy (teaching explicitly and well the language
and skills of power, and the workings of the system) have always been known and
attempted in a small scale; and the very fact that they haven’t been generally
implemented, albeit technically and financially possible, provides the reason why they
won’t be easily and largely implemented. Second, they caution against the mistake of
identifying the objective interests of the dominated classes with the individual interests
of some of their members (who have advanced by mastering the language and skills of

power), insofar as ”the controlled mobility of a limited number of individuals can help

144

to perpetuate the structure of class relations” (p. 54).

If the public school appeared historically as an instrument of upward social
mobility and class hegemony (the ascension of the bourgeoisie), how can it promote
equality? Equalization of access under the imposition of one cultural arbitrary (and
the consequent devaluation of the other culttual arbitraries) necessarily creates
inequality of outcomes, as explained by the theory of symbolic violence (Bourdieu &
Passeron, 1977); from this perspective, we can even see curricular differentiation
(tracking) as a naive attempt at democratization, skirting the cultural-krrowledge issue.
The compensatory education approach surely requires that the students who lack the
valued cultural capital pay a much higher price to succeed in school by acculturation;
however, the possibility of equalization would remain narrow insofar as, due to
different starting-points and due to the property of accumulation, some individuals
would always hold more cultural capital than others, and due to investment of other
forms of social and economic capital and their combined influence, some individuals
would still have more advantage than others. In short, within the dominant cultural
arbitrary of capitalist schooling, equality is antithetic to meritocracy, which in turn
sets the limits of upward social mobility within the educational system.

Furthermore, even if schools produced equality - equally enlightened and
competent individuals, holders of equally high credentials - social and economic
inequality wouldn’t necessarily disappear as a consequence. For one reason, despite
the common contrary belief, social and economic inequality is more a cause than an
effect of educational outcomes. For another reason, educational attainment doesn’t

turn automatically into jobs and salaries: complex market mechanisms and the play of

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social capital mediate between educational credentials, occupational positions, and
socio-economic rewards. The relative autonomy of schooling in front of the socio-
economic realm precisely implies that on the one hand school does not automatically
reproduce (but rather converts) social inequalities, but on the other hand it cannot

determine (but rather it does reproduce) social and economic relations.

3 . Educational policy, equity, and the family

The end of the nineteenth century saw a peak in enthusiasm for education. At
the end of another century, the information available about the doubtful
accomplishments of an era of schooling in regard to social equalization offers no
reason to be enthusiastic. Nor are there new educational promises in the air. To be
sure, the current discourse on education is not about social justice and personal
happiness but about economic competitiveness, school efficiency, and individual
success. Within the framework of globalization, and consonant with the neoliberal
surge, intense demands are posed: the social efficiency goal of schooling has been
renewed through expanded attention to test scores (and international grade-
performance comparisons), stress on student accountability, a new impetus at
curricular centralization, school finance reforms with incentives for downsizing and
cost optimization, a simultaneous emphasis on computers and ’the basics, ’ and the
assignment to the family of the job of securing school accountability through the
school choice movement.

Interestingly, we have seen in this last decade of the twentieth century a

nostalgia for old forms and meanings of education, family and community. A most

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startling point is the return to home or family education, either through grassroots
initiatives, like the home schooling movement, or through the official recognition of
"families as educators" by both the educational research and policy establishments.”
While research has focused on family educational workings and parenting styles
conducive (or not) to school success, and suggested how schools can help families in
order that families help the schools to educate their children (Henderson & Berla,
1995), policy has been advancing a ’necessary’ shift from the ’delegation model’ to
the ’partnership model’ (Seeley, 1993) in individual-institution and, specifically,
family-school relations.

So, the hopes now are not deposited on the school but, instead, on the family.
And again, the voices in the research and policy communities dealing with the
articulation of schools and families speak from the grounds of the traditional middle-
class family, or the latest case of successful immigrant family (Southeast Asian now)
who employed the ’right’ attitudes and values.’3 In this context, Bourdieu and

Passeron’s theoretical model offers a much needed perspective“ by connecting the

 

’2 See, for instance, the American Educational Research Association ”Families as
Educators” Special Interest Group.

’3 Coleman’s 1987 paper ”Families and Schools" is a case in point, in that he
proposes changes in school conceptions and practices in order to respond to recent
changes in the middle class family, particularly women’s rise in employment, and
lauds the Asian family.

5‘ It could be argued that this theoretical approach is too pessimistic and that, in
allowing for no hope, it would discourage efforts toward equity in schooling. I
counterargue that accounting for the tendency toward social reproduction, i.e. , for the
narrow range of possibility of social transformation, is indispensible for counteracting
intelligently and effectively the inertia of traditional practices, as well as for reading
the reproductivist aspects of novel practices. It is useful to consider two points: first
social reproduction is not bad as long as good things are reproduced; and, second,

9

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processes of social reproduction (physical, emotional and cognitive) initiated in the
home environment to the function of symbolic violence (as a strategy of social
reproduction) carried by compulsory schooling, with its shameless processes of human
selection based on family cultural capital. It allow us to understand precisely why and
delimit under what sociocultural conditions families have been important for school
success, and precisely why and under what pedagogical conditions schools have
implemented social reproduction and reproduced social inequalities.

In recapitulation, schools implement social reproduction fundamentally through
the reproduction of the dominant cultural arbitrary, that is, through the dissemination
and conservation of a particular form of knowledge (and consequent condemnation of
various knowledges to illegitimacy and oblivion), and secondarily through the
reproduction of social hierarchies, that is, by sorting students according to their
possession of the ’right’ knowledge. By specifically building on family-class diverse
cultures, the school action may vary from merely confirming social hierarchies by
validating the ’right’ habitus - in which case it combines a great reliance on the
family, with an implicit pedagogy with a major accent on assessment - to providing
effective opportrmities for the acquisition of academic culture - in which case it
realizes the specificity of its pedagogic work by developing an explicit pedagogy with
a greater stress on teaching and learning. Of course, the greater the stress on

selection, the tighter will be cultural imposition” and, consequently, the likeliness of

 

individuals tend to be conservative when their own interests are at stake, pushing them
(consciously or unconsciously) against the interests of others.

’5 I think that the religious fundamentalists scream about curricular-content
matters because they know this.

1 4 8
inequity. Conversely, the meaning of educational opportunity (within the very frame
of the dominant cultural arbitrary) depends on systematic teaching and appropriate
support for cultural translation within a context of respect for diverse cultures. The
important fact to retain is that the more efficient the educational system is in its
traditional functions of complementing the family and selecting the best individuals,
the more it tends to tightly reproduce the status quo, so that the stress on its social
efficiency goal necessarily implies an intensification in the production of unequal
outcomes.

Knowing what is known about the reproduction of social inequality within
schooling, a fascinating question at this point is: Why is the family now being called
to exert a crucial educational role and an urgent contribution to successful schooling?
What are, then, the good reasons why schools should abandon the traditional
delegation model and enforce the so-called new partnership model? In order to
explore this movement, and to close this analysis around the questions of fairness and
viability of parental involvement as a policy, I take four lines of thought. First,
concerning the family, I caution against the definition of the family as an educational
institution and against educational policy defining home education as an aid to
schooling. Second, I argue that while the meaning of the public school is currently at
stake, the policy emphasis on the family as educator, implying formal family
accountability, is not auspicious nor viable for many families, due to material and
symbolic reasons. Third, I alert that, insofar as parenting functions as symbolic
capital, and teachers expect a certain ostensibly supportive parental role, parental

involvement creates a context in which teachers are likely to discriminate among

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students based on their parents’ performance. And, finally, I spell out some of the
contradictions of the parental involvement model, and what a policy concerned with

equity would pose in terms of school goals and family—school relations.

The family is not an educational institution

It is very curious that the family is being rhetorically redefined as an
educational institution’6 at the very moment in which it is suffering a quite marked and
costly transformation. Coleman (1987) points out that ”families at all economic levels
are becoming increasingly ill-equipped to provide the setting that schools are designed
to complement and augment in preparing the next generation” (p. 32). Growth in
single-parent’1 and two-earner households, and also in poverty of families with
children due to ”increasing distribution of income away from households that have
children or other dependents” (p. 33), has paralleled the contraction of the welfare
state. Though unemployment is said to be low right now, work conditions seem to
have deteriorated for some occupations, with the expansion of jobs by-thehour, under
rotating shifts, and sweat shops (employing the new immigrant) which resemble the

early times of industrialization. Even those who can survive decently feel constantly

 

’5 I am not denying that families educate, but affirming that formal education or
instruction is not (and never really was) the foremost or special function of families,
still less when we take education for schooling. I believe that homeschooling, for
material and cultural reasons, tends to remain an exception.

’7 According to Sanders (1995), ”as of 1992, 10.1 million families in America
were headed by a single parent, usually the mother. This works out to be about one
third of all families with children in this country, and represents a 300 percent
increase since 1970. Demographers predict that by the m of the century, half the
children in this country will grow up in single-parent families (reported in Chicago
Dibune, April 23, 1992)” (p. 186).

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pressed by all the needs and obligations created by the organization of a consumerist
society which dictates aspirations and life styles, and overall has made free time a rare
good available only to the very rich. As a result, working parents do not dispose of
quality time either for themselves or for their children. According to Sanders (1995)
”the amount of time parents have to spend with their children has decreased about 40
percent since World War 11. Between 1960 and 1986, the potential time with parents
for white children dropped by ten hours a week, and by twelve hours for black
children due to increases in mothers’ employment, in fathers’ increased working
hours, and in the incidence of single-parent households" (p. 191)." Thus, the
emphasis on parenting runs contradictorily to these trends.”

Within the macro-historical picture, the appeal of the current call on the family
can be traced to its remote cultural origin in the ’school-as-an-extension—of-the-family’
middle-class model - still actual, to a limited extent - which is historically
(individually and institutionally) the model of successful schooling. Coleman (1987)
describes the traditional family-school partnership in the following way: formal

institutions of child rearing are structured to provide for ”a certain class of inputs into

 

5“ Sanders’ (1995) reference is Victor Fuchs (1988): Women ’s Quest for
Economic Equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

’9 The call for parents-as-educators can be seen, at some level, as a reaction (a
nostalgic yearning) against the changes in the traditional family structure (Doug
Campbell, 1997, personal communication). But parenting is also one of the newly
created needs and obligations, a consumerist good in which parents must invest time
efficiently in caring for and relating to their children, as the activity has become more
rationalized and specialized. A good indicator of this is the expressive number of
popular (middle-class) magazines featuring the issue (see note 65). The contradiction
is expressed in terms that more and better is demanded within actual - but
unacknowledged - less resources.

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the socialization process characterized as opportunities, demands, and rewards, "
while the family (”the child’s closer, more intimate, and more persisting
environment”) is supposed to impart "a second class of inputs described as
attitudes, efion, and conception of self" (p. 35).60 There is more, however, to this
second class of inputs than Coleman’s choice of terms might suggest: the primary
habitus, according to Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), really renders the basic
psychological, and specifically cognitive structure, as well as cultural, and specifically
linguistic structure, which, in conditions of cultural continuity, productively interact
with the social, specifically pedagogic, stimuli of the school. And it is also crucial to
note that the educational character of the family has basically lain in the full-time
dedication of the mother, and that the typical home-maker, in this case, has been
educated herself. In effect, the traditional (successful) family-school partnership has
counted on ”the best hidden and socially most determinant educational investment,
namely, the domestic transmission of cultural capital” (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 243), based
on the mother’s time, embodied cultural capital, and available social capital.

Thus, the call on the family as educator is consonant with the pedagogic ethos
of the schooled middle classes, and eventually with the upward mobility project of
some low class families and social groups (including immigrant), in that it merely
confirms their life style and/or aspirations. Insofar as the policy of parental
involvement just consecrates the traditional practices of some families, these very

families are just getting a formal insurance while keeping on helping their kids take

 

5° The notion of parental control of schooling can be understood exactly on these
grounds.

1 5 2

advantage of educational opportunities. For other families, the policy might function
as an incentive: it is likely that a few low class families will again benefit (as in the
past) and attest the lack of interest and effort of the majority of losers, repeating the
old strain. However, a majority of families cannot fit the partnership model, as they
have not inherited and are not likely to produce (due to their concrete life conditions)
the cultural and social forms of capital likely to work as currency in their exchanges
with the school.

It is also curious, from a historical perspective, to find that the current
emphasis on family educational responsibility runs counter the ideology of the
superiority of public schooling over home and community education, which justified
compulsory schooling, in terms of political purposes and socioeconomic viability, last
century. In fact, consideration of family diversity, specially regarding social class,
and meanings of schooling for different social groups, reveals the inaccuracy of the
notion that modern schooling substituted and supplanted the family in education, under
the new urban-industrial conditions of social reproduction. First, the school could
have substituted only those families that were in a condition of offering literate
education, which in turn didn’t nwd the public school, having mostly preferred to rely
on private arrangements.“ Second, the modern school came to offer exactly what

poor, peasant and urban, families lacked: lettered education and industrial discipline,

 

“ Schools - and the public school, in special - are dispensable for the
reproduction and transmission of economic capital of the wealthy as discrete families,
but of course not as a (dominant) class, due to the ideological function of schooling in
sustaining the dominant culture. For the reproduction of culnual capital, specifically
the sophisticated canons of the dominant cultural arbitrary, and also for the
concentration of social capital, the wealthy have relied on exclusive private schools.

1 5 3

the path to socio—cultural and economic integration and perhaps, social mobility.
However, a division of reproductive and educative work between family and school
(functional differentiation) was concretely constructed: their roles and tasks in the care
and instruction of children became specialized, moreover tending to be exclusive,
albeit articulated and complementary."2 A banal indicator is the fact that both teachers
and parents perceive the specificity and exclusivity of their tasks and are eager to
defend their prerogatives.‘53

Traditionally, but in various degrees, schools and teachers have seen the role
of families and parents as one of preparing for (specially in preschool and elementary
school years), supporting, and reinforcing academic work on a daily basis, and the
more so as when students present difficulties. Besides home backing, teachers and
principals also expect parents to participate in a variety of scth social activities,
sports, fund-raising, and some limited level of decision-making in school governance.
Some families and parents, specifically middle—class, academically oriented, and
occasionally those from lower class and minority groups struggling for social mobility,

have assumed such in-home and/ or in-school supportive roles. The positive

 

‘2 This exclusivity is based on separate spaces and times of school and family
lives, and on distinct practices, to say the least. It is interesting to note that teaching
degrees were traditionally valued for marriage and motherhood (Carvalho, 1989);
however, being a parent or mother, i.e. having experience in raising children, was
never a sufficient qualification for a teaching job: despite the persistent low status of
child teaching, teaching is a work defined by formal knowledge and specific
institutional location (school, classroom).

‘3 Regarding parents, one example is the current ”parental and family rights”
movement. Teachers, in turn, despite contrary rhetoric, do not welcome parental
interference in the classroom, as some researchers have pointed out (Dombusch &
Ritter, 1988; Biklen, 1995).

154

participation of parents within the framework described above - positive in the sense
of not creating conflicts, but rather helping to solve problems according to the
school’s orientation - has reinforced the model of parental involvement expected by
teachers and now promoted by educational policy.

However, when schools and teachers expect parental involvement both in
school and homework, they don’t consider the cases of single parents, working
mothers, ethnic and language minority families, low-educated, handicapped, and
chronically-ill parents, those with a great number of children, and in situations of
poverty - all who have time constraints and limited skills and resources, and who add
up to the majority of parents of public schools. It is reasonable that parents in these
difficult life situations, feeling that they already make great sacrifices in order to feed,
keep healthy, and bring their children to school, expect the school to provide for
precisely that which they cannot afford at home or with their own resources, and at
minimum cost for them. It doesn’t seem reasonable nor efficient,“ on the other hand,
to expect schools and teachers to help these kinds of parents in adding academic work
to their ordeal, creating moreover an extra function for the school (social assistance
and adult education) and an extra burden for teachers (social worker and parent
educator).

Since the material, cultural, and personal conditions for the family to perform

an educational role influential on school success are not evenly available, how can one

 

6‘ Unless the ultimate (hidden) function is to blame parents, deflecting the focus
from the nature of the pedagogic work carried by the school. By suggesting this, I
am not proposing a simplistic explanation, but rather recalling the blaming game
(teachers have been unfairly blamed for ’poor’ educational outcomes, and have also
unfairly blamed families and parents), symptomatic of a complex situation.

155

make sense of the subliminal (and, at times, quite explicit) charge at parental
accountability within the formalization of the family-school partnership? While within
the dominant cultural arbitrary of schooling the typical partnership in which parents
support by all means the school curriculum makes total sense and is not perceived as
an imposition (since there is identity and continuity of values and practices among
middle-class parents and education professionals), this is certainly not the case for the
majority of lower class and cultural minority parents. Nevertheless, insofar as the
educational workings of the family are subordinated to the school (where home
education is confirmed or denied), by framing the family as an educational institution
- not quite in its own right, but designated with the obligation of providing the basic
inputs for the development of the school curriculum - educational policy can, in fact,
not only legitimately fail those students whose parents don’t comply with their
educational obligation to their children, but rightftu dictate family education. This
contradiction has already generated reactions of some families (the homeschoolers,
for instance, who are attempting to do education in their own right and by their own
means)," but is not likely to be easily worked out by the many families who lack the
resources, the time, and the voice to intervene politically in the realm of public

education.

*

‘5 The religious right, in turn, is pushing for curricular, and even bigger systemic
Shange, since changing family (religious) education in order to align it to the
Ideological (scientific) frame of the school is simply unacceptable for them. See, for
mSl-‘ance, Luksik & Hoffecker (1995).

156
The purposes and meanings of the public school

The public school first appeared as a solution for the intellectual education of a
small collectivity, resembling what is called a private school today. The meaning
public, as we came to understand it, is connected to the advent of the state
compulsory school, which represented a greater collectivity and supposed a common
knowledge, a special purpose, and a unique context of experience, which could not be
accomplished by any other form of education or social institution, as purported by the
ideology of modern democratic schooling. So, modern education is precisely
epitomized by the public, secular school, open to all citizens, whose mission, while
intellectual, is social, and while political, is collective-bound.

On the one hand, and in contrast with the fact that schooling became its
predominant mode, the very idea that public education is a joint responsibility of
State, family, and community (through organized groups) presupposes diversification
and specialization, differentiated powers and responsibilities, within a framework of
convergent purposes, that is, a conception of public interest. Historically, as the work
community declined, the new ’social contract’ of education and social reproduction
split personal and common, affective and cognitive aspects between the nuclear family
and the school: psychosocial and individual-moral development remained primarily as
the camp of the family, while the specific task of the school was defined as
intellectual and collectiVe-moral development. On the other hand, within this ’social

contract, ’ public education has been assigned two purposes: democratic construction

157

(citizenship education) and social efficiency“ (labour training), the second being
subordinated to the first, at least rhetorically.67 Fundamentally, democratic
construction presupposes not only formal equality of educational opportunity (so that
individuals can have equal chances of developing their skills and competing for
positions of power in order to serve the collectivity), but a common experience and
knowledge, which result in a minimum set of shared values and social solidarity.
However, as it evolved, schooling offered diverse experiences and embodied
distinct meanings for different social classes, groups, and individuals, depending
basically on their relation to literate culture and on the place they occupied - and could
come to occupy, depending on the movements of the market - in the relations of
production.“ While wealthy families never needed the public school, the middle
classes have been quite successful in privatizing it, i.e. in shaping the educational
service offered by their neighborhood school, through active involvement and subtle

pressures to get a tailored education for their children, as Lareau (1991) demonstrated.

