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Cultural scripts: the home‐schoolconnectionLucinda Lee Katz aa Principal , University of Chicago Laboratory School ,Chicago, Illinois, USAPublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Lucinda Lee Katz (1991) Cultural scripts: the home‐school connection,Early Child Development and Care, 73:1, 95-102, DOI: 10.1080/0300443910730110

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Early Child Development and Care, Vol. 73, pp. 95-102 © 1991 Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S. A.Reprints available directly from the publisher Printed in the United KingdomPhotocopying permitted by license only

Cultural scripts: the home-schoolconnectionLUCINDA LEE KATZ

Principal, University of Chicago Laboratory School, Chicago,Illinois, USA

(Received January 1991)

The combination of important elements that form the way a person views theworld, behaves, and thinks is called that person's script for living. Groups ofpeople view the world, behave, and have cognitive styles in common, thus, thereare ethnic and national scripts. Individuals begin to develop scripts from birthfrom their parents, caregivers, and significant others. As young children develop,they extract scripts from their own experiences and from their habitual acts.Hence, scripts or "mental maps" give meaning to experiences, and this substruc-ture forms the basis on which parents and teachers can build with instruction.Scripts both teach and enable learning to make sense. Given the potency ofscripts, it makes sense that appropriate educational experiences must incorpor-ate and reflect each child's cultural scripts in order to be effective.

Key words: Early childhood education, culture, socialization, quality education,ethnic perspectives

Each person, starting at birth and continuing throughout life, learns about theenvironment, has behaviors for interacting with others, skills for surviving andmanipulating the environment, attitudes and understandings for functioning daily,and content from many bodies of knowledge which are needed for various situations.This information allows each of us to enter into and function in a society. The familyis the early laboratory for learning about the world, and parents are the first teachers.It is in the family setting with the parents that one performs the first clumsy stepstrying to learn and understand what love is, how to communicate, and how tointerpret the behavior of others. It is in the home that children observe how mothersand fathers relate to one another either as friends, as parents, or as man to woman. Itis here that we begin to understand that the parent-child relationship and siblingrelationships are the foundation for later friendship patterns. It is in the family thatconflicts arise and resolutions to conflicts are sought. How one practices at andprepares for these life events begin within the family context.

Family as a socialization agent may differ from child to child. A child's familyconsists of those adults who provide the primary care for that child and other childrenin a particular residence. The primary caregivers could be mother and father, mother

Dr. Kratz is also on the faculty at the Erikson Institute, in the Department of Advanced Study in ChildDevelopment, Chicago, Illinois. This article was written from a project conducted at the Erikson Institute.

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and grandmother, mother or father alone, and any other combination of adults whohave primary responsibility for caring for and parenting children between the ages ofbirth and 21 years of age. This grouping of caregivers who may or may not be relatedto the child by blood is that child's link to the past. How that child feels about thepast, what haunts that person from it, what holds the individual back or even defineshim/her and directs the future comes from the historical, linguistic, and psychologicalpast as transmitted by the family. This role of bridging the past with the future iswhat makes the family the primary socializing agent for their children, i.e., parents arethe major influence on each child's social development. Personal interactions witheach child in different situations for a variety of reasons teaches the individual how heor she fits into society. Although parents are the first, most influential and consistentsocial agent for each child, anyone else who comes in contact with an individual andaffects how that person behaves is also a socializing agent for that person. Therefore,each of us has a cadre of social agents consisting of people such as siblings, peers,teachers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, neighbors, child caregivers, and otheradults in the community.

The content and behavioral patterns (cognitive, psychological, social, and physi-cal) passed on by parents to their children most often come from the culture in whichthe parents (primary caregivers) themselves grew up. Education for parents andtraining for teachers can modify the techniques used to teach this information andalso can influence what aspects are emphasized. What is needed to make a differenceis for both parents and teachers to be aware that what we call American culture hasmany ethnic perspectives and interpretations, and also can be manifested throughmany behavioral patterns. The aggregate location (rural area, town, city, or largemetropolitan area) further modifies culture so that, for example, the black experienceis different in each of these settings, although some similarities are constant.

