It’s been a week since school let out for the summer, and I’ve been been thinking about what happened in the classroom this year. Decompression – it happens every May. Long bike rides are key: 30 miles yesterday, 20 today, 50 miles tomorrow, if it doesn’t look too much like rain. Two-lane country blacktop with nobody talking at me helps clear the slate. I’ve also been preparing the garden for planting.
And I’ve been working on my summer reading list – more on that, below.
It’s been over five years since I worked with sixth-graders, when I was in grad school, which is when I got hooked on reading education research. The academic reading colored my outlook on what, this year, turned out to be a difficult teaching assignment. Sometimes it only takes one or two “problem” children to derail a group, but when half the class is ’special’, then everyone is at risk of getting pulled off track.
Too much of the time, it felt like I was the only person not-drinking at a party. About half way through the year I realized that I was putting more time into teaching School (with a capital S) than I remembered from previous years. Spending too much energy maintaining order saps the enthusiasm. For me, anyway.
I was reminded of Paul Willis’s Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs, a book about counter-school culture and ’style’ in an English boys’ school, and it’s connection to the larger world of working class culture. Willis said, “In particular, counter-school culture has many profound similarities with the culture its members are mostly destined for – shopfloor culture,” which he calls, “…the zone where strategies for wresting control of symbolic and real space from official authority are generated and disseminated.” It’s a zone where people are not serious about work; it’s about resistance – joking around, goofing off, wasting time, disrupting and subverting the “boss’s authority and status.”
In this case, it just means ’sixth-grade,’ and I’m not complaining about it. Just noting that there was a lot more screwing around than I remembered from my previous experiences with the age group. Not everyone joins the game, of course. Some are more resistant to authority, or peer pressure on the other side of the coin. I don’t want to go into too much detail on this. It’s mostly just shop-talk. (See how the metaphor works?)
I ended up thinking of the class as essentially two groups, even though they were never formally distinguished from one another. The achievers were the kids who did their homework, finished their assignments, and managed their time without too much oversight from me. The shirkers sharpened pencils, joked and laughed when they should’ve been busy, read or talked while the teacher was talking, visited the bathroom, fiddled around with stuff in their desks, lost and forgot things, and rarely asked for help. Projecting a few years down the line, I believed I could reasonably predict who would be working for who.
The theory that cultural practices are sustained across generations is called cultural reproduction. Schooling is one of the main mechanisms for this phenomena, and one of the ironies of formal education is that it works at cross-purposes to itself. On the one hand, we see education as a gateway to social mobility, while it also acts as a mechanism for sorting children into the roles they’re destined to play in the adult world. People are advantaged by different sorts of knowledge, which they develop both formally and informally, depending on how they see themselves and how they want other people to see them. This knowledge is expressed in not only what they do, but in the countless ways they express who they are. Not everyone willingly buys into the official program because it may not necessarily further their personal ambitions or reflect their values.
One of the main issues in the school reform discourse is how to help kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds become achievers. If you watch them in action, though, you notice wide variability in their attitudes toward these good-intentioned efforts to promote their success and happiness in life. Some seem to want little to do with it. Why? Dina Strasser, a blogger I encourage everyone to read, asks a great question when she wonders if maybe they are being resistant, and suggests that we might want to look at why, and whether they may be justified.
I wonder if the deeper question is this: whether the students and/or the communities who might take such anti-school attitudes are doing so by choice— and if so, whether that choice is justified.
The axis of that question, of course, being one of responsibility. And isn’t that the heart of hearts of any question of social injustice? Who is responsible?
This question about responsibility and justice has been rolling around with me for a long time. Responsibility gets carved up and shared, as I see it, among people all down the line. Looking through a cultural lens we tend to focus on the surfaces of things without getting into the deeper structures that may help us understand why they’ve turned out a certain way. But if we shift the lens a bit, and point it in an inconveniently uncomfortable direction, we get into an area that may expose some closeted skeletons. And that would be to look at social class, and to notice how it colors our interests and values. In a society with democratic ideals, class distinctions are generally discounted as non-existent or irrelevant, since everyone is supposed to have a shot at making something of themselves. But I couldn’t overlook what was there in front of me all this year.
As Eduwonkette pointed out back in November, structural issues are problematic for practitioners because we can’t tell kids, “Forget it. The deck is stacked against you. Give up.” But if we simply tell them, “Work hard. Be nice,” we risk losing credibility and setting them up for disappointment when things don’t work out as well as we’d like, even if they did work hard and act nice. However, since we know it’s their best option, that’s what we tell them to do. We teach compliance with a system structured to favor some over others.
