does help now, you know. He’ll pick the children up, whereas before I used to
pick them up from the school. ”
Kali refers to the job as making all the difference, but she obtained the job through her
participation in classes - a simple example of an educational effect mediated through
employment.
Her development has therefore led to a mutually satisfactory (as reported by her)
reorganisation of the domestic division of labour. But complementing this has been
her ability to help her husband in his work running a restaurant, for instance by using
her IT skills (in which she has proudly gained certificates and a diploma) to design the
menus. So the family has gained as an economic as well as a social unit.
On the other hand, this process of modernisation has had its impact on the wider
family. Previously, Kali used to be almost at the beck and call of a range of relatives,
putting her language skills at their service. Now she no longer has the time for this,
and has the self-confidence to refuse to be so much at their beck and call:
“ I always used to do so many things for the family, you know, like aunties and
uncles, who couldn’t read or write. Filling forms in and things like that, or
writing letters, or accompanying them to, you know, to some kind of meeting ...
to the Benefit Agency, and you obviously need that knowledge to talk. ”
This she no longer does, partly for time reasons, being busy with her own affairs, and
partly because she feels less tightly tied by obligations. There is therefore something
of a tension between the benefits to the immediate family, and the potential loss to the
traditional extended family of Kali’s culture. The wider costs of education’s role in
modernisation have been noted elsewhere (for example in relation to the peasant
region of Campecho in Portugal; see Fragoso, 2001). But the deflection of energy,
time and skill has not only been inward to the nuclear family. Kali’s involvement in
the parent support project means that she is supporting other parents with children at
school. As part of her work in this project she is learning about the history of the
project and the local networks within which it operates. This has given her a ‘broader
picture’ of her environment. Although she does not say so, it may in so doing also
have given her a changed understanding of community, and the relationship between
family and community.
There is, not surprisingly, a multiplier effect. Kali offers the parents in the project her
own experience as encouragement to them to enrol in education, stressing to them that
they will not have to be tested. Her own views on adults’ ability to learn have
changed, and she can convey this to others.
Kali’s case illustrates the effect of education in helping someone to cope both with
life course change and social change (see Hareven, 1992). She had come to a point in
her life - common to women from many different cultures and walks of life - when a
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