About this book
Overview
"One way to begin the development of a more systematic understanding of what events in the classroom do to students is to bring to bear the skills of participant-observation field work....
"In this book, Ray Rist uses these skills to make us understand the first few years of school experience of one group of children. He shows us in fine-grained detail how teachers shape and direct some of the children toward academic success and others toward failure. Because most of these children are poor and black, and because their teachers, though black themselves, nevertheless expect most of their charges to do poorly, the principal training that goes on in the classroom seems to be training for a life of failure rather than success...."
—From the Foreword by Lee Rainwater
"In this book, Ray Rist uses these skills to make us understand the first few years of school experience of one group of children. He shows us in fine-grained detail how teachers shape and direct some of the children toward academic success and others toward failure. Because most of these children are poor and black, and because their teachers, though black themselves, nevertheless expect most of their charges to do poorly, the principal training that goes on in the classroom seems to be training for a life of failure rather than success...."
—From the Foreword by Lee Rainwater
