Exploratory Essay Second Draft

Social Class and Education

            One idea that has been consistent through the readings is the correlation between social class and level of education and how students behaved in school.  Many arguments brought up by the authors work together to show this idea. The majority of these articles focus on the different social classes and their specific educational practices.  In “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, the author Jean Anyon visits a working class school to observe the level of education these students were receiving. Anyon speaks in particular about the role of the teacher in the students’ learning. Anyon states “Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.”  The teachers were not put into place to drive the students to expand their knowledge past simple ideas. Instead, they taught a particular set of rules to solve problems and were set to memorize those rules instead of looking further into the concepts. The author argues that the teachers talk down to the students and do not allow them to be creative because of their low social status (Anyon).

Similarly, in “On the Uses of Liberal Education”, the author states that the working class has been cheated in their education. He says, “Rich people learn the humanities, and the poor do not. The humanities are the foundation for getting along in the world, for thinking, for learning to reflect on the world instead of reacting to whatever force is turned against you (Shorris).” The author has the same argument as Anyon in “Social Class and The Hidden Curriculum of Work”: that the working class is not taught the basic ideas for life like the upper class. Anyon states, “The environment in working class schools is mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice.” Moreover, both authors believe that the poor are taught a basic process of how to learn, but not how to think for themselves enough to make it in the world (Anyon).

            Knowing the ways of education in the working class, I raised questions about how techniques changed through higher social classes. In “On the Uses of Liberal Education”, the author explains some of the working class students that he encountered, some of which included people who have been in jail, were homeless, or were pregnant (Shorris).  In the article “Women without Class”, Julie Bettie describes her encounter with the same types of behavior in younger females.  Due to some of the teaching practices of working class schools previously mentioned from “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, the students were not prepared for further education after high school.  This pushed some of the younger girls into premature adulthood, Bettie argues.  She explains that “girls who do not have college and career to look forward to as signs of adulthood, motherhood and the responsibility that comes along with it can be employed to gain respect, marking adult status (Bettie).”  Both Bettie and Shorris are arguing that because of the education practices found in working class schools, students are not invested in their future enough to make proper long term decisions.

            In “Women without Class”, Bettie also studies students who were raised in middle class schools. These girls were college bound and had very clear plans of how they were going to get into college. They kept a planner of important events to make sure they stayed on track. She found that this is due to their different educational experiences (Bettie). In “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum”, Anyon also found a significant change in the education presented to middle class schools. He explains “One must follow the directions in order to get the right answers, but the directions often call for some figuring, some choice, some decision making.” The students he studied were allowed to make decisions and were given choices. They were given the freedom to think for themselves and figure out why they are given certain assignments. Their schoolwork focused on the expansion of ideas instead of following steps to get a solution. For example, the students were able to find their own steps and explain how they would work. This learning process prepared them for a higher education necessary for success in today’s advanced job market, unlike lower class schools (Anyon).

            It also sparked my interest as the articles mentioned the specific way that the rich are taught. Not only did I raise the question of how differently the rich were taught, but I also wondered why they were taught this way.  In “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum”, the author visits an executive elite school.  In this school, work is “developing one’s analytical intellectual powers.”  The author describes “children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality.” The thought processes developed by these students result in rules that fit together in systems and then applying the rules into solving a problem.  The way they are taught prepares them for life full of achieving goals and excelling in their intellectual abilities.  The students are allowed to challenge the answers to certain questions if they do not agree. Unlike the lower class schools, they did not analyze questions by whether they were right or wrong.  Anyon observes that “the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of whether they agreed with the answer that had been given.” Moreover, the students were taught valuable skills in order to succeed in higher education (Anyon).

Similarly, as mentioned earlier, in “On the Uses of Liberal Education”, the author states that the rich are taught about the humanities in school, as the poor are not.  He explains that “rich people learn the humanities in private schools and expensive universities, and that is one of the ways in which they learn of the political life.”  The poor are cheated in their education because they are taught this way. The author takes this way of teaching and brings it to a poor environment in attempts to give the students a better life.   He tells them that unlike the rich, they will not simply be given this opportunity; they will have to work for it. They will have to participate because “they want a particular kind of life and a richness of mind and spirit.” After the course is completed, a majority of the students who came from poor backgrounds go on to attend four year universities and receive scholarships, bridging the gap between their upbringings and their futures  (Shorris).