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Dividing Classes: How the Middle Class Negotiates and Rationalizes School Advantage
In this study of the school system of an Indiana town, Ellen Brantlinger studies educational expectations within segments of the middle class that have fairly high levels of attainment. Building on her findings, she examines the relationship between class structure and educational success. This book asserts the need to look beyond poor peoples' values and aspirations--and rather to consider the values of dominant groups--to explain class stratification and educational outcomes.
- GenresEducation
268 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 21, 2003
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November 3, 2015
A lot of books like this one start by saying that most research into education has been done either into the very top end of the school market or the very bottom. But I think this is increasingly not the case. Making Modern Lives; Class Strategies and the Education Market; White Middle Class Identities and Urban Schooling and also the two excellent books Unequal Childhoods and Class Work all only make sense because they also include a discussion on the work of middle class mothers in the education market. This book has been particularly interesting for me. Firstly, because too much of what I read in education sociology is based in the UK, and so getting to read another book on the US education system is always worthwhile – but also because this book uses, in part anyway, the work of Jean Anyon – and I’ve fallen completely in love Ms Anyon – so much so that I’m basing a big part of my research on her work.
This book is about cognitive dissonance. Most educated middle class people probably prefer to think of themselves (and be thought of by others) as essentially liberal in the US sense of that word, what other nations would call left-wing or perhaps left-of-centre. Probably a ‘good enough’ definition of this type of person would be that they don’t really want to be considered someone that discriminates against someone because of what they are, but likes to think they judge people by who they are. They believe they judge people on the basis of their character. Are women as good as men? It depends on the woman, it depends on the man. And Black people? I’m colour-blind. Poor people? Well, this one is a bit harder, as is pointed out in this book, there are no laws against discriminating on the basis of social class, not least because so few people believe social classes still exist –we have an all-pervasive view that we live in a meritocracy and therefore if you are poor it is because you deserve to be poor. Either you have poor genes or poor habits and are just basically a wastrel of some description. Of course, there are the ‘deserving poor’ – which doesn’t mean they deserve to be poor, but rather the opposite, they are deserving of our pity and compassion even though they are poor – but that only means that all the rest of the poor are the undeserving poor and deserve only our contempt. Let’s all hope that Jesus guy has been grossly misquoted or bad shit is going down in the after-life for us all…
The problem is that in this great game of life, if you want to win the race, it really does pay to have a bit of a head start. And being born white, male and middle class is pretty well winning the trifecta (sorry, Melbourne Cup day – hopefully that will be the last of the racing metaphors). Now, that doesn’t guarantee that you actually win, but it does give you one hell of a head start. Except, of course, that NO ONE wants to believe they have ever been advantaged in life. The funniest example of this was one day listening to Gina Rinehart (who was until recently the richest woman in the world) talk about how she was a self-made woman. Which I suppose is true enough, up to a point. Of course her father was estimated to be worth $125 million in 1990 shortly before he died and left her his fortune, but I’m sure she was only born into that family after hard work, grit and determination. If Gina can convince herself she hasn’t received any benefits in life, hasn’t been provided with any shortcuts, it should be a piece of cake for the rest of us to convince ourselves of exactly the same thing.
The problem only arises when someone or something challenges our pleasant vision splendid of ourselves. And that is pretty much what the author of this one does to the poor buggers she interviews. She interviews teachers, parents and school administrators and basically rubs their noses in the fact that they not only have received benefits from a system that are systematically denied to other parents (because those parents are not middle class) but also that they often get these benefits on the basis of the conscious efforts they make to advantage their own children, and this is often at the direct expense of other children.
The bits that were particularly interesting where when she asked if everyone who goes to school in America gets an equal chance to succeed. The meritocracy myth can’t work if this isn’t the case, of course. The myth doesn’t ‘work’ by actually providing an equal starting place for everyone, but in convincing everyone that remarkably unequal starting places are, in fact, all effectively the same. Many of these mothers answered that all schools are the same, that you have exactly the same chance of a good education no matter which school you go to – after all, this is America (all this is said while the first strains of the national anthem start in the background with the mothers placing their right-hand over their heart…) Then the author asked them why it would be that they drive past two or three schools so as to drop their children off at the not-so-local middle class school. Uncomfortable silence. Sometimes the mothers would say that while anyone can succeed in such schools that they drive their children past the problem is that their child just isn’t self-disciplined enough to be successful in such schools – the little darling needs more structure and discipline. Poor people’s kids are lucky in that they need neither of these things to be successful, which is fortunate, as they couldn’t afford the school fees in a more middle class school.