Since transmission of one's culture is the key to the home-school connection in theprovision of a quality education for all children, the term culture should be defined.Therefore, the definition will be examined for ways to help parents improve theirsocialization skills, and how to assist surrogate caregivers (including teachers) indoing the same. Then, there is a discussion of how culture varies according to itsscript and thus, its transmission from generation and from aggregate location toaggregate location within the same generation can be quite different. Next, sugges-tions are provided for merging scripts, especially divergent ones, in order to increaseeach child's chances for success in school, regardless of the child's ethnic background.Finally, recommendations are given for the improvement of teacher education so as toprepare teachers who can bridge the home-school scripts in ways that affect learningfor each child, and who can work as partners with parents in providing qualityinstruction.

There are easily 150 different definitions of culture from anthropology, sociology,history, psychology, linguistics and the arts just to name a few. However, since thedefinition used in this discussion needs to be inclusive of any child enrolled in anyclassroom in the nation, it should be underlined with the concept of culturalpluralism. That is, this definition should include any of a child's subgroups as vitally

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important to the identity of that child. Therefore, the following definition of culturewill form the backdrop for this chapter:

Behavior patterns, symbols, institutions, values, historical events, and other human compo-nents of society represent the concept of culture. It is the unique achievement of a groupaccording to race, religion, gender, age, geographic region, national origin, economic and socialstatus, and interests due to a historical perspective. Cultural groups are generators of culture ina dynamic, active, and participatory sense (Copan, 1979).

Culture, therefore is a way of living, learned patterns of behaviors, and a way ofseeing the world that is unique to a group of people in the way they have beensocialized which would include many different subgroups. For one person, thesubcategories of ethnicity, gender, and income level might be of particular signifi-cance in structuring the learning style. For others, important identity groupingsmight include religious affiliation, geographic location, and national origin. Thecombination of salient elements that form the way a person views the world, behaves,and thinks is called that person's scripts for living. Since the groups of people canhave these elements in common and also are similar in the ways they view the world,behave, and in cognitive styles, there are ethnic and national scripts.

An example of a script and how it comes about may occur as follows: Sometimeswhen a very young child is hungry and fussing to get attention, he or she may stopcrying when footsteps are heard even though no food has reached the stomach —presumably because the baby knows that food is near. On other occasions, footstepsmay not have a noticeable effect on that child's behavior. The footsteps have meaningwithin a particular framework and not in others. The framework for understandingthe script says that under the circumstances of hunger, footsteps mean relief.However, under different circumstances, footsteps mean something else or perhaps,are ignored.

Children obviously develop all kinds of scripts which they apply to phenomena tomake sense of them. Sometimes, children use the wrong script, or make errors injudging the limits of a script. For instance, when mother leaves the child at the day-care center, for some children the script says "abandoned" and nothing we can tellthe child helps him understand that Mom is going to come back. The same child,however, may be left at Grandmother's house without making a sound when parentsleave.

Children may fail to handle information in school the way we expect them to notbecause they have never met up with the information before, but because they do nothave a script to make sense out of the information. This is likely when the schoolinformation is dissimilar to that experienced at home and, thus, is difficult toincorporate or connect with for use. Perhaps an example can illustrate this concept. Ithas been pointed out that in many poor families parents ask their children questionswhen they want to know the answer to such questions. For example, "where have youbeen?" or "What did you do?" These parents tend not to ask the child questions forreasons other than to get the child to show off his knowledge. (The same families mayask a child to show off physical prowess or a skill.) When children who have been

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socialized toward these clues and the corresponding behaviors go to school, they arelikely to be confused when questions are asked in different formats for reasons otherthan to solicit the demonstrations of some skill. In fact, they may not know how torespond at all. An example of this might be in instances when a teacher asks aquestion regarding how a child feels about what a story character did. Of course thechild knows the answer, and depending on what has transpired, the child may knowthat the teacher knows the answer. However, the child may not respond because thereis confusion about the meaning of the question (since questions are for showing offsome skill). When the child's script says to him/her that questions are for givinginformation that other people do not have; not for revealing feelings, there is no modelor situational context for the child to respond. In the confusion and uncertainty,silence may seem like the best response to the teacher's question. Being alone in anisolated place or telling jokes to peers may be scripts for the expression or feelings forsuch a child, but questions from another person may not be a script for such verbalexpressions.

