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Some of them are playing one parent off against the other. Let’s see how bad
I can be with Mother so she’ll let me stay with Dad longer, and this is not
fair to Dad, but let me stay with Dad so she’ll give up and let me go to Dad’s.
He doesn’t have as many rules as Mom has. Homework is not monitored as
closely. That kind of thing. Or, I’m with Dad,
let me see how aggravating I
can be so he’ll give up and send me back to Mom. And, they’re not in some
cases doing it intentionally. They’re not bad kids. They’re just frustrated and
if they come to us with all this baggage from home, it’s difficult to learn in
the classroom.
Family support was also cited by teachers in highly affluent communities, such
as Rolling Hills and Lakeside. In these communities, teachers reported their belief
that a high level of parental involvement contributes to the high level of achieve-
ment of many students. In the words of one teacher:
A lot of the mothers do volunteer work or help with the PTA.
The PTA here
is incredible. The way they are involved! Moms are here everyday. They help
with the first-day classes. When I see a mother, I say to myself, ‘‘There’s a
mom with too much time on her hands.’’ The mother will say something to
me like; ‘‘I disagree with the way you graded Johnny’s homework 3 months
ago.’’ (Teacher, Vanderbilt Middle School)
Teachers in poor communities also focused on the family and social environment
in explaining individual differences and academic success. One teacher at Parks
Elementary School in Metro City estimated that 90 percent of the students live
in
nonintact families, most without fathers and many without mothers, and she
blamed these figures for the comparatively low performance of most of the chil-
dren at the school.
While examining the classroom attendance sheet with the interviewer, the teacher
explained her views about how differences in home environments create individ-
ual differences in ability:
I think a lot of it has to do with their home life. I think almost all of them
are on welfare. A lot of them don’t live with their parents—either one. R is
living with her stepfather. S is living with her aunt. You can go down the list.
M, her mother is one of those; she is in one
of those home-alone situations,
where the mother is never really there. J is in a homeless shelter. E has one
parent. B, we think, might be abused. R has been abused. D is being taken
care of by her grandmother. R has two parents at home. So does X. J, L, and
A do not. J has both parents, but they live in a shelter. L lives with his grand-
father. So these kids are not coming from your typical home.
Other teachers noted that some students have families of their own to support
and that this affects their academic performance. Teachers at Uptown High
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School, indicated that many teenage girls drop out of high school in order to take
care of their children. More than 75 percent of girls
at South Central Vocational
High School drop out of school, primarily because of pregnancy. The principal
of South Central told us:
Some of the girls have two or three babies. Childcare responsibilities make it
difficult for these girls to attend school regularly and that explains the low
rates of attendance among female students at South Central.
At the schools in West City, a number of students indicated that they care for
siblings. This was considered to be a factor in the lower academic achievement
among certain groups at the school. Overcrowded living conditions were also
seen as adversely affecting academic performance.
A middle school teacher in West City offered a typical
explanation for the source
of individual differences:
I would say their home life. If they had the support—even if it were one par-
ent—really backing up the teacher and supporting the teacher and pushing
their kids to continue their education, they will. They will succeed. But if they
do not have that, and they do not have the continuity. If they have the con-
tinuity, they can do math, even though it is harder. We have kids who are
from
the shelter, and the fact that they still get that support there that helps
them a lot too. It is a lot harder for them because they are really in an unstable
situation. I think it is the continuity and the parental support.
Overall, individual differences among students were most often attributed by edu-
cators to the family environments and family responsibilities of individual children.
Differences in innate ability or effort were not spontaneously offered as expla-
nations with any frequency. Teachers stated that high-achieving students were
more likely to come from stable families that support schools and that negative
influences, such as unstable families, divorce, abuse, and other social problems,
were responsible for the low achievement of some students.
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