'I Need Help!' Social Class and Children’s Help-Seeking in Elementary School

What role do children play in education and stratification? Are they merely passive recipients of unequal opportunities that schools and parents create for them? Or do they actively shape their own opportunities? Through a longitudinal, ethnographic study of one socioeconomically diverse, public elementary school, I show that children’s social-class backgrounds affect when and how they seek help in the classroom. Compared to their working-class peers, middle-class children request more help from teachers and do so using different strategies. Rather than wait for assistance, they call out or approach teachers directly, even interrupting to make requests. In doing so, middle-class children receive more help from teachers, spend less time waiting, and are better able to complete assignments. By demonstrating these skills and strategies, middle-class children create their own advantages and contribute to inequalities in the classroom. These findings have implications for theories of cultural capital, stratification, and social reproduction.