 

6‘ I borrow this term from Labaree (1997). A certain breed of sociologic and
economic theories has assigned education a social mobility purpose. That education
has exerted an upward mobility function in some cases, for some groups and
individuals, under special and restricted conditions, is certain, but a theory that
generalizes such a function, suggesting a social equalization function, is certainly
disputable. The raise of credentials for job placement, in the context of increased
levels of educational attainment, has annulled the upward mobility effect; it seems that
education has been much more instrumental for horizontal mobility nowadays.

‘7 Individual development, as a goal, is also, necessarily, subordinated to social
pm'poses; and, as a process, is inextricably connected to a socio-cultural framework
(Leontiev, 1978).

6‘ This suggests that the social efficiency purpose came to be dominant. And, to
a Certain extent, schooling has appeared to corporations and business people as an
interesting institution serving technological development and enabling rationalization
and increment of production.

158

For working class individuals the public school represented a kind of education quite
distinct from their home background, and the only opportunity of access to formal
education and, eventually, white-collar jobs, whereas for the underclass it didn’t mean
any hope. As a result, academic knowledge (represented by a credential), which is a
condition for social opportunity in the present mode of social reproduction, has not
been accessible to all, and has been disproportionately denied the lower classes. From
a cultural perspective - in the conditions of imposition of a particular cultural arbitrary
upon all, of traditional cultural wars, and of unstableness of academic knowledge - it
seems fair to say that the common knowledge necessary for democratic construction
and solidarity has been hardly developed and precariously realized.

Diverse school experiences and outcomes related to distinct social class cultures
originated two models of family-school relations: the partnership model of the middle
classes, and the delegation model of the lower classes, tempered by various degrees of
resistance to the school culture. Notwithstanding, the current policy rationale on the
necessity and benefit of parental involvement, based on the ’school-as-an-extension-of-
the-family’ model, carries a typical middle class bias, in that it assumes the intrinsic
value of education for self-accomplishment, and/or the ideology of education for
upward social mobility, counting on the fiction that all parents value academic
education, desire school success, believe it is conducive to social and economic
affluence, and are able to invest in it.

Meanings of education and schooling are produced by concrete life conditions
and school experiences. Parents’ expectations and investments toward their children’s

schooling, and particularly their contributions to learning, depend on various

159

intertwined factors: generally, on material and cultural resources (the later being
dependent on the former to a greater extent), on their social class framework (work
and life style), on the extent in which they have bought into the promises of the liberal
ideology (individualism, competition, and pursuit of advantage), and on some sort of
more or less conscious calculation of costs and benefits, considering all of the other
life needs, circumstances and challenges; specifically, on their own habitus and school
experience, i.e. on the extent to which they have been successfully schooled and
acquainted with erudite culture themselves; and, last but not least, on children’s
(individually differentiated) school performance which, being a source of gratification
or frustration for parents, interacts with the above general and specific factors. On a
very practical level, granted that they share the dominant cultural arbitrary, parents’
involvement in education requires, at least, free time and money to enjoy and
introduce children into literate culture: time, for instance, to be with children after
work and all the other tasks of daily life reproduction; money, for instance, to pay for
a babysitter in order to attend a school meeting, to buy a ready meal instead of
cooking in order to help with homework, etc.. On the symbolic level, the meanings
parents assign to school knowledge, experiences, and credentials are related in
complex ways to family history, current life situation, and aspirations. Yet, specific
engagement in instruction depends not only on parents’ own academic background and
mastery of subject matters, but on their keeping up with successive curricular reforms,
and thus on a special interest in schooling.

Traditionally, middle-class families have taken advantage of educational

opporttmities: independently from school explicit policy, their parents are known for

160

getting actively involved in school and promoting academic culture at home. Their
motivations are various,‘59 but basically they strive to stimulate their children to learn
the school curriculum and succeed, assuring them of the value of education and
individual effort, bolstering their self-esteem and compensating for frustrations. They
may participate in school activities as a way to show their children how much they
value education and, thus, to reinforce expectations of school success. They may
show up in school as a kind of insurance regarding future needs, thus increasing the
chances that their kids will profit from positive discrimination being related to
concerned parents, or as a strategy to influence specific school policies and practices
for their advantage. They may join extracurricular activities which offer opportunities
to socialize and meet friends for their own leisure purposes, as in the case of sports
and arts. They may follow the academic curriculum at school (by volunteering in the
classroom) and/or at home, either because they value it and try to reinforce it, or

object to it and try to modify it, or else because of their students’ special needs. They

 

‘9 I was reminded by Steven Weiland (1997) of the main motivation of parents in
getting involved in schooling: love for their children. This is an implicit point for
me. Much can be said about love, its various forms of expression and constraint, but
one point should be explicit here: that love is also culturally arbitrary. Along this
line, it has been said that some parents love their children better than others, and also
how parents should love their children (a part of effective parenting). The problem
with a policy aiming at enhancing parental involvement in schooling is precisely that it
appeals to parental love. The current discourse that ”all parents care about their
children” aims at counteracting the widespread belief, related to school failure, that
certain parents (low class, ethnic minority) do not care about their children’s
education; and, indeed, the challenge posed to policy-practice has been how to
capitalize on parental interest (love) in their children’s academic success. The
interesting cultural point here is that parental love is associated with being able to
promote one’s child school success, which is seen as a condition for future economic

security. Another motivation of some parents is love of school and particular
academic subjects.

161

may engage more or less in homework according to students’ peculiarities, such as
talent, difficulty, or dependency, or because they want to compensate for curricular
weaknesses independently, at home.

While a variety of forms of family-school partnership have worked for the
middle classes, poor and working class families have had to delegate schooling to the
State, the school, and the teacher, for complex material and cultural reasons. Beyond
material constraints, the association between education and personal success is not part
of their concrete experience or a promise of their cultural arbitrary, and they lack the
very educational prerequisites to get involved in schooling. Insofar as those parents
were not educated when they should have been, it is all the more unfair to expect
them to invest in their own education (return to school or attend parenting workshops)
in order to educate their children, when their life circumstances are very different and
harder than those of the middle and upper classes.70 Along this line, it is
inappropriate and unjust to call lower class parents passive, and it seems untenable to
expect their participation to increase on the basis of a policy call and teacher
leadership, as pretended by Epstein (1991). Insofar as conditions of life and meanings
of education are doomed to persist differentiated for the various social groups,
school’s reliance on the family is generally implausible.

In this context of dissimilar sociocultural experiences, and knowledge that

school serves certain individuals and families better than others, the current stress on

 

. 7° When one thinks of the burdens of child rearing today in the urban, socially
isolated, nuclear family context, and of all the scientific and consumerist demands on

parenting, the no-children or one-child options of many in the middle and upper
classes come as no surprise.

162

the educative role of the family, narrowly defined in terms of accountability in
relation to school goals, represents a sharp and alarming shift. It is sensible to expect
that any families under adverse circumstances, including middle-class, will have their
children’s opportunities restricted, from the beginning, by a policy and instructional
practice requiring more parental involvement in school, and specific academic forms
of work at home. At this moment, it seems that the ideology of the social purposes of
education is being ’adjusted, ’ with an increased emphasis on social efficiency
(Labaree, 1997), expressed by the ’need’ to train new work skills, produce improved
outcomes, and raise test scores; neoliberal politics is attacking state bureaucracy and
shrinking its social services, in favor of private, supposedly more efficient, small
scale, initiatives (Chubb & Moe, 1990). Within the rhetoric of new standards for
education and production, and a better educated workforce for international economic
competition, in order to maintain or boost the domestic quality of life as well as the
leading political role of this nation in the world scenario, the blaming game of who is
responsible for the present social crisis (poverty, unemployment, drug consuming,
violence, alienation, customarily treated not as economic but as educational problems)
seems to be shifting from the school to the family. More visib. reforms like ’school
choice’ and less visible ones like ’more homework’ have passed the burden onto the
family, ignoring the concrete impact that the crisis has already had on the majority of
families. The very fact that families are the most vulnerable to such crisis is taken for
granted.

It seems that an attempt at establishing a novel educational mode is at work,

163

with the redefinition of the very meaning of public education.71 The traditional model
of public school, in which the family delegated education to the state but still retained
autonomy in home education, is being pressed to be substituted by a model in which
the State delegates education to the family or organized groups - while it still controls
the standards, i.e. determines the curriculum and administers the tests, just like
Coleman’s (1967) ’open schools.’ Though that traditional model had been subverted
by middle-class school control, it is important to reclaim its most important aspect: the
commitment to equal treatment of students, including compensatory approaches
(positive discrimination) and the goal to equalize basic outcomes.

In contrast, the model pressed to be generalized now seems to be that of the
private school, which has survived, on a small scale, all along the expansion of the
public school system, or that of the privatized public school, the kind in which
families shop for a tailored education. And, indeed, partnerships between school and
family are only possible where there exists enough consensus over purposes,
meanings, values, contents, and methods of instruction, and specially over the
particular roles of teachers and parents within the school-family educational contract.

This is more likely to occur in the context of private schools, where the school

 

7‘ To complicate matters, the very concept and role of the American state in
public and private life is a confused issue in its own, bearing upon the destinies of
families and the public school. On the one hand, the idea that the state has had and
should have a small role in individual and social life, i.e. that social problems should
be solved privately, is part of the cultural arbitrary of privileged groups who have had
their own interests identified with the state’s: as long as the state apparatus has served
them well, they do not want to share those resources with other groups. On the other
hand, some groups are suspicious of the state interest, either because they don’t
believe in the common interest, or haven’t had their interests attended on; the religious
right for instance, has charged the American state with totalitarianism in the struggle
over the school curriculum.

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functions as an extension of the family, and/ or where the exchange of money for
service is quite direct and, by the way, where parents see and treat teachers as
subordinates.”

The private school model also might accommodate cultural diversity better,
insofar as it divides the greater community into small groups sharing common
particular interests, but it eradicates the space of commonality represented by the
unitarian public school, the only space available for the production and reproduction
of democratic (communitarian) values and practices on a daily close fight basis.
Considering certain features of American society, like the past (recent) history of
school racial segregation, and the urban geography of class and ethnic segregation,
this model might as well bring about re-segregation on class, race, and ethnic lines.

It is redundant to say that the current policy redefinitions of the meaning of the
public school, the purpose of family education, and the role of parents in schooling,
are not auspicious for many, underprivileged families. Yet, in recognizing the limits
of families as educators, it is important to understand how relations between families
and schools were constructed, and why families nwd schools, in spite of their defects.
Under the present conditions of social reproduction, though schooling has distinct
meanings for different social groups, schools have a tangible meaning and an essential
role, place, and time in the organization of daily life, beyond the use value of
education outcomes and the exchange value of school credentials. The majority of

families and parents, specially working class and poor minority, depend on the public

 

7’ This has also been noted in the case of upper middle—class parents relating to
public schools (Connell et al., 1982; Iareau, 1993).

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school for the care, occupation, and education of children, and cannot substitute it
(reversing history), or create a private alternative.73 Indeed, public education doesn’t
need to be compulsory anymore: as a central apparatus of social reproduction, schools
became indispensable, for they keep children and youth while parents work, even if
they fail to accomplish their claimed social purposes and specific academic, civic, and
work training functions. This is, of course, a problematic point, insofar as the
expansion of the psychosocial function, in order to compensate for family weaknesses,
has come in detriment of the academic function, which is precisely what most

families, by definition, cannot provide.

Parenting as symbolic capital

In this era of formalization of education and systematic study and regulation of
human experience, certain trivial and informal kinds of knowledge and skills have
been refurbished as special training, packed as courses and books, and sold under the
rubric of continual and life-long education, expanding the educational market so to fit
new usable knowledges on how-to-do, how-to—succeed, and even how-to-enjoy things.
This movement is not restricted to labour-market adjustments but has penetrated
private life, fixing expectations and behaviors, blurring distinctions between leisure
and study, subjecting personal expression and enrichment to assessment and

normalization, thanks to the popularization of psychology and the great expansion of

 

’3 Home-schoolers are exceptional, for their movement encounters specific
economic and intellectual barriers in terms of available home-educators. To the extent
that various families join limited resources (like individual time and intellectual skills),
they might as well operate a private (communitarian) school.

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its professional market. Among such new ’teachable’ knowledges is parenting, which
from an informal art of raising children turned into a science, with standardized and
expert-prescribed contents and techniques.

Indeed, psychology has continually redefined positive and negative parenting
and has considerably influenced family life Style, specially middle class well-informed,
’up—to-date’ patterns of child rearing.“ Schools, in turn, have furthered and
reinforced new demands for the education of children, and for the re-education of
parents for the role of educating their own children, insofar as a certain parenting
style is perceived as influential on school achievement. Thus, beyond providing for
physical care, affective expression, and moral direction, parenting has assumed a very
instrumental sense, in that it is supposed to generate specific qualities and
competencies, fit to social opportunities and exchangeable for social rewards: it has
become a specialized form of affective relationship explicitly required to be effective
in the psychosocial development and, increasingly, in the cognitive development of
children.

Parenting has both implicit and explicit dimensions which function as symbolic
capital in current family-school exchanges. The implicit dimension is evident in the
following typical family scene: the student comes home from school and the parent

(usually mother) is eager to know how was the school day and what is the homework;

 

7‘ One can find at Schuler Books nine popular magazines specialized on
parenting, ranging from traditional to alternative approaches, and covering a variety of
tastes and situations: Child, Parenting, Family Life, Visitation (the source for non-
traditional families), Mothering (the magazine of natural family living), Family Fun,
Exceptional Parent (the magazine for families and professionals), Working Mother,
and Parents.

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next, the parent reads the homework, stimulates the student to do it and, if necessary,
coaches him or her. In this way, cultural capital (in the form of a specific academic
disposition) is developed. The explicit dimension, equivalent to social capital, is
played in the school site by participation in various activities, which demonstrate that
the parent is involved in his child’s education and supportive of the school’s agenda,
and create the likelihood of profit in the form of a favorable disposition, on the part of
teachers and principals, toward a particular student.

The centrality of the intellectual project within the definition and practice of
middle class parenting is explained by Bourdieu (1977) in the context of cultural and
social reproduction: ”those sections which are richest in cultural capital are more
inclined to invest in their children’s education at the same time as in cultural practices
liable to maintain and increase their specific rarity" (p. 502), thus integrating the
investments placed in the academic career of their children into the system of
strategies of its own (class) reproduction. Furthermore, ”the support accorded by a
category to academic sanctions and hierarchies depends not only on the rank the
school system grants to it in its hierarchies but also on the extent to which its interests
are linked to the school system or, in other words, on the extent to which its
commercial value and its social position depend (in the past as in the future) on
academic approval” (p. 504).

Thus, consonant with current definitions of good parenting, middle class
parents have played a quite visible, showy role in their children’s education, and
consistently intervened in schooling, as academic success is part of their life style.

Moreover, in their exchanges with the school they have relied not only on their own

1 6 8
cultural capital, but on social capital as well:

Those who possess the most prestigious qualifications also have at their

disposal an inherited capital of relationships and skills which enable them to

obtain such qualifications; this capital is made up of such things as the practice
of the games and sports of high society or the manners and taste resulting from
good breeding, which, in certain careers (. . .), constitute the condition, if not
the principal factor, of success. The habitus inculcated by upper class families
gives rise to practices which (. . .) are extremely profitable to the extent that
they make possible the acquisition of the maximum yield of academic
qualifications whenever recruitment or advancement is based upon cooptation
or on such diffuse and total criteria as ’the right presentation, ’ ’general

culture,’ etc. (Bourdieu, 1977, p. 506)

Iareau’s (1993) empirical findings depict the efforts of upper middle-class,
professional families in constructing their children’s school success. She argues that
"social class (independent of ability) does affect schooling. Teachers ask for parent
involvement, social class shapes the resources which parents have at their disposal to
comply with teachers’ requests for assistance" (p. 2). Hence, teaching (the form of
pedagogic work carried by the school) is articulated with a particular (productive)
parenting model. The way schools are conceived and organized, teachers not only
’need’ parental commitment to academic activities and encourage parents’ engagement
with homework, but make decisions concerning students based on evaluations - or
rather bets, involving stereotypes and prejudices - about their parents.

On the side of the family, social class provides differentiated resources needed
to fit the current model of schooling - the family-school parmership in which the
family is supposed to fulfill an auxiliary, but rather basic, academic function. Those
resources, basically economic, as already noted, are concentrated on the time,

cultural, and social capital of the mother. In fact, as acknowledged by David (1980),

home-school relations are broadly and specifically built into gender differentiated

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parenting roles.15 Iareau (1993) also verified empirically that, though gender neutral,
parenting really means mostly mothering: ”parent involvement remains primarily
mother involvement in education while fathers, particularly in upper middle class
homes, have an important symbolic role" (p. 95); while "contemporary mothers
appear to face a more varied, complex, and labor-intensive set of tasks in promoting
their children’s academic progress than in previous eras, " fathers exert a leadership
role in important educational decisions and inter-institutional pursuits, such as formal
complaints to school (pp. 90-95). This "pattern of maternal activity and paternal
passivity" (p. 88) reflects differentiated gender roles within the family, where women
play reproductive roles complementary to men’s central role as economic providers,
which is especially true for the upper middle-class, where mothering may constitute
women’s sole or principal career. Therefore, the model of parenting envisioned by
parental involvement policies, characterized by a strong intellectual accent, is typical
of the schooled middle class, which counts on mothers’ intensive and extensive
dedication to overseeing their children’s schooling, and bringing home activities in
alignment with the school curriculum (Fine, 1993; Iareau, 1993). As an invisible and
devalued female work, mothering is just not acknowledged as the core of parental
involvement.

On the side of the school, it seems correct to state, parodying Lareau (1993),

that social class (and parental ability) qfi'ects schooling the more teachers ask for

 

75

David (1980) pertinently points out that, in the absence of collective or state

responsibility, mothers are usually the sole responsible for children during preschool
years (prior to the age of compulsory schooling), before and after school hours daily,
and during school breaks and vacations, which do not coincide with the length of the
working day and working year.

1 7 0
parent involvement in preparing for, complementing, and reinforcing instruction.
Insofar as teachers’ success depends on effective parenting, it also seems reasonable to
state that teachers will depend all the more on parental commitment to school success
the more they are pressured to raise outcomes and the less they actually dispose of
time and efficient pedagogic resources to promote learning independent of parental
support. It is fair to assume that - as a rule, special compensatory programs being the
exception - schools and teachers are organized to count on parental academic support,
as the current formalization of ’parental involvement’ into a policy attests.
Consequently, a policy attempting to mobilize parental academic support is doomed to
consecrate family education alignment to school standards (what makes no difference
to and actually benefits certain groups) and certain parents’ efforts to increment their
own children’s school experience (what has typically happened within the middle and
upper classes).

