Producing Success: The Culture of Personal Advancement in an American High School - Softcover

Demerath, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226142418 ISBN 13: 9780226142418

Verlag: University of Chicago Press, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as Producing Success makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead.

Demerath undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. Producing Success reveals the many ways the community’s ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as Demerath shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful. Insightful and candid, Producing Success is an often troubling account of the educationally and morally questionable results of the American culture of success.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Peter Demerath is associate professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Producing Success

The Culture of Personal Advancement in an American High SchoolBy PETER DEMERATH

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2009 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-14241-8

Contents

Acknowledgments....................................................................................ixIntroduction: Producing Success....................................................................11 The Wilton Way: Middle-Class Culture and Practice................................................272 Parental Support, Intervention, and Policy Manipulation..........................................483 The Role of the School: Institutional Advantaging................................................634 Identities for Control and Success: The Acquisition of Psychological Capital.....................855 Teaching the "Point-Hungry" Student: Hypercredentialing in Practice..............................1036 "Generation Stress" and School Success...........................................................1297 Alienation, Marginalization, and Incivility......................................................1528 Conclusions......................................................................................169Appendix: WBHS 2002 Student Survey.................................................................185Notes..............................................................................................191References.........................................................................................195Index..............................................................................................203

Chapter One

The Wilton Way: Middle-Class Culture and Practice

Locating Wilton

Wilton is a middle- to upper-middle-class "historic" suburb of Columbus, Ohio, that has long been a favored residential spot for the area's professional class. Located less than ten miles from the city center, it has a quaint downtown where the Wilton Inn and various shops and restaurants border the village green. It also has well-maintained parks and libraries, two country clubs, and an expansive public recreation center. At the time of the study, nearly 60 percent of adult residents had a bachelor's degree or higher (the U.S. average was 24.4 percent), and over 60 percent of households reported gross income of $50,000–$199,999. The median home value in 2000 was $163,000 (the U.S. average was $111,800) (U.S. Census Bureau 2000).

Of its population of approximately fifty thousand, nearly half of employed adults in Wilton at the time of the study were in managerial and professional occupations, and over a third were in technical, sales, and administrative support. The largest employers in the area were in the government, education, insurance, banking, and technology sectors, and included the State of Ohio, Ohio State University, JPMorgan Chase, Nationwide, Ohio Health, Limited Brands, Honda of America, and the Batelle Institute.

This chapter describes the community of Wilton as well as the class cultural ideology known locally as the "Wilton Way." It discusses local views regarding the distinctiveness of Wilton, community members' awareness of competition, associated beliefs concerning competition as a natural social process, and expectations for individual success. Then it describes local beliefs regarding the importance of the maintenance of individual self-worth. Finally, it shows how these class cultural beliefs underlay key tenets of the local educational philosophy. This philosophy functioned as a key linkage in Wilton that authorized the extraction of private goods from public schools. Other key linkages that bind together this cultural system oriented toward self-advancement are discussed in subsequent chapters.

Wilton's ethnic makeup has remained relatively constant over the last two decades: over 90 percent white; less than 3 percent Asian American; less than 2 percent African American; approximately 1 percent Latino; and less than 1 percent Native American (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). However, socioeconomic diversity has increased—more low-income people have moved there largely to take advantage of employment and educational opportunities not found in the larger city. Throughout the study, parents, students, and teachers commented on the fact that there were poor people who lived in Wilton; some expressed concern that there had been an increase in rental properties in the community (in 2000, of the 5,845 homes in Wilton, 904 were renter-occupied). During the 1999–2000 school year, 4.7 percent of students in the Wilton district qualified for free and reduced-price lunches (U.S. Census Bureau 2000). Cindi Criswell was evicted with her father from their home during her junior year because he could not pay the bills on time.

Nevertheless, virtually all of the parents interviewed for the study who were not originally from Wilton said they had moved there for a combination of economic and educational reasons. Parents generally mentioned the quality of life and the reputation of the schools. David Sterling's father said, "It was supposed to be great schools and just a great community." A school librarian mentioned that she had moved to Wilton because the district would pay for her master's degree.

Most Wilton parents were well-off, and many were able to provide a variety of enriching opportunities for their children, such as private music lessons, trips to England with the select soccer team, and family vacations to far-flung locations. Students and parents showed various degrees of awareness of the privileged lives led by residents in the community. One white parent said:

Um, we kind of refer to it as pretty much a bubble, because it's not like living in a—city. I mean it's not like living—even in Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, or even Cincinnati where my daughter lives. I mean you—you don't see anyone that is a different ethnic background! [Chuckles.] It's very ... isolated from the real world." (Interview 7/21/03)

Data from the study suggested that this isolation from other kinds of people seemed to foster a naturalized view of privilege and the social order. One white parent said, "To live in Wilton, you have to be doing a certain amount of good stuff." Parents and students oft en expressed meritocratic beliefs, ascribing success or failure more or less entirely to individual talent or effort. This theme is discussed in more detail later in this chapter, as well as in chapter 4. Typically, Wilton students had little interaction with people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. When taken on a field trip to visit a homeless shelter, two white male students commented repeatedly on how "weird" it was, how it "totally sucked," and how one shelter resident had tried to take one of the boy's money (which turned out not to be true).

Other students, however, demonstrated an awareness of their good fortune to live in such an area and undertook activities to help others who were less fortunate. When one of the researchers commended two freshman girls for the amount of money they raised for the school's "Adopt a Child" program, one of the girls, of Southeast Asian descent, said, "I think it's definitely important to help people.... You're still a very lucky person to be living in this area."

Finally, Wilton had a reputation for an outstanding school system. One of the local metropolitan magazines consistently ranked it as one of the top three suburban districts in the area. The average standardized test scores for...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226142418
• ISBN 13: 9780226142418
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 220
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland