Delpit and Kosut

The readings that we have focused on this week, written by Delpit and Kosut, both discuss the issues of children learning to fit into an academic world when they come from one that is not focused on academic achievement. In order to further analyze their discussion, I'd like to share my own personal story regarding these issues of family and education.

I grew up in a middle-class home with both parents working full-time. They divorced when I was 12 years old, and both are now happily remarried to other people. A little background on my mom and her husband: My mom has an undergraduate degree in nursing, worked as a nurse for about 15 years, and she is now a successful case-manager in a hospital. My step-dad has a journalism and mass-communication degree and works as an engineer for Brewers radio and is the voice of the women's Marquette basketball radio. Background on my dad and his wife: My dad barely finished high school, got a job at a battery shop and later found a suitable blue-collar job that he has been working at for many years. My step-mom's highest education is also high school, and she now works part-time at a blue-collar job. As you can see, on my mom's side there are only college degrees and extremely successful careers. On my dad's side however, there is no college, and jobs that give them enough money to get by.

When I was in my junior year of high school, I was picking out the different colleges that I wanted to go to. My mom largely played the role of the parent who took me to visit colleges and she had strong opinions about which colleges were preferable. She helped me with my applications, financial decisions, and degree choices. My dad, on the other hand, didn't see the sense in going to college. He figured I could pull it off, but as soon as I was in college and talked about how difficult it was, he and my step-mom both decided that college was not for me. When I talked with my mom about my struggles in college, she would encourage me to lay off of my social life more, study more, and get more sleep. It was difficult receiving mixed opinions from my different sets of parents. Even now, when school gets difficult, I hear my dad's side telling me that I'm "like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole" (quoting my step-mom).

Reading the articles that Delpit and Kosut have written makes it so much more clear to me why I'm receiving such mixed ideas from my parents. Their dreams and aspirations for me are only to the extent that they have seen themselves succeed. Delpit experienced a family a lot like my dad's side of my family. Delpit's family didn't understand why she was staying in school for so long and why she was getting her Ph.D. Delpit and Kosut explain this as an issue of discourses. Both sets of my parents come from different discourses, and therefore have different opinions about the academic discourse that I am in in college.