Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School

by Jessica McCrory Calarco

In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica McCrory Calarco argues that the middle class has a negotiated advantage in school. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Calarco traces that negotiated advantage from its origins at home to its consequences at school. Through their parents' coaching, working-class students learn to follow rules and work through problems independently. Middle-class students learn to challenge rules and request assistance, accommodations, and attention in excess of what is fair or required. Teachers typically grant those requests, creating advantages for middle-class students. Calarco concludes with recommendations, advocating against deficit-oriented programs that teach middle-class behaviors to working-class students. Those programs ignore the value of working-class students' resourcefulness, respect, and responsibility, and they do little to prevent middle-class families from finding new opportunities to negotiate advantages in school.

Genres: Sociology, Education, Grad School, Academic, Parenting

272 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2018

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I saw a reference to this book (about middle class advantage in public schools) in the news recently. It piqued my interest because I had cousins in expensive college prep private schools and marveled at their pampered treatment. I am interested in ECE, child development and behavior, I've studied the subject formally and I've done quite a bit of reading, therefore I knew this book wouldn't be a thrill ride. I did expect it to be well written and engaging. ( I am writing this review for potential readers, not to chastise the author. It's obvious she worked hard)
HOWEVER, a book for adults shouldn't be filled with extensive chapter padding as this one is. The beginnings and ends of chapters are long unhelpful previews and redundant summaries that tiresomely tease and/or restate the findings therein. A following chapter, which one would think would be full of distinct observations that belong there and nowhere else, is full of long winded restatements or ever-so-slight shades of previous observations. For a book, it is nearly unreadable as edited and the bulk of it comes across as a 4th year college paper that should be 25 pages in length but has been stretched to meet a requirement that it be 50 pages. The effect is amateurish and frustrating on an academic level and I found myself skimming/speed reading long restatements of previous observations for new material and insights into this fascinating subject.
There's aren't very many, folks.
Here's the take away: Middle class parents teach their children to use teachers as tools to further their academic careers. They teach their children to work the system to their advantage and teach them consequence avoidance skills. Middle class parents intervene to a high degree in their children's academic and personal lives and it's apparent that teachers fear these parents. Because schools and teachers are products of the middle class themselves, they frequently reward/comply with these strategies.

This is an unwritten norm of the middle class and it advantages middle class children.

For the most part, working class children, for whatever cultural or socioeconomic reasons, are taught to comply with classroom rules and to tackle academic problems on their own without running to their teacher at the first sign of difficulty. Their parents are far less likely to intervene on their behalf and when working class children misbehave they are more likely to accept the results of their actions when punished. They do not try to avoid consequences or advocate for special treatment.
Don't expect a whole lot more from this extremely overwrought book.

[Melinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important book for anyone who cares about education. Jessica McCrory Calarco documents that by late elementary school years, middle-class children have learned to badger their teachers so persistently that whether they want to or not their teachers end up caving in to their demands, giving them extra time, answers to test questions, and exemptions from the consequences of rule-breaking. I knew that middle-class parents demanded all those things on behalf of their children, but I did not know that by 4th or 5th grade the children could so effectively do this on their own.

And the working class kids? Their parents felt equally strongly that they wanted their children to be successful, but their version of success valued more highly being of good character, being respectful, and being self-reliant. All this translates, in a busy classroom, to their struggles being overlooked in the cacophony of a classroom dominated by the demands of their more assertive classmates.

Read it. Get angry. Demand better of your school for all the kids.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is approachable and interesting from a number of perspectives. As a former elementary school teacher, it made me think about interactions in class and what I perceived versus what may have been going on. This would make a great faculty or district "reading club" book. I think there are many discussions to be had about the perspectives students bring to the classroom based on what students learn at home. I really enjoyed the fact that the author clearly laid out the book as it was laid out in her research. She explains her methodology and more while keeping it accessible to all.

[Elizabeth Li · Rating 5 out of 5]

it's been three years since i read this, but i still think about it often. one of the most impactful books i read all of college. the conclusions were not exactly revolutionary but still fundamentally altered the way i understood socioeconomic class and public education.

[RYAN PHAM · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book about how white collar students ask for more help and work the system through greater cultural capital and how blue collar students focus on relationship ties and accept bad outcomes as fixed and deserved. Maybe I should get it in hardcover

[Flora · Rating 4 out of 5]

interesting and well-made argument but kind of repetitive. fun anecdotes that were usually helpful in illustrating her points.

[Cami Duron]

Does skimming a book count? I’m gonna let it count for this one so I can keep track of it and because it contains such redundant content I might as well have read it in depth. Point: working class students don’t have the cultural capital that middle class students have that urges them to push back in the classroom. Therefore, working class students’ creativity, comfort, and learning is limited.

[Mills College Library]

305.55097 C142 2018

[Nicole Hoffmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to read for soc101 — made me totally rethink the education system as I knew it.