1. Student Life in School and at Home
Chapter 3

2. School Culture
Rules, rituals routines (the other 3Rs): teachers’ and students’ perspectives
Teachers are very busy, students are often caught in patterns of delay
Timekeeping activities
To succeed as a student, coping with continual delay is important

3. Watching the clock
“On time behavior” on the most powerful cultural lessons in schools’ hidden curriculum
25%-50% of available time for learning lost to other activities
Goodlad found enormous difference in efficiency of time usage in schools…about 75% devoted in some schools to instruction
The “clock ticking”, one of the most oppressive features of teaching

4. Teacher as Gatekeeper
More than one thousand verbal exchanges with students daily
Gatekeeping: who will talk, when, for how long and the basic direction of the communication
Two-thirds of classroom time is talk, two-thirds done by the teacher
Teachers question, students answer
Most questions require rote memory to answer
Less than a second of wait-time for student answers
Less interaction as students get older

5. Classroom Patterns Maintaining order large focus
Students typically work alone…in a group
Teachers set the tone and determine the activity
Teacher in the front, teaching the whole group
Emotionally neutral or flat…little praise or correction
Limited range of activities students involved in
Significant number of confused students, with little guidance on how to improve
Less attractive learning environment as students age

6. Tracking
School, as a social system, begin college selection in elementary school, virtually sealed by the finish of 8th grade
Social class a critical factor in the selection system
Most kids from the upper social class, maybe 15% from the lower social class in college prep classes

7. Kindergarten classroom
Classic study done by Ray Rist (1970s)
By 8th day of class, teacher had separated the “fast learners” from the “slow learners”, spent more time with the fast learners, more instruction and encouragement…slow learners got control and ridicule
Determined by: physical appearance, socioeconomic status, language usage

8. Tracking
Students of color more than 3 times as likely in low track math, whites more than 1.5 time as likely in high track classes
Schools with mostly poor kids have fewer advanced classes, more remedial classes
With parent intervention, middle and upper class kids with poor grades often placed in more advanced classes
Few kids of color in gifted classes
Least experienced teachers assigned to lower tracks
Friends usually chosen from ability groups
Most schools now don’t track…they “ability group”

9. Grade School First grade…teacher important
Second grade…boys begin to break away, sex-segregated
Third grade…boys openly challenging teacher, pecking order, pranks, sissies (girls relegated to fringe areas, standing around, playing a little)
Girls switch to peers by fourth grade, choose best friends, being “nice”…til upper grades when appearance becomes the key to status
Gender walls greater than racial walls

10. High School
“the closest thing to a real social system in the society…the closest thing to a closed social system
13 million kids at 20 thousand high schools
High school “has little material reward to dispense, so that its system of reward is reflected almost directly in the distribution of status.”
Classroom observation (Sadker web page), self concept

11. Changing Family Patterns
Wage earners and parenting
America’s new families: alternative families
Latchkey kids (commercial TV. for kids is times more violent than prime-time TV. Cartoons average more than 80 violent acts per hour
Children at promise: dropping out, sex and pregnancy, AIDS, substance abuse, suicide, gay kids (invisibility), bullying
Classroom observation: Sadker: drugs, bullying
Video segment 10 “It’s not all academic” “Immigrant students”