Debbie tells Willie, “You have two cavities that have to be filled.” She tells Wendy, “You have to have two teeth pulled.” Wendy asks, “Do I have cavities?” Debbie says, “No.” Wendy, excited, says, “Goody!” and then announces triumphantly to Willie, “You have two cavities and I don’t.”11
Ms. Driver does not equate the term “tooth decay” with “cavity.” Over the next ten days, there are many conversations in the Driver household about the teeth Wendy will have pulled. Wendy is disappointed to discover that she can’t leave her teeth that are pulled under her pillow for the tooth fairy. In addition, various explanations are offered for why Wendy’s teeth must come out. Mr. Fallon says she needs more room in her mouth. After the visit, Wendy was given her two teeth to take home. Both had large black marks on them. To our knowledge, no one in the family ever understood that Wendy’s teeth had cavities.
Incompletely or incorrectly understanding the terminology professionals favor was a common problem among parents in the working-class and poor families we observed. It is one of many elements that contribute to these parents’ tendency to defer to, or at least silently accept, the pronouncements of professionals such as teachers and health-care providers. In addition to being uncomfortable with the terms school officials and classroom teachers used, most working-class and poor parents believed it was inappropriate for them to intervene in their children’s day-to-day classroom experiences. They expected teachers to shoulder the responsibility of educating children, and they presumed that if there were problems, the school would contact them, not vice versa. Still, the deference these parents exhibit in their dealings with school representatives often includes an underlying element of hostility and resistance.
DEFERENCE: HOSTILITY IN DISGUISE?
One area in which working-class and poor parents frequently disagree with educators involves discipline, especially the advisability of physical punishment (this issue is examined in more detail in the next chapter). The emphasis schools place on verbally negotiating problems strikes many of these parents as misguided, at best. Wendy’s mother is no exception. In fall of the fifth grade, when Wendy is troubled by a male classmate, Ms. Driver (and Mr. Fallon) advises her to take matters into her own hands:
When I ask what Wendy’s new teacher is like, Debbie says, “She seems nice.” Mack says, “There is a boy pulling her hair; he sits behind her.” Debbie repeats, “Yeah, there is a boy who keeps pulling on her hair.” Debbie says, “I said, punch him.” Mack elaborates, “Yeah. Hit him when the teacher isn’t looking. That will take care of it.”12
There are deeper reasons for working-class and poor parents to mistrust the judgment of classroom teachers and school staff but not to openly challenge them. The school, as an institution, is an official representative of the state. In practical terms, that means that if school officials have any reason to suspect that a student is in any kind of danger at home, they can take steps to have that child temporarily removed from his or her family. This gives school representatives an enormous power over parents, an imbalance that, reasonably, they both deeply resent and greatly fear.
One night, after our regular visits had finished, Ms. Driver tells me that they took Wendy to the hospital because her wrist was sore.13 Ms. Driver had not thought this soreness was anything to worry about, but she felt compelled to have Wendy examined by a doctor.
Every time the school sends something home, I am worried if I don’t do something about it that they’ll report it and DHS [Department of Human Services] will come and take my kids away. So, even though I knew it was nothing, I took her to the hospital to have them tell me it was nothing. Mack amends, “To tell you it was a strain.”
Ms. Driver explains:
They send you this big card, and even though I’m her mother, I feel that the school—if you don’t do something—that they will report you. And they’ll come and take your kids away.
The hospital visit was covered by Ms. Driver’s insurance, but it was expensive and inconvenient:
It cost four hundred and ten dollars. I came home at five, and—(Mack interrupts) “We had to go get my Mom.” Debbie, explaining, says, “We had to go get his mom to watch Valerie,” and then continues, “We took her up and waited and waited and waited.” Mack recalls, “I said, ‘If it isn’t broken, then I am going to break it myself.’” Debbie repeats, “It cost four hundred and ten dollars to tell me what I already knew.”
To make matters worse, “the school,” vested with an overbearing authority, often seems as likely to get things wrong as right. In Ms. Driver’s experience, school nurses not only exaggerate nonexistent problems but fail to recognize real emergencies. When Willie, for example, was in a collision at school, the nurse said “not to worry” and that she thought he would need “some butterfly stitches.” But Willie had a huge gash over his eye that required twenty-eight stitches. For Ms. Driver, the conclusion is obvious: school nurses are not to be trusted. They fuss too much over minor matters and do not accurately convey the severity of major matters. In lumping into a single unit nurses in two different schools, ministering to children of different ages and sexes, Wendy’s mother demonstrates a common tendency among working-class and poor parents to merge authority figures into one indiscriminate group. Thus, classroom teachers, resource teachers, librarians, and principals are usually all referred to as “the school.”
Ms. Driver resents having to take Wendy to the hospital for what she believes is a ridiculous complaint. It is, however, her only sure way to stave off possibly arbitrary and capricious but nevertheless very real threats of coercion from professionals in a position of power. The inconvenience and expense of the hospital trip is small compared to the huge risk that “they” might come and “take your kids away.” Other working-class and poor parents voiced similar anxieties and shared the same feeling of distrust with school officials.
DISCUSSION
Daily life for Wendy Driver (and her brother) followed much the same pattern we observed with Tyrec Taylor, Katie Brindle, and Harold McAllister. The Driver children had vast amounts of leisure time that they spent hanging out with cousins, watching television, helping with household chores, and visiting grandparents. There were firm directives that shaped their actions but also much room for autonomous decision making. The overall cultural logic of child rearing in the family seemed to be the accomplishment of natural growth. The only significant deviation was that Wendy’s mother had enrolled her in three organized activities. But this seemed less an effort on her mother’s part to expose Wendy to a range of life experiences than a means of protecting her from the street. Although Wendy enjoyed two of the three activities, these did not dominate her leisure time or alter the rhythm of her family life.
Wendy’s school situation was extreme in some respects, since even at Lower Richmond, where test scores are routinely in the bottom quartile nationally, most children have learned to read by third grade. In other respects, however, her situation was not unusual. Ms. Driver, like other working-class and poor parents, believed she was doing all she could to help her daughter succeed in school. Wendy’s teachers, however, defined the meaning of parental support differently. The educators advocated a version of concerted cultivation. They longed for an idealized world wherein parents were energetic and took a leadership role in monitoring their children’s schooling but always stopped considerably short of the kind of intervention the Kaplans undertook when they objected to the music teacher’s choice of songs for the school holiday program. Teachers like Mr. Tier and others did not want parents to be deferential and reactive. They sought an approach that was a contradictory blend in which parents were actively involved and consciously responsible for guiding their children’s school experience but were still polite, compliant, and supportive of educators’ programs. It would be only in situations where differences of opinion arose that parents would immediately defer to the wisdom of educators.