How, then, to navigate this chasm that is also called the “achievement gap?” It becomes a fascinating issue in diplomacy, psychology, politics, and strategy, and it holds promise for new areas of teacher inquiry.
Without any formal training in sociology, I’ve been doing a lot of background reading. But I want to point to an especially entertaining and informative source, brought to my attention recently by Dave Pollard. It’s a book by gonzo journalist Joe Bageant called Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. You can download and excerpt from the first chapter, American Serfs.
This may be the germinal phase of the book I’ve been thinking I need to write. At any rate, it’s too big to squeeze into a single blog entry, so I won’t go too much farther with it right now. I’m going to begin reviewing the literature, and introduce some characters. I have plenty more to say on the subject.
11 Comments
I see elements of what you refer to here in your post within my own classroom. The homework angle is one where there is a distinct difference in attitude between two distinct groups. I’m wondering if those who groan about the concept, have to be chased and harangued just to get some of it done don’t already have the workplace model of once they’ve heard that siren, work is done for the day and has no business being taken home. My brother-in-law works in an environment like that (a warehouse) where his tales of work are about the guys and the pranks they play on each other, or their weekends away, or how they managed to undermine their boss or direct supervisor. I see that in the classroom and it sometimes comes from kids whose parents are the first to be hot on the “Why aren’t you setting more homework?” trail. Maybe there’s some contradiction in what the child sees and experiences from the significant adults in their life and what they try to say is important in order to “get ahead”.
Part of things like homework is a bit to do with getting kids to be accepting about working beyond the hours of work. Certainly, teachers have no boundary that stops their work life following them home and being embedded in their “off duty” time. And there are plenty of other occupations that expect out of hours work commitments or business travel or compulsory attendance without extra renumeration. The kids who actively pursue extras like homework and do more than the required minimum are getting their social messaged from just their teacher. I think the teacher may well be the least important part of the equation – if all kids took their education and work ethic values from us, then you might expect more uniformity in outcomes not such wide disparity.
I think that what to expect out of life is shaped by many outside influential factors including the mass media, and that many kids already have a strong idea of the value of what we offer to them in the classroom in terms of helping to pave their imagined future. I’d be more than happy to proofread any chapters for you as your book germinates and takes shape.
The kids who made good use of time in class had very little homework to do. What the rest of them called “homework” was actually the stuff they didn’t do when they had the time in class. You’re absolutely right about the working class attitude toward working offsite. It’s unpaid overtime for many. And it takes away time from things that, in many cases, are important. And, of course, there are many frivolous activities that “homework” interferes with. Generally, I find homework to be a waste of time for all involved. But I encourage kids who want to revise their work to have another go at some assignments.
You’ve already begun making good on that offer of help with the book. Thanks.
A model post: gets me interested with a description of a real life problem, locates deeper issues at work in the problem, and finally analyzes the issue in a balanced and nuanced way, liberally seasoning the whole dish with interesting references. You’re a terrific writer, and I for one think the book is long overdue.
Haven’t much of my own to add, save this: I’m interested in your (and Dina’s) question of responsibility. There is a very real sense in which “deeper structures,” as you quite accurately point out, are to blame for the uncomfortably obvious differences in how groups of students perform. But I think that your notion of “carving up and sharing” responsibility is a bit too tidy.
The problem is that the very idea of responsibility is a puzzling and contradictory one. On the one hand there are two strong (and related) arguments for moving responsibility away from the individual.
First is the older, cultural argument. As you point out, there is a certain amount of class stability built into our (and AFAIK, every) social arrangement. Sure, America has always offered the possibility of the Algier-style (or, if you prefer, Jeffersons-style) climb–but whether one sees this chance as cruel, unreachable carrot dangled by the evil capitalist or as proof that America is a Grand Land of Opportunity, what you can’t deny is that these climbs are the exception, not the rule. So from this perspective, it seems clear that at least some of the responsibility for a wide range of social problems–including classroom shopfloor culture–must be dropped at the feet of the system not the student.