Teachers also have scripts that govern their understanding of events. For example,many teachers have a script that says children only have knowledge if theydemonstrate it in response to a question. In the teachers' script, children who do notanswer questions directed to them must be dumb, hostile, or stubborn — otherwisethe children certainly would have answered the question.

When scripts are similar, communication is easier because both the teacher and thechild understand the same thing from the same perspective and the resultantbehavior has the same meaning to both. On the other hand, when one hasexperienced classroom instruction overtime to reach secondary school or college, thescripts about lectures are likely to be the same. For the students, the script says sit in aseat, do not talk — at least not to anyone except those close by and then in a whisper —- and either listen or act as if listening. This script probably also means to take noteson the points emphasized and concentrate on all the speaker's message. This samescript tells the teacher to verbally impart some information with examples that thestudents need to know. If either the teacher or the students behave in ways notincluded in this script, both will be confused and might even get angry as well as seeknew scripts to explain the unexpected behavior.

With scripts being so important to our interactions with others, especially inschool, it seems important to know where people get their scripts, and how might thisprocess be facilitated. Scripts are acquired in a number of ways: some are acquiredfrom identifying with people who love and take care of us and who we try to emulate.Clearly, one of the important things one needs to know if one is to be like one's lovedones is what are the person's ways of viewing the world, of organizing behavior.Another place individuals get scripts is by extracting rules from their own experiencessuch as Piaget describes in the development of schemata. These scripts change as weget older and acquire additional information, and when we move from one stage toanother stage. Object permanence is a kind of script about what happens to objectsyou cannot see. Scripts are extracted from direct teaching as rules. An example is,parents warn children about cars in the street, but children understand a script thatsays cars are only one kind of object in the street that one should fear. Finally, we get

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scripts from habitual acts; i.e., a person who gets up in the middle of the night to feedthe baby does not feel the need to brush his/her teeth, but getting up in the morning isaccompanied by feeling just awful until the teeth are brushed. A script then is thegridwork, the substructure, that gives meaning to experience.

As illustrated in the examples given, most scripts are gained from interactions withclose significant others or from extrapolations from these experiences. In many ofthese situations bonding has occurred and the situations are personalized to theindividual. However, the school model is one with formal lesson times whereby theteacher interacts with a group of children in ways that are emotionally cool, withmostly impersonal verbal statements used to structure the environment for learning.This formal manner and atmosphere set by teachers might mean social distance forsome children, especially those who have been socialized prior to school inemotionally expressive experiences based on the adult-child attachment. Thisemotional, participation-oriented script is the one many black children bring withthem to school from home — only to find a quite different script in operation atschool.

Hilliard (1976), Cohen (1969), Hale-Benson (1986), and others have pointed outthat black children seem to prefer a more personal style of interaction than do whitechildren. Hale-Benson (1986) in her book Black Children: Their Roots, Culture andLearning Styles notes that black children grow up in a distinct and sometimes, isolatedcommunity, and that they develop behavior patterns and belief systems not valued inthe traditional public schools. Therefore, it is difficult for many black children toachieve in schools the way schools are currently structured. She explains that "Afro-American culture seems to place a greater degree of emphasis upon affect thanAnglo-American culture places on this dimension. The realms of feeling and affectand the cognitive process arising from interpersonal relations may have importantimplications for Black people," (pp. 34—36) [but not for interactions in the schoolsetting]. In many black communities, the "style" of interactions depends strongly oncommunications between people and not so much about or with things.

