Blog 10

The name of the author for blog 10 is Jean Anyon and the article's name is Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work which is a chapter from the book Learning Power. Anyon is arguing in this text that social classes in our society are teaching different curriculum based on the population and economic information about their community. Anyon believes that teaching pedagogy in these communities will keep the kids status quo and most likely keep them in the community that they grew up in with little chance of reaching a higher class. The contrast in the teaching styles were truly amazing and eye opening for a person who thought we were all learning the same way. A couple of the passages that really stood out to me in this article were on page 4 when a teacher from a working class school retorted "Simple punctuation is all they'll ever use." The disbelief I felt when I read that statement was intense, I simply could not believe a teacher would not try to get the best out of all children in a profession so important to molding young minds. This teacher was teaching them just enough to get by for the working class community instead of trying to get the best out of the students and basically telling them this is all that they will amount too. Another troubling quote from the working class part of the article was the way teachers communicated with the students, for example on page 5 "the teachers continually gave orders to the children " and when the teachers heard a student talking they would tell the student to "shut up, shut your mouth." How in the world can a child learn when treated and communicated to like this, it is very disturbing. In contrast to the working class, I found interesting differences in the way the executive elite school kids were educated. The first example is how students are viewed: "These children's opinions are important-it's important that they learn to reason things through." The opinion of the teacher in the elite school has glaring differences from that of the working class school. Kids are treated with care and viewed as important in the elite class, where the working class kids are told to shut up and listen and have little or no input on their education. It is my opinion that all children in every class be afforded the type of education using sound logic and having their voice heard. I think if the pedagogy of the working class teachers would reflect that of the elite class, you would find a meshing of more kids from different classes and kids in lower classes ready to challenge for spots in higher education that were firmly gripped by the elite class. This piece is good evidence about white privilege and how it is entrenched in different social classes.