Eventually, the mystique of good parenting may be used as an asset in the
struggle for school success also by lower class parents, as suggested by Lareau’s
(1993) rich data. The following events, which occurred in a working class school
with low levels and few kinds of parental involvement (as compared to an upper
middle class school), illustrate the cling between parents’ performance and institutional
discrimination imbedded in the structure and culture of the school and actualized in
teachers’ practices, particularly in their expectations and judgements about effective
parenting and potential student success.

A first grade (female) teacher was impressed by the parents - particularly the

father - of a (male) student and concluded (also based on other performance data) that

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"Johnny’s parents had worked with him at home, reading to him, teaching him new
words, and giving him educational advantages" (Lareau, 1993, p. 141). Then,
“despite her conviction that Johnny was not a gifted student and her knowledge that he
was only slightly above the class average, Mrs. Thompson recommended that he be
selected for the school enrichment program; " however, she ”did not recommend that
children with similar, or even slightly superior, academic records be admitted to the
program" (p. 142). Iareau (1993) suggests that ”Johnny’s parents may have
influenced her decision [and that] his parents’ behavior raised her expectations” (p.
142).

A second grade (female) teacher ”believed strongly that children’s home
environments influenced their classroom performance” (Lareau, 1993, p. 142). She
heard rumors about a (female) student’s mother who had frequent parties at home and
’neglected’ her child, and concluded that "because of her home situation, AnneMarie
did not have as positive an attitude toward school as children whose parents were
more conventional" (p. 142). As a result, and despite the fact that this student had a
top performance and " greater reading fluency when reading aloud than most of her
peers, Mrs. Sampson did not focus on her reading skills until the end of the year,
when she looked at the standardized test scores” (p. 143). According to Lareau’s
(1993) analysis, ”it is possible, even likely, that Mrs. Sampson’s negative assessment
of Anne-Marie’s home life clouded her view of the child’s classroom performance
until challenged by test scores. With other children . .. [especially a Vietnamese boy
and a sheriff’s daughter] Mrs. Sampson appeared to expect good performance and was

on the lookout for evidence of academic promise" (p.143).

172

Thus, while in the lower class school Lareau (1993) discovered that "children’s
schooling - particularly their access to special programs - could be shaped more by
teachers’ perceptions of the parents’ role in education than by the children’s
performance in the classroom, " at the upper middle-class school she found ”no signs
of teachers - on their own initiative - altering a child’s school program based on
their assessment of the students’ parents’ values" (p. 143).

The counterpart of parental involvement is teacher positive discrimination, non-
involvement resulting in negative discrimination. As Lareau (1993) states, while
parents’ actions "appeared to influence teachers’ assessment of children’s abilities and
their potential for achievement” (p. 141), in turn "when teachers believed that parents
valued education and were heavily involved in children’s schooling, they took actions
which they did not take for children whose parents were less active in schooling” (p.
140). This is understandable in terms that the logic of the school and its agents is also
a logic of investment and profit, minimization of time and effort (and frustration), and
maximization of success and gains; hence, automatic and unconscious reading of signs
of cultural, social, and economic capital orient decisions regarding the capitalization
on the apparent habitus within interpersonal relations.

Quite surprisingly, however, Iareau (1993) denies the occurrence of
institutional discrimination, for teachers did not "make different requests of parents or,
even in subtle ways, encourage upper-rniddle-class parents to be involved more than

working-class parents" (p. 104).76 The way she poses the issue is already revealing of

 

7‘ Nevertheless, Iareau (1993) observed that "the tone, breadth, and quality" (p.
105) of teacher-parent interactions differed between the working-class and upper-
middle class schools: more stilted in the former and more relaxed in the latter, a

173

a particular arbitrary stance: that parental involvement is positive, then all parents
should be equally encouraged to get involved, which leaves the choice - merit or fault
- to them. By limiting potential discrimination to a discrete moment (teachers’ first
move), she misses its dynamic (as if all was left to parents’ initiative), as well as the
prior point that the conditions for (further) discrimination are already embedded in the

very request of parental involvement.

Policy prospects

As education involves the workings of family and school, amid a multitude of
other powerful social influences, educational policy can be conceived precisely as a
framework connecting their interactions in favor of public goals. However, as
schooling is not equal to education, it is important to recognize that educational policy
carries fundamentally the politics of schooling, which nonetheless has served
differently the politics of education of diverse families. In the past, while school
policy didn’t deal directly and explicitly with family education, parent-teacher-
principal interactions were left to random individual initiative within traditional local
politics, which worked well for certain groups and individuals. What is new now,

and needs to be acknowledged, is that state policy is not only expanding its scope of

 

feature not attributable to teachers’ treatment. She also noted that the working class
school had three formal programs of parental involvement (a Read-at-Home Program,
a parent education workshop, and a class on parenting for single parents), and that the
teachers there "were more vigorous . .. in recruiting parents to work with their
children at home” (p. 106); in contrast, the upper-middle-class school had a very
active parents’ club, which sponsored fund-raising activities and a classroom volunteer
program (giving parents opportunities to learn about instructional activities, their
children’s performance within the group, and teachers’ performance, as well).

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action by formalizing those interactions and by specifying the educational contribution
of the family toward schooling, but is also regulating family-school relations according
to one particular model: the middle-class pattern of parental involvement.

So, this new movement articulates family policy with school policy on behalf
of children, and seemingly under a framework of social efficiency. It is very
complicated and full of contradictions. While it is generally expected that public
policy should deal with the school, and not interfere with the private realm of family
education, a policy like parental involvement in schooling tends to raise immediate
agreement and even enthusiasm. It sounds correct because it draws on parents’
natural obligation, good because it aims at benefiting children, desirable because it
will increase democratic participation and raise school achievement. Moreover, it
echoes the middle-class cultural tradition, specifically the belief that families, i.e.
parents, influence school policy. Nevertheless, besides specific conditions and
dispositions of parents to participate, such a policy presupposes perhaps what it aims
at building: cultural continuity and identity of purposes between all families and
school, a doubtful prerequisite in times of acute cultural diversity and contention
(Hunter, 1991; Berliner, 1997).

A basic contradictory aspect refers to the family-school division of educational
work. If it is consensual that both families and schools educate, the intersections and
boundaries of their roles have not been stable or thoroughly clear. On the one hand,
suspending the fact that schooling builds on a particular family-class culture (Bourdieu
& Passeron, 1977), according to the traditional delegation model teachers shouldn’t

expect from parents more than physical and emotional care, so that children could

175

come to school prepared to learn the school’s special knowledge. Apparently, the
"crisis of the family” (stressed parents, working mothers, divorce, burdened single
parents, lack of quantity and quality time with children) has reduced its role in
physical, emotional, social, and moral discipline, requiring schools, in turn, to extend
their traditional role in academic and civic instruction in order to encompass various
bio-psycho-social aspects. In this context, precisely, it is inconceivable to attribute the
family a role in academic education. On the other hand, suspending the latent conflict
between parents and teachers (Waller, 1965), it seems reasonable to count on parents
and to expect them to be the teachers’ best allies in schooling: parents desire the best
for their children and would be willing to help teachers’ efforts in various ways. But
this supposes a few conditions: that the parents dispose of time, interest, and know-
how in order to help, that they are familiar with the school culture and value the
school curriculum, and that they submit to teachers’ authority and lead. Granted these
conditions, parents’ work for schooling, with moral and emotional obligation as an
incentive, would have the advantage of bearing no direct costs for the school. And,
in case parents needed to be taught how to help, it would have the additional
advantage of creating special projects, new grants, and specialized jobs in the school
and academy.

A related contradictory aspect pertains to teacher authority. In the delegation
model, family authority and school authority are separate, teacher authority being
enacted over the student in the limits of the classroom, and not being constantly
mediated by the parent. In the partnership model, on the contrary, teachers may both

exert authority over the parents, as the latter mediate between schoolwork and

176

homework, and resent parental interference in their professional camp. Another cost
for teachers may derive from the new obligation to consult, coordinate, and evaluate
parents’ homework. Moreover, a teacher-parent parmwship may invite two peculiar
situations: one in which teacher and parent dispute instructional choices, or compete
for influence over the child, and another in which they become accomplices in
pressuring the child. Of course there can be happy cases in which teacher-parent-child
get along well; but there can be also unlucky relationships having to last for a whole
school year! So, while sometimes students might benefit from a teacher-parent
alliance, [they can also benefit from difference between adults’ approaches. The
contradiction for teachers is that they need and like parents’ interest, support, and
appreciation, but they are better off with the delegation model.

Why do teachers need parental involvement? I firmly believe that when
teachers have good work conditions, and students learn satisfactorily, they do not need
to engage ordinarily with parents. Teachers have needed parental backing when they
feel impotent and frustrated. And they have typically blamed the family for student
failure because they are also subject to blame from principals and parents, and
moreover because they lack the practical and intellectual means to develop an effective
social, institutional, and pedagogic critique, due to the very function and conditions of
their work. For the essential contradiction of teachers’ work is that they are supposed
to help students learn and, at the same time, to assess them negatively and fail them,
in the name of meritocracy, or with the purpose of helping them further. Parents, in
turn, don’t need to get involved in schooling as long as all is going well, and they

normally prefer to trust teachers and leave the job to them. For one thing, there are

177

also gains in maintaining a distance from school and its demands, as parent-child
relations can be more relaxing and enjoyable if they don’t spin around school subjects,
homework, quizzes, and grades.

Another potential source of tensions may derive from parental conceptions of
education and perceptions of schooling. From the perspective of the family, parental
involvement in education and in schooling are, indeed, two different things, which
might fit or crash. As long as there is agreement over the content and quality of
education offered by schools, i.e. parental tacit support, and satisfactory student
outcomes, i.e. convergence of individual achievement and institutional efficiency, all
is well; conversely, if learning is perceived as deficient, either in individual or general
terms, or if it conflicts with family values, then there is a situation of crisis. Albeit
the continual rhetoric of crisis might be, to a great extent, fabricated, as Berliner &
Biddle (1995) argue, there is disagreement over the content of schooling in U.S.
society, and discontent over its quantitative and/ or qualitative outcomes among various
groups, either conservative or progressive. In such cases, participation in school may
ensue from parents’ initiative, either individually in attempting to get a tailored
education for a particular child, or collectively organized around a specific change
agenda, as for instance the current movement against outcome-based education (Luksik
& Hoffecker, 1995); or else parents may try to compensate for schools’ lacks by
private means, or even radically withdraw from public education, as exemplified by
the home schooling movement.

Therefore, the main contradiction of parental involvement in schooling as a

policy is that, albeit wrapped as grass-roots, it is really top—down - but, of course, no

178

contradiction is likely to be perceived by those who or are on top or share into its
logic (the cultural arbitrary where it is nested). As it basically depends on consensus
over purposes, meanings, and contents of schooling, and on coincidence between
parents’ educational conceptions and possibilities, and school goals and practices,
ultimately this policy bears upon the hierarchical relation between school knowledge
and family diverse cultures, with the equity implications already suggested.

Alternatively, what would a policy concerned with equity pose in terms of
school purposes and family-school relations? In order to answer this question it is
important to retrieve two fundamental points: the democratic ideal of education, and
the social function of schooling.

Recalling Bourdieu & Passeron’s (1977) theoretical contribution, the
educational system fulfills relatively stable social functions: it plays a key role in
cultural and social reproduction, by inflating or deflating students’ initial cultural
capital acquired from family and class socialization, and converting it (or not) into
more or less valued credentials. The individual path to profitable exchanges and school
success depends on ’familiarity’ with the school’s specific knowledge, language, and
standards of evaluation, and reflects the distance or affinity between home and class
culture (informal education) and academic culture (the formal school cmriculum).
Thus, the production of educational failure is intrinsic to the functioning of an
educational system that encompasses individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds,
but implicitly adopts one cultural framework. Consequently, policies which leave
these particular reproductive mechanisms untouched necessarily promote educational

and social inequality by reinforcing the existing structure of the distribution of cultural

1 7 9
capital among the social classes.

Moreover, a policy that rrrisrecognizes the fact that both material and cultural
resources are preconditions for successful alignment to the educational mode of the
dominant culture, that is, that omits the fact that a certain initial cultural capital
(produced, transmitted, and inherited within particular social conditions) is required to
invest in and benefit from the school mode, and explicitly demands family alignment
to the school, is strangely assigning the family not only entire responsibility for
student success, but also a (political and improper) role in minimizing educational and
social inequalities, inequalities which the family does not produce or reproduce.

Thus, it seems obvious that a policy that prescribes the educative role of families in
relation to school goals is likely to create more inequity, as schools (which have
properly a political role) organize their processes counting on the implicit and explicit
support of families.

Social equality and individual self-realization are ideals and aspirations. The
fact that they haven’t come true doesn’t diminish their power in orienting human
pursuits and inspiring the educational agenda. The limited powers of both families
and school in promoting them have to be acknowledged, so that alternatives can be
devised.

Once the political-structural limits of schooling, in particular, are
acknowledged, the issue of realizing its specific symbolic power remains: reproduction
still allows for a range of choices (and ideological disputes) in terms of knowledge and
practices. Bourdieu & Passeron’s (1977) framework shows that, as the school

constitutes a symbolic market in itself - in that it mediates between preceding

180

individual and family inequality and broader, parallel, and subsequent (in terms of the
individual life course) economic and symbolic structures - it has some degree of
autonomy to influence the processes and outcomes of its own production (the space of
production in reproduction). As it constitutes a setting of symbolic exchanges and
conflicts, the school has also, ideally, to conciliate between the dissemination of a
common culture (the dominant cultural arbitrary, in any case) and respect for diverse
individuals and cultures, through - as much as possible - democratic processes.’7
Consequently, educational policies and practices represent a range of choices in
reducing or augmenting the dependence of students’ opportunities upon their social
origins, in breaking or fastening the automatic conversion of family and class material
and cultural differences into school success or failure. In thinking over the
possibilities of conversion of symbolic capital, in the terrain of cultural diversity,
precisely resides the fecundity of pedagogy.

Along this line, an alternative policy framework for family-school relations,
aiming at producing a more equalizing effect, should initially frame the relations
between these distinct institutions as nonessential and accessory, that is, entirely
optional, recognizing family educational practices as diverse and autonomous, while
clearly demarcating the specificity of the pedagogic work (purposes and knowledge) of
the school. Because the crucial issue of family-school interactions is cultural,
referring to the reproduction of a cultural arbitrary, and implying the demarcation of

the knowledge to be imposed upon all and assessed in the context of schooling, from

 

7.7 Socio—interactionist instructional methods, following a Vygostyan approach,
provrde for good a example.

181

the perspective of the family the problem can be defined as to what extent school
offers a valuable knowledge and succeeds in imparting it, while simultaneously
allowing for the co-existence of diverse cultures and knowledges in the family and
community realms.

In contrast, the education encompassed by schooling is distinctively political
and fundamentally distinct from - and not necessarily continuous with - the education
provided by diverse families. Along this line, a project of educational equity must
initially recognize and respect families’ differentiated resom'ces and choices, and
clearly delimit the school’s educative mission in terms of imparting a common and
special knowledge within its own time, space and resources, while simultaneously
compensating for cultural differentials and, therefore, assessing only what it explicitly
and systematically offers. In other words, instead of counting on the educational
workings of the family, the school should work ways to precisely discount family
educational input from its educational output by investing in effective pedagogic
processes, consequently liberating families from any form of educational
accountability defined by school policy and practice."

It is useful to recall here Bourdieu & Passeron’s (1977) point that the
efficiency of modes of inculcation, i.e. an effective pedagogy, ”cannot be defined

independently from the content inculcated and the social functions which the

 

7‘ I was asked provocatively whether the solution should be, then, to prohibit
parental involvement. Of course not, for the same reason parental involvement should
not be mandated. Parental involvement is good, what is bad is grading children on
the basis of their parents’ availability to help with school work. Parental involvement
in schooling in the home is a matter of private choice and possibility; parental

participation in the school and classroom should be steered at benefiting all students
and the school community.

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pedagogic work in question fulfills in a determinate social formation" (p. 47 ). In this
light, as pointed out by Gagnon (1995), the role of a core curriculum and universal
standards is crucial for equality: only by defining "the basics” of public education, as
a clear intellectual project can its proper pedagogic role be strengthened. And,
indeed, from the very point of view of the dominant cultural arbitrary,
democratization both presupposes and follows from knowledge. Thus, insofar as the
dtfierential productivity of schooling according to ethnic group and social class is
produced by the very exercise of its pedagogic work, which excludes those who lack
the capital and ethos objectively presupposed by its mode of inculcation, the school
then must produce as much as possible the conditions for its own productivity, that is,
invest in effective teaching-learning methods, without relying in preconditions
produced elsewhere.

Finally, without a critical view of the function of the educational system in
reproducing social inequality, through its implicit partnership with one kind of family,
and through the very exercise of its specific fornrs of pedagogic work, it is not
possible to see the false promise of parental involvement as a policy and generalizable
practice. For one thing, the strategy of reaching the family in order to capitalize on
family (differentiated) resources as a way to simultaneously reduce state investments in
education, enhance student achievement and school productivity, and better educate all
children seems rather tortuous. The practical forms and effects of this mandated
partnership may be to create more complications for both schools and families, and to
amplify educational inequity, in spite of good intentions. Therefore, since it is quite

doubtful that educational policy can exert a more equalizing effect by focusing on the

183

family, it should definitely retire from the family realm and re-focus on the learning

environment and purposes of the school.

Chapter 4

RESEARCH AND POLICY: CRITIQUE OF THE GROUNDS

AND PROMISES OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT

Educational research, policy, and instruction are specific complex practices in
their own right, related to distinct purposes and interests, albeit sharing, in principle, a
common purpose and ground. Their interrelations are even a more complicated issue.
On the one hand, in our complex social and educational systems, the gaps among the
practices of researching, policymaking, and teaching result from distinct spaces, times,
and people involved, presenting a problem of communication and coordination, from
the outset. One important specific difficulty refers exactly to differences of
perspective (derived from distinct contexts of social production and personal
commitments) and struggles of interests among professional groups. On the other
hand, a general hierarchical model links their distinct realms: research is the realm of
production of trustworthy knowledge and authoritative discourses; policy is the realm
of articulation and dissemination of discourses as well as planning of effective actions;
and practice is the realm of implementation of informed action. It follows that
knowledge should inform plans and action. How should - or could - research

knowledge inform policy and practice remains a problematic question.‘ Yet, a

 

1 Other important related questions are whether available research offers sufficient
’conclusions’ which may be considered an appropriate basis for policymaking (Ben-
Peretz, 1989), and why research does not directly influence or found policyan or
practice (Cohen & Garet, 1975).

