"Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work," by Jean Anyon

"Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes (1)."

I believe this to be true.  It seems that in this day of standardized testing, many of the reasons for the disparities in test scores between  the middle and upper classes and those from lower socioeconomic groups are due in large part to the different ways different students are taught.  Simply put, those students from working and poor families are not expected to learn the cultural language of academia in the same way as those of their more affluent peers.  Terry Meier would suggest that this is primarily due to a lack of understanding of cultural differences.  This reading, however, seems to imply that the problem is deeper than that.  Possibly, it is not not only that cultural differences effect how kids learn,  but also that there exists a class system that is perpetuated due to what positions in society students are expected to fill based on their background. 

I thought of how this applies to the movie we watched and the piece we read about "tracking."  In this case tracking is not occurring within the individual school.  Rather, it occurs in separate schools.  Basically, the working class schools can be seen as remedial or vocational track, the middle class school can be seen as representing a middle level "college bound" curriculum, while the affluent professional school and the executive elite school would represent an advanced placement program. 

"The first two schools I will call working class schools.  Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs.  Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs.  During the period of study (1978-1979) approximately 15 percent of the fathers were unemployed.  The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white (2)."

This was an interesting description for me.  If we agree with SCWAMP, Delpit, and Johnson that whiteness in itself is a significant cultural privilege, then I can only wonder what Anyon's study would have found if, for example, this study was done with the population of the DelSesto Middle School in Providence.  A category would have to be added before working class entitled something along the lines of poor and non-white.  Of course, this study is somewhat dated, and a study done today would probably find some differences in teaching methodologies within urban, poor, majority non-white settings like the ones that our service learning occurs in.  A study of this nature would likely show discrepancies in how children are taught from school to school and even from classroom to classroom.  

"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure.  The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice (3)."

This description of teaching methodology made me think of Delpit's advice that children from certain cultural backgrounds learn better if they are taught "explicitly."  Some might argue that this is simply what's going on in the classrooms mentioned in this study.  The point might be made that this study was done in a time (the late '70s) when teachers and educators better understood how some children learn differently than others, and that those with less academic advantages entering school need more concrete, specific instruction to catch up with those who come to school with all the cultural trappings that make it easier to ensure academic success.

I would argue, however, that while this type of procedural instruction might make some more sense in the earlier grades like kindergarten and first grade, once children start to advance in grade levels, they need instruction that challenges their cognitive development more.  I don't see being clear about the rules and challenging students to think more abstractly and analytically as being mutually exclusive in a classroom.  I think the film on the integrated, non-tracked classrooms illustrated ways to accomplish this method of teaching quite effectively.  

Overall, I enjoyed the essay, and like all of them, I found it thought provoking.  I certainly didn't see it as a scientific study that really proved a case, however.  Anyon, herself, admits that the data discussed only "offers tentative empirical support (1)."  I also found it significant that this study is more than 30 years old.  I would like to see more comprehensive studies like this done in today's classrooms.  I do suspect that finding anything conclusive would be extremely difficult, as I would doubt that most classrooms fit as neatly into distinct categories as the ones described in Anyon's study.  Having said all that, I still have little doubt, personally, that the way students are taught in our schools varies greatly according to a number of economic and cultural factors.