Before proceeding, caution must be issued here so as not to overinterpret thistendency to prefer certain ways of relating to mean that all black children are thesame. Black children who grow up in inner cities have quite different experiences anddifferent elements in their environment emphasized than do those in small towns orrural areas. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that high density communitieswhere people are pretty much isolated from the influence of other ways of structuringand viewing the world, certain ways of seeing the world are more frequent thanothers. Care must be given not to assume that because many black children prefercertain styles of relating to the world that they are unable to use other styles. Becausea black child is likely to prefer to listen to the blues does not mean that he or shecannot listen to and understand the symphonic music of Mozart or the atonal themesof eastern peoples. It simply means that since childhood the rhythm of the blues hashad a significant emotional effect, and that black children will probably prefer that tothe more cluttered form of symphonic music or the "different" tonal combinationsfound in the Middle East. Similarly, children who tend to look at the facialexpressions of people as a way of understanding the meaning of an experience are also

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aware of inanimate things; they simply pay less attention to things. Likewise, childrenwho pay attention to things are aware of facial expressions and body language, theyjust pay less attention to nonverbal clues.

There is no evidence that one set of scripts and its accompanying way of viewingthe world is superior to the others for everything we must do. It is that our publicschools reward some ways and fail children who use other styles based on differentscripts than the ones valued. For a pluralistic society such as that found in the UnitedStates, individuals need to know more than one approach to the world. To beprepared for global functioning as the "smaller" world we live in today requires, allindividuals need to be competent in several scripts. According to Hilliard, "everystyle is necessary, valuable, and useful in human experience if society is to functionfully. A 'gifted' [and truly functioning] person is one who has integrated andharmonized the different styles within himself or herself to focus one harmonizedstyle" (p.44). In an extensive review of the literature about the function of both sidesof the brain, Webb (1983) reported that neither side of the brain is superior to theother. Each side of the brain has its own function and, thus, is the placement forcertain ways of thinking. To really know, individuals need to team both sides of thebrain so as to understand or process information in a variety of ways. Using one sideof the brain predominantly enables one to know certain things quite well, but notother dimensions of the same thing. Therefore, schools are not justified in rewardingsome children for using a style favoring one side of the brain and failing other childrenwho use a style which favors the other hemisphere of the brain (Webb, 1983).

It could be that attempts so far could simply be treating the symptom of anincorrectly defined problem. In the past, one assumption has been that black childrenand some other minority children have inferior preparations for school and thus neededucation to compensate for the missing information and skills. Another assumptionhas been that the experiences of middle-class white children and their ways of viewingthe world are superior and thus more desired for school success. Still anotherassumption has been that school must change the child without including the child'sparents. With these types of controlling principles directing curriculum development,instructional methods, teacher's attitudes, educational materials, and all schoolservices, it seems clear that the school script is designed for some children to fail. It isno wonder that failures occur mostly by ethnic groups, the economic and educationallevels of the parents, and in certain locations such as in large urban areas.

Instead of the problem being with minority children it could be that educators have"brought" into a cultural script ever so indirectly ladened with racist attitudes. Ifinstruction is to yield school success for children in the next decade and into thefuture, then educators, starting with those for preschoolers on to college instructors,must modify their thinking and educational tenets to accept the fact that the schoolscript and the home script for some children may differ, thus it is the school that mustmove closer to the home script if we are to improve learning for all children. Thisrecommendation is in no way meant as an invitation for teachers to teach childrenabout their own culture using only the home teaching techniques. To do this woulddoom people who are already at the bottom to no access to the mainstream — thesegroups would be more locked out than they are now.

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Instead, teachers can help more of their children to achieve in school when theyknow the key components of culture that influence differences in script, when theyhave attitudes of valuing all cultures and ethnic groups, when they are trained towork with parents as partners in the education of their child, and when they aretrained to provide instruction using one script and its cognitive style to teach others.Nonwhite, inner city children do not have to give up their home or community scriptsto succeed in school. The school, especially through the competence of teachers, canmove closer to the out-of-school scripts in understanding and ability to incorporatethem for use to teach other scripts.

To achieve these ends, two recommendations can be made:

1. All stakeholders — parents, educators, advocates, legislators, policymakers, andconcerned citizens — must take a more forceful role in effecting a national educationalpolicy that provides for addressing the core causes for school failures. One of which isthe mismatch of scripts; home and school. This means that communities with parentsand other leaders must get involved in the educational process so that the schoolscript is appropriately connected with the community and home scripts. Efforts todate have attacked the victims, the symptoms and various components of the problemrelated to mass school failures, but actions have not included the notion that theschool socialization process may be flawed.