184

185

fundamental question is: what kind of research and knowledge can best inform policy
and practice?

Setting aside doubts as to whether research can really provide comprehensive
pictures and solutions for problems, whether its product (knowledge) is in any case
useful as a guide for practice, and whether its pace could keep up with the urgencies
of practice,2 one thing that can be said is that the research discourse usually confers
authority to policy and practice and, thus, is used with ideological and rhetorical
purposes in order to build consensus and urge action. And, indeed, the research
enterprise survives and struggles to expand by selling the very idea of a fundamental
necessity of sound scientific knowledge for solving or illuminating educational
problems, and guiding action.

In this context, it is tempting to see policy as exerting a mediation role
between researched problems and well-grounded solutions, i.e. possible effective
actions. In this sense policy would be seen as informed decision prescribing the best
course of action, while research would be the best source of information, conferring a
scientific seal onto it. However, there are competing sources of information (and
dispersed knowledge) and pressure (interests) for policy decisions, besides so called
scientific knowledge. It is also tempting to see research as an independent effort,
ignoring the fact that researchers’ choices in selecting and defining researchable

problems are also influenced by educational policies (and political courses of interest)

 

2 The dynamics of both social reality and research practice (the knowledge
production race) create successive shifts and constantly redefine problems, though
basic problems remain. In turn, policy and practice bear their own dynamics,
demanding political choice and prompt action, and cannot wait for the ’right’
knowledge.

186

designed elsewhere, as well as - and principally — by long lasting cultural traditions
and ideologies. Finally, it is also tempting to see knowledge produced by research as
’new evidence, ’ forgetting the basic role of theories - more or less conscious, explicit,
or sophisticated - which inform and propel any research, policy and practice, and
connect past experiences and future visions.

With these considerations in mind, in this chapter I examine research
grounding parental involvement. In order to make this task viable, I restrict my
sources to Henderson & Berla’s (1995) report3 The Family is Critical to Student
Achievement - an annotated bibliography of 66 titles, ranging from 1969 to 1993, and
including research reports, reviews, articles, and books, classified in three groups:
programs and interventions, family processes, and school policies. Because
Henderson & Berla (1995) focus on family empowerment, student achievement, and
effective schooling as a result of parental involvement, they offer a particularly
conclusive reading of this research: ”to those who ask whether involving parents will
really make a difference, we can safely say that the case is closed" (p. x). My
reading, however, will focus on unpacking the articulation of research and policy
rationales, inquiring on how the importance of family for school success has been

constructed or corroborated by both research and policy.

 

3 This report is the third on the role of parental involvement in improving student
achievement, published by the National Committee for Citizens in Education (N CCE),
whose mission - parent and disadvantaged student advocacy - is defined as ”putting the
public back in the public schools" (Henderson and Berla, 1995, p. x).

l 8 7
Q Parental involvement as a research problem

Parental involvement emerged as a variable in the evaluation research on
compensatory education programs, which were designed with a parental education
component. Insofar as evaluation is a regular component of program implementation,
it is obvious, in this case, that policy propelled research and, moreover, that both bear
an utilitarian character and accent. According to Henderson and Berla (1995), ”by
1987 the subject had come into its own as a special topic of research... Now, in
1994, the field has become a growth industry" (p ix). Epstein (1996) so expresses the
present research agenda grounded on the concurrent implementation of partnership
programs:

We have moved from the question, Are families important for student success

in school? to If families are important for children’s development and school

success, how can schools help all families conduct the activities that will
benefit their children? Researchers and educators have common questions,
such as: What do we need to know and do to help all children succeed in
school and to enable their families to help them do so? How can schools
communicate with families and community groups to enable more families

(indeed all of them) to guide their children on positive paths from birth through

high school? How can these communications be family friendly, feasible for

schools, and acceptable to students? What are the effects of alternative designs

and implementation processes of practices of partnership? (Epstein, 1996, p.

213)

Following Henderson & Berla’s (1995) two decade research display, I examine

next the different research focuses on the role of the family in schooling.

Parental involvement within compensatory programs
The first group of 33 studies - evaluation of early intervention, mostly

preschool (16 studies) and elementary school (14 studies) compensatory programs -

188

poses parental involvement as a factor of student achievement, basically correlating
increased parental involvement with ”significant gains” in academic achievement
(Thompson, 1993). The particular quest is to demonstrate the relationship between
parental involvement specifically furthered by parent education - ’parents as teachers
of young children’ (Goodson & Hess, 1975)‘ - and improvement in disadvantaged
students’ IQ and other academic performance tests (Mowry, 1972; Radin, 1972;
Stearns & Peterson, et. al., 1973; Guinagh & Gordon, 1976; Leler, 1987). This
rationale is further expanded by various studies in order to include positive,
significant, measurable benefits not only for children, but also for families, and even
for schools as institutions serving the community (Gordon, 1979).

The designs of this set of evaluations are traditional experimental (typically two
different treatrnent— groups for kind and amount of parental participation, and one
control group) and longitudinal studies. The findings are presented as almost
invariably positive, as for instance: Head Start centers with high levels of parental
involvement in both decision-making and learning roles consistently had children who
performed higher on verbal intelligence, academic achievement, self-concept, and
behavior in classrooms and at home (Mowry, 1972); early stimulation via parent
education produced significant immediate and long-term gains in IQ scores and school
performance (Guinagh & Gordon, 1976), as well as positive changes in the teaching
behavior of parents (Goodson & Hess, 1975); children whose parents spent the most

time participating in program or school activities scored highest on reasoning, verbal

 

‘ Few studies refer explicitly to mothers. See, for instance, Radin (1972), and
Bronfenbrenner (1974).

189

concepts and school-related skills (Irvine, 1979); involving parents as tutors and
trainers was associated with improved IQ scores (Stearns & Peterson, et. al., 1973),
and with improved performance in reading and math in early elementary school
(Olmsted & Rubin, 1982).
<3 However, as pointed out by Lazar & Darlington (1978), parental involvement
cannot be easily isolated and measured as a variable, though it is part of a cluster of
factors considered necessary for program effectiveness. More recently, this line of
studies received a comprehensive methodological critique. After reviewing the design
of 193 such program studies, according to rigorous standards of reliability and
validity, White, Taylor & Moss (1992) concluded that "claims that parental
involvement in early intervention leads to benefits are without foundation and
should be disregarded until such time as defensible research is available to support
such a position" (p. 118). Their arguments are well grounded:
In summary, we found no evidence of larger effect sizes for intervention
versus no—intervention studies which involved parents versus similar studies
which did not involve parents. Admittedly, the potential for confounding
variables to obscure true relationships in a data set of this nature is substantial.
Furthermore, as shown by the data reported . .. most of these studies have
focused primarily or even exclusively on using parents as intervenors instead of
involving them in other ways. Thus, it would be inappropriate to conclude,
based on this data, that parent involvement in early intervention is not
beneficial. Just as important, however, is the fact that no information exists in
this admittedly indirect type of evidence to argue that parent involvement in
early intervention will lead to any of the benefits that are often claimed.
(White, Taylor & Moss, 1992. p. 109)
Of course the role of parents in student achievement has always been known
from direct experience by teachers, and by those individuals who benefited from their

parents’ academic support, in spite of research. Accordingly, intervention programs

190

not only strongly underscore the role of parents in efforts to raise disadvantaged
children’s achievement,’ extending it in order to encompass activities as tutors,
classroom volunteers, paraprofessionals, adult learners, adult educators, and decision-
makers (Stearns and Peterson, et. al., 1973; Gordon, 1979), but actually forego
explanation (beyond common-sense, or classical research on indicators of educational
attainment) to illuminate the correlation between parental involvement (and forms of
involvement) and student achievement, or to account for the imperative of parental
involvement as the definitive or most appropriate measure for improving achievement.
Explanatory research is still meager. Stearns & Peterson (1973) explain the
relation between parent education and student achievement in preschool in terms of a
cycle of success-reinforcement involving child motivation, skill, learning and
performance, and parent self-image, competence and confidence. Bronfenbrenner
(1974) stresses the importance of the home component in preschool programs for
disadvantaged children, as parent intervention would act as a "fixative" of school
influences. Goodson & Hess (1975) attribute the success of preschool-parent
education programs to an increase in parents’ awareness of their influence on their
child’s behavior, and systematic focus on parent-child verbal interaction. Becher
(1984) highlights several key family "process variables” related to student achievement

in elementary school: parents’ high expectations for children, frequent interactions

 

5 For instance, ”the extent of parental involvement is a critical variable to the
benefits derived by children from their Head Start experience” (Mowry, 1972); or
”long-term IQ gains can be achieved by early intervention only when the parent-child
relationship is properly treated" (Bronfenbrenner, 1974). The rationale is simple: the
more comprehensive and long-lasting the parent involvement, the more effective it is
likely to be (Gordon, 1979).

191

with them, modeling of learning and achievement, and actions as ”teachers" of their
children, using complex language and problem-solving strategies, and reinforcing what
they learn in school.

Finally, Becher’s (1984) conclusion in a ”review of research and principles of
successful practice” is illustrative of the research-policy partnership in this area:
"extensive, substantial, and convincing evidence suggests that parents play a crucial
role in both the home and school environments with respect to facilitating the
development of intelligence, achievement, and competence in their children" (p. 39);
it follows that programs that encourage parents to engage in educational activities with
their children are likely to be effective in improving the cognitive development of
children.

Eventually, what is left as grounds for policy is just plain rhetorical appeal, as
for instance in Beane’s (1990) report on a program sponsored by the National Urban
Coalition, called Say Yes to a Youngster ’s Future: ”While many school improvement
projects can be implemented without a parent or family component, programs that aim
to make a substantial impact on the long-term participation and performance of under-
represented children of color in mathematics and science must generate home and
community support” (p. 361 , italics added). Thus, the policy interpretation of this
research is that if "programs designed with extensive parental involvement can boost
low income students’ achievement to levels expected for middle-class students"
(Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 7), then parental involvement (and training) is a
solution to inequity. The viability - and even desirability - of generalizing such

programs remains unexamined. And, ironically, this kind of research and related

192

policy is blind to the fact that compensatory programs with a stress on parent
involvement end up demanding a great deal from parents in order to ”compensate" for

what parents didn’t offer in the first place.

Family background influence on student achievement

The second group of 29 studies, involving both quantitative and qualitative
approaches, pursues the relationship between parental involvement and student
achievement from the perspective of the family, focusing on the influence of family
background, processes, and interactions with the school on children’s development,
grades, test scores, high school graduation rates, and enrollment in higher education.

Essentially, "directly or indirectly all the studies address the extent to which
family socio—economic status (SES)6 determines the quality of student performance"
(Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 7). Interestingly, Henderson & Berla’s (1995) reading
of some of those studies,7 although recognizing the irrefutably positive correlation
between family SES and student achievement, not only stresses the association
between family practices and student achievement, but also suggests that ”family
practices can have an effect independent of SES. " \Hence, ”parent encouragement at
home and participation in school activities are the key factors related to children’s

achievement, more significant than either student ability or SES" (p. 8).

 

‘ Eagle (1989), for instance, considered the following indicators of SES: mother’s
education, father’s education, family income, father’s occupational status, and number
of major material possessions.

7 See Sattes (1985), Ziegler (1987), Eagle (1989), Milne (1989), Kellaghan et
al., (1993).

193

In attempting to deny or counteract the power of SES, this research agenda
cannot produce but an ambiguous rationale - yet, again, assigning the compensatory
effort to the parents - as expressed in conclusions such as:

While parent affluence and education level are consistently related to their
children’s educational achievement (that is, students from high-SE8 families
tend to do better than students from low-SE8 families when both groups of
parents are highly involved), "parents of any social class can contribute to their
children’s postsecondary educational attainment by monitoring educational
progress during high school.” (Eagle, 1989, in Henderson & Berla, 1995, p.
60)'3

In spite of the confusing evidence on the disadvantages of children of single-
parents and working-mothers, "what is important is the ability of the parent(s)
to provide proeducational resources for their children - be they financial,
material, or experiential.” (Milne, 1989, in Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 92)9
High-SES students tend to do better because their mothers are more educated
and employ better management skills in steering their school careers, since
they are more familiar with the system, having negotiated it successfully for
themselves. Yet, "whether children’s options for post-secondary education
remain open depends not on the socio-economic status of their family, but on
how well their parents can help manage their progress through school" (Baker
& Stevenson, 1986, in Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 26). Moreover, ”if they
become actively involved in school activities, mothers with less formal
education can have as much positive impact as do highly educated mothers. "
(Stevenson & Baker, 1987, in Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 130)10

 

' Eagle (1989) analyzed the data-base of the 1980 High School and Beyond and
1986 follow-up surveys, conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics,
focusing on family characteristics most associated with student enrollment in post-
secondary education and attainment of a college degree across SES. She found that
the most significant family background characteristic related to achievement was
parent involvement during high school, defined as frequency of talking to teachers,
planning for post-high school activities, and monitoring of school work.

9 Milne (1989) reviewed literature on the impact of family structure, specifically
number of parents and mother work outside the home, on children’s school
achievement.

‘° Baker & Stevenson (1986), and also Stevenson & Baker (1987), similarly to
Lareau (1993), show how hi gh-SES parents influence their children’s performance
through active involvement in school activities, and particularly how involvement in
the school site mediates the effect of mothers’ education on students’ performance.

194

This research represents an attempt to establish the relative autonomy of
educational and cultural factors (the role of parents’ effort) in front of socio-economic
conjunctures.“ However, the implicit theory of culture informing such a rationale
apparently relies on a material-symbolic dichotomy, obscuring the relationship
between SES (family material conditions) and home culture (parents’ beliefs, values,
skills, and investments in education). As a result, the very fact that education
interventions address an already distinct - social class and/ or ethnic group - culture
(continually constructed within the interaction of particular material and symbolic
factors) seems to be overlooked, leading to an exaggerated belief in the power of
school policy to change home culture where it is perceived as deficient, and to the
current call for action in terms that schools must support families develop the cultural
conditions required for school success. This rationale omitts the fact that schools are
the specific site where learning outcomes are produced, as if student success simply
depended on the will of the parents.

Along this line, Sattes (1985), for instance, conceives family practices (reading
to children, guiding TV watching, and providing stimulating experiences) as variables
subject to change, which can be positively shaped by involvement with schools.

Cochran & Henderson (1986) suggest that "the school can be a powerful force for

 

“ Henderson & Berla (1995) put it in this way: "In fact, the most accurate
predictor of a student’s achievement in school is not income or social status, but the
extent to which that student’s family is able to: create a home environment that
encourages learning; express high (but not unrealistic) expectations for their children’s
achievement and future careers; become involved in their children’s education at
school and in the community" (p. l).

195

building parent capacity and thereby buffer the negative consequences of low-income”

(Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 46). Ziegler (1987) offers the following opinion:
The gap in school achievement between working-class and middle-class
children is more effectively explained by differing patterns of child-parent and
parent-school interaction than it is by characteristics of socio-economic status
(SES). School personnel can intervene positively and effectively to show
parents how to help their children be successful. The attitudes and behavior of
parents who have felt powerless and excluded can be changed. Aggressive
outreach techniques may be necessary to establish communication with ethnic,
racial, and language—minority families. (In Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 151)

And, more recently, Kellaghan et al. (1993) have reiterated the issue in this way:
The socio-economic level or cultural background of a home need not determine
how well a child does at school. Parents from a variety of cultural
backgrounds and with different levels of education, income or occupational
status can and do provide stimulating home environments that support and

encourage the learning of their children. It is what parents do in the home
rather than their status that is important. (Kellaghan et al., 1993, p. 145).

Families as learning environments

The studies focusing specifically on families as learning environments basically
compare parenting (precisely mothering) styles, strategies for teaching children at
home, and expectations for academic performance (Clark, 1983; Scott-Jones, 1984,
1987; Dombusch et al., 1987) associated with high-achieving students with those
associated with low-achieving students. Their implicit premise is that families must
provide the dispositions (Bourdieu and Passeron’s habitus) toward school learning and
success.

Rumberger et al. (1990), for instance, examined how family processes
influenced high school students’ achievement and dropout behavior, finding that

dropouts are more likely to have parents less involved in their education, involvement

196

being defined as monitoring and helping with homework, attending school conferences
and functions, and providing a supportive Ieaming environment at home. In contrast,
high achievers, across grade levels and social groups, have been identified with the
following home characteristics: daily routines for study, sleep, household chores, and
limited TV watching for children”; parent modeling of the values of learning, self-
discipline, and hard work, through conversations and shared activities, such as visits
to the library"; parent expression of high but realistic expectations for children
achievement, and encouragement and reinforcement of school progress“; reading,
writing, and discussions among family members"; and use of community resources.“5
Thus, Kellaghan et al. (1993) conclude that "the home environment is a most powerful
factor in determining level of school achievement, interest in school learning, and the
number of years of schooling” (pp. 144-145).

However, though there exist exemplary low-income family environments which

 

‘2 See, for instance, Benson et al. (1980); Walberg et al. (1980); Clark (1983);
Walberg (1984); Eagle (1989); Clark (1990); and Kellaghan et al. (1993).

‘3 See, for instance, Dombusch et al. (1987); Steinberg et al. (1989); Rumburger
et al. (1990); Snow et al. (1991); Caplan et al. (1992); and Clark (1993).

1‘ See, for instance, Scott-Jones (1984); Baker & Stevenson (1986); Schiamberg
& Chun (1986); Fehnnann et al. (1987); Stevenson & Baker (1987); Ziegler (1987);
Eagle (1989); Melnick & Fiene (1990); Snow et al. (1991); Mitrsomwang & Hawley
(19,33); Dauber & Epstein (1993); Kellaghan et al. (1993); and Reynolds et al.
( )-

. ‘5 See, for instance, Tizard et al. (1982); Becher (1984); Scott-Jones (1987);
Ziegler (1987); Epstein (1991); Snow et al. (1991); and Kellaghan et al. (1993).

1‘ See, for instance, Benson et al. (1980); Beane (1990); Clark (1990); Nettles
(1991); and Chavkin (1993).

197

have produced successful students (Clark, 1983),17 the parenting style associated with
successful school performance is also associated with higher levels of income and
education (Benson et al., 1980; Eagle, 1989). There is also evidence that while
particular forms of parent-child interactions and parent involvement at school may
reduce the achievement deficit of low-SES children in elementary school, they do not
overcome their disadvantages compared with their upper-SE8 peers (Benson et al.,
1980). Moreover, as Steinberg et al. (1989) stress, it is not possible to establish that
positive (authoritative) parenting practices cause or even precede outcomes such as
higher grades, more self-reliance, less psychological distress, and less delinquent
activity.

If one interrogates the implications of this line of research on family processes,
two interrelated aspects arise. One refers to the model of family environment and
parenting style related to school success, and to the danger of judging negatively other
kinds of environment and style. It doesn’t require too much knowledge to recognize
that model as typically middle-class, nor does it require much imagination to identify
it with the Puritan ethos. The second aspect bears upon the endeavor to improve
family environments and make them more educationally productive, as suggested by
the following titles: "Families as Educators: Time Use Contributions to School
Achievement” (Benson et al., 1980); and ”Families as Partners in Educational
Productivity” (Walberg, 1984).

