Entitlement

I'm really excited about Outliers. It has opened my eyes to things I think I have always known, just never really saw written, or heard fully explained. I'm on the chapter about Annette Lareau, a sociology professor who wrote about the effect class plays on how children are raised and how successful they become. Middle class families teach their children to talk clearly and openly with authority figures, including doctors and teachers. Thus, they become responsible for their own success early in life. Furthermore, they learn that they have a right to ask questions, assert themselves, and state opinions. I think it is important to note that all the subjects she studied learned that this right was born of privilege and that the kids could speak up, as long as they were respectful and articulate. That is, the children were not bred to be bratty know-it-alls.

This reminds me of the time I spent volunteering with the Children's Aid Society. The CAS teaches children in its care that they have rights and I'm so glad they do. Children have the right to a safe home, clean clothes, education, health care, and I think a few more. But basically, they have the RIGHT to be a child in Canada: everyone should be so lucky. But some kids knew how to work the system well. They developed superiority complexes, more than likely spawned from years of being abused and neglected, that would attempt to prove to the world that they had FAR more rights than those listed above. For instance, one had the right to not do homework; another to sass authority; yet another to physically assault other children. This is not what I mean when I say that children who grow up in a middle class environment have rights: the good ones truly do know when their rights end and privilege begins. But I digress...

Conversely, to paraphrase Gladwell and Lareau, children reared in low class families would shy away from conversations with adults, avoid eye contact, and accept the word of an authority figure as gospel. Children born to this type of environment spent more time fighting with family members, playing with children over interacting with adults, watching television, and generally had more free time. They did not have family reading time, get carted to extra-curricular activities, or engage in dinnertime conversation with their parents about things that "mattered" (as opposed to tattltale-ing, for instance).

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell helps to define entitlement ("That word, of course, has negative connotations these days.") by quoting Lareau,

"They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in an institutional setting. They appeared comfortable in those settings; they were open to sharing information and asking for attention...They made special requests...to adjust procedures to accomodate their desires." Malcolm says, "They knew the rules."

It is amazing to me that these class distinctions still exist. However, when I think back to the relationships I have maintained over the years, my most successful friendships have been with people whose class was equal to mine. The reason why is quite simple. Case and point: my parents read to me all the time. They instilled the need to read well and quickly, write articulately, and speak eloquently. I still love the written and spoken word, and am very thankful (almost) everyday that I'm lucky enough to be teaching it now. My friends also revere the spoken and written word (with the exception of iambic pentameter. We won't go there. It's true because it happened).

Anyhoo, the long and short of it is this: I have a new theory that my failed relationship could all be attributed to this very simple class distinction. So if your parents didn't read to you as a kid, didn't cart you off to things that would "enrich your mind", didn't insist you learn new things and, for God's sake, get your elbows off the table!, we just can't be friends. And for those of you who were born dancing, playing the piano, speaking French, or reading at an ungodly age, I'm so glad we have each other.

Here's some information on Annette Lareau, taken from Powell's Books:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780520239500-3