Bridging the Culture Gap

Ashlea Jackson grew up in a trailer park, and she grew up poor. Neither of her parents attended college, working at whatever jobs they could find to make ends meet. Her two brothers were always in trouble with the law, and one day in middle school when she saw her older brother being removed from school in handcuffs, Ashlea vowed that she'd be different. She would go to college and create a good life for herself.

But dreams and reality part company when it comes to lower-income children actually going to college in the United States. This truth was underscored last week in a startling new report about the aspirations of children in middle school -- a critical juncture that leads a child to higher education and a productive career or to dropping out and dead-end jobs.

Surveying some 1,800 7th and 8th grade students nationwide, the report from the National Association of Secondary School Principals and Phi Delta Kappa International is yet another indictment of our class-bound school system that promises the world to all children but actually opens that world to the privileged few.

Indeed, virtually all the middle-school students, 92 percent, indicated that they wanted to go to college but that they were uninformed about what they needed to do to get there. In fact, a full third of those students said they'd had received no information about what classes they should be taking that would put them on the right path to college.

What's more, students' ignorance about course requirements correlated strongly to the level of parental education. In our education system, well-educated parents who are "in the loop," having flexible working hours or a non-working spouse, keep track of such details for their children. For children like Ashlea Jackson, however, parents aren't providing the information, and schools aren't providing it either. So where are they these children supposed to get it?

I know it's tempting to blame the parents, but that's a trite and easy game played by cultural conservatives and the "family values" crowd. As is often the case for lower-income families, Ashlea's parents always wanted the best for her, but they were as information-poor as her daughter, even more so.

I met Ashlea through my wife, Kathleen, who was her mentor in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. We wanted to set up a modest college scholarship fund for Ashlea and asked her to maintain a certain GPA in school to earn it. When we broached the idea with her dad, Gary, we were shocked to learn that he didn't know what a GPA was, let alone SATs, AP courses, or any number of details that families must master nowadays in order to prepare their children for higher education.

Compared to other more educated and affluent parents and students I interviewed for my new book, Tearing Down the Gates, Ashlea's cultural deficits put her at a huge disadvantage in the education system. Our system relies heavily on the ability of families to provide the cultural capital needed for children to succeed. If parents of poor children aren't providing them with sufficient information and resources to thrive in the American school system, then we've got to turn to schools to do the job.

That would require a revolution in thinking about schools in America. With our generally laissez-faire attitudes about families and society, we have structured American public schools around the academic mission, minimizing their role as providers of cultural capital. State and federal education policy are slaves to just that role for schools. The federal No Child Left Behind law, which uses high-stakes testing to try to close the academic achievement gaps between rich and poor children, is a case in point. Sadly, NCLB will never work as intended because the law completely ignores the root causes of the achievement gaps, which stem from the gaping economic inequalities in America.

Indeed, when it comes to education, it's economics, stupid. Families having money and a good education isn't the whole story, but wealth and education do produce the culture gaps that lead one child to college and child to dropping out of school.

The problem, then, is for policymakers to figure out the most productive ways that schools can help close those culture gaps. By attending more to the culture gap, the achievement gap will go a long way to righting itself. When middle school students understand how school now relates to their life in the future, and are provided a reason for wanting to do well in school, they will. Affluent families give their children that. Disadvantaged children need it too, and we've got to find ways for them to get it -- if not from their families then from public institutions like schools.

On numerous occasions, Kathleen stepped in to help Ashlea, like the time a counselor stuck her in a math class she'd already taken but Ashlea didn't know how to confront school officials to fix the problem. With Gary's permission, Kathleen fixed it. Having the skills and the resources to help Ashlea, Kathleen went well beyond the call of duty as Ashlea's mentor.

Big Brothers Big Sisters is a fine program. But we can't leave the job of proper schooling to the kindness of volunteers. Proper schooling for disadvantaged children also means showing them the connections between school and the world beyond -- information and cultural guideposts that such children aren't getting from home. When will our schools fill the gaps, giving disadvantaged students even the most basic information they'll need to succeed? And when will policymakers make some laws that will really make a difference in children's lives?