Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Jean Anyon claims that, after observing five 5th grade classrooms of different social class, that students are already being prepared to occupy specific jobs and have specific roles based on their social status.

I found the whole article to be very interesting. As Anyon says herself, it's no secret that schools in wealthy areas are better than schools in poor places. I didn't find it surprising that the wealthier kids were getting the better educations. I think the thing that I was surprised by is just how much students are being taught just enough to occupy the jobs that people in their neighborhoods would commonly occupy. It's ridiculous and it's obviously set up to keep poor families poor and rich families rich.

When students are given expectations just high enough to fit in with their social class, it leaves very little room for greater achievments. It leaves the rich families with more oppertunities if for no other reason than the fact that there's less competition for 100K+ jobs.

"One teacher explained to me, "Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use." Regarding punctuation, either a teacher or a ditto stated the rules for where, for example, to put commas."

That's such a horrible thing for that teacher to have said. How does that teacher know that one of their students won't go on to become a great writer, or a journalist, or go to an Ivory League college. They don't know, and the sad part is that many of their students probably don't even think of those options as possible for themselves because of the low expectations set for them. It's sad, really, when your teacher doesn't even believe that you can do it. A teacher's job is to TEACH, not to decide to skip the hard parts because their students won't amount to anything more than store clerks.

The point is that there is nothing wrong with growing up and being a store clerk, or a garbage disposal person, or a mail person. BUT, who has the right to tell you that that's all you CAN be. That those are the only positions open to you. The schools are saying just that through their actions. By having such low expectations for their students, they're giving them a below par education. Since those student have been given that below par education, they're already behind compared to their peers from higher social classes. Because of this, even if they want to be a doctor or a lawyer, they're already behind. They're going to be competing against students who had a rich education.

"In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a good grade. 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."

Well, at least these students are being asked to figure things out, right? I hated all classes where the main objective was to come up with the single correct answer. I think this may be one reason why I detest math so much but love literature. Instead of being told that there's one right answers, with one way to find it, and that's it, it's more valuable to be taught to think about WHY that answer is right. Why is there only one right answer? That's not what the middle class students are getting. Another issue is that when students are so focused with finding the right answers, they're less likely to be creative or to take chances. They'd rather have safe, correct opinions, than have risky opinions.

" A child hands the teacher his paper and she comments, "I'm not accepting this paper. Do a better design." To another child she says, "That's fantastic! But you'll never find the area. Why don't you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?""

This sounds harsh, but I think it's so great! This is what I'm talking about, finally a classroom showing some expectations. This is what students need. They need to be taught that just drawing any design is not good enough, that they need to try their best the first time so that they don't have to repeat their work. If you start with high expectations in small things like homework assignments, than students feel important because you expect better from them. They're important enough for you to correct, and not just ignore their poor work and accept the paper and give them a C.

I think that Anyon did a good job giving us a peak inside each classroom. I do wonder if she was biased, if maybe the working class schools did do SOME things better than the higher class schools that she didn't give them credit for. Maybe that's not true though, but I have a hard time thinking that most teachers in the lower class schools care about their students less than the teachers in the upper class schools. But, it's obvious that there's a problem here. Students are NOT getting equal educations. I doubt that too many people, people who could actually change this on a big level, care though. As long as their kids are getting a great education, I don't think they care about the other kids.