Came in today after almost a week offline, and noticed the thread on
parents and teachers reading to children, middle class parents acting like
teachers and teachers acting like middle class parents.
Found it very interesting from my own experience (from 20 years ago) as a
middle-class mother, living under pretty working class conditions as an
ironminer's wife in mid-Sweden, but still (I have realised afterwards)
acting very much as a middle-class mother, reading a lot to the kids
(Ludvika town library was a blessing) and being in general very
"educational" (in the exploratory learning vein). All this without any
teacher's education (that came much later, and THEN I began to see the
parallel) -- but with a "romantic" art education behind me...
And also raised by another middle-class mother (i.e. my own) who _always_
read to us while we had our evening sandwich-and-milk at the kitchen table.
She had _wanted_ to be a primary school teacher, but became a telephone/
/telegraph operator instead, in her small town.
With these experiences, and the teacher education++ I found it very
interesting to read Valerie Walkerdine digging into the history of how the
middle class mother was produced as "the caring teacher-at-home" and the
teacher (of young children) as the "loving parent-at-school" who was to
remedy the shortcomings of working class mothers.
Walkerdine, Valerie. 1984. Developmental psychology and the
child-centred pedagogy: the insertion of Piaget into early education. In J.
Henriques, W. Hollway, C. Urwin, C. Venn and V. Walkerdine. *Changing the
Subject. Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity* London: Methuen.
...and the deconstruction of the treatment in developmental psychology of
the difference between working class mothers and middle class mothers
(written by two angry and theoretical working class academics)... (aren't
we all hybrids?)
Walkerdine, Valerie, and Helen Lucey. 1989. *Democracy in the
kitchen regulating mothers and socialising daughters* London: Virago
best wishes
Eva
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Eva Ekeblad
Univ. of Gothenburg, Sweden Goteborgs Universitet
Dept. of Education & Educational Research Institutionen for Pedagogik
Box 1010 S-431 26 Molndal, SWEDEN
e-mail: eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se
URL: http://www.ped.gu.se/KIKI/personer/eva.html
Tel: Int +46 31 773 2393 fax: Int +46 31 773 24 62
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