Clark (1990), for instance, estimating that students spend 70 per cent of their

 

‘7 Clark’s (1983) in-depth case studies of poor Black families’ successful and
unsuccessful senior high school students highlight different family contexts and
parenting styles.

198

waking hours (surely an overestimation) outside of school, discovered that high
achieving students typically spend about 20 hours a week engaged in ”constructive
learning activity" after school - practically 4 hours each school day, while they do
only 2 to 3 hours of chores a week, implying an available adult who does everything
else for them. Because Clark presumably finds the learning time in school insufficient
(quite surprisingly, since the school day is 7 hours), or ineffective (since school
learning time, according to his estimate, may vary from 7.5 hours a week in poorly
organized classrooms to 17.5~ hours in the best settings), he passes the responsibility
for learning on to the family.

In a similar guise, Kellaghan et al. (1993), figuring that from birth (?) to age
18, children spend only about 13 percent of their waking hours in school (1), stress
the importance of home processes: ”how time and space are organized and used, how
parents and children interact and spend time together, and the values that govern the
family ’5 choice of things to do" (In Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 77). Consequently,
they propose a framework for home intervention and parent education based on five
home-process variables: family work habits based on a regular routine and priority to
schoolwork; academic guidance, support and encouragement of schoolwork;
stimulation and opportunities to explore and discuss ideas and events; language
environment for development of correct and effective use of language; academic
aspirations and expectations for children, and knowledge of their school experiences. ‘3

Thus, while this line of research does not contribute to changes in the quality

of school and classroom instruction, its main political implication might well be to

 

'3 Walberg’s (1984) "curriculum of the home" represents a similar framework.

1 9 9
impose one model of family and parenting, eliminating family cultural diversity in
exchange for a mere promise of school success, and straining parents and children for
school productivity reasons. Oddly, the emphasis on productivity has generated a
popular strategy, quite generalized in school practice: the formal contract. Gillum
(1977), for instance, refers to parents’ performance contracts to improve reading skills
of low-income elementary school children, with specific tasks, vouchers, and stipends
for parents. Walberg et al. (1980) mentions a contract signed by superintendent,
principal, teacher, parent and elementary student, stipulating parents’ tasks: to provide
a special place in the home for study; to encourage the child daily through
discussions; to attend to student’s progress and compliment him/her on gains; to
cooperate with the teacher appropriately.

And, finally, this focus on parents as a resource requires a new role of
teachers: "leadership in organizing, evaluating, and continually building their parent
involvement practices” (Epstein, 1991, p. 274), i.e. in attempting to turn all parents
into that middle-class model of parent who helps routinely with homework.
Nevertheless, teacher leadership is likely to encounter cultural and educational limits
in parental resources. In her study, Epstein (1991)” found that "teacher leadership in
parent involvement in learning activities at home positively and significantly influences
change in reading achievement" (p. 266); however, she did not find a similar

relationship for math achievement, suggesting that teachers may need to give more

 

‘9 Epstein (1991) studied, through multiple regression analysis, the relative effects
of student and family background (sex, race, parent education, Fall test scores),
teacher quality and leadership in parent involvement, parent reactions (rating of
requests and quality of homework), and student effort (quality of homework
completed), comparing Spring and Fall scores.

200

help to parents so that they understand how to assist, guide and monitor their
children’s math homework. This suggests that teacher leadership is likely to resonate
and corroborate cultural and educational factors already present in the home and
natural in adult-child interaction, for instance capitalizing on reading for children as a
substitute for traditional story-telling. Insofar as the school curriculum and learning
models include contents and forms of construction and expression which are not
natural in many home contexts, hence the need of parent education is further

corroborated.

Class and cultural mismatch

A few Studies of family-school interactions focus on class and cultural
mismatch, referring to differences between values and ways of learning promoted at
home and those promoted at school. Comparing White middle and working class
families’ interactions with schools, Lareau (1993) found that the former not only have
time, money, and cultural resourc;s to participate in schooling, but their education
also facilitates interactions with teachers. Middle-class culture and social networks
concur to what Wong Fillmore (1990) calls a "seamless splice" between home and
school; working class culture stresses ”separation between home and school, reducing
opportunities for collaboration and lowering teachers’ expectations for children”
(Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 10).

In addition, ethnic and language diversity play an important part in family-
school relations, accounting for the mismatch between the type of socialization, child

rearing and skill development natural in certain cultural groups and the background

201

(home preparation) children need to prosper in mainstream American public schools
(Wong Fillmore, 1990). In fact, the research reviewed by Wong Fillmore (1990)
shows that mainstream White and Chinese-American are successful in school because
the middle—class values and models of learning promoted in their homes are
compatible with school requirements; in the cases of working-class Black and White,
and Mexican-Americans a mismatch occurs between the preparation provided by the
home and that which is expected by the school.

The cultural mismatch view and the knowledge about cultural diversity have
moved educational interventions away from the cultural deprivation disabling approach
in the direction of learning about and valuing the skills, strengths and values of ethnic
minority children and their families (Goldenburg, 1987).20 In the opposite direction of
the conventional quick acculturation expectation, Cumnrins (1986), for instance,
claims that school failure does not occur in the case of minority groups (such as Jews
and Asian-Americans) who are not alienated from their own cultural values, do not
perceive themselves as inferior to the dominant group, and thus remain positively
oriented toward both their own and the dominant culture. Along the same line, Wong
Fillmore (1990) asserts that the more anchored children are in their primary culture,
the greater their chances to adjust successfully to new environments, consequently
suggesting programs that build on children’s home experiences, while providing
opportunities to acquire some of the experiences, strategies and outlooks expected in

school.

 

2° Unfortunately, there is real danger that, at the level of policy and practice,
knowledge of distinct cultures be transformed into stereotypes, and Asians, for
instance, be set as a model for Hispanic children.

202

Moreover, the policy suggestions of this line of studies allow for different
possibilities in addressing the family. According to Kellaghan et al. (1993), research
studies suggest two ways of dealing with home—school discontinuities: increasing the
overlap between home and school, and helping children learn how to apply cognitive
and social skills Ieamed at home to school activities and tasks. Henderson & Berla
(1995) generically pose the need for collaboration between family and school in order
"to help children adjust to the world of school, bridging the gap between the culture at
home and the mainstream American school (p. 11), a need in great part derived from
the very cultural (ethnic and class) condition of the teacher in front of his/ her (more
or less diverse) students, as well as from the language of instruction and patterns of
classroom interaction. And yet, there is surely a difference between collaboration so
that the teacher can learn about his/ her students’ cultural backgrounds in order to
inform instructional choices that can help bridge the gaps, and in order to intervene
effectively in the classroom, and collaboration for inducing the parents to recreate the
home environment - read more, enforce homework, control TV watching - in order to
compensate (with their own limited resources) for cultural differences, and help the
students advance.

The latter stance seems to carry significant ambiguity in attempting to merge
family empowerment, individual competitiveness, and school productivity.
Goldenburg (1987), for instance, acknowledging that ”parents represent a vast
potential resource in the effort to improve achievement among minority children" (p.
176), suggests that schools must find ways to capitalize on parents’ motivation and

actions to help improve their children’s achievement. And Henderson & Berla (1995)

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propose that schools encourage and support low-income families in adopting the

’getting ahead’ position with their children."

Family politics and school policy

Studies of family-school interaction, encompassing family politics and school
policy are still incipient. According to Stevenson & Baker (1987), research on the
relations between families and schools has tended to focus on how parents influence
student achievement through a supportive learning environment at home. Involvement
in school activities (like the PTA and attending parent-teacher conferences), and its
impact on achievement, has received less attention.

Snow et al. (1991), studying home and school influences on literacy
achievement of low-income children, pointed at formal parent-school involvement
(active PTA participation, attending school activities, and serving as volunteer) as the
single variable most positively connected to literacy skills. They hypothesized three
reasons for the effectiveness of formal involvement: parents obtain information about
the school so that they can better prepare their children; they demonstrate to children
that school is important; they influence teachers positively about their children’s

potential, raising teachers’ expectations and willingness to offer extra help. Besides

 

2' They cite a work by Doug Powell according to which there are two types of
working class families: ”In ’ getting by’ families, their way of life seemed preferable
to the competitive game of rising higher, and children were encouraged to finish high
school but not to attend college. In ’ getting ahead’ families, parents stressed high
marks, paid attention to what was happening at school, and suggested options for post-
secondary education and future occupation. " Doug Powell (1992). Literature Review.
Department of Child Deve10pment and Family Studies, Purdue University. In
Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 11.

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gains on reading achievement tests, parent-teacher contacts improved family-school
communication, quality of schoolwork, and teacher assessment of the family. In a
classic ethnographic piece Lareau (1993) confirmed the role of family politics at the
elementary level, depicting upper-middle class parents interventions in instruction, and
active mediations in the school site.

At the high school level, Baker & Stevenson (1986), Stevenson & Baker
(1987), and Eagle (1989) also focused on the role of parents in managing their
children’s school careers. The idea of the impact of parents on the learning
environment of the school had already been pursued by McDill et al. (1969), who
defined parent involvement in high school as a climate source variable correlated with
students’ achievement and educational aspirations, and mediating the impact of the
high school environment on the achievement measures and college plans, even when
controlling for ability and family educational background.

Among the few studies focusing on family-school interactions and school
policy, the most comprehensive was done by Phillips, Smith & Witted (1985), who
studied variations in parental involvement among 22 school districts in metropolitan
Milwaukee area, covering school policies, parent organizations, attitudes of teachers,
principals, and parents about parental involvement, and whether parental involvement
affected school performance. The most interesting findings confirmed the social class
characteristic of parent involvement: parents of children attending high performing
schools were much more active than those of children in poorer schools; and parent
organizations had much more active members in the suburbs than in the city, and

mostly dedicated their efforts to fund raising and communications. Other findings

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confirmed the student-age characteristic of parent involvement: it was higher in the
elementary level and also seen as more positive by elementary teachers (as compared
to teachers in the other levels). Another very interesting finding referred to teacher
authority and school governance: principals felt more positive about parental
involvement than teachers, and were willing to promote it in all areas except in school
policy and personnel.22

However, the traditional class contour of parental involvement has been
challenged, among others, by Dauber & Epstein (1993), who surveyed low-income
parents of inner-city elementary and middle schools on attitudes about schools,
practices at home, perceptions of school involvement practices, and preferences for
actions and programs. Although they found parents with more education, and parents
of better students, to be more involved both at home and at school, they also found
that ”the strongest and most consistent predictors of parent involvement at school and
at home are the specific school programs and teacher practices that encourage and
guide parent involvement” (p. 61). And, interestingly, while they also found that
parents of elementary school children were more involved than those of middle
school, they attributed this fact simply to teachers’ efforts. Moreover, contrary to
teachers’ assertion that parents were not involved and did not seem willing to become
more involved, the researchers concluded that parents want to learn more about the

school curriculum and want teachers to advise them on how to help their children at

 

’2 Wagenaar (1977) had who found that public elementary schools that were more
open to parents and the community had higher levels of student achievement and
community support, and, moreover, that community group support, fund raising,
attendance to school meetings and functions were more significantly related to
achievement than citizen participation in school policy decisions.

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home, the policy implication being that schools should develop "more comprehensive
programs of parent involvement to help more families become knowledgeable partners
in their children’s education" (p. 69).

One doubt about Dauber & Epstein’s (1993) conclusions derives from the
limited adequacy of surveys as instruments to ascertain perceptions, attitudes,
preferences, and practices, especially of low class (low-educated) individuals.
Moreover, what parent is going to declare that he or she is not involved or willing to
become more involved in his/her child’s education? Asked by school people, parents
are very likely to confirm that they want to learn more about the school curriculum
and want teachers to advise them on how to help their children at home. It would
also be plainly inappropriate to conclude that all inner-city low-income parents are
asking for partnership programs with the schools.

Finally, it is interesting to stress that the rationale of research with a focus on
the impact of parents (either formally or informally) on schools as learning
environments, or on the opportunities their children will seize in the school, reflects a
basic belief in the limits of schools as learning environments, and in the partiality of
opportunities they offer. The implicit conception of the role of school seems to be
closer, in this case, to the market place, where individuals freely compete and succeed
on the basis of initiative and skill, than to a safeguarded realm where individuals
freely grow on the basis of a fair distribution of opportunities, including compensatory

and affirmative-action mechanisms.

2 0 7
Future agenda

The current and future research agenda on family-school relations may be
illustrated by the mission statement of the Families as Educators Special Interest
Group of the American Educational Research Association, created in 1982: "to
promote the study and dissemination of information on family social processes and
home-school relationships that support children’s education and development”
(Families as Educators, 1996, p. l). Recognizing the major role of the family in
schooling, one particular area of interest is defined as "the internal dynamics and
external supports and strains on demographically different families" (p. 2). The
suggested topics reflect familiar tenets, according to the itinerary described above:
"(1) how social processes, purposes, and educational resources in dtfi’erent kinds of
families afiect the education and development of children; (2) how social institutions
and social policies can support families in their roles as educators; (3) how parents
can use parent education and other community resources to improve their skills in
educating their children; and (4) how the school achievement of children and youth
can be supported through stronger relationships between home and school " (p. 2,

italics added). It is all about family education for school achievement.

f 2) Parental involvement as a policy solution

How are the need and benefit of parental involvement posed in research and
policy discourse? Since it is conceived as a natural practice, or a cultural role
(Hoover—Dempsey & Sandler, 1997), and its importance and efficacy are validated by

research, parental involvement can be rhetorically constructed as both the problem and

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the solution for increasing school productivity, and especially the academic
performance of minority groups.

Yet, as indicated above, neither was it (nor is it) possible for research to
establish that parental involvement is a cause of high achievement, nor to rule out a
possible association between high achievement and less parental involvement, nor to
attribute the low achievement of certain groups or individuals, in any case, solely or
principally to the role of their parents. In effect, parental involvement pertains to the
successful model of schooling of the middle-classes, based on cultural continuity
between home and school, as well as on concrete school practices which require
(implicitly or explicitly) family academic input. In other words, both as a research
problem and a policy solution, parental involvement constitutes a particular paradigm
of school-family relations, within which research evidence fits an implicit theory.

The model of school success based on parental support is offered to other
families and social groups (which obviously do not share into it), with the aim of
promoting both family empowerment and student achievement. In addition, in view
of the differences in the quality of schooling that is offered to low-income groups,
parental involvement is also depicted as the key for promoting effective schooling. In
sum, the formula goes like this: more parental involvement at home equates better
school performance and longer attendance; and more parental involvement at school

results in better schools.

2 09
Rationale

Parental involvement (as a policy and expected practice) is based on a (mostly
implicit) theory of family-school relations according to which families and schools are
overlapping rather than separate spheres of influence (Ziegler, 1987). Or, as Lareau
(1987) puts is: "The definition of the ideal family-school relationship [is] a
partnership in which family life and school life are integrated” (p. 76). However, the
realization of the promise of a productive family—school educational partnership,
depends on (also implicit) requirements, ultimately uniformity and harmony in terms
of values, contents, and forms of experiences between the two institutions, a case
restricted to middle-class families.

If, as McDill et al. (1969) maintain, "school and home environments which are
mutually reinforcing are likely to achieve greater academic growth of students than
those lacking such consistency” (p. 29), it follows that educational policy and practice
must promote such consistency, where it is found lacking, by addressing the family
and increasing the forms of parental involvement in schooling. Henderson & Berla
(1995), for instance, based on the general conclusion (within a set of program
evaluations) that ”student achievement increased directly with the duration and
intensity of parental involvement" (p. 6), argue in this way: "the form of parental
involvement does not seem to be critical as long as it is reasonably well-planned,
comprehensive [that is, involving a variety of roles] and long-lasting; " hence the role
of policymakers and educators is to offer "the supports families need from schools and
community sources to guide their children successfully through the system" (p. ix).

The partnership rationale, then, can be summarized as schools helping families in

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order that families help the schools to educate their children, subtly implying that

families need support from schools, but do take the lead in their children’s education.

Models of school—family relations

Swap (1993) offers a useful typology of home-school relations, which
illustrates different possibilities. The most common type, the protective model,
establishes strict separation between parents and educators with the aim of reducing
conflict. It corresponds to the delegation model according to which parents hold
school staff accountable for educational processes and outcomes and educators accept
this responsibility. The second type, called school-to—home transmission model,
adopts one-way school-home communications, with the goal of enlisting parents in
supporting school goals. Its premise is that, insofar as student achievement benefits
from common expectations and values between family and school, the school should
inform the values and practices that contribute to success, and the parents should
provide for them in the home. According to the third type, the curriculum enrichment
model, parents and educators work together to enrich the curriculum, incorporating
parents’ expertise, in an effort to reflect students’ cultural backgrounds, and bridge
home and school. In the new partnership model, parents not only work alongside
teachers on the common mission of helping all children to learn, but become involved
in all aspects of school life, at student, classroom, school, and district levels.
Ultimately, this model requires school restructuring, with a trade-in between parents’
support of the school, and the school’s provision of health, education, and social

services for families. Swap also suggests gradual paths to partnerships, from teacher

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or team initiatives to comprehensive school programs.

Such models of school-family relations can be viewed dynamically and in
various combined ways. While the school-to—home transmission model can be
considered an authoritarian development of the original protective model based on
institutional functional differentiation, the curriculum enrichment model can be seen as
a critical and more democratic development of the same protective model, as it
precisely addresses cultural conflict in the curricular terrain. The partnership model,
in turn, while resembling an ideal communitarian-school model, can very well
incorporate, in more or less disguised form, the traits of the school-to-home
transmission model, as the correlation of power between school and families tends
normally to lean toward the school side. The fact that most schools paradoxically, in
Swap’s (1993) account, ”do not have comprehensive parent involvement programs” -
" given the widespread recognition that parent involvement in schools is important, that
it is unequivocally related to improvements in children’s achievement, and that
improvement in children’s achievement is urgently needed" (p. 12) - might tell of a
need of separation and mutual protection against latent (old or new) conflicts within
family-school relations. The hypothesis which has been discarded by those who sell
the partnership model is that separation of responsibilities might provide for a better

power balance in school-family relations.

Promises of the partnership model
The great promise of the partnership model is the implementation of a more

productive family-school relation, resulting in family empowerment, school

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effectiveness, and success for all students. Research-based benefits are variously
described: improved academic performance, attendance, motivation, self-concept, and
positive behavior (Sattes, 1985); positive and preventive school-home
communications, formal parent organizations and informal social networks, and strong
home educational role (supposedly desirable) in complementing and reinforcing what
is taught at school (Cochran & Henderson, 1986); increase in teacher responsiveness
to particular children and in the available help for students in the classroom and school
site, prevention of problems, and, ultimately, transformation (implicitly positive) of
the school culture (Ziegler, 1987); improved academic performance of students and
positive school perceptions of parents (Melnick & Fiene, 1990); high expectations for
teachers and high support of teachers by parents, and, consequently, elevated teacher
morale, as well as higher teacher opinions of parents and expectations for their
children (Henderson & Berla, 1995).

