Workshop Reflection: Exploratory Essay

1. Ashley-Don't necessarily need the conclusion, but you can make it more than what it is.
    Isai- Putting questions in your conclusion would make it not your typical conclusion.
    Brian-Check some of my sentences because some of them were run-ons.
    Lealsie-Insert some question in your paper
2. The most helpful piece of advice that I got was to add some questions to my conclusion. I considered this the best advice because both of my concerns were, where to put questions and my conclusion in general.
3. I believe all the advice I received from my group was helpful and their opinions were greatly appreciated.
4. For my revision I will be going through and shortening some of my sentences. Then I will be adding some of the questions I had from the readings to my conclusion.

Ist Draft Exploratory Essay

Kiara Shuford

Megan Keaton

English 1102

25 February 2013

Education and the Social Class

            We all have to go to school for at least 9 years and you would think that each and every one of us received the same education. According to the authors of “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, “On the Uses of Liberal Education”, and “Women without Class” believe that students that belong to different social classes receive very different educations that are based on the social class and occupation of their parents.

In the “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, the Author Jean Anyon describes her experience as she travels and observes students and teachers in four different social classes. From the lowest of the social classes to the highest Anyon describes it as,  “shocking, to learn how vast the differences in schools are – not so much in resources as in teaching methods and philosophies of education”(Anyon 1).  Working class students were being taught their material straight from the book, while the highest class, Executive Elite, students were learning critical thinking skills, how to voice their opinion, and they were given more responsibility than any other students from the different classes.  Because the teaching methods were so different the author thought that these “practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital, to authority, and to the process of work (Anyon 10).” Anyon argues that the children are being taught to remain in the same occupations that their parents currently hold and because the students of a higher class have more of an advantage in these aspects because of the teaching methods and resources she calls this the “hidden curriculum.” She suggests that many of these students won’t be able to break this cycle and will eventually in the same social class that they grew up in. 

             This harsh cycle also shows up in “The uses of Liberal Education.” The author, Earl Shorris, of this article also believes that the lower social classes don’t receive the education they need to escape their social class.  He exclaims, “ Numerous forces—hunger, isolation, illness, landlords, police, abuse neighborhoods, drugs, criminals, and racism among many others—exert themselves on the poor at all times and enclose them, making up a “surround of force” from which it seems they cannot escape. I had come to understand that this was what kept the poor from being political and that the absence of politics in their lives was what kept them poor.(Shorris 188)” Unlike Jean Anyon in “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, Shorris didn’t plan to just observe he wanted to teach lower class people some of the things that they never had the chance to be taught. He taught the homeless, drug addicted, and disease stricken things like, “philosophy, poetry, art history, logic, rhetoric, and American history”(Shorris 192). Being taught these things made these lower class people act differently, “more politically” in their everyday lives. Whether it was discussing a problem for class or holding back their anger in their work environment. By the time the students had graduated this course they were still facing there problems, but had completed the course and had actually received college credit. As they graduated Shorris knew what he set out to do was completed, the fourteen people that completed the course would continue their life and be more aware of the politics that they were so blind to before they had taken the course. In the case of “On the uses of Liberal Education”, the lower class was educated with the things that only the upper class were taught in “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” and in both cases the students that were taught “politics” excelled.

          A majority of the lower class students in all the articles were racially diverse. In How Working-Class Chicas Get Working-Class Lives, Latino women were treated differently in their high school by the students and faculty then what the author called the “prep”. These girls were treated differently not only because of their ethnicity, but also because of their gender. The faculty degraded these girls because they thought that the only thing that they were going to do after high school was become “pregnant and barefoot” and gave up on these students and didn’t teach them like what they needed to learn. Some of these students fell victim to the stereo types that the teachers and community had put on them, but most of them wanted to make something of themselves and not become a part of the of those stereotypes. The Latino girls were put in the same predicament as Shorris’ student , Abel Lomas, who had to choose to get help from the government to feed his family or become a drug dealer just like his brother. In both of these cases a young person had to overcome what other people thought that they would fall victim too and do something for themselves. Most of the Latino women’s in “How Working-Class Chicas Get Working-Class Lives” parents were strict about their children getting an education and they would blame the teachers if their students weren’t doing well. This goes back to “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” where the working class, the same class these Latino women were in, doesn’t have enough resources for their students to reach their potential. So the women wouldn’t make it to college, but besides end up working “low-wage clerical or retail jobs, In comparison to mothers whose work was less than glamorous and sometimes dirty, working in an office or behind a cash register in retail can indeed appear as mobility.”(Bettie 82)

          These articles really highlight the lower/working class and how they don’t receive as much as a higher class of people. The authors of the articles believe that this class of students deserve the just as much of an opportunity as the higher classes and they try to show the readers of their articles this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

 

Anyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Journal of Education. Vol. 162, no. 1(1980): 1-11. Print.

