Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind

I think this is such an important point and I think that everything the article describes the rich as doing is just an extension of the rich perceiving their children to be capable of excelling academically, and that perceptions of our children's abilities probably do correlate to our own educational backgrounds. It makes people uncomfortable to suggest that the parents of the poor would benefit learn to interact differently with their children home if we want to close the gap.

I have been wondering about this a lot lately after observing how differently and probably stereotypically a close friend on welfare parents her child compared to the upper middle class parents I know. I grew up in a very poor area and noticed this parenting style a lot. I've probably already said something offensive in that sentence and I apologize. It's obvious that this other parent views her child as much less capable of learning than I view my own so she dumbs things down that I would explain in a lot of detail. I don't know how someone comes to believe her child is smart and capable of understanding the answers to her own questions versus thinking her child is not capable and should not be given the full answer, and should not be encouraged to ask questions. Is it a product of being treated like a smart student versus being treated a dumb student in your own educational experience? I think this is part of it but there must be more to it. And then once you know how state this comes about, how you change a person's perception of her child's potential, especially when no one around her is telling her child is exceptionally bright and when her child may be already struggling compared to peers? It seems like a commonly occurring cycle that just feeds on itself for generations. I think things like better preschool for all would be a good start but not enough. We need to be able to talk openly about differences between parenting styles correlated to SES and not automatically blame all differences directly on money.

Yes, and I was perhaps MOST intrigued by the comments which, even in the most reasoned and logical/informed among them... mostly ignored what the article actually suggested-- which is that schooling makes quite a small difference. Most of the difference is coming from influences that:

a) started well before school age
b) occur in the "non-school" portions of children's lives, and that furthermore;
c) all of those hours in classrooms pretty much SLOW the natural trajectory of kids in the top 10%, not "help" the trajectory of the lowest 10%.

That part of things, I find fascinating. I wasn't terribly surprised that few commenters picked up on it specifically (and no telling how the social Darwinists/assortative mating people felt, because they stayed on their particular message and maybe they felt it was too obvious to bear remarking upon). I assumed that others here would note the over all trend as well, given how common afterschooling and enrichment is with HG kids.

Whether or not 100K + is "middle class" seems to me to be arguing semantics, here. 185K definitely pays for things-- "extra" and "nice" things-- that 50K doesn't, I think that we can agree. Just how far that income goes depends heavily on location, true. It is in the top 10%, however-- that is simply what the math suggests. In some locations, it might be top 1%, and in others top quartile, which blurs the lines a bit, but the trend probably remains intact.

The trends observed in this research are not about just WHICH benefits of high income are available given a particular level of purchasing power, anyway-- they are about retrospectives on how achievement is tied to income LEVEL, and they've chosen levels sufficiently far apart that the 'noise' in that signal should be minimal. Nowhere does 180K annually lead to a lifestyle enjoyed by a family living on 15K anywhere else, right?

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I've not ignored the possible contribution of assortative mating. It's just that I'm not willing to ASSUME that those factors are insignificant without noting them. ARE they insignificant? I think that they probably are far from small, those caveats. Like marries like, all right. But 'like' there means a lot of different things, not just intellect.

Is there a study that supports that spouses are within 10pts of one another in IQ? Given the (apparent) spread in many college programs, even, I doubt it.

Plus many MEN raised in traditional homes prefer women who are not at or beyond their own IQ level. That one I have seen studies to support.

Which means that yes, "like" may marry "like," but what that probably means instead is that people of more-or-less equal SES are marrying one another. If SES is not a good correlation for IQ (and I do question whether or not it is), then as we move down this chain of conclusions to assortative mating widening the bell curve...

the errors are not additive... they are propogated and increase as we go along. So yes, that makes the notion of assortative mating/social Darwinism little better than an unsupported hypothesis at this point.

What is also true is that there are 'break-out' cases that suggest it is flawed, too. I think of this as the Trading Places effect. Anecdote isn't data-- but it is sufficient to serve as a counter-example in a hypothesis.

MotherofToddler: I've seen a wide variety of parenting styles in my own middle-class neighborhood, so I couldn't chalk it up to SES. There's one mother nearby who describes her upbringing as significantly more privileged whose parenting style definitely needs work.

It's more about ideas regarding children. A child of an authoritarian background, for example, is likely to parent in that style. One common defense of spankings, for instance, is, "My momma whooped my butt, and I turned out okay."

SES definitely matters when we're talking about gifted children, though, because the free public education system fails these kids so badly. So... can you afford private schools? Homeschooling? Can you take your child to different museums? Summer camps? Can they do extra-curricular activities that teach them to fail gracefully, like sports, music, theater? What about 2E? Can you afford a full psychological profile? Occupational therapy? Lawyers or advocates to help your child get what the law says they get in school?

All of these things take time and money. Your SES may not allow for all of these, or even any of these. And we all know they have an impact on future results.

I like that!!

That is a great way of summing that up. Pretty much nowhere will 15K grant one that, and there are a LOT of places where 165 or 180K will. There are not that many places where an income above 165K doesn't give you the kind of security that someone raised in that lowest tenth of income cannot even IMAGINE.

I say that as someone who lived most of my childhood in the bottom half of the SES, and some of it in the lowest quartile.

It's about a lot more than teaching parents to interact in more supportive ways with children. It needs to be about teaching an entire CULTURE to interact with them differently. These are not kids worried about whether or not they get to go to camp or get piano/voice lessons... these are kids who are worried about basic safety and healthcare needs, and food.