Yet, an optimistic promise of the family-school partnership is to recover
democratic values and practices by "allowing parents and citizens to participate in the
governing of public institutions and to have the deciding voice in how children are to

be educated" (Henderson & Berla, 1995, p. 19).

Requirements and implications

Roles and tasks of school staff and parents are depicted in various studies
suggesting the conditions for partnerships: formal, wrinen policies, containing
direction and guidance for parents, and ”clear and high expectations that parent

involvement is a key to improved schools"; commitment from administrators, and

2 1 3
training for teachers ”in planning and evaluating the parent program"; a variety of
options for parents, and parent training in order ”to learn the skills and knowledge to
be good partners” (Sattes, 1985, in Henderson & Berla, pp. 112-113); parental
awareness of school demands, children performance, and when and how to use their
influence (Baker & Stevenson, 1986); regular communication between teachers and
parents, so that the latter reinforce schoolwork (Ziegler, 1987).

Contradictorily, partnerships require simultaneously horizontal relations
between teachers and parents, and parent re-education, placing parents in the position
of less knowledgeable ones. Ziegler (1987), among others, explicitly acknowledges
that effective parent involvement programs require parent training. Hoover—Dempsey
& Sandler (1997) stress that policy efforts to involve parents should focus on
enhancing ”parental role construction and efficacy for involvement in their children’s
schooling” (p. 35). Kellaghan et al. (1993), on the other hand, assert that the
empowerment model is based on the premise that ”the roles of parent and teacher are
equal and complementary, sharing the same purpose and characterized by mutual
respect, information sharing, and decision making“ (p. 92, italics added) - as if
parenting and teaching did not concern distinct institutions, or imply different roles
and relationships with the student. Surprisingly, the fact that teaching is a job -
involving both the power to grade students’ Ieaming, and the possibility of being fired
for inadequate performance - is too easily overlooked.

This contradiction, of course, is not likely to be perceived wherever exists
affinity (of social class and culture) between teachers and parents, in which case

parents do not need re-education, and teachers are not likely to feel threatened. It is

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obvious, then, that parent education is designed for lower-class culturally diverse
parents, and it remains to be seen whether egalitarian relations can be developed
between parents and professionals in such a context.

But the redefinition of parental roles in terms of a school-family partnership
also requires the redefinition of the school mission, which, in principle, is not to
educate parents. From the school perspective, this is a problematic aspect, which is
insidiously carried about by a policy which attributes an educational mission to
families and a pedagogic role to parents, even if (and precisely because) these are

subordinated to the school agenda.

An example

In 1982, the Michigan State Board of Education issued a position statement
and resource guide on Involvement of Parents and Other Citizens in the Educational
System, recommending parental involvement in "communicating about schools,
training to assist in school programs, and marketing the many positive aspects about
school programs” (Superintendent’s Foreword). Recognizing ”the value of active
participation of citizenry in helping schools attain the educational goals identified by
state and local communities, " the ”severe declines in resources” and "budget
constraints, " and survey results on the positive contribution of parents and other
community members’ involvement in schools, the document calls upon their ”services,
interests, and commitment to assist wherever practicable in all aspects of the school
program” (pp. 1-2).

Communicating with all parties is considered ”the basic tenet for effective

2 1 5

meaningful change,” in order to ensure ”support and understanding; " training is
required for effective help and also communication of expectations; marketing,
explicitly following the business model, is portrayed as the way to ”build a positive
school image” (a "successful costoeffective, student-oriented and responsive image”),
to gather "strong community support for school programs, passing millage elections,
and in contributing to a quality school atmosphere" (Michigan State Board of
Education, 1982, pp. 2-3). Within this framework, and based on the idea that parents
are ”simply waiting to be asked” (p. 4), parental roles are depicted as: resource
linkers, assisting teachers in curriculum enrichment; classroom volunteers, facilitating
teaching ”by keeping records, correcting papers, duplicating materials, giving
directions to students, assisting with homework and arranging the classroom setting”
(p. 3); home instructors, by helping their children become better learners; decision
advisors, sharing responsibility for decisions; future—orientators, becoming involved in
school programs that deal with (unspecified) controversial issues - related to changes
in technology, family structure, environmental relations, moral and ethics - to ensure
public support for them; educational monitors in board and advisory meetings, and
regular school activities; and community organizers, informing about schools and
recruiting people to help in the schools (pp. 3-4).

The roles of parents are further depicted in detail:

At student level:

. assist students with learning activities.

. reward students academic achievements.

. listen to student’s feelings and experiences.

. follow through on recommended support activities.
At classroom level:
. participate in parent/teacher conferences.

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. assist with planned program and activities.

. volunteer to drive on field trips.

. volunteer to contribute personal skills/experiences.

At building level:

. provide questions to enhance learning.

. assist with solving building level problems.

. volunteer to help with lunch-room, playground, or total building activities.

. react to policies and directives.

(Michigan State Board of Education, 1982, p. 9)

This policy guide on parental participation covers both traditional practices and
a variety of options, illustrating areas and trends reflected in the literature above. It is
typically comprehensive, and simultaneously specific - for instance, in stating the roles
of parents at student and classroom levels - and vague - for instance, in stating the
more critical-intellectual roles of parents in governance.

Moreover, it suggests implicit functions of the call for parental participation in
schooling. The suggested objectives for district planning, for instance, although
basically repeating what is stated by the general the framework, adds, specifically, the
following: ”to provide parents and other citizens with an awareness of the impact of
technological trends on the future educational process and curriculum" (Michigan State
Board of Education, 1982, p. 5), implying economic, specifically market expansion,
goals. I am referring generally to the fact that these technological trends have created
patterns of individualized consuming, and specifically to the fact that the use of
computers in schools creates the need for each student to have his own PC, in order to
do his/her homework. The strategies for district planning, on the other hand, besides
school staff training, and inclusion of parents or citizens in committees, call for

surveys (to assess community and school staff perceptions and attitudes), skill banks

and resource centers, and training on community service (Michigan Board of

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Education, 1982, pp. 6-8), suggesting the need to build community cohesion around
the socio-educational project, and reaffirming the important political—cultural function

of schools.

Chapter 5

SCHOOLWORK AS HOMEWORK:

DISCUSSION OF SCHOOL AND FAMILY PERSPECTIVES

Homework may be considered an educational need, a segment of instruction
and of the school curriculum, and a policy. It has been long known as an
instructional strategy. Traditionally, it has been used as drill and review (application
and evaluation exercises), and as preparation (through readings, observation) for class
explanations and discussions. Its content has mostly derived from the school
curriculum, and occasionally it has been conceived as more free and creative
exercises, focusing on students personal experiences, like writing journals and
developing projects, under the rubric of curriculum enrichment activities. It has also
been conceived as a strategy linking school contents and social life, focusing
eventually on the home or (more broadly) social curricula, including family and
community activities, television programs. On the psychosocial and moral aspects,
homework has been justified in terms of building independence and responsibility,
through the development of study habits and punctuality. Finally, as a policy
measure, it has been considered a panacea for raising student achievement and
generally improving the quality of schooling.

Once acknowledged as a need and a legitimate strategy of instructional and
educational policy, homework appears as an instructional area constantly in need of

elaboration and assessment, employing teachers, policymakers and researchers. Thus,

218

219

explicit homework policies are enforced; instructional packs must contain homework
sections; textbooks must provide homework suggestions or home-problem-solving
sections; content, form, and purpose of homework must undergo revision and
assessment. Homework also appears as a problem of motivation and compliance:
some students resist or procrastinate, some parents omit or neglect. It arises as a
problem that cannot be easily solved by means of school resources.

As an integral part of instruction, homework affects its planning and
implementation, particularly the conceptualization and time frame of school, home,
and community activities. It affects the lives of students outside school and their
family routines. Thus, the homework issue, either defined as a learning problem or
solution, is inseparable from the issue of the relationship between families and schools
and their common educational purposes and responsibilities. This relationship has
been addressed by recent policies of parental involvement. However, it is pertinent to
question the notion of homework as an educational need, in the first place, by asking
who expresses and defines how it should be fulfilled.

There are various interesting aspects of the policy-practice of homework related
to instructional conceptions and forms, and the work of teachers. There are also less
visible but extremely important aspects of homework related to the evolution of
educational practices of families and schools, and the redefinition of boundaries and
functions of the private and public realms of social life. Thus, the predominant
conception and practice of homework as schoolwork transferred to the home might tell
that schools are not doing their specific job, i.e. , providing children (enough) formal

education. In might also constitute a defensive strategy of school accountability. But,

220

generally, it offers a pertinent illustration of public policies regulating private life,
specifically the education of the family by the school via dissemination of certain
contents and explicit (and implicit) prescription of practices and values. This is most
visible when homework becomes a strategy of mainstreaming minority, immigrant,
and/or working class families.

In order to develop my argument, I offer a brief historic and research
overview, a current school policy example, and a discussion of conceptions and
implications of homework for learning and evaluation, teacher work, family life, and
school achievement. Finally, I stress the role of homework in connecting school and
family in various - sometimes conflicting - ways, and propose that instruction be
conceived independently from family input, which has basically taken the form of
homework. Acknowledgement of differences between home and school knowledges
and practices and distance between school and family may provide more focus on
classroom processes and school resources in developing the academic curriculum. At
the same time, it may allow for the conservation of diverse family and social group

cultures and may be less harmful for children and parents, in the end.

Historic

When child learning occurred in the realms of family, community, and
economic production, before the advent of the common compulsory school, homework
was some kind of practical, productive work done at home. And even after schooling
began, in rural communities and early urban industrial settings school could not send

work home, taking students away from real work and, thus, affecting families’

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survival needs.

Throughout this century, the very use of the term homework as schoolwork
sent home suggests that academic learning hasn’t remained quite confined to school.
However, home Ieaming aligned to the school curriculum is not a general or natural
practice of the family, but part of the life style of the schooled social classes. This
assumes a problematic character in face of the ideal of democratic education,
according to which the school constitutes the social space where all students, provided
equal opportunities, share a common educational experience and are evaluated in
terms of a specific (common) curriculum, despite diverse family and social class
background cultures. From this point of view, homework will affect variably school
performance, since home conditions are not controlled by the school.

In effect, the importance of homework has been disputed in U. S. education
throughout this century (Gill & Schlossman, 1995). Homework has been recurrently
advanced or retracted as a matter of educational discourse and policy, not only as a
result of debates over pedagogical conceptions, but also as a result of family pressures
(Sedlak, 1995). Its amount and form, for instance, have been formally regulated by
school policy, whenever it is devised as a strategy to raise academic standards or
perceived as interfering with family life and individual students’ social activities.

The Progressives, who emphasized interest versus will (Prawatt, 1995), didn’t
support homework policies associated with traditional methods. According to Gill &
Schlossman (1995), "in the decades before World War II, many school districts
(including Los Angeles) abolished homework, ostensibly in order to discourage rote

learning in the classroom and encourage more creative use of non-school hours by

222

children and families. " At that time research attempted to prove that homework did
not help school achievement. "Reformers denounced homework, first of all, as a
threat to children’s health. The Ladies’ Home Journal carried on a lengthy crusade,
offering its readers sordid tales from parents, teachers and doctors about the alleged
harms (including death) caused by overworking children” (Gill & Schlossman, 1995).

However, pro—homework positions succeeded in the educational debate and
policy in the fifties, with the general dissatisfaction and attacks on progressive
education, the renewed stress on academic rigor, and the urge to surpass the Soviet
Union in the context of the cold-war. Hence, homework joined the efforts to enhance
academic excellence.

During the sixties, the belief in the relevance of homework was boosted by
comparative and cross-culture literature (either comparing high and low achievers in
the context of effective versus ineffective schools, or different ethnic groups) and
stimulated a series of policy efforts in the line of compensatory education, under the
banner of equity. Low achievers were found to be poor, one-parent, inner-city kids,
members of ethnic minorities such as Mexican-Americans, obviously economically
disadvantaged and culturally unprepared to take advantage of social resources. High
achievers originated from middle and upper class stable families and also from certain
ethnic groups as Asian-Americans, who had incorporated formal education as part of
their life style or as a means of social mobility. Thus, low achievers and their
families became the target of policies aimed at improving their home learning
environments and family culture.

Nevertheless, according to Gill & Schlossman (1995), the anti-homework

2 2 3
tradition appeared to shape policy and practice during the seventies: ”By the mid-
19705, American high schools assigned far less homework than they had fifteen years
earlier; hardly anyone complained. "

More recently, in the eighties, pro-homework views were once more reinforced
with the publication of ”A Nation at Risk” by the National Commission on Excellence
in Education (1983), which credited the U.S. political, economical and moral downfall
again to a sofi pedagogy (Gill & Schlossman, 1995). Since then, homework for all
students has been highlighted amidst a series of reform projects aiming at academic
excellence (Chubb & Moe, 1990). Cross—country academic comparisons in the
context of international competition have also pointed at the importance of fanrily
environment and homework practices, as Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese students
were found to perform better in standardized tests and do more hours of homework
per week than American students (Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). Though research is
not conclusive about the value of homework (and will never be, in the sense that a
single variable cannot account alone for higher test scores), common sense and
urgency to surpass competitors seem to suggest that more homework is not a strategy
to be discarded in any case.

Accordingly, the educational rhetoric of the nineties, following the
privatization wave, has strongly stressed family empowerment and school choice, from
the radical solution of home schooling to increased parental participation in scth
reform. Yet, parental participation appears mostly restricted to the homework issue.
Nation wide official guidelines have stressed regular homework as a strategy to

improve academic performance (Office of Educational Research and Improvement,

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1992), extending educational policy from school to the home, as suggestions of
monitoring homework, enhancing reading, and limiting TV viewing clearly transfer

learning accountability to the parental sphere, as I discuss in continuation.

Recent research

The positive impact of homework on academic achievement has not been
empirically established. Research has pointed out its smaller direct effect on
achievement, as compared to powerful direct effects of intellectual ability and
academic coursework, in the case of high school students (Keith & Cool, 1992).
Overall, there is not substantial or sufficient research to support a relationship between
high achievement, time spent on homework, kinds of homework, and tutoring styles,
across grades, curricular goals, levels of student ability, and individual and group
characteristics.

An analysis of 418 recent (1992-3/95) ERIC titles and abstracts related to
homework reveals that learning disabilities is one of the areas that has deserved the
most attention from research and instructional programs. Other significant areas are
task conceptual relevance related to instructional planning and assessment, and the use
and assessment of computer instructional programs as homework aids. Compensatory
education approaches related to parental involvement are significantly present in early
nineties research and policy on homework. F ostered by a demand for homework
productivity, research has focused on motivational and valuational aspects related to
students and families. International comparative perspectives are also (though

scarcely) represented.

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In the analysis of the literature on teacher-parent partnership programs
homework appears as a key issue to enhance school success. Parents, in general, are
subject to various forms of informal appeals to value their children’s education and
monitor homework. But they have been also the targets of specific formal programs,
usually implemented through their local elementary schools, designed to teach them
good parenting skills, which include stimulating their children’s school achievement
and tutoring homework. Such school-based programs send the clear message that it is
parents’ homework to monitor their children’s school progress.

Finally, it is also worth noting the literature on policy efforts to provide
alternatives to parental tutoring. School initiatives have taken the form of homework
hotlines, after school assistance through telephone, and on-site supervision, a daily .
guided in-school homework practice, which curiously keeps the designation (Locke,
1991). Community support to homework includes public library homework centers,
and other forms of community homework centers for at—risk students, assigned the
function of substituting for home assistance, which is suggestive of the limits of many

families in providing for that obligation.

School policy

There has been a tendency to provide for formal and comprehensive homework
policies, defining its rationale, school expectations, and parents’ obligations, as
exemplified below:

Wm:
Homework refers to an assignment to be completed outside of school hours
preferably at home. These assignments keep parents informed and involved in

2 2 6
their child’s Ieaming.

Roller:

Well chosen, clearly communicated homework is an integral part of the
instructional process. Challenging and relevant homework will be provided.
Homework assignments will review, reinforce or extend classroom Ieaming by
providing practice and application of knowledge gained; teach students
responsibility and organizational skills; promote wise and orderly use of time;
and provide opportunities for enrichment activities.

School teachers will include homework appropriate for the students and
their educational needs. Teachers will consider assignments of other teachers,
individual differences in students, and other factors that may affect the home as
an extension of the classroom.

Consequences for not completing homework will be handled by individual
teachers. Teachers may detain a student(s) to complete homework afier school
on Monday, Wednesday or Thursday unless notified by the parent/ guardian
that the student(s) is not to be detained on any of those specific days. Also, if
after-school homework completion is a consequence, for example, the students
will know about it in advance and, therefore, they will be held responsible for
informing their parents about their after-school work. The late bus will be
available for these students on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. (East
Lansing Educational Foundation, 1996, p. 14, italics added)

One interesting consequence of this type of policy approach, likely indeed to
create judicial battles, is to hold parents formally accountable for non homework
completion. Recently, The Detroit News (October 2, 1996) featured a related issue in
these terms: "School district to make detention a family affair. " The district policy in
question requires parents to attend Saturday morning detention and do homework with

their insubordinate kids.l

 

‘ The purpose in this case is to hold parents accountable for classroom
misconduct. Legal measures to hold parents accountable and "help them identify
unwanted behavior patterns in their kids before they become bigger problems, " range
from attending lectures on ”how to better raise their children, " to juvenile court
hearings for students, and the arrest of the parents (conviction meaning 90 days in jail
and a $500 fine), in case detention is refused and truancy thus established. (The
Detroit News, October 2, 1996, on-line)

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Instructional and social relevance

As an instructional strategy, homework extends Ieaming, connects precedent
and subsequent class work, and intends to stimulate independent study habits. It
represents an important resource which can potentially benefit all students. Yet, it is
noteworthy that, while it is supposed to take place in the home, its content and form
are designed at school, and its function is helping students learn the school curriculum
in order to succeed in school.

The ample belief in the relevance of homework for academic achievement is
expressed through various conceptions and practices related to distinct curricular
goals. One conception is simply that if one increases study time, effort will build
quality learning. Low ability students, in particular, need more hours of work to
catch up with expected standards. The quality and design of tasks also can enhance
specific skills. Another conception seeks broad experiential enrichment by attempting
to integrate diverse aspects of family and community cultures to the school
curriculum, or to connect and apply academic contents to everyday life.

Why is homework necessary? One plausible reason is the simple and obvious
acknowledgement that school time is not enough to accomplish curricular goals.
Another answer, which confirms the previous, is that time spent on homework
increases total learning time (of the school curriculum). However, the general
institutionalization and acceptance of homework also suggests that schoolwork is
viewed as a desirable occupation for children in the home and/or as a means of
enabling children to compete and raise their performance in school and in future life.

Along this line, it seems reasonable to consider that the school curriculum is positively

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valued, at least by those families and students who adhere to homework practices.

