The effectiveness of a foreign language immersion program for children from different ethnic and social class backgrounds: Report 2

1991 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi E. Holobow ◽  
Fred Genesee ◽  
Wallace E. Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
White Students ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
French Immersion ◽  
Immersion Program ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
And Mathematics

ABSTRACTThis report presents the results of the second year of a 4-year longitudinal evaluation of a partial French immersion program in Cincinnati, Ohio. This program is of particular interest because it includes children from lower socioeconomic group and ethnic minority group (black) backgrounds in addition to majority group (white), middle-class students who have been the subject of virtually all evaluations of immersion to date. The native language development (English), academic achievement (math), and second language attainment (French) of pilot groups of middle- and working-class students and of black and white students who were in grade 1, as well as those of a follow-up cohort of kindergarten students, were assessed. The results showed that performance differences in English and mathematics between subgroups of students did not depend on the program of instruction they were receiving. Moreover, it was found that the working-class and black students scored as well as the middle-class and white students on the French language tests. The results are discussed further in terms of the immersion students’ level of proficiency in French.

Effectiveness of partial French immersion for children from different social class and ethnic backgrounds

1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi E. Holobow ◽  
Fred Genesee ◽  
Wallace E. Lambert ◽  
Joseph Gastright ◽  
Myriam Met
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
French Immersion ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Immersion Experience ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Class Background

ABSTRACTA program of partial (half-day) French immersion in the Cincinnati Public Schools was evaluated in the kindergarten year. The English and French language development of participating native English-speaking children from both working and middle class backgrounds was assessed. The results indicated, firstly, that the pupils who spent half of their academic time in a foreign language (French) progressed just as well in English as carefully matched control pupils who followed a conventional all-English program. Secondly, it was found that socioeconomically underprivileged children (both black and white) benefited from an immersion-type introduction to a foreign language as much as pupils from middle class homes did. The degree of progress made in French was not linked with the social class background of the pupils even though this background factor clearly affected the students' performance on the English language tests. These results suggest that the immersion experience may help to diminish the effects of social class background.

Object label learning by middle- and working-class, black and white, younger and older preschool children

1999 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
VALERIE WHITTLESEY ◽  
ELIZABETH F. SHIPLEY
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Older Children ◽  
White Children ◽  
Related Target ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Inclusion Relations ◽  
First Session

The present study examined the ability of younger and older preschool children from different backgrounds (16 middle-class black, 16 middle-class white, 16 working-class black, and 16 working-class white) to map labels to objects and to establish inclusion relationships. The children were taught novel labels for perceptually related and unrelated unfamiliar objects. Although the groups were similar in their ability to comprehend the first label during the first session, white children produced the first label more. When additional labels were taught during subsequent sessions, the differences among the groups of children were augmented. Although children from all backgrounds applied labels to objects based on initial labelings, middle-class, white, and older children did this to a greater extent than working-class, black, and younger children. Evidence for the use of inclusion relations for perceptually related target objects was not found for the children; rather, the children used a mutually exclusive labeling strategy.

I Fight for a Living

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Moore
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Middle Class ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Sporting Culture ◽  
Collective Group ◽  
White Manhood ◽  
Jim Crow Era

At its heart, I Fight for a Living is a book about black men who came of age in the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow era--a time when the remaking of white manhood was at its most intense, placing vigor and physicality at the center of the construction of manliness. The book uses the stories of black fighters’ lives, from 1880 to 1915, to explore how working-class black men used prizefighting and the sporting culture to assert their manhood in a country that denied their equality, and to examine the reactions by the black middle class and white middle class toward these black fighters. Through these stories, the book explores how the assertion of this working-class manliness confronted American ideas of race and manliness. While other works on black fighters have explored black boxers as individuals, this book seeks to study these men as a collective group while providing a localized and racialized response to black working-class manhood. It was a tough bargain to risk one’s body to prove manhood, but black men across the globe took that chance.

