Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School by Jessica McCrory Calarco (review)

Abstract

C hildren are agents in their own lives. Exactly how, when, and to what extent is a reality that Jessica McCrory Calarco meticulously details in her engaging book, Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School. For those interested in the cultural underpinnings of continued inequality in schools and in the lives of children and youth, Calarco outlines why we must move beyond simply believing that successful navigation of our schools results from a match between the cultural resources students bring with them every day and the norms and expectations of teachers. As Calacro notes, there is more agency on both sides of the student/teacher dyad than we previously theorized. There is nothing natural or automatic about it. Extending the literature on cultural capital, as well as teacher bias, Calarco pushes us to interrogate how middle-class advantage (and reproduction) is the result of ongoing and, importantly, intentional negotiations between children and their teachers that begins early on in their schooling journey. Importantly, through her close analysis of classroom dynamics and rich examples of complex interactions, we see new ways how students who follow the established rules are more likely to be left behind. The working-class students who adopted what Calarco called “strategies of deference” not only tried to color within the lines, they also tried to pay attention to teacher mood and other small cues as to whether they were doing things right. And while being able to read a superior’s mood is a valuable skill later in life, things did not work to their advantage. Social class reared its ugly head—this time in the form of middleclass students’ “strategies of influence”—dictating who gets access to teachers’ time as well as institutional resources even when school officials did not want to give it. While I applaud Calarco for uncovering these new dynamics, different aspects of the book tripped me up. I am left with two questions regarding the concept of negotiated advantage. First, how is this not opportunity hoarding? On this point, L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy brings up this exact point in his book,