The time has come for this realization. Urban, minority children are not the onlyfunctionally illiterates graduating from high schools, or wasting their lives. Ourschools are also not connecting with and educating many white children also, asindicated with the statistics relative to drug addictions, teenage pregnancies andsuicides, and involvements in counterculture groups. Of course, all of these problemscannot be blamed on the schools, parents have responsibilities and primary roles inthe development of their children. Neither the school nor parents can solve theproblems associated with our youth alone. They must join forces together and inconjunction with others to 're-establish goals that make living worthwhile andpurposes that give meaning to life. This information must be communicated to theyoung through the most effective channels: parents and teachers. Abilities tounderstand and interpret various scripts in order to connect one with the other duringthe critical learning period (preschool years) will help both parent and teachers carryout their roles more effectively.

An example where this ability might be of help in favor of the child is when teachersrecognize that school might be "an alien institution" while at school. When using thisscript the child is often extremely passive using little facial or body language andseemingly disinterested in any of the people nearby. Examples of this behavior can beseen when observing people waiting in public clinics, unemployment offices, andother such agencies. While observing such behavior, it is easy to conclude that theseindividuals are depressed or either retarded and incapable of responding appropria-tely. Of course, in some instances the assumptions are true, but in many cases what isbeing observed is the behavior suitable for the script relative to the larger, moreunfamiliar community and its institutions. At home or in more familiar settings theseindividuals are active, verbal, and responsive. Knowledge about, respect for, and

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skills for working within various scripts can make a difference in whether somechildren achieve in school. Therefore, with this teacher competence embodying suchpowerful potential, it is vital that teacher training focus its preparation on acquiringan understanding that different scripts exist and on the comprehension of the salientattributes of various scripts. Field experiences for prospective teachers must includepractice in settings where the home scripts may be quite different from that used inthe school so that neophytes can have experience in bridging to connect the home-school scripts.2. Another recommendation is that schools and teacher preparation institutionsopen up their missions to include community education so as to teach parents andothers involved in education how to build bridges for children in their care. Parentsand schools can no longer stand alone in their responsibility to educate children.Assistance is needed from business, industry, social service agencies, state and federalgovernments, policymakers, and everyone responsible for the welfare of our citizenry.Therefore, each of these individuals and groups must know how to communicate toour youth those bodies of knowledge that bear on survival and functioning in themainstream of society. Money is not the only thing needed from these groups. Withthe changes in family structures, individuals are needed to be significant adults in thelives of children who may not be their own. Adults in various settings must serve asrole models and carriers of the cultural tenets for our children. These types ofresponsibilities carry with them the need for training so that parents and other adultscan do such things as asking children questions to give them practice in expressingtheir feelings and verbal knowledge. Verbal behavior that helps to structure socialsituations can be used in interactions with young children. Such actions on avolunteer, spontaneous basis will not do the job needed for large groups of children.There must be a comprehensive, national and state initiative to coordinate thevarious components and to support implementation. Then, and only then can we letourselves believe that we have begun to invest ourselves AFFECTIVELY,FINANCIALLY, AND WITH COMMITMENT into all of our children's learningand quality education.

References

Cohen, Rosalie (1969). Conceptual Styles, Culture Conflict and Nonverbal Tests of Intelligence. AmericanAnthropologist, 71, 828-856.

Copan, Andrew (1979). (title of presentation needed). Excerpted from a presentation at the Conference onMulticultural Education, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.

Hale-Benson, J.E. (1986). "Afro-American Roots," Black children: Their roots, culture and learning styles (rvd.ed.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hilliard, A. (1976). Alternatives to IQ testing: An approach to the identification of gifted minority children (FinalReport to the California State Department of Education).

Webb, G.M. (1983, April). Left/right brains, teammates in learning. Exceptional Children, 49, 508-515.

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