Bettie, Julie. Women without Class: Girls, Race and Identity.Chapter 3. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. 57-94. Print.

Shorris, Earl. “On the Uses of a Liberal Education” Reading about Learners. Vol. 2 (2006): 187-200. Print.

Class on 2-18/2-20

Brainstorming on Monday really helped me see what I wanted to write about in my exploratory essay. It really put in perspective what Megan wanted from us in the essay and it made it more clearer for me. I decided I wanted to write about education and social class and I decided this because of the fact that that is what I had the most questions about after reading what we read for class. Workshopping sounds interesting as well becuase I've never done it before. In my other English classes we had peer editing, but what we talked about in class on Wednesday always happened. People wouldn't give you actual information that you could use to edit your paper. So I shall find out what it's all about on Monday!

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower Reading Response

In this excerpt a college professor explains how dealing with older or returning students can be a challenge. He gives us a example with Ms. L saying that she was technology illiterate and she couldn't comprehend doing research for a paper. He then explains that everyone thinks that people going back to college to expand their knowledge and career opportunities are a good thing because of government and the media. But some students just aren't ready to go back to school.

The professor argues his point by explaining that grading these assignments from the students that aren't on a college level is hard for both the student and himself. He starts by telling us the reaction of Ms. L and how broken she looked and felt when receiving her "F", but he also lets us know that it was hard for him to give her that grade because she had attended class and had worked her hardest. He goes back and forth about if should help this student or even tell her that she isn't ready for college, but decides against it. Does he ever tell her?

I definitely agree with author that some people aren't ready for college and it doesn't matter if they're are straight out of high school or if they got out of high school 20 years ago. College isn't for everyone and it's hard for some people to realize this because you have to have a degree to make money in the world we live in today. I do disagree in the fact that he doesn't tell Ms. L that she wasn't ready for college, this conversation could have saved her a lot of money and maybe made her realize that he's right.

" Ms. L. had done everything that American culture asked of her. She had gone back to school to better herself, and she expected to be rewarded for it, not slapped down." This line really spoke to me because of the fact that everywhere in media they tell to go to college and to better yourself, but they never tell you that some people won't make it or even can't.

Social Class and the Hidden Cirrculum of Work:Reading Response

This article was written to explain to educators that elementary schools taught their students different ways with direct relationship to where the school was located and how much the students parents income was. I had to read about how the elite executive school operated, these students were taught to think critically and think for themselves. These students were also given a lot of freedom with leaving class, walking to a different class without a teacher, and coming to school whenever they wanted. With all this freedom also came more pressure to do good in school, so their grades were very good.

Reading the elite executive school portion, I can tell from my personal experience in elementary school that the author of this article made it very clear on how different students were taught in different social classes. I can tell that these children were more prepared for being successful later in life than most of the children the same age in different social classes. The author of the article never says how the grades of the children from each area compare to one another.

I most certainly agree with the author. Like I said before from my personal experience of being in elementary school we weren't treated at all like elite executive school children. The only thing I could compare this reading to is something like a Walmart, they cater to the demographic with what they sell. The schools are just like that they get what they can afford and then teach and prepare their students for what they'll eventually be doing.

"These differences may not only contribute to the development in the children in each social class of certain types of economically significant relationships and not but would thereby help to reproduce this system of relations in society." This line explains that if the school systems keep going this way it will become a cycle of the same. The rich will stay rich and the poor will stay poor. And none of the different classes will ever interact.

standardized test reflection

To most of us standardized tests are just the norm because we've been taking them since we were in elementary school. For many of the educators that teach these classes, their curriculum is designed to help their students pass the end of year tests. Then there is the SAT for high school students trying to get into college. This is when my inquiry group started to think how could we change the SAT to help students do better. We've decided that students should be more prepared and comfortable for the test, so they're not blindsided on test day. Throughout high school everyone is taught things to help them in life, so why not teach students how to study and prepare them for the SAT? SAT prep classes would help students be less intimidated when the time came for them to take the test. The discussion in class also got me thinking that standardized testing shouldn't be the deciding factor of a student passing of failing. Test can be good at seeing just where your class is in understanding the material, but not passing or failing a grade or course. Some students are not very good test takers and can become nervous in these situations. When pressure like passing or failing is added to the already nerve racking situation of taking a test, these students probably wouldn't do as good as they could, Even if they knew the material perfectly. So I  believe that standardized testing helps students to some extent, but so much weight shouldn't be put into them.