Second is the biological-reductionist argument. As far as we know, the only two things that make me me are the genes I started out with, and the experiences I’ve had since that start. Obviously, you can’t hold someone responsible for her genes; no one asks to be created. And how do you hold a person responsible for the experiences he’s, um, experienced? Yes, I make choices that lead to experiences–but the “I” that makes those choices has already been shaped by other genes and experience. So far, the argument has a Skinnerian influence (see the fittingly-titled Beyond Freedom and Dignity). Newer versions have drawn from the explosive growth of and popular fascination with brain science. How can I be responsible for ‘choices,’ this goes, that are really just the workings of a computer in my head: a computer that I didn’t program? If it’s not my fault that I was born colorblind, it can’t be may fault if my brain was born bad, too. If this reductionist argument sounds silly, it won’t for long: already we see llegal defenses based on similar reasoning.
Traditionally, social liberals have gravitated toward the first argument, while conservatives have been drawn toward the second (Murrey and Hernstiens’ The Bell Curve being one of the better-known examples of this).
A strong thread also exists, though, that runs counter to both these views: one that I’ll call humanist (cf the Humanistic movement in psychology, though this approach is much older than that). This view emphasizes agency and the irreduceability of the person. I am more, the argument goes, than my upbringing or my genes or my brain or anything else–I’m all me. Like populist politics, this argument has transcended simple liberal/conservative distinctions; also like Populism, there has always been a slight (and sometime more than slight) mysticism; not magic, but a belief that past all the science and the economics and the numbers, there’s Something More. From this perspective, the individual is truly responsible for her actions, regardless of what happens around her. To say that ‘the system’ has held me back is to rob me of my agency, my humanity.
The point of all this: before we start assigning responsibility, we need to think about which of these models we’re going with. I think that you give up something no matter what you choose. In particular, I worry that, to the extent we blame ‘class’ or anything else for our students’ failings, we rob them of their agency, sending insted a subtle, constant message of Seligmans’s learned helplessness. But the other approach seems wrong, too–how can we blame a 12-year-old kid for the way he was raised? As usual, no easy answers, I think: a great example of how education relentlessly requires us to examine our deepest understandings of being a person.
Jason, good to hear from you again. Your comment may help guide my approach to this rather over-large (for me, anyway) subject. You put your finger on the main problem, which as you note, I merely waved at.
When the testing juggernaut geared up a few years ago I told my principal there’d be a lot of finger-pointing in advance of the train wreck. That seems about right. But this issue goes back to long before the current reform push. What’s new, I think, are the proposals for assigning responsibility as a solution. I don’t want to go into detail on it now because it’s going to take a little more time to get there. What your comment emphasizes for me is the central importance of that idea. Blame won’t accomplish or explain anything that hasn’t already been tried.
I’m grateful for your analysis of the argument, and links provided. Very helpful.
Thanks for stimulating more thinking about the problem of the “factory model” or “industrial revolution model” of 19th/20th century schools, where schools are designed to prepare productive members of society (”standardized citizens”, perhaps to take a kernel from your “about” page), but mostly for, as you say, the working classes and perhaps clerks and petty bureaucrats. I grew up in a farming community where nearly one third of my ninth grade cohort never bothered to finish high school and yes, they for the most part are working on those shop floors you mentioned. And for the most part they still don’t care.
I’m sure most teachers believe that education will lift us all up, but teachers are stuck in the system of School (with a capital “S”) as much as the students. Maybe some of the new technologies that remove some of the walls and boundaries can bring some relevance and creative stimulation to our students’ experience, and also enable teachers to see different roles for themselves. It will take a lot though, to outweigh the impact of tests, grades, and other mechanisms for keeping us all in line.
Hello Doug,
I’ve been reading here for awhile and now find a good reasons to comment. I’ll be really interested in following this project as you think more about it (and I, too, do some of my best thinking out there on my bike). This is not just a shameless plug for my blog, but I am trying to think and to link through all sorts of issues about class and teaching and aspiration over there and would love discussion with you (and others, of course).
I also moderate a listserv (not always active, but it comes and goes) for teachers wanting to think and talk about class. The sign-up info is on a page on my blog.
I just finished teaching a grad class called Education and the American Dream that looks at class and mobility (or not), and to a person, the teachers there said that this was the very first time that they’d had any conversations in any education course about how class matters outside the inner city. And now, they said, they’re seeing it everywhere.
That question of “what do we tell the kids about hard work/obstacles in your way” continued to vex the class all term.
I wasn’t too crazy about Deer Hunting with Jesus, maybe because I’d read it right after I’d finished Truck: A Love Story by Michael Perry. They’re very very different books — Perry makes less ambitious claims about what his book is about, but he’s much more at peace with going home and respectful of who he finds when he does go back. The “working class” is in such transition now, it’s hard for anyone to describe it in its entirety.
Looking forward to more conversation (maybe even about biking!).
Jane
Doh.
