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- Title
Parents who get what they want: on the empowerment of the powerful.
- Authors
Birenbaum-Carmeli, Daphna
- Abstract
The article addresses the issue of parent involvement in school life in the newly emerging realm of commodified education. It explores the limits of empowerment and its context-dependent nature. Previous research has shown that parent participation in school life often entails difficulties for both parties. In response to the difficulties, some schools have made direct efforts to improve parent-school cooperation. Parents of higher socioeconomic levels, however, tend to demand more substantive involvement. The case under scrutiny is that of parent organizing in an established Tel Aviv area, Israel, who demanded a share in the shaping of their children's education. These demands were couched in a hierarchy of moderate-status teachers and prestigious parents and backed by the parents' resources and their capability of effective organizing. As the case unfolded, conflicts between the parents and the educational system turned into a paralyzing factor, which further eroded the teachers' prestige and humiliated weaker parents within the community. Empowerment, commonly hailed as a desirable goal, may thus become an additional resource for the powerful, constituting less resourceful populations as passive and indifferent.
- Subjects
ISRAEL; PARENT participation in school administration; PARENT-teacher relationships; COMMUNITY-school relationships; SOCIAL groups; SOCIAL change
- Publication
Sociological Review, 1999, Vol 47, Issue 1, p62
- ISSN
0038-0261
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-954X.00163