I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, and found that several of his points, though all were well outlined and supported, struck a special chord with me after working for the past 19 months in two rural, low-income high schools based in communities where the traditional occupation is farming.
Following a discussion on the relevance of genius level IQs to an individual's chance for success (there was discovered to be a threshold after which additional intelligence provides no special advantage), Gladwell provides markedly different life trajectories of two individuals who have been considered to be smarter than, well, just about everyone. Gladwell explains how this could have happened by diving into a study by sociologist Annette Lareau, in which she found the single influencing factor in the success of third graders was class. While we'd think there'd be more more divergent results -- not merely two options -- on the assumption that there are endless philosophies on parenting, Lareau instead found that "wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way (104)."
At first, this doesn't appear to be much of a surprise; wealthier children have many obvious advantages: particularly, access to money, books and educational resources in the home, parents who have more free time to devote to them, and a greater variety of extracurricular activities (such as dance and sports and music lessons, all of which normally require the availability of extra spending money and parents who can shuttle their children to and from all of their appointments). We all understand the basic advantages of being born rich or being born poor, and how poor parents are often stretched thin on resources and time, with little left to give to their children. But what I previously didn't realize, before reading Gladwell's book, was in what way the differences in parenting styles caused by the availability of resources to people of middle/upper and lower classes influences the future success of children.
Gladwell really does put it best:
"Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style 'concerted cultivation.' It's an attempt to actively 'foster and asses a child's talents, opinions and skills.' Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of 'accomplishment of natural growth.' They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own. Lareau stresses that one style isn't morally better than the other. The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages. The heavily scheduled middle-class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau's words, the middle-class children learn a sense of 'entitlement' (104-5)."
Gladwell takes care to emphasize this is entitlement not in the negative way that we normally think of it, but in a way that implies individuals have "'the right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings'(105)." Because individuals coming from poorer backgrounds typically have not had parents who could (1) devote the time and effort to the concerted cultivation of their children, nor (2) recognize the importance of concerted cultivation because they themselves grown up poor and remained poor, the individuals lack the comfort in institutional settings and skill of speaking up and advocating for themselves that is so defines the most successful of individuals. Indeed, it can make or break those with even the highest measurable IQs. That is because, in many settings, individuals coming from poor backgrounds are distant and distrustful and unable to tailor their environments to their personal use (105).
When reading this in Outliers, a light-bulb turned on for me. It completely explains how my students, 14-18 years old with habits and traits ingrained in them from childhood, much more often than not do not take advantage of so many opportunities presented to them. They fail to meet deadlines, they don't bring in materials when I ask, they are afraid to call any person of "authority" on the phone, they are wary of involving their parents in their schooling, and they don't understand the importance of going the extra mile (especially in relation to college applications and proving themselves worthy to their choices schools). And when things don't go their way as a result, they shrug off their dreams, calling them opportunities lost.
The saddest part of it, of course, is that just as often, those dreams are not lost. They would still have been capable through further work and research and finding the right people with which to converse. And on top of that, better opportunities are oftentimes presented in the face of these "lost" opportunities, but my students are so consumed with discouragement that they cannot see them. This phenomenon is crystal clear in the life of the high school football star profiled on Diane Sawyer's recent 20/20 special on Appalachia (Children of the Mountains). This student was homeless, living in a truck because his family was taken over by violence, alcoholism, drug dealing, and poverty, but he received a football scholarship to a nearby college. After a first semester struggling to keep up with his peers, both in classes and (especially) in a college social life where money was necessary to keep up, he dropped out, moving back to the poverty of the hills, hoping for any job to come his way, facing a coal mining future, and picking coal off the side of a highway hill to warm his family's home.
This attitude of defeatism is perpetuated all around me in the hills of Southwest Virginia, too. It's like, if one thing ever goes wrong in someone's life, it's a sign for him/her not to push through it because the world doesn't want him/her to succeed. And so they don't push through, and of course they never climb that ladder. It's all because these people don't have the attitude of entitlement instilled in them by their parents. And what follows is nothing less than heartbreaking.
*All quotes from Outliers.
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