My blog:
http://educationandclass
Jane, thanks for checking in here. I’ve recently (just the last few weeks) discovered your blog, and am grateful for it, since you’ve spent a little more time thinking about this issue than I have. The reading list you’ve provided will come in handy.
Deer Hunting with Jesus was entertaining, and it did explain a few things that I’ve observed over the last couple of years, but it also left me feeling a little discouraged since just about everyone is indicted in the end, with little emphasis on what we can concretely do to make things better other than to start talking to each other – which is generally good advice no matter what the issue may be. I plan to say something about it, but I also picked up Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” which explores the same question Bageant asks about why working class people vote with Republicans, against their own economic interest. I figured it might be more interesting to think about both books at once than to react to each of them separately, so I’m not saying much about Deer Hunting yet.
I have no trouble believing that a group of teachers would report that they’ve not thought about this very deeply, because we tend to focus on practical issues at work. Who has time to have such a conversation? And then, what are we going to do about it? The blog, though, and the classroom, are great places for me to work through some of the questions I have. Thanks for your interest. Feel free to comment again.
I came to your site from Jane’s, which I read regularly. I’m not an educator–I read your piece as a person who, at 40, is just realizing the extent social class has impacted my life. I grew up working class and was sent to wood shop and typing classes in junior high. I went to a vo-tech high school for my first year in HS.
So I read your blog auto-biographically.
And I wonder now if I should be upset with the teachers who said they believed in me. I’m finding that despite the fact that I now have a college degree (with honors, gotten just this past December at a low-rung state school), people can still tell that I grew up working class and treat me as such. People who went to tonier institutions get jobs for which I’m very qualified and for which I’m possibly better suited because of my work ethic. I get bossed around at social events with lots of middle and owning class folks, and I am often treated as if I’m hired help.
But is any of this my teachers’ fault? I don’t think so.
Hope is the only way out and you, as a teacher, are supremely qualified to give someone hope who has no other source. It’s not your fault that hope can seem like a lie because the system is hell-bent on keeping people in their proper places.
Though I sure do hear that it feels like you’re lying to kids.
I appreciate you asking the questions and talking about it, because until we talk about it, we’re not going to change anything. I’ll keep checking back here too.
Jeanne, thanks for your comment. When you say, “I get bossed around at social events with lots of middle and owning class folks, and I am often treated as if I’m hired help,” you describe some of my own feelings as a public school teacher.
I’ve taught long enough to have learned I shouldn’t jump to conclusions about the brightness of anyone’s future based on what they do in elementary school. I’ve seen too many examples of both success and difficulty that I would have never expected. (’Failure’ is a word I can’t even begin to comprehend.) So I, and I think most teachers do the same, peddle hope. I try to package it, make it real for kids, show them the way, and build a bridge from here to there no matter what seems to be in the way.
I’ve been accused by people who know me well of looking too hard at my shortcomings, so maybe I leave the wrong impression sometimes. I don’t see much gain in celebrating my successes when they seem to come easily. A lot of kids who I thought I’d lost, or never connected with, have come back to tell me thanks. It’s humbling. But I know there are a lot of other kids that I’ve missed the mark with. I’m not just saying it, when I tell them to work hard and be nice. They don’t all hear it, even though I think those qualities are critically important. I’m not lying so much as I’m withholding commentary on a lot of negative things I know many of them struggle with. Who needs to have their nose rubbed in the fact that they got handed less of a chance than the next person?
I went to a low-rung state school, too. And yet, I’m happy with the home and family that I’ve had a hand in raising. I think that life is mostly about making our dreams come true, but I’ve also been lucky enough to be able to say that. If I teach my students nothing else, I want them to believe that they are capable of doing, and being whatever they want to be. It’s a lesson that they can carry with them anywhere, and for as long as they care to. My question now is about what part I play, beyond the “giving someone hope” part, in even-ing the playing field, or conversely, in promoting a myth.
Hope is always a good thing. But strategy and luck are important, too.
I see amazing similarities between Paul Willis’ ideas – Learning to Labor and Haberman’s Pedagogy of Poverty. It is an (un)conscious way to teaching and relating to students that only reinforces attitudes of helplessness, the need for ’special’ programs for poor urban school children – in the States, and other behaviors/attitudes that discourage people from becoming critical thinkers, civically engaged, upwardly mobile, etc.
One Trackback/Pingback
[...] 12, 2008 Doug, over at Borderland, writes at the end of the year with his 6th graders about class and social reproduction, about [...]
Post a Comment