Generally, the meaning and value of homework are related to broad
conceptions of education, valid and useful social knowledge, purposes of schools, and
roles of families. Compulsory schooling involves an implicit social contract between
families and the State, i.e. , a division of labor in the common task of educating
children. The traditional division of educational work between school and family has
posited intellectual development and the teaching of subject matter as the main
function of the former, while socialization and the formation of dispositions and
values are prerequisites basically developed in the home, though schools have also
increasingly performed psychosocial roles, in place of the parents. For some families
the conditions of the contract (or partnership) may be viable and satisfactory, whereas
for others they may be not.

Students’ failure in completing homework and parents’ unresponsiveness to
school expectations may express that for some students and parents the terms of the
contract may be seen as unattainable or unfair. When this is the case, it is patent that
the basic related factors are economical and cultural: parents’ (and high school
students’) work loads and conflicting schedules, and values related to education and
school. As educational needs and values conflict with other basic needs and values,
families are unable to participate in the partnership. Interestingly, policy efforts have
focused on cultural approaches, such as involving (re-educating) parents, and practical
approaches, such as providing extended day and Saturday enrichment programs, while
maintaining homework. The whole instructional conception which includes homework

hasn’t been subject to a radical questioning, from a more inclusive outlook that

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accounts for disadvantaged families and students’ own perspectives, for instance.
Problems of low achievement and homework resistance do not affect all
students. Nevertheless, homework is a general policy, based on the assumption that
all children will profit from more schoolwork done at home. Apparently, the targets
of a homework compensatory policy would be low achievers, but those students
precisely lack the motivation, parental support and other resources necessary to
commit and benefit from it. The general prescription of homework, then, needs to be
considered at the core of a certain curricular conception, which in turn needs to be

considered within a broader framework of educational values and social practices.

Articulation of homework and classwork

Within a strictly technical framework, conceiving instruction with or without
homework affects classwork - and, of course, different conceptions of homework
affect it differently. This is because the teacher has to figure ways to integrate
homework and classwork, give specific homework feedback, and establish the relation
of homework to evaluation within the learning process.

Within the traditional teaching-learning process, homework fits into the final of
a series of instructional steps, according to Herbart’s pedagogical model, based on the
inductive empirical method: (1) preparation, i.e. , review of background knowledge;
(2) presentation of new knowledge to be assimilated; (3) assimilation by comparison
of the old and new knowledges; (4) generalization, i.e. , identification of
corresponding cases which may integrate the same class of phenomena; and (5)

application. The three first steps fit the moment of observation,which is followed by

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generalization and confirmation (Saviani, 1984). In this model, homework represents
the opportunity to test one’s own learning through new examples, that is, to apply the
new knowledge and confirm assimilation. Application exercises provide opportunity
to independently test knowledge and evaluate one’s own performance.

The traditional practice of homework as knowledge application, learning
confirmation, student self-evaluation, and instructional evaluation and re-planning by
the teacher meant that everyday students would hand homework to be individually
reviewed by the teacher out of class. The teacher could identify types and range of
difficulties, and evaluate individual and collective performance. This used to be the
way when I went through elementary school in the sixties in Brazil.

Recent transformations in the modes of teaching, related to the technicization
and intensification (Apple, 1985) of work practices, have changed the form of
homework evaluation. Common procedures now are: teacher reviews homework
orally in class and students make self-corrections; pairs of students exchange and
check each other’s homework; groups discuss homework ’findings. ’ But teachers
don’t have time to check individual homework sheets, and often collect them for
bureaucratic control purposes since grading is often on completion and not
correctness. Teachers now seem often to spend more time planning instruction and
reporting evaluation, while the process of evaluation becomes reduced mainly to the
moment and space of the class. As a result, both in the U.S. and in Brazil, I have
presently found the typical fifty minute class in which the teacher reviews past
homework, briefly presents a new piece of content (or demonstrates a procedure, or

rather assigns a reading), hands new homework, explains and ’discusses’ instructions

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and ’motivates’ the students to do it at home. Thus, homework may occupy the whole
class.

There are, of course, alternatives to routine application-homework. In fact,
the conception and practice of homework is likely to vary across student age/ grade,
and content/task nature and purpose. In my own past experience as a student, for
instance, from middle school on, homework was mostly study on your own. Within
the inquiry method currently adopted by certain constructivist approaches, homework
may be designed to fit the moments of observation and generalization in the model
above described. It can be conceived as an aid to various novel procedures, such as
cooperative Ieaming (Foyle, 1990), or as open special projects to be conceptualized
and articulated by students, individually or collectively, or else as inter—disciplinary
projects carefully designed by a group of teachers. In such instances homework
provides occasion for non-routinized practices, involving extra resources and energies
of both teachers and students, and frequently of parents as well (Carger & Ayers,
1995).

The link of homework to evaluation is another significant point. In the
traditional instructional model described above, homework was evaluated for
instructional purposes and individual feedback, but not graded. Grading was attained
by exams, usually culminating the process. Exams appeared as decisive moments -
intimidating rites of passage. Apparently to minimize the threat of exams, perhaps as
a measure of effort intending to countervail plain momentary performance, homework
started being graded. Currently, in the local American schools attended by my

children, the typical grade composition is: 40% homework, 40% tests, and 20%

2 3 2
projects.

But grading homework creates its own difficulties. Here is an example. In
December 1996 I received the following "Interim Report of Student Progress” from
my 10th grade son’s Math teacher: ”Valentin has stopped doing his daily work with
any regularity. His test scores have been excellent (96%), but his homework (lack of
it) will lower his grade. " I asked Valentin why he had not been doing his homework,
and he answered: "What for if I already know it?" Of course, I pointed at the grade
lowering consequence, and insisted that he had to do the things he didn’t like as much
as those that he liked, but he ended up with a D in Math, his favorite subject, and I
ended up with no arguments to press him.

A possible implication of grading homework is to equalize measures of
outcomes of students who do homework and perform low in tests and others who
don’t do homework and perform high in tests, though it is expected that doing
homework will generally enhance test performance. Even if homework grading
intends to reward effort versus ability, nonetheless what is being assessed is actually
’fanrily support, ’ which is dependent on economical and cultural conditions. Thus,
assessing the process of learning and not the outcome is complicated when that process
occurs at home, away from the teacher. Within a constructivist practice, some
teachers have attempted to use a scoring rubric to assess students’ abilities to
communicate attempts at solving homework problems, for instance. This is just one

example of ’solution’ which obviously creates new instructional problems.

2 3 3
Teachers

The first obvious way in which homework affects teachers refers to the variety
of possibilities in planning instruction as related to diverse conceptions of homework.
Articulating additional work developed out of the class requires that teachers design
and make explicit some sort of integration. This means more planning and an increase
in the complexity of teachers’ tasks.

One interesting practical consequence is that designing more instructional
activities in the format of creative homework and closely evaluating it, means
homework (overwork) for teachers. Otherwise, teachers may rely on routine
homework like textbook exercises, chapter outlines, and quick classroom check up.
The point is that increasing time and extending the spaces of learning also increases
teachers’ work in planning and evaluation, and teachers have to find ways to cope
with and simplify it.

But homework also affects teacher work in another, indirect, profound way.
Homework has been seen as a "natural means of home-school collaboration (Olympia
et al. , 1994), but parents and teachers have also been considered ”natural enemies”
(Waller, 1965). The literature on teacher-parent relationships is replete with
references to silent or overt conflicts, especially in contexts of social class, ethnic and
cultural diversity, where apparent lack of support for homework may be common.
Even in middle-class homogeneous contexts, precisely the kind in which parents do
collaborate, there are tensions between teachers and "pushy, professional parents”;
furthermore, teachers especially resent mothers’ interference in the classroom as a

"challenge to their professional identity" (Biklen, 1995, pp.l3l-139). Generally,

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parental involvement in schools involves issues of power, authority and control over
curricular goals, instructional methods and assessment, resources, decisions and
accountability (Fine, 1993).

There are two related points which might illustrate the strategic and dangerous
role of homework within the complicated school-family educational partnership.
Because schoolwork is sent home and requires some kind of parental work, parents
become at the same time subordinated to school dictates and empowered to charge
teachers and schools from the role of collaborators and, somehow, insiders. Parents
become the targets of specific meetings, training, contracts, guides, manuals, and
packs, specially designed to make the home-school connection and to teach them
certain instructional tasks (Gallagher, 1994; Mafnas et al. 1993; Orman, 1993;
Association of American Publishers, 1989), a way in which teachers come to share
some pedagogical knowledge with non-professionals. On the one hand, parents are
pressed to learn pedagogy according to the school’s curricular agenda; on the other
hand, teachers - though telling parents what to do - lose some of their exclusive
expertise and, thus, are disempowered.

As families provide resources and learning opportunities, school operating costs
would be likely to decrease, but teachers’ gains seem doubtful. Because schoolwork
is sent home, and the family is assigned pedagogical responsibilities and specific
instructional tasks, parents become explicitly accountable for the school achievement
of their children and, consequently, teachers become less accountable as they formally
share obligations and accountability with families. Students’ failure, then, may be

more authoritatively attributed to negligent families and lack of homework. But issues

235

of accountability between school and family regarding learning outcomes certainly
reflect on teacher professional status in complex ways. According to Rieck (1994), a
more realistic way of assessing high school teachers’ performance is to adopt an
’adjusted failure rate’ encompassing student-caused failures, namely absence and
incomplete homework. Again, teachers are liberated from an onus, but lose latitude
regarding their specific power, that is, the power to teach effectively and prevent

students’ failure.

Parents

I would like to illustrate diverse expectations about schooling and homework
from a different cultural perspective. In Brazil, students attend school for half day - a
period of four hours, at the most. (Due to economic reasons, schools offer at least
two daily periods, in an effort to maximize physical resources.) At least for middle
and upper class students, it is routine to spend the other half of the day doing
schoolwork at home, as well as attending a variety of extra-curricular courses. Their
families can hire private tutors when they do not count on a dedicated (unemployed)
full-time mother. Unfortunately, students from poor and working class families are
often expected to fit the tutored homework routine model. This has been associated
with the school failure of those students who don’t have conditions for learning in the
home. There, it is obvious that because school Ieaming is insufficient in terms of
time and deficient in terms of quality, children are discriminated on the basis of their

family and home conditions.

Educators and parents would like to have a ’full-time school’ in Brazil, with

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eight hours of daily attendance and good quality education. Common sense suggests
that, then, homework will not need to be assigned. It is expected that all parents will
welcome that day as liberating for themselves and their children. And so will
teachers, who will have better conditions of work (by disposing of more time with
students) and won’t depend on family resources. Within this logic, it is interesting to
note that alternative (Progressive) private schools in Brazil compete for middle-class
clientele on the basis of not demanding homework. The argument in favor of the
higher quality education they offer is that students effectively learn during the school
period. (Of course those schools are very aware that they count on a rich cultural and
academic home curriculum, due to their selected and restricted clientele.)

Here in the U. S. , presently, in a quite different movement, parents are
expected to make enthusiastic efforts to help children with homework assignment. As
Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler (1997), suggest this is part of the very cultural definition
of the parental role (though they leave social class differences out of their analysis).
On the other hand, educational policy rhetoric stresses a correlation between student
achievement (especially in mathematics and science), individual competitiveness
(better jobs), and international competitiveness (U.S. political—economical leadership
in the world) (Ingham Intermediate School District, 1995; Arbanas, 1994). Schools
offer ’parent-child-homework workshops, ’ packets of curriculum materials carry
’family homework activities, ’ and teachers require parents’ signatures on homework,
even at high school level.

Within such an ambiguous rhetoric, the distinction between work and leisure is

frequently blurred and homework becomes leisure. At the same time, the role that

237

parents and family resources actually play in learning in the home are not clearly
acknowledged. According to the U.S. Secretary of Education research-based advice,
"Effective homework assignments do not just supplement the classroom lesson; they

\._m, --

also—teach students to be independent learners. Homework gives students experience in
following directions, making judgements and comparisons, raising additional questions
fOLSI‘IQY’ and deve10ping responsibility and self-discipline" (What Works, 1987, p.53,
italics mine). To be sure, it is not the assignment that gives students all those
benefits, but the experience of accomplishing the assignments, in the home
environment, assisted by the parents. In this sense, homework is not the

instruction/ answer sheet students bring home, but the actual work and learning that
takeplace at home. Thus, if effective homework means learning all that which is
stated above in the home, then indeed the home is accountable for its benefits.

In fact, policy has focused on both areas: directly on homework conception,
and indirectly on parental implementation. A recent national survey on homework
policies (T =267) revealed that 91% of U.S. school districts inform parents about
homework policies and regulations, 58 % specify roles that parents are expected to
assume in the homework process, and 35 .2 % have a specific policy including
frequency and amount of assignments and home-school communication mechanisms
(Roderique et al. , 1994). The worrisome fact is that the present pro-homework
movement, according to Bowditch (1993), has been enforcing a division of labor
between teachers and families in which "teachers have been charged primarily, either
implicitly or explicitly, with the limited tasks of presenting information and covering

material; families, which most often means mothers, have been assigned the tasks of

238

motivating students and providing the time, space, and extracurricular attention or
assistance to ensure that Ieaming takes place" (p.178). That’s exactly what I have
learned in recent years as a parent relating to local U.S. public schools, both from
attending parents’ meetings, in which teachers quite explicitly inform school
expectations regarding parents and students, and through the contracts sent home
specifically for parents’ information and signatures.

Since the purposes and conditions of implementation of homework policies
depend on the home (external) conditions, it is imperative to consider the parents’
perspective. How can parents get involved and actually monitor homework? The first
condition is obviously to have free time; another condition is to know how, which
includes knowing content and pedagogy. But another basic condition is will and
liking. Very few parents hold all the three.

Creating Ieaming opportunities in the home, according to school prescriptions,
demands time from the parent in order to organize and continually adapt the home
environment to fit school demands. Parents know what it means to ’help’ interpret
and review homework, to arrange and attend after school and weekend group-
homework meetings, to provide (in time or at late notice) for materials not found
around the house, among other forms of support. Though families basically exist for
children, they have their own needs, obligations, and policies, including children’s
house chores, sleep time, and family activities (not family mathl), with which school
homework interferes.

Regarding the second condition it is reasonable to question whether parents

should be taught to monitor homework. Shouldn’t this ’extra’ investment in

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homework workshops be applied to teachers and schools, instead? Every parent who
glances at homework knows that he or she cannot simply draw on his/her own
knowledge and previous school experience: contents and methods of instruction have
changed and keep changing, and different schools, subject-matters, methods, and
teachers impose various, distinct formats. Moreover, tutoring homework implies
deciphering instructions and expectations which were posed by a teacher with whom
the parent is not in contact on an everyday basis. In order to fill this gap, some
schools have implemented a ’homework assistance telephone service, ’ to which parents
and/ or students can resort, one more curious example of investment in homework!

Every parent also knows that a very small part of the school curriculum
actually served him/ her throughout life. Thus, regarding the third condition, is it
reasonable to expect parents to choose to invest their free time in learning school
again? It is pertinent to consider here the curricular attempt to link school knowledge
and everyday knowledge. As an illustration of school expectations of parental
involvement, Michigan "Programs for Educational Opportunity" (1995) offer ”Family
Math” and "Family Science" workshops aiming at ”helping parents and children learn
about mathematics and science together, " using "materials and situations that are
commonly found around the house. " Through this ingenious strategy homes become
classrooms, parents become themselves at the same time teachers and students, and
child education merges with adult education. And, it is stated, it’s supposed to be
fitn!

In sum, homework can be conceived as activities that students can perform

independently, or as ’home-learning activities’ intentionally involving parents, and the

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official rhetoric encompasses both possibilities. In the first case, parents well know
that independence is a long, gradual process and that most students cannot perform
without help. In the last case, parental involvement carries an undisguised moral
appeal, since it addresses all parents, not only those of students who present specific
difficulties or disadvantages. In both cases, homework not only has a cost for
families, but also subordinates family to school.

Yet, there is another point to be considered: if the family is ”America’s
smallest school" (Barton & Coley, 1992), in most cases who is central to the family
and to children’s lives is the mother. As school has counted on female teachers as
cheap work-force in the past, all kinds of housework and child care - including
homework - have also depended, and still depend presently, on free, donated women’s
work, adding moreover onto the burden of those women who work outside the house.
Hence a feminist claim against homework.

As Bowditch (1993) argues, it is obvious that "the rhetoric of parental
involvement assumes, legitimates, and seeks to enforce a particular normative
model of the family - a model that has become decreasingly representative of
American families across socioeconomic classes” (p.179), as the numbers of single-
parent families and working mothers have been significantly expanding. Thus, it is
critical to acknowledge that through the homework policy "schools make heavy
demands on the organization of family life and the practices of mothers, which given
recent changes in family structure, may no longer be reasonable" (Bowditch, 1993, p.

178).

The perverse effect, as Bowditch (1993) points out, is that by ”teaching

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families their ’basic obligations’ to provide the appropriate home environment for
learning, " school policy creates the conditions for ”blaming families for their
inadequacies and then retreating from the responsibility to teach the children of those
families" (p. 179). This is a clear threat exactly to the children of low-income and

minority families.

Equity and accountability

Homework is the key issue, in my view, within the effective home-school
partnership. Its purpose is to promote more and better learning, through "home-based
reinforcement of school behavior" programs, such as parent tutoring (Fullan, 1991).
In this sense it both acknowledges and draws upon the home environment as an
important factor of school achievement, according to a general assumption that "the
closest the parent is to the education of the child, the greater the impact on child
development and educational achievement" (Fullan, 1991, p. 227). Thus, it is
potentially a very political issue in which it attributes the responsibility of school
success or failure to kids and their families (McCaslin & Good, 1992).

I have suggested along the way that homework relates to notions of family and
school educative purposes, curriculum, instruction, school accountability, and equity.
Those and other aspects of education are very (theoretically and practically) intricate,
and the issue of homework constitutes a window into the complexities and broad social
implications of educational policy-practice.

As an illustration, I consider a recent claim at ”abolishing homework" posed

by school board member Garrett Redmond, from Half Moon Bay, California (Gill &

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Schlossman, 1995). His arguments were that homework (a) "threatened family life,
depriving children of quality time with their parents”; and (b) "was unfair because
many children lacked the computers, encyclopedias and quiet places enjoyed by more
fortunate students. " Gill & Schlossman (1995) counter-argued stating that "homework
is parent’s eyes and ears": it is the "primary, often the sole communication link that
informs parents about the school’s academic mission, " opening ”an otherwise closed
window to the school’s intellectual agenda. " Furthermore, it "compels teachers to let
parents see what they are doing in the classroom and how well they are doing their
job. "

Redmond seems to express both the point of view of the parents who have time
and material resources to invest in homework but have other preferences about family
life style, and that of the parents who lack those resources. His first concern is about
quality of family interaction, since homework usurps the space and time of domestic
education, of family relations mediated by other purposes, contents and values, and of
leisure. His second concern is about equity, since homework is part of the measure of
student success or failure in school and further social life.