Race and Culture

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy L. Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
Race And Culture

The conflicting racial and cultural values that underpin much of the Supreme Court’s decision making in civil rights cases are brought under critical review in this chapter as part of a larger argument regarding cultural diversity made in the next chapter. Thus, this chapter is a bridge between the socio-legal and socio-cultural race problems. In preparation for arguing in the next chapter that cultural diversity rides with a corpse in its cargo—to wit, cultural subordination—this chapter discusses the conflicting racial and cultural crosscurrents of the American middle class and working class. White-middle-class values, more than any other values, shape the American mainstream culture—“It’s the Middle Class, Stupid!”—wherein the problem of cultural subordination lies.

scholarly journals Social class differences in social integration at university: Implications for academic outcomes and mental health

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Rubin ◽  
Olivia Evans ◽  
Romany McGuffog
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Class Differences ◽  
Class Environment ◽  
Working Class Students

University represents a pathway to upward social mobility for many working-class people. However, this distinctly middle-class environment also provides a number of unique social psychological challenges for working-class students. Working-class university students are often in the minority group at university, they are often the first in their families to attend university, and they often feel out of place at university. They also lack the time and money required to engage with other students on campus. Consequently, they are less likely to be as integrated into social life at university as their middle-class peers. In this chapter, we consider the potential implications of this lack of social integration for working-class students’ academic outcomes and mental health. In particular, we review recent research that shows that working-class students’ lack of integration at university is associated with poorer academic outcomes and poorer mental health. We conclude with a discussion of potential interventions to increase working-class students’ social integration at university.

Urban chaos and the imagined other: remaking middle-class hegemony

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Kulz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Conveyor Belt ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Minority Parents ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Class Hegemony ◽  
Potential Weight ◽  
Sixth Form

This chapter examines parental orientations to Dreamfields, as responses to the urban chaos discourse show how parents and students conceptualise their positions within this imagined Urbanderry landscape. Discourses of pathology shape the relationships developed between parents and teachers, impacting upon how students and parents are perceived and treated by the school. The urban chaos discourse powerfully reiterates the inequitable positions of the watcher and the watched, the judger and the judged. The white middle-class parent occupies an invisible, normative space, while working-class and ethnic minority parents feel the potential weight of discipline's reformative hand. Rather than students being measured as data, the continued use of types, categories and subjective judgements becomes evident as students are weeded off Dreamfields’ conveyor belt as it progresses from the compulsory lower school to sixth form college.

A Different Kind of Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie M. Fousekis
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Welfare Rights ◽  
Black And White ◽  
National Organization For Women ◽  
Welfare Rights Movement ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Women's Equality

This chapter looks at the new voices that began speaking for child care, both in California and across the nation: black mothers in the welfare rights movement and white middle-class women in the feminist movement. While black and white poor mothers organized in CPACC and around welfare rights, a more visible women's movement developed among predominantly the white middle class. In 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) emerged out of frustration over the government's unwillingness to enforce Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which made discrimination by sex as well as by race illegal. With seasoned women's rights, labor feminists, and a few black women at its helm, NOW quickly moved to the forefront of the struggle for women's equality.

Inequality Remade: The Theory of Correspondence and the Context of French Immersion in Northern Ontario

1983 ◽  
Vol 165 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Paul Olson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Correspondence Theory ◽  
French Immersion ◽  
Northern Ontario ◽  
Immersion Program ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Just Society

The French Immersion program in northern Ontario is examined in the light of the correspondence theory of Bowles and Gintis. It is argued that to view schools as simply a means of reproducing class-stratified society is inadequate and distorting. Instead, it is argued that we need to consider the ways in which schools also produce social inequality through the mediation of social actors. The motivation and actions of middle-class parents in controlling French Immersion programs for the benefit of their own children are examined. It is argued that schools must be recognized as sites of contestation and struggle and that both the form of transmission and the content of schooling are open to real reform as part of the struggle to build a more democratic, just society.

Back to Bed

Coming Home ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 9-33
Author(s):  
Wendy Kline
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Home Birth ◽  
The Other ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
La Leche League ◽  
Hospital To Home ◽  
The City

Chapter 1, “Back to Bed: From Hospital to Home Obstetrics in the City of Chicago” analyzes the home obstetrics training practiced at the Chicago Maternity Center alongside the emergence of what would become an international breastfeeding organization, La Leche League. One focused on the inner-city’s working-class population, while the other catered more to the suburban white middle-class. Both the Chicago Maternity Center and the La Leche League relied on the promotion of home birth, but for very different reasons. Under the CMC, home birth provided essential training for obstetrical students, while under the LLL, it enabled mothers to breastfeed and bond with their babies. The different rationales underscored the extent to which race, class, and context shaped ideas about home birth. Taken together, these two examples reveal the complex origins of what would become a contested yet increasingly popular practice by the 1970s.

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