Class in Education - Blog Post 7

The topic that my group is doing our wiki page on is Class. As I have done the research for the past week it has definitely been an eye opening experience. Through my research I have discovered what class really is and how many different definitions there are of social class and how people view them differently. Also, America almost refuses to believe that there is a class system that we operate within.

In Class: A guide through the American Status system, Paul Fussell writes that the class distinctions in America are complicated and subtle. Often times foreign visitors miss the existence of the class structure in America. In America there is a “fable of equality” that the Government does not want to ruin. Social class is not officially recognized by the American government. Fussell writes about the experience of Walter Allen, the British novelist and literary critic. “Before he came over here to teach at a college in the 1950’s, he imagined that ‘class scarcely existed in America, except, perhaps, as divisions between ethnic groups or successive waves of immigrants.’ But living a while in Grand Rapids opened his eyes: there he learned of the snob power of New England and the pliability of the locals to the long-wielded moral and cultural authority of the old families.” (Fussell, 1983)

It is interesting to me that we, as educators, track the progress of low socio-economic students as well as African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, etc…but the federal government does not necessarily divide students up.  I think that sometimes we forget how important a distinction between the different class is in reaching our students.

In What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?, Cheryl King talks about what a working class girl wants the rest of the world to know about her position in life. The girls responds with “to know that not all students have access to the same resources and this is based in large part on one’s class of origin.” (King, 51) She goes on to talk about how students who come from higher classes have a “knapsack” of tools that helps them to get ahead in the world, however, like the issue of race, those not white or in the higher class do not have this knapsack and it become infinitely harder for those students to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” (King, 62) King goes on to give three suggestions on how teachers and administrators can include class education as part of the discipline (a) raising your own class consciousness and, if needed, seeking colleagues to whom you can refer first-generation students; (b) integrating class into your courses both as a matter of study and as an analytical frame; and (c) disempowering “covering” and making the mainstream more inclusive. (King, 62) These are all suggestions that can be implemented into the classroom that we teach in. 

As an education system we have put an emphasis on racial differences but probably need to do a better job of helping students that are struggling because of their social class and educating our teachers. 

References:

Fussell, Paul. (1983). Class: A guide through the American Status System. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/peoplelikeus/resources/essays6.html

King, C. (2012). What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?. Journal of Public Affairs Education

18(1). 51-66.