Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:51:43.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

ENGINEERED STRUGGLE AND “EARNED” SUCCESS

Preparing Black and Latino Students to Attend Elite Boarding Schools

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2018

Amanda Barrett Cox
Amanda Barrett Cox*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania
*
*Corresponding author: Amanda Barrett Cox, Department of Sociology, 3718 Locust Walk, McNeil Building, Ste. 113, Philadelphia, PA 19104. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines how a nonprofit organization prepares low-income Black and Latino/a students to attend elite boarding high schools. Using ethnographic data, I investigate how the program engineers the experience of academic and emotional struggle for students, how students experience these struggles, and what students learn from this process. I find that the program’s academically-induced emotional rollercoaster serves to strengthen students’ confidence in their academic skills and their ability to persist in the face of academic challenges—a valuable emotional asset for the students as they enter elite boarding schools. However, I argue, the feeling students emerge with of having earned their successes (and failures) may ultimately serve to reproduce the individualistic, meritocratic discourses that support the patterns of social inequality the program helps its students sidestep.

Keywords

Elite EducationSchoolingSocial MobilityPipeline ProgramsMeritocracy
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , Fall 2018 , pp. 467 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anson, Robert (1987). Best Intentions: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Barron’s Educational Series (2015). Profiles of American Colleges 2016. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In Karabel, Jerome and Halsey, A. H. (Eds.), Power and Ideology in Education, pp. 487–511. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Passeron, Jean-Claude (1990). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert (1976). Schooling in Capitalist America. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Ellen (2003). Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage. New York: Taylor & Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calarco, Jessica McCrory (2011). “I Need Help!” Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School. American Sociological Review, 76(6): 862–882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calarco, Jessica McCrory (2014). Coached for the Classroom: Parents’ Cultural Transmission and Children’s Reproduction of Educational Inequalities. American Sociological Review, 79(5): 1015–1037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carter, Prudence (2005). Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cary, Lorene (1991). Black Ice. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Charles, Maria (2008). Culture and Inequality: Identity, Ideology, and Difference in “Postascriptive Society.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 619: 41–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cookson, Peter W. Jr., and Persell, Caroline Hodges (1985). Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Corbin, Juliet M., and Strauss, Anselm (1990). Grounded Theory Research: Procedures, Canons, and Evaluative Criteria. Qualitative Sociology, 13(1): 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Amanda Barrett (2016a). Correcting Behaviors and Policing Emotions: How Behavioral Infractions Become Feeling-Rule Violations. Symbolic Interaction, 39(3): 484–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Amanda Barrett (2016b). Mechanisms of Organizational Commitment: Adding Frames to Greedy Institution Theory. Sociological Forum, 31(3): 685–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Amanda Barrett (2017). Cohorts, “Siblings,” and Mentors: Organizational Structures and the Creation of Social Capital. Sociology of Education, 90(1): 47–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croninger, Robert G., and Lee, Valerie E. (2001). Social Capital and Dropping out of High School: Benefits to At-Risk Students of Teachers’ Support and Guidance. Teachers College Record, 103(4): 548–581.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demerath, Peter, and Lynch, Jill (2008). Identities for Neoliberal Times: Constructing Enterprising Selves in an American Suburb. In Dolby, Nadine and Rizvi, Fazal (Eds.), Youth Moves: Identities and Education in Global Perspective, pp. 179–192. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fordham, Signithia (1991). Racelessness in Private Schools: Should We Deconstruct the Racial and Cultural Identity of African-American Adolescents? Teachers College Record, 92(3): 470–484.Google Scholar
