Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2017 Children Enrichment Programs and Teaching Methods in Two Different Socioeconomic Classes Chloe Bartlett Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Education Commons, Income Distribution Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Bartlett, Chloe, "Children Enrichment Programs and Teaching Methods in Two Different Socioeconomic Classes" (2017). Honors Theses. 5. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/5 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CHILDREN, ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS, AND TEACHING METHODS IN TWO DIFFERENT SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES By Chloe Bartlett ******** Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for B.A. in anthropology UNION COLLEGE November, 2016 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract.........................................................................................................................................................3 ​ Chapter 1: AN INTRODUCTION TO TWO SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES Overview of Argument...............................................................................................................4 Methodology...................................................................................................................................5 CHAPTER TWO: THE EDUCATION SYSTEM AS A CULTURAL CONTEXT A LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction................................................................................................................................17 Schools and Social Reproduction.......................................................................................19 Daily Life of Children of Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds..........................21 Conceptions of the Child’s Self According to Social Class........................................25 Conflicting Achievement Ideologies.................................................................................29 Role of Educators in Child Rearing in the School........................................................40 Role of Schools...........................................................................................................................44 CHAPTER THREE: FIELDSITES IN TWO DIFFERENT SOCIAL CLASSES Fairfield, CT..................................................................................................................................48 Chicago, IL....................................................................................................................................52 Hamilton Hill District..............................................................................................................56 CHAPTER 4: THE WORKING CLASS HAMILTON HILL ARTS CENTER.....................................................................................................70 ​ Inner-City Children..................................................................................................................73 Interactions with Authority..................................................................................................88 Union College’s Influence......................................................................................................91 Teaching: Methods and Discipline.....................................................................................93 Activities.....................................................................................................................................101 CHAPTER FIVE: THE WORKING CLASS COCOA HOUSE The Community.......................................................................................................................107 Inner-City Children................................................................................................................109 Interactions with Authority...............................................................................................117 Attitudes Towards School...................................................................................................121 Teaching: Methods and Discipline..................................................................................124 Social Class, Cultural Capital, and Schools...................................................................128 Activities.....................................................................................................................................129 Conclusion: Low-Income Programs................................................................................138 CHAPTER SIX: MIDDLE CLASS CHILDREN The Summer Institute for the Gifted..............................................................................140 Middle Class Children and Their Parents.....................................................................140 Attitudes Toward School.....................................................................................................145 Activities .146 ……………………………………………………………………………………………… Teaching and Discipline.......................................................................................................149 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................156 CHAPTER SEVEN: CONCLUSION..................................................................................................158 ​ My Recommendations..........................................................................................................158 Overall.........................................................................................................................................169 Bibliography..........................................................................................................................................175 ​ 2 ABSTRACT Chloe Bartlett CHILDREN, ENRICHMENT PROGRAMS, AND TEACHING METHODS IN TWO DIFFERENT SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES. Department of Anthropology, November, 2016. Students from working class families are not given equal attention, treatment, opportunities or guidance as those of middle class backgrounds. The “gap” between family and school is the socioeconomic background being catered to in schools. I argue that schools run on a highly Western middle class ideology and thus do not reflect cultural values or systems of students from working class families, who perceive authority differently and have been socialized in a community plagued by violence, crime, and lack of economic resources. Such resources that middle class families can attain to academically assist their children. As a result, those students are not receiving a sufficient education that would allow them to bridge the achievement gap and end social reproduction in schools. Based on my experience in four different programs, two that attracted low-income children and two that attracted upper middle class children, as well as what I’ve read by other anthropologists, I argue that children are already substantially different by the time they reach school due to their upbringing and social class. Therefore, the ways in which they are taught and how they behave and learn in academic and enrichment programs reflect the context in which they grew up. Educators must learn to take into account the diverse range of students in the classroom and be sensitive to the many perspectives of each child in order to effectively teach and help bridge the achievement gap. 3 CHAPTER ONE AN INTRODUCTION TO TWO SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES OVERVIEW OF ARGUMENT After reading much about how educational systems reproduce social class, I decided to focus my research on afterschool and summer programs aimed at children from different social classes. Therefore, I spent time in afterschool programs in the Schenectady area while I attended classes at Union College, and worked as a teaching assistant during the summers at enrichment programs for children in Fairfield, CT and Chicago, Illinois. I had read that parents and teachers make different assumptions about children according to social class, with a focus on developing the unique individual talents of middle class children and a focus on teaching working class children to be rough, resilient, and also obedient to authority. Ultimately, middle class children are socialized to act in such a way that schools and employers will recognize as showing that they have unique individual talents. Inner city children may in fact be equally gifted and unique but the cultural styles they have been taught do not display these traits in ways middle class teachers and employers expect. What I found in some ways confirmed these patterns and in some ways did not. I found that the programs I examined socialized middle class children to think of themselves as unique and talented individuals and inner city children to be tough and self sufficient. Otherwise, however, the programs were in fact similar in the 4 degree to which children were encouraged to be creative and received individual attention. It was just the rhetoric that was different and the result was that middle class children got great resume building items while children in Hamilton Hill just went to after school programs. I conclude with two suggestions. First, as a cultural