Dear Editor:
I laud Jacob Eaton and the Tufts Daily for attending to the important issue of education. Eaton did a thoughtful job questioning the complex and multiple factors informing education in the United States.
However, I want to clarify that I did not say, as Eaton writes, that "one reason the United States may be falling behind in the proportion of citizens receiving bachelor's degrees is lack of assistance from families."
In fact, I find this claim troubling, as it reinforces a deficit theory that wrongly blames families for the damaging effects of larger structural forces of domination. As I explained to Eaton, differential academic success of students in the United States is an enormously complicated sociological phenomenon linked inextricably to race, class, gender, geography and so on.
Blaming students or their families is not only inaccurate, but it simply serves to maintain or further the existing inequities.
Sabina Elena Vaught, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Urban Education
