Consider your own experiences as you read this week. Pick a quote and / or main idea from two texts as a way to examine and consider your own educational experiences from a class lens. This reflection on your own schooling should not be a telling of stories but a substantive discussion.
Educational experiences through a class colored lens are considerably different for each individual in the US. As we have looked at before, the higher regarded class somebody is in, the better they are off when it comes to pretty much anything in their daily lives ( either as small as being served at a coffee shop differently or something as big as education offered to them).
Though there are many ways to describe a person’s class, the top four distinctions come from education, wealth, occupation, and income, and each one of those distinctions is prompted by the other. Therefore explaining why resources made available to those of the middle and upper classes has a unfaltering advantage when choosing an educational path. Though all Americans have great expectations of their schools and we tend to invest them with the primary responsibility for providing our children with the means by which they may succeed in an increasingly uncertain work world, this unfortunately cannot be fixed by schooling because it only fosters social classes even further.
Schools most definitely reinforce social class in their curriculums, and I first hand have seen this occur. For example, I attended a private high school in Providence RI, well known for its prestige. The majority of students (excluding myself and my brother), are from the top social classes because of the money or occupations their parents hold. My cousins (same middle/working class as my family), attended East Providence High School. The differences when comparing the curriculums and classes offered between my cousins and myself were vast. Though we both had the same basic classes (English, math, gym). East Providence offered vocational studies to its students, and my private school did not and never will. Maybe I am jumping to conclusions here about fostering the working/middle class, but does that not set up the students for careers with no mobility to move up in their class?...I don’t know the answer… Yet again, my cousins who attended that vocational program loved it and were happy to go to school and , and prepare themselves for the career that they do today. I don’t know what the real problem is, the fact that schools reinforce social class with those types of programs, or are the just reinforcing to make students stay interested? This one example only fuels the argument which Bourdeua made that certain schooling curriculums are different in skills leading to “social power and regard (medical, legal, managerial) are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes to whom a more "practical" curriculum is offered (manual skills, clerical knowledge.” How schools prepare students for further education and jobs, plays a big role in the classes offered…
No comments:
Post a Comment