5. As Appendix A explains, Stacey was not a student at Swan and thus was in a different district. While the cutoff for entrance to the gifted program at Swan School is 125 (which Garrett Tallinger missed by a few points), at her school the cutoff was 130.
6. When I asked Ms. Marshall what she would have said to the coach, she explained that she would start by tackling the problem indirectly:
That I’m concerned, that she’s a little uncomfortable at lunchtime. I would probably ask, I’d say, “How are things?” I would start out with, “Is everything okay?” You know, “Do you know my kid Fern? I’m just a little concerned because she said, she’s, you know, she’s eating alone.” Or, “I just, I’d like for this to be a wholesome experience and just wonder. . . . ”
7. In the language of Pierre Bourdieu, the Marshall family was reading “the field.” (See Appendix B for a discussion of the concept of field.)
CHAPTER 9: CONCERTED CULTIVATION GONE AWRY
1. Indeed, Ms. Handlon reported, “The first week I had to walk her to her class. She wouldn’t get out of the car unless I did.” She said that Melanie was not crying, but “I could tell she was just scared and she asked, ‘Will you walk me in?’ It was probably about a week and then she was confident enough for me to just drop her at the door so she could go in by herself.”
2. When we interviewed Ms. Handlon in the fall, she estimated that in the previous two weeks she had had eight casual conversations with other mothers about school matters. The conversations were often brief and occurred before or after Melanie’s organized activities (e.g., Girl Scouts, meetings, church) or before or after school.
3. Note that these are preexisting networks; Ms. Handlon does not have to build them. She chooses to participate and then draws on the information she learns.
4. Ms. Handlon does not usually help either of the older boys. Harry generally does little homework; his grades suffer. Their mother is dismayed by this, but she feels she needs to let the boys, especially Harry, learn for themselves that they need to do their homework.
5. Since home observations were confidential, we did not tell the teachers what we observed.
6. Negotiations were routine, as this Saturday morning when Tommy decides to make some fresh juice: Mrs. Handlon says that it is fine to use this squeezer.
Tommy says, “Can I use the electric one?” Mrs. Handlon says, “No use this one.” Tommy says, “Why can’t I use the electric one?” Mrs. Handlon says, “This one is here.” Tommy says, “I don’t mean to argue but the electric one is already out.” Mrs. Handlon says, “Well that must mean somebody used it. All right, you can use it if you rinse it out when you’re done.”
Mrs. Handlon sounds a little frustrated at the end of this conversation.
7. Note that Ms. Handlon had fewer class resources than did Ms. Marshall. She had considerably less education, and in her job as a secretary she did not exert the same kind of managerial authority. Her husband had more class resources, but he was not active in managing Melanie’s schooling. Thus, it is possible that Ms. Handlon’s inability to effectively activate class resources could be linked to her own, relatively limited, resources. Also there are families who are rich in class resources but who have parents or children who are impaired, for example, with mental health problems or substance abuse problems. My point here is that class location does not guarantee the transmission of advantages.
CHAPTER 10: LETTING EDUCATORS LEAD THE WAY
1. Wendy was nine when the visits began but turned ten during the course of the study.
2. When we began observing the family, Ms. Driver and Mr. Fallon and the children had been living together for just under a year. They eventually married (Valerie was about two years old at the time).
3. When their father died, Wendy and Willie became eligible for Social Security benefits, which they now receive.
4. See Maria Kefalas, Working-Class Heroes, for a discussion of a comparable neighborhood in Chicago.
5. Field-workers noted that during a typical two-hour visit to the Driver family, they would hear more than twenty-five references to kin.
6. Moreover, as we observed in all the families, regardless of social class, much more attention is paid to Wendy’s physical appearance than to Willie’s. The adults, and Wendy herself, focus repeatedly on her clothes, hairstyle, shoe size, and overall creation as a present and future object of beauty.
7. Willie expressed an interest in joining a hockey team, but the combined costs of the equipment and the activity fee were prohibitively expensive. Ms. Driver wished that there were programs “where kids could just go and play for nothing.”
8. In an exit interview, Ms. Driver complained that Willie had acted differently during the visits, often “pushing it” and “not taking ‘no’ for an answer.” She noted, however, that he seemed to have begun testing the limits in other situations as well.
9. In the end, the teachers recommended that Wendy repeat fourth grade, and the principal approved their decision. On the last day of school, however, Mr. Tier learned that a higher district official would not permit the retention (for reasons not made clear to Mr. Tier). Instead, in fifth grade Wendy went into an intensive special education program at Lower Richmond, in a classroom with only thirteen children. Mr. Tier was mollified because he felt Wendy “would be getting the attention she needs.”
10. Mr. Johnson’s explanation was different. He said, “We had one little problem. I yelled at her one time and she stopped coming. . . . I had given her an assignment, and she came in and she told me her mother didn’t know how to do the assignment.” The assignment, for Black history month, was to match names to occupations. Mr. Johnson thought Wendy was making up an excuse for not doing her work: “I mean, it just didn’t make sense to me. So I got a little perturbed and I told her, ‘You can’t tell me, if your mother completed high school [she] couldn’t do this.’ I mean, you just say that you didn’t do it. . . . If you didn’t do something, you just didn’t do it. I can accept that more so than you telling me that your mother—so that upset her.” Her classroom teacher, Mr. Tier (who did not have a good relationship with Mr. Johnson) presumed that Mr. Johnson’s schedule had changed and that Wendy would resume at some point.
11. I wrote in my field notes, “I am flabbergasted by this.” Still, since the aim of the study was to learn as much as possible about how families interact with institutions, I did not correct her.
12. Several people in Mr. Fallon’s family believe in hitting. His sister, Sar, for example, told Wendy one afternoon when she picked her up from school and Wendy complained about another child hurting her, “You’ve got to learn to fight!”
13. We did not observe this visit. Overall, it was very difficult to go along on medical visits, unless the trips were for appointments made well in advance, such as a wellness checkup or a camp physical.
CHAPTER 11: BEATING WITH A BELT, FEARING THE SCHOOL
1. He worked “off the books” for many years but recently changed jobs, taking a pay cut, so that he could pay taxes and begin to qualify for Social Security benefits.
2. A clerk at the emergency room, however, told Ms. Yanelli about a state program providing health insurance for children; as a result Billy has a medical card.
3. This parent-teacher conference was in the fall, after I had interviewed Ms. Yanelli but before she was asked to be in the observational study. In this conference, Mr. Tier told her very directly that he thought that Billy had psychological problems. (Mr. Tier, not known for his tactfulness, also expressed frustration about Billy rolling down a muddy hill during a field trip, saying in the conference, “Even kids that were fat and stupid got themselves down the hill.”) Ms. Yanelli was very distressed by the conference. Taking my number from the consent form I had given her, she called me at home that evening to discuss it. She thought Billy’s report card was excellent. She was bewildered about why Mr. Tier would not discuss the report card in the conference but make claims of Billy having psychological problems. What is striking in this conversation and many others is that despite Ms. Yanelli’s clear sense that educators are acting inappropriately, she feels incapable of influencing the situation. Furthermore, she blames herself for her powerlessness. As she said that evening, “I think, ‘Why do you let the school do this to you time after time?’ ”