Gill & Schlossman’s (1995) arguments seem to address the political necessity
of evaluating a public service, that is, the content and quality of the education that is
being offered youngsters, including teacher accountability. As part of the ’educational
contract’ between family and school, the family should supervise and intervene in the
educational process, besides participating (often in indirect ways) in the very definition
of educational policy. However, the evaluation of public education is surely more

than a family concern, transcending individual families’ interests. This is the complex

243

terrain of democratic practice and public life. There is one point, though, that
remains open: the mode through which such an evaluation should and could be best
performed. Who is entitled and effectively able to perform it? Each individual, direct
consumer? Or should that task be carried out by an institutional mediator?

The contend over the harms and benefits of homework invite other questions
related to institutional functions and roles of schools/teachers and families/parents.
Should subject matter learning be temporally and spatially confined to school or
should it have a place at home? My own view, as a mother and as a teacher, is that
subject matter instruction (the transmission of a historically constructed body of
disciplinary knowledge) is the specific function of school, the professional role of
teachers, while domestic education, including physical, affective, and moral aspects, is
mainly the function of the family. However, this distinction is considerably blurred in
current educational policy, practice, and discourse. It is very interesting to notice
how often teachers complain about the educative omission of parents regarding
problems of student discipline in the scth site, and how extensively schools offer
drug prevention programs for youngsters, and parenting skills workshops for parents,
as if families were not performing their basic educative function. At the same time in
which school extends its function in psychosocial development, encompassing previous
familial functions, families have been pressed to do the intellectual training of the
students through the homework policy. It is a curious exchange.

Are parents entitled to closely assist intellectual development? This is, in my
account, a specialized practice, precisely a profession. Are teachers capable of

assisting psychosocial and moral development of numerous and diverse students?

244

Within the present school organization that is an impossible task. Moreover, families
and schools are distinct social institutions. If families could do the job of schools
(though some claim they can), we wouldn’t need schools. But schools cannot solve or
even nrinimize the so-called ’crisis of the family.’ So, considering their concrete
limitations, when schools invest more in psychosocial goals, they end up investing less
in their specific academic goals. Conversely, when parents are compelled to invest
time in the intellectual training of their children, they obviously have less time to take
care of their other educational needs.

Of course Ieaming in general and subject matter learning in particular are not
confined to school. But the school, as a specialized institution, should focus on the
learning that occurs within its boundaries and assess solely the learning constructed
within classroom practices, for this is already an enormous task. Those who would
advocate the legitimacy and desirability of subject matter learning in the home would
have to assume that all homes hold the conditions to perform this function. Since
most of them don’t, the equity goal of education is radically undermined.

When Gill & Schlossman (1995) suggest that families should be the guardians
of the content and quality of the schooling provided their children, they present the
view of educational researchers, who are qualified to assess school practices. In
contrast, most parents cannot perform such a role for the same basic reasons they
cannot assist homework: lack of specialized knowledge (and lack of time to learn
how) to evaluate instruction. The issue of democratic participation - confused within
the rhetoric of consumer choice - is a thorny one. It is currently at stake in both the

parental involvement and school choice policies, which stress freedom and

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opportunity, promising direct consumer control, school accountability, and recovery of
the quality of the public school. However, insofar as parental participation and choice
basically require free time and expertise in order to evaluate school performance,
differentiation in the quality of schooling is likely to persist, as a result of
differentiation in the conditions and possibilities that parents hold.

The possibility that parents evaluate teachers’ performance is also a delicate
issue. In front of parents, teachers are experts and hold the competent discourse,
which may be used to silence less educated parents. In turn, teachers often feel
pressured and threatened by certain (too involved) parents’ suspicion and demands.
Only when family and school clearly share the same ’mission, ’ teacher-parent
relationships may flow conveniently, and that is the ideal but not the rule.

Antagonism between teachers and parents may emerge based on mutual prejudices, but
may be masked because there is a child (and a job) at stake. Though research
indicates that parents are willing to get involved with children’s schoolwork and would
welcome specific guidance from teachers (What Works, 1987), I doubt such findings
on the basis that parents, when inquired directly, would obviously almost always
confirm school expectations, general ideas about good parenting, and moral

obligations related to their children’s success in school.

The re-articulation of home and school
Homework appears as a camp of expression of multiple goals related to
academic achievement, character development, and even family cohesion (Gill &

Schlossman, 1995). Current redefinitions of homework include focus on "a positive

246
social interaction with parents with gradually increasing independent responsibilities”
(Speaker, 1990). Especially at the elementary level, ”interactive homework helps
parents and children come together on activities they enjoy" (Epstein, 1994). School
Districts have developed explicit homework guidelines regulating amount, length, and
kind of homework assignments, number of week nights, and grading practices Close,
1994). A number of parent guides to helping with homework in different disciplines
have been recently published (Gallagher, 1994). Homework kits are defined as
”leisure time activities” (Ward, 1993). Teachers send homework contracts to be
signed by the parent (Mafnas, 1993), require daily parental feedback on students’
journals (Wisdom, 1993), send questionnaires related to specific homework
assignments to be answered by the parent. This movement toward ’helping families
enjoy learning together’ seems related to current redefinitions of teaching as helping
and learning as fitn, as well as to redefinitions of the scope and functions of
schooling, extending its reach in order to encompass domestic education and cultural
life.

Based on the above evidence of homework regulation and of formalization of
the family-school partnership, my view is that, by sending schoolwork home, school is
regulating family life, an interesting case of extending its ’disciplinary power’
(Foucault, 1977) to children’s homes and to parenting activities. Only within this
framework can the TV versus homework polemic, for instance, persistently hold the
attention of school educators.

School is a mediator-agency between the individual and the family, on one

side, and socio-economic structures, formal (dominant) culture, and public life, on the

247

other. Homework, academic learning, family, and school cannot be considered apart
from the power relations that shape social life. In the present case, it is difficult to
convince that families and students really have power in shaping educational policies,
such as homework and the content and direction of instruction. In fact, the practice of
developing schoolwork in the home and influencing school policy was historically
restricted to the middle-classes, and evaluation of instructional policies and reforms
have not counted on general family input, though educational policy depends on

’social consent’ as a condition for successful implementation.

I assume that education is a complex enterprise, which should never be entirely
encompassed and directed by the school. School provides a specific kind of
education, and should be relatively autonomous regarding its specific educative task.
The fanrily offers a distinct educative realm and should ’recover’ its role in education,
which of course depends primarily on improved material conditions. In social life and
individual development it is desirable that distinct educative realms, communities, and
groups provide for diversity and contrast. Contrary to the idea of a school-family
formally regulated partnership, I claim that gaps, such as those between school and

family, may represent much needed spaces of freedom and creativity in social life.

Rethinking the impact of homework on school achievement

My argumentation admits that homework does have an impact on achievement.
As an institutionalized policy implying direct grading and increased learning time to
be assessed also by other instruments, homework may generate positive or disastrous

results. The issue is not simply that homework intends to help raise learning and

248

achievement - it is that if a student doesn’t succeed in homework per se, his/her
chances of succeeding in school are already undermined.

Furthermore, homework is not likely to help at risk students, because it
requires the same favorable social conditions those students basically need to succeed
in school, anyhow. As a learning intensification strategy held at the expense of the
family, it depends on the family’s conditions and thus, in some cases, may enhance
the chances of failure it intends to reduce. As a compensatory policy for schools’
insufficiencies, it may as well magnify the problem. This is possible because it affects
the instructional practices carried in the classroom, the proper place where learning the
school curriculum should be intensified.

As an instrument linking family and school toward certain common (but
restricted) educational goals, homework imposes the academic curriculum on family
life and, by using family time and resources, subordinates family to school.
Furthermore, as a particular expression of educational policy, homework subjects the
educational values of the family to the purposes of school achievement, as well as to

the prevailing concepts of individual and social success, and national triumph.

Rethinking the impact of homework on family life

Whenever I read or heard claims on the desirability of homework and the
natural obligation of parents to be homework helpers, I thought to myself that
homework acolytes either didn’t have children, or were not parents of many children,
or of children who did not enjoy homework, or they had their children a long time

ago before certain curricular reforms, or they were men who counted on a dedicated

249

full-time wife-mother, or they were teachers who also enjoyed teaching at home, or
they were super-parents, whom I didn’t envy. Thus, it was with satisfaction that I
recently found Corno’s (1996) recognition that homework is a complicated thing, and
Natriello’s (1997) hoist on the petard of homework, a researcher’s penitence on the
homework prescription. Natriello found out for himself about the ”incredible
homework burden, " the family evenings "lost to homework, " all of this intensified by
"challenging" homework assignments provided by a "serious” teacher (pp. 572-573).
As an enthusiast of constructivist approaches and higher-order learning, and in a two
parent-two children family situation, thus he assesses the homework-parent fit:

The assignments seem to be a good mix of tasks that vary across subject areas

and from routine review to creative exploration. Both kinds of assignments

pose challenges to parents. The routine tasks sometimes carry directions that
are difficult for two parents with only advanced graduate degrees to
understand, and we are forced to rely on our children, who seem to have better
intuition about how to read such directions. . .. More creative homework tasks
are a mixed blessing on the receiving end.... they require one to be well
rested, a special condition of mind not often available to working parents. . ..

At my house the fancy carriage of constructivism turns into the pumpkin of

didactism sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 pm. (Natriello, 1997, p. 573)

It is all the more important to observe that his lament and loss - not "to spend
the remainder of the school year in quiet evenings of contemplation, sherry, and
poetry" (Natriello, 1997, p. 574) - do not correspond to the picture of family life of
most working parents, though his time constraints and difficulties in helping his

children with homework are certainly a point in common among parents of all social

classes and circumstances.

Epilogue

PERVERSE EFFECTS OF PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT:
EXTENDING SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE TO THE FAMILY AND

WEAKENING THE EGALITARIAN IDEAL OF PUBLIC EDUCATION

In this dissertation I inquire about parental involvement in schooling, and
particularly in academic learning, as a model for family-school relations and as a
strategy to enhance and equalize educational outcomes. Knowmg (from my own
experience in a distinct social context) about the various problematic aspects of both
parental involvement and separation from school - which seem unequivocally related
to @ulture and concrete meanings of schooling, the general social selective
function of the educational system, the objecfive and subjective conditions gljamflies,
parents, and students, and the interactions between family needs and the quality of
school services, within specific and changing social arrangements - I seek to
understand the historical origins and cultural meanings of this policy, the ways in
which it has been sustained by recent research and policy discourses and by the
specific instructional practice of W and especially what effects it might
produce in the context of U.S. education.

A historical view of the construction of public schooling reveals an original
project both distinct from family education and akin to democratic ideals.

Notwithstanding, schooling has played a specific part in the reproduction of social

250

2 5 1
hierarchies within socio-economic-cultural change, by grossly converting family,
ethnic, gender, and class ‘conditions into unequal individual educational achievement.
In this process, a history of successful schooling and social rewards (for instance,
upward mobility) was constructed, including ideologies like meritocracy and practices
(politics) like parental involvement.

Accordingly, the call for parental involvement in education appeals to powerful
cultural meanings and typical sentiments and values related to family strength,
cohesion, and obligation, but also to individual initiative and search for advantage,
exemplified by current phrases such as constructing the school career, obtaining a
tailored education, and negotiating the school system in order to get the best
opportunities for one’s child. Evidently, in constructing the role of the school as one
of offering opportunities that individuals (students and their families) may use for their
own advancement, this policy is blind to both the external social function and internal
workings of the educational system within the process of reproduction of séal
inequty, as well as to the limits of the logic of educational opportunity. And it
produces, inevitably, negative effects: students , shortcomings can, be “attributed"to lack
of parentalinvolvement; family apathy in front of the school’s implicit and explicit
demands can be addressed as cultural deficit; and the meaning of education can be
constructed in terms of individual responsibility and family choice, omitting social
responsibility.

The fact that schools have limited power to transform social conditions, and
have not succeeded in fostering a common (and high) level of individual development

or in equalizing basic educational outcomes, does not mean that schools’ relative

2 5 2

power (which has been used to reproduce social hierarchies in new ways) should not
be preferably and persistently directed toward the purpose of democratic-equality.
Unfortunately, at this moment, the sway of the neo-liberal political agenda is placing
accountability fully on the individual, blaming disadvantaged groups as a result. In
educational policy, the 22151.???“ of - parental involvement - along with other
reforms like school choice, and the instructional stress on autonomous and more
accountable learners - represents just one aspect of the current retraction of public
responsibility, supposedly on behalf of individual, family, and community
empowerment. In this way, the current policy rhetoric clearly admits that schools
have no power, or that their power is subordinate to the family:

The efi’ective functioning of schools has depended on the reflective functioning

of the family and community. What makes some ghetto schools function

poorly is that the communities and families they serve are weak, lacking the

social capital that would reinforce the school’s goals. (Coleman, 1991, p. 13,

italics added)
The fact that family input has come to be formally recognized as an essential condition
for school effectiveness reveals the betrayal of the democratic project of public
education: a school devised to be effective independently from, and precisely in order
to counterbalance, unequal social conditions which harm individuals and hinder their
development.

Theflirgclflt indirect) role of the family in .studetrtaclriexemem is

indisputable: by preparing children _to adapt and succeed in school by developing

 

literate, school-like practices at home and further backing the school curriculum

(conveying and incrementing cultural capital), and by participating in school events

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 5 3

and fldeveloping close connections with school , staff in order to exert influence, on
behalf of their. Children (investing social capital), middle and upper class parents
mediate their children’s school performance. The selective function of school is also
undeniable: its curriculum counts on a certain family cultural background and
continual support, and its practices build on daily home, specific academic, workings.
The fact that teachers expect more from students who have involved parents (because
those students are more likely to respond and corroborate their efforts) tells about the
importance of symbolic exchanges in the production of school outcomes. And it also
tells of where and with whom resides the ultimate power of reproduction within
schooling: in the school’s cultural (i.e., arbitrary) standards, and with the teachers.

Thus, the family-school partnership means that families invest their cultural
and social capital, while schools capitalize on specific forms of capital, sanctioning
their conversion into academic capital, i.e. , grades and credentials. Accurately, there
can be no partnership in the case of those families who do not possess the required
symbolic capital. At the same time, those families and groups who can seize the
opportunity to participate in school governance, might use it in detriment to the
interests of those less powerful. Hence, the degree of success of this policy - in terms
of benefiting all students, or those most in need - tends to be limited from the outset.
However, while it is very likely that family-school relations will just remain as they
are, with low levels of parental involvement, schools will have a lever to tighten their
selective function, discriminating between students of positively involved and non-
involved parents. Effects on the development of instruction are also conceivable, the

most obvious being the likely scenario in which teachers’ efforts at communicating

254

with parents and helping them enhance their parenting efficacy will drain energy away
from the classroom process.

From the perspective of the family, the immediate implication of more parental
involvement is a demand gorilla, and also for specific social and intellectual skills.
In this way, the so-called opportunity to participate is likely to be perceived as an
extra burden by precisely those parents who have not been involved. Moreover, the
mandate on particular kinds of involvement basically restricts families’ choices
regarding private life, supposedly in the name of benefiting their children, hence
imposing a strong moral sanction.

One interesting question related to the formalization of parental involvement is
whether by making explicit the (previously implicit) contribution of the family to
school achievement this policy would really create opportunity and, consequently,
increment family input precisely where it is found lacking. Notwithstanding, it is
very doubtful that a formal incentive drawing basically on individual (parental)
motivation and effort can create the conditions to overcome objective and subjective
impediments present in the family and broader social contexts, as well as in parent-
school relations, so that all families become educationally productive in the terms
defined by the school. And it is also implausible that schools should carry a massive
effort at parent re-education toward this goal.

A question remains: why the current stress on family educational
accountability? One possible answer addresses the limits of schools in promoting both
education and social equalization. In this case, shared accountability helps spare

schools and teachers the recurrent rhetoric of blame for the social crisis, while

255

simultaneously diverting attention from the school problematic. Along this line, the
need for parental involvement can be read contradictorily as both acknowledgement of
the weakness of school, and the set up of a new scapegoat.

Considering that parental re-education is a necessary requirement of parental
involvement, another answer bears upon the very cultural project of schooling within
the social order - its central role in the reproduction of the dominant cultural arbitrary
and social hierarchies, in Bourdieu and Passeron’s terms, or its role in building and
maintaining the cultural hegemony of the dominant classes, in Antonio Gramsci’s
terrrrs - via the reinforcement of meritocracy (and its related values and practices, such
as individual effort, and student assessment), and via the dissemination of up-to—date
knowledges and technologies. In this sense, parental involvement legitimatizes the
whole project and practices of schooling, as well as the cultural practices furthered
through schooling (for instance, the current use of computers), and thus can be seen as
a consensus building strategy within adult continual education.

And, indeed, parental involvement and, particularly, its segment of parent
education, have been announced as a timely strategy to help minorities who "suffer
disproportionately from inadequate education, unemployment, and other social and
economic handicaps” (Chavkin, 1993, p. l),1 at a moment in which growth in

immigration and minority population are amply acknowledged and feared as threats to

 

‘ Chavkin (1993) cites the 1988 report One-third of a nation: A Report of the
Commission on Minority Participation in Education and American Life issued by the
American Council on Education and Education Commission of the States,
Washington, DC: "The report predicts that the alarming disparities in the educational
achievement of minorities will lead to a compromised quality of life and a lower
standard of living not just for the minority population but also for the majority
population” (p. 2).

256

the domestic economy, the social order, and the national security - hence as a strategy
(beyond the helping motive) to secure the cultural and linguistic hegemony and
promote social efficiency, as it happened a century ago.

Yet, the intensification of the cultural hegemony and ideological consensus-
building role of schooling by calling on parental involvement, in this case, is bound to
stir a host of contradictions. Whereas successful family-school parmerships depend on
convergence of views on purposes and contents of education, it is notable that the call
for parental involvement has not been coupled with a call to discuss public education,
the academic curriculum, and its practices. Moreover, partnerships also depend on
agreement over teaching and parenting roles and rights, another polemic arena
(Education Week, on line). And, finally, they require trust and respect between
teachers and parents, based not only on common values and goals, but on actual
student learning and satisfactory formal outcomes (gradesl), which makes it unlikely
that precisely those parents of ’at—risk’ students will become involved, in spite of
happy exceptions.

In this context, the most important political-practical implication of
understanding the meaning of education as symbolic violence and the articulation of
school and family in social reproduction is the strengthening of the democratic role of
the public school, while simultaneously restraining the reach of policy onto private
life. On the one hand, symbolic violence or cultural imposition may be tolerable, to
some degree, if confined to the public realm, as long as the private sphere bears
freedom. On the other hand, schools can only contradict the reproduction of social

inequality by extending their pedagogic autonomy in order to produce a common and

2 5 7
meaningful experience, precisely through kinds of teaching and learning unavailable
at home, and effective and fair outcomes, in the terms that make students and families
happy. This requires, fundamentally, commitment to public education, the recovery

of democratic ideals, and the specific development of a pedagogy that does not require

family input.

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