It's really about Maslow's Hierarchy in my opinion. When you spend the first years of your life on the most basic levels, is it ANY surprise that you don't get to "learning" until you reach school, which is (mostly) safer, more pleasant, etc. than "home" is?

Whereas a child in that 165K+ household spends ALL (or nearly all) of their childhood and "home" time at the highest levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.

Maybe some exceptional homes provide the other kind of environment at paradoxical income levels. Wealthy but abusive homes, or impoverished but stable/supportive/loving ones, I mean. That would explain outliers far better than social Darwinism would predict, because they seem to occur in the same kinds of rates that are observable for abuse, KWIM?

Anyway. Kind of rambling. I'm testy this morning about the notion that some kids are "worth it" more than others, too. Just so everyone knows. Local school official and College Board meets out-of-the-box disability accommodations, let's just say.

But that brings up another good point-- as mentioned by Irena in a recent thread. What happens to kids with unusual or extraordinary needs in instances in which parents do NOT have time, knowledge, and resources to devote to solving those problems??


ETA: Cross-posted with Dude above me. Clearly I'm not the only one wondering about that last point.

MofT, you make some good points. It's complicated.

Differences in ability do exist, and I've seen how they play a role in how people interact with their children. As an example, I know people who aren't very bright, and from what I've seen, they have no or nearly no books in their house. Their kids are young, and are starting to get overweight and pasty-looking, due primarily to the amount of junk food they consume. They're a low SES family.

Yet one parent is very active in the PTA and is all over the kids to get their homework done. Both parents clearly love their kids, invest a lot of time into them in many ways, and want the best for them.

It could be argued that no one ever taught the parents about the value of activities like reading or healthy eating, and therefore they don't know their value or that there is some kind of low-SES issue there. But in this case, that idea seems odd, given the high level of involvement in school, family-wide sports involvement, and the lengths these people go to to find affordable enrichment programs. I suspect, but don't know, that the lack of books is due to a lack of interest. The junk food issue is more complicated than simple SES.

It's possible that the kids will fare better than their parents and that their children will do better still. I don't know; there are a lot of factors at work. I do know that these people work very hard with their kids, and that in many ways, they're setting them up to do well with their lives.

Dude - I did not mean to say every parent's parenting style can be predicted by SES and that there is no variability within groups, but there are trends in interaction styles that are supported by research.

La Tex-- I think that the notion of "retiring" at all is pretty much a first world problem by definition.

Sure, general trends exist. At opposite ends of the SES curve you can usually see very different behaviors generally, but in the middle, the picture gets muddied.

It's in the upper quartile where helicopter parenting is prevalent, with the attendant low self-esteem and resiliency issues. The behaviors of the upper quartile do have a noted effect on those below, though.

When desperately poor Jewish immigrants came to this country, with incomes below $15K in today's dollars, do you think they neglected teaching their kids before they entered school? What about poor Asian immigrants today?

Here is an article on how much poor Chinese value education:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/business/in-china-families-bet-it-all-on-a-child-in-college.html
In China, Families Bet It All on College for Their Children
By KEITH BRADSHER
New York Times
February 16, 2013
HANJING, China — Wu Yiebing has been going down coal shafts practically every workday of his life, wrestling an electric drill for $500 a month in the choking dust of claustrophobic tunnels, with one goal in mind: paying for his daughter’s education.

His wife, Cao Weiping, toils from dawn to sunset in orchards every day during apple season in May and June. She earns $12 a day tying little plastic bags one at a time around 3,000 young apples on trees, to protect them from insects. The rest of the year she works as a substitute store clerk, earning several dollars a day, all going toward their daughter’s education.

Many families in the West sacrifice to put their children through school, saving for college educations that they hope will lead to a better life. Few efforts can compare with the heavy financial burden that millions of lower-income Chinese parents now endure as they push their children to obtain as much education as possible.

Do you think that this is a matter of cultural norming? I wonder.

Because I think that you are right... but I see fault lines there in ways that are not necessarily SES, but other cultural groupings. For example (and really, just an EXAMPLE, based upon my experiences within my own extended family);

the more adherent to the religious faith (common to that group) the individuals within that group are, the more likely they are to use corporal punishment liberally and to use a patriarchal authoritarian parenting style-- one which ignores problems that it cannot solve.

The children of those homes (ten of them) range from PG to below-average in IQ, and the homes themselves range from upper-middle class to the lowest 10th (as in the study). My observations lead to me to the conclusion that within this particular group (okay, just think of me as Jane Goodall here ) fall most closely along the religiosity line, rather than either IQ or SES alone. This is a faith that is somewhat anti-intellectual and openly promotes rigid gender roles and early marriage and child-rearing. I have a cousin born within weeks of me, who was lauded to me throughout my entire life as a "model" child... her oldest child is 14 years older than my own. Her parenting style and mine are similar, but one large difference is the premium that we place on "book smarts" and our expectation that our DD will have high achievement and expectations of herself in that domain. The other difference is that her household is HIGHLY adherent to the group religious faith, and mine is an outlier in that regard.

Among my cousins, there are two of us with HG+ children and we are also the only two whose households are not advocates of that group faith. Mine is fairly high SES, hers is not.


Anyway.


Complex. Yes. I think that there is a huge mass of cultural norms at work here-- and that teasing it apart variable by variable is nearly impossible. People are reluctant to admit to some parenting practices, they hide dysfunction, etc. Those are the factors that (IMO) probably produce outliers to the SES effect.