Understanding of underlying differences in education

Rhetoric 2 Rough Draft

In the Article by Jean Anyon, “ Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Anyon looks at accumulating coursework and interactions between student and teachers in elementary schools that varied highly in socioeconomic statuses. Anyon attempts to find the varying differences in student work in wealthy communities compared to poor communities, she uses these examples to support her claim that public schools in our society provide different types of knowledge/educational experiences to children who come from different social backgrounds and classes.

Anyon studied children from 5th grade from five different schools in New Jersey from September 15th 1978 to June 20th, 1979. She used observations in the classroom, interviews on the students, teachers, principals, and district administrative staff, and assessed the curriculum and other materials in each classroom to collect evidence. Two schools were labeled as “ working class”, where 15 percent of the families were at or below the federal poverty line. The third school was considered the “ middle class school”, it was filled with students whose parents were blue- collar workers and considered skilled and well-paid, it also contained parents with “ white collar” jobs such as: city employees, skilled tradesmen, and office supervisors. The fourth school was considered as “ affluent professional school” that had parents that are upper income level of the middle class and were mostly “ professionals” such as doctors, lawyers…etc. The fifth school was labeled as the “ executive elite school” the majority of these families had capitalist belongings with most fathers being top executives.

Anyon discovered some interesting things. The first two schools tended to focus on how to follow the steps of a procedure with little to no explanation as to why or how the procedure works or relating them to real life. The third school focused on trying to get the right answer and follow directions to get to that answer but almost always contained the element of choice and decision making. The fourth school focused on mostly individual thought and expressiveness and illustration of ideas and relating them to the appropriate method and material. The fifth school focused on developing one’s analytical intellectual powers. The children were routinely asked to reason through the problems and to produce work from that with academic quality. This led to Anyon’s conclusion that “ as social class of the community increased, the following increased: variety and abundance of materials in the classroom, time reported by teachers spent on preparation, higher social class and more prestigious educational institutions attended by teachers and administrators, ore stringent board of education requirements regarding teaching methods, and increased teacher support services such as in-service workshops…” (87) Even more specifically Anyon discovered that working class children have been more prepared for mechanical and routine wage labor services. The middle-class children were prepared for white-collar jobs, professional children tended to follow the footsteps of their parents to become professionals as well, and executive children develop skills that are required for the “ ownership and control of the physical capital and the means of production in society.” (88-89).

The overall conclusion is that it is very important to understand the underlying differences in education when you compare schools from poverty and wealth. The schools who had more wealthy parents and families were able to give children a better education that would lead to a brighter future and usually are based off of their parents career choice. This further proves that children who come from a family of poverty tend to stay in poverty their entire life. Our school systems seem to unfairly prepare children for the real life depending on the socioeconomic level of their parents.