America's Children and Their Elementary Schools

Abstract

America's children seem to have at least one large experience in common - school. they spend roughly one quarter of their waking hours in classrooms, corridors, lunchrooms, and playgrounds, all under teachers' supervision. But the more we examine that experience, th eless common it seems. For instance, we have observed and talked with Crystal Bebee, a young Caucasian woman in her second year of teaching in a large and generally prosperous city on America's West Coast. Her schol is in the inner city, and it is a polyglot of racial and ethnic groups: Eleven of her second graders are Hispanic, eight are African-American, and six are Asian. Five are Caucasian. If culture has a significant influence on experience, these students must have wildly different experiences in school, even if they share a great distance from the conventional American mainstream. But if social class has a significant influence on experience, the students must have very similar lives in school. They are all poor; twenty-eight of the thirty students qualify for the free or reduced lunch program.