Failures of Poor and Working Class Education in America
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- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 12/01/2015 03:56 PM
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Wray 1
Jonathan Wray
Professor Muldoon
English 101
7 October 2015
Failures of Poor and Working Class Education in America
Today in America we know how to plan and implement an education system that
produces intelligent, thinking, reasoning, empowered students that are prepared to navigate a
path of their choice in life. Today we know that students can’t just be boringly feed knowledge,
they need to be nurtured into thinking, questioning students who learn not just the knowledge,
but how to become someone who can use that knowledge to successfully navigate life. Now
instead imagine a school system planning their student’s education around the goal of grooming
docile and obedient students who do what their told without questioning. Some Americans have
to suffer with just such an education. Today many Americans who make up the poor and
working class are unfairly denied an education that graduates students with the knowledge and
life skills to navigate the ladder of social and economic empowerment.
In her essay “From Social Class and The Hidden Curriculum of Work”, in which she
writes about spending an entire year observing schools from different economic backgrounds,
Jean Anyon gives an overview of her observations of school in a working-class education
system, “Work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical,
involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice” (p167). That sounds like it
could double as a description of a factory job that trains you to do the same thing or few things
Wray 2
over and over again. It’s subtly building the future social expectations for the students. The
students may be learning specific facts and knowledge, but their education is failing to nurture
the thinking, questioning part of their minds, the very parts that would empower them to grow
into adults capable of not only dreaming of a better life, but making a better life. It’s denying
them the life skills they will need to...
Jonathan Wray
Professor Muldoon
English 101
7 October 2015
Failures of Poor and Working Class Education in America
Today in America we know how to plan and implement an education system that
produces intelligent, thinking, reasoning, empowered students that are prepared to navigate a
path of their choice in life. Today we know that students can’t just be boringly feed knowledge,
they need to be nurtured into thinking, questioning students who learn not just the knowledge,
but how to become someone who can use that knowledge to successfully navigate life. Now
instead imagine a school system planning their student’s education around the goal of grooming
docile and obedient students who do what their told without questioning. Some Americans have
to suffer with just such an education. Today many Americans who make up the poor and
working class are unfairly denied an education that graduates students with the knowledge and
life skills to navigate the ladder of social and economic empowerment.
In her essay “From Social Class and The Hidden Curriculum of Work”, in which she
writes about spending an entire year observing schools from different economic backgrounds,
Jean Anyon gives an overview of her observations of school in a working-class education
system, “Work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical,
involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice” (p167). That sounds like it
could double as a description of a factory job that trains you to do the same thing or few things
Wray 2
over and over again. It’s subtly building the future social expectations for the students. The
students may be learning specific facts and knowledge, but their education is failing to nurture
the thinking, questioning part of their minds, the very parts that would empower them to grow
into adults capable of not only dreaming of a better life, but making a better life. It’s denying
them the life skills they will need to...