Gaztambide-Fernandez, Rubén A. (2009a). What Is an Elite Boarding School? Review of Educational Research , 79(3): 1090–1128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén A. (2009). The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Granfield, Robert (1991). Making It by Faking It: Working-Class Students in an Elite Academic Environment. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 20(3): 331–351.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Shirley Brice (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1979). Emotion Work, Feeling Rules, and Social Structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85(3): 551–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie Russell (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Jennifer (2003). Social Class in Public Schools. Journal of Social Issues, 59(4): 821–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvat, Erin McNamara, and Antonio, Anthony Lising (1999). “Hey, Those Shoes Are Out of Uniform”: African American Girls in an Elite High School and the Importance of Habitus. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 30(3): 317–342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, Adam (2008). Learning Privilege: Lessons of Power and Identity in Affluent Schooling. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ispa-Landa, Simone (2013). Gender, Race, and Justifications for Group Exclusion: Urban Black Students Bussed to Affluent Suburban Schools. Sociology of Education, 86(3): 218–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jack, Anthony Abraham (2014). Culture Shock Revisited: The Social and Cultural Contingencies to Class Marginality. Sociological Forum, 29(2): 453–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jack, Anthony Abraham (2015). (No) Harm in Asking Class, Acquired Cultural Capital, and Academic Engagement at an Elite University. Sociology of Education, 20(10): 1–19.Google Scholar
Khan, Shamus (2011). Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Khan, Shamus (2012). Elite Identities. Identities, 19(4): 477–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kingston, Paul W., and Lewis, Lionel S. (Eds.) (1990). The High-Status Track: Studies of Elite Schools and Stratification. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Kramer, Rory (2008). Diversifiers at Elite Schools. Du Bois Review, 5(2): 287–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuriloff, Peter J., and Reichert, Michael C. (2003). Boys of Class, Boys of Color: Negotiating the Academic and Social Geography of an Elite Independent School. Journal of Social Issues, 59: 751–769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labaree, David F. (1997). Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals. American Educational Research Journal, 34(1): 39–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lareau, Annette (2011). Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Logan, John R., Minca, Elisabeta, and Adar, Sinem (2012). The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools. Sociology of Education, 85(3): 287–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacLeod, Jay (2009). Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S., Charles, Camille Z., Lundy, Garvey, and Fischer, Mary J. (2003). The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McGrath, Daniel J., and Kuriloff, Peter J. (1999). “They’re Going to Tear the Doors Off This Place”: Upper-Middle-Class Parent School Involvement and the Educational Opportunities of Other People’s Children. Educational Policy, 13(5): 603–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McLeod, Julie, and Yates, Lyn (2006). Making Modern Lives: Subjectivity, Schooling, and Social Change. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Monroe, Sylvester (1989). Brothers: Black and Poor—a True Story of Courage and Survival. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
National Association of Independent Schools (2016). Facts at a Glance. Washington, DC: National Association of Independent Schools. <http://www.nais.org/Statistics/Documents/TABSFactsAtAGlance201516.pdf> (accessed May 1, 2017).+(accessed+May+1,+2017).>Google Scholar
O’Flynn, Gabrielle, and Petersen, Eva Bendix (2007). The “Good Life” and the “Rich Portfolio”: Young Women, Schooling and Neoliberal Subjectification. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 28(4): 459–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez, Richard (1982). Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez: An Autobiography. Boston, MA: D.R. Godine.Google Scholar
Steele, Claude M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Suskind, Ron (1998). A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League. New York: Broadway Books.Google Scholar
Turner, Ralph H. (1960). Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System. American Sociological Review, 25(6): 855–867.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Useem, Elizabeth L. (1992). Middle Schools and Math Groups: Parents’ Involvement in Children’s Placement. Sociology of Education, 65(4): 263–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walkerdine, Valerie (2003). Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the Neoliberal Subject. Gender and Education, 15(3): 237–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willis, Paul (1977). Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Yin, Robert K. (2003). Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Youdell, Deborah (2004). Engineering School Markets, Constituting Schools and Subjectivating Students: The Bureaucratic, Institutional and Classroom Dimensions of Educational Triage. Journal of Education Policy, 19(4): 407–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zweigenhaft, Richard L., and William Domhoff, G. (2003). Blacks in the White Elite: Will the Progress Continue? New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar