The middle-class youth attended four different high schools, and all four were different from Lower Richmond. At the time the youth were attending, these schools appeared to offer a fast-paced, challenging curriculum. For example, the schools emphasized the development of writing skills, they offered a large array of AP courses, and they provided college preparation services unavailable at Lower Richmond. At Swan High School, which Melanie attended, SAT preparation was offered as an elective class. Average class size in Swan high school was about half that in the Lower Richmond District. The passage rate on state proficiency tests was over twice the rate at Lower Richmond. Average Swan SAT scores were 1065 [1598]. Swan’s ratio of 250 students to 1 counselor was approximately one-half that at Lower Richmond. Some of the suburban high schools also offered an International Baccalaureate Program, which is a rigorous, selective high school curriculum. The school Garrett attended had very high test scores that consistently put it among the state’s top ten high schools. Garrett’s school and the one Stacey attended were selected for accolades by U.S. News and World Report in the magazine’s ranking of America’s best high schools. Alexander went to a small, elite private high school with a reputation as one of the best private high schools in the area. These schools all had dropout rates under 7 percent and college-going rates over 90 percent. All three of the public high schools also had active parent volunteer programs and educational foundations that annually raised thousands of dollars for school equipment, teacher grants, and college scholarships. The suburban high schools also appeared to bestow many awards. Thus, there are many signs that the middle-class students attended high schools that differed significantly from Lower Richmond in terms of funding, facilities, curriculum, college preparation, and overall reputation.
Networks, Work, and Resources
As the youth transitioned to adulthood, nearly all sought to enter the labor market, either by being hired for paid employment or by securing an internship in a work setting. Their parents used their own social networks to help the kids gain access to work.24 But the jobs parents could help their children get differed. The kinds of connections they could make on their children’s behalf were shaped by the parents’ social networks, which were in turn shaped by their social class position. Working-class and poor youth generally were referred to lower-level blue-collar jobs or, in a few instances, lower-level white-collar jobs. Katie’s mother helped Katie get a job cleaning houses alongside her. Harold’s brother-in-law helped him get a job as a busboy in a chain restaurant. Billy’s father helped him get jobs painting houses. By contrast, Alexander’s mother arranged for him to be an intern in a medical office in order to build his resume for his premed college applications. Stacey was a waitress, but she was also a camp counselor, a position with characteristics similar to those needed for a career in education or counseling. Garrett had a “hideous” summer job in an auto parts yard, but it was clear this was an aberration with no bearing on his vision of his future employment. The amount of time the young people spent in the labor force also differed. Harold started working full-time at age fifteen. Wendy worked two jobs in high school. By contrast, Garrett, Alexander, and Stacey had much more limited experience in the labor force.
All of the middle-class parents and most of the working-class and poor parents owned cars. Many of the young people described their pleasure at (finally) becoming old enough to get a driver’s license. Getting a driver’s license is an important mark of adulthood, a formal institutional recognition of adult status. In addition, it is a resource in the sense that it is a prerequisite for applying for many jobs (e.g., truck driver, forklift operator, pizza delivery driver, babysitter). Still, as Table D1 shows, whether these young people had a driver’s license varied across the sample. Many youth indicated that they knew how to drive, but not all were licensed. Any driving Harold or Katie did, for instance, was technically illegal. Others, including Tyrec, had received their driver’s licenses, but then had them suspended.
Organized Activities
In the follow-up interviews, I asked the young adults who had participated in organized activities as children if there were any ways that these activities affected their lives now. Three of the middle-class youth, Garrett, Stacey, and Alexander, enthusiastically discussed benefits from their organized activities.25 Stacey, who had been involved in gymnastics, was effusive:
I learned the whole essence of what a teammate is supposed to be. I had all these people cheering when I did my routines. I think that helped me a lot with basketball. . . . At the time I loved it all. . . . There was never a bad thing in gymnastics.
Some of the insights Stacey gained have stayed with her. She learned that she could work through challenges in life, and having people cheer her on taught her the critical role of social support:
Someone is just off [having a bad day], and you start cheering for someone or talk to them by yourself. If you don’t do well, you have all those people who support you.
Alexander emphasized the benefits of organized activities for helping him build time-management skills. Garrett, who took piano lessons for eight years, mentioned music as an important, ongoing resource: “If I’m not in a great mood, I’ll just sit down and play [and it] soothes . . . I love it, just love music.” More generally, he saw his experience with organized activities as teaching him goal orientation (“If I have an assignment or a project [I] need to get finished, I won’t stop until I reach the goal”) and other skills likely to be helpful in the world of work:
I think it will help competitiveness. If my job comes to that, I’m pretty sure it probably will, I’ll have [a] competitive edge or the competitive nature to want to [have] success and do well. And it helps. I play team sports so [it helps in] getting along with people—working together.
Melanie, however, did not consider her childhood organized activities especially helpful. She did not feel that she had learned anything from Girl Scouts. As an adolescent, she lost interest in church and stopped attending (to her parents’ deep disappointment). She still played piano from time to time. She loved being a high school cheerleader.
Very few of the working-class and poor young adults had participated regularly in organized activities as children. Those who did have activities had one or, rarely, two rather than the schedule of multiple, concurrent activities typical of the middle-class kids. Tyrec played football, Billy played baseball, and Wendy took dance lessons and religious instruction. During interviews when they were twenty-year-olds, none of the three could think of any particular long-term benefits they had derived from participating in these activities. Their parents concurred with this view. When I asked Ms. Driver if dance lessons had a lasting impact on Wendy, she responded, laughing, “Nah, she is still clumsy.” Referring to her dance classes, Wendy said simply, “I did it to have something to do.” Tyrec could not think of any benefits from his participation in football. From Billy’s perspective, there were neither benefits nor drawbacks from having taken part in a team sport. Echoing Wendy, he said, “It was just something to do.” His mother, though, regretted Billy’s participation in baseball. Ms. Yanelli felt that he lacked natural talent and that his repeated failure on the field had been humiliating for him.