The point of this book isn’t just to show how good the author is at making self-righteous middle class mothers feel uncomfortable while talking about their kids. The thing is that this stuff is over-determined – we live in a highly competitive society and any advantage you can get for your family is probably something you will grab with both hands. Sure, looking too deeply into the mirror might not make you feel all that great about yourself, but a little Vaseline smeared on the glass hides a multitude of sins so that no one can tell the difference between left-wing egalitarian and selfish pig.
Except, and this is the bit I found most interesting in this book, that there is a view that these mothers want a particularly progressive form of education for their kids to go with the sort of faux liberal beliefs. As the author explains, there are basically two flavours of education – right wing nasty education that basically involves lots of testing and what Freire called ‘the banking model’ – where the teacher is the banker and has all the knowledge and he (yep, he) tries to deposit as much of that knowledge into the empty heads of his students as he can.
The other flavour has various names, generally ‘constructivist’ or ‘progressive’. This is the idea that people (even students) learn stuff when they need it and so what you would be better off doing is creating authentic and realistic learning situations and letting them muck in and learn stuff for themselves. This doesn’t mean just leave them sitting there until they get so bored they decide they might as well learn some stuff – but quite the opposite, it means finding ways to make learning imperative. The assumption has long been that middle class types are much more likely to want the second kind of education for their kids – but this research found quite the opposite – basically the mothers were saying, open their skulls, if necessary, and stuff their heads full of good-old-fashioned 3Rs.
A large part of this book is devoted to a description of the author’s hometown and education bureaucrats she has known and loved (well, known). I found this quite interesting, but I can see that others might not. Still, if you were going to read this book and you got a bit bored at this point, skip it and read the end of the book, the last chapter essentially – which is a really, really lovely summing up.
This is an important piece of research for a number of reasons, I think – not least because the education system really is set up for white, middle class people – and being shown how advantage works in our favour is important. You see, the problem with cognitive dissonance is that the best and most effective way of avoiding feeling the pain it can cause is to find a way to blame the victim. Been advantaged by white privilege? It’s not really white privilege, it is that black people aren’t really fully human. Been advantaged by the patriarchy? Everyone knows women have smaller brains. Been advantaged by social class? You’ve worked hard to deserve all of your advantages in life and anyway we live in a meritocracy, so if those lazy bastards had just got up off their bums for five minutes and worked as hard as you have they would be just as well off.
Being reminded all this is nine-parts rubbish is an important part of life and might even, if only in my more optimistic moments, perhaps one day mean our moving towards a fairer society.
This book is about cognitive dissonance. Most educated middle class people probably prefer to think of themselves (and be thought of by others) as essentially liberal in the US sense of that word, what other nations would call left-wing or perhaps left-of-centre. Probably a ‘good enough’ definition of this type of person would be that they don’t really want to be considered someone that discriminates against someone because of what they are, but likes to think they judge people by who they are. They believe they judge people on the basis of their character. Are women as good as men? It depends on the woman, it depends on the man. And Black people? I’m colour-blind. Poor people? Well, this one is a bit harder, as is pointed out in this book, there are no laws against discriminating on the basis of social class, not least because so few people believe social classes still exist –we have an all-pervasive view that we live in a meritocracy and therefore if you are poor it is because you deserve to be poor. Either you have poor genes or poor habits and are just basically a wastrel of some description. Of course, there are the ‘deserving poor’ – which doesn’t mean they deserve to be poor, but rather the opposite, they are deserving of our pity and compassion even though they are poor – but that only means that all the rest of the poor are the undeserving poor and deserve only our contempt. Let’s all hope that Jesus guy has been grossly misquoted or bad shit is going down in the after-life for us all…
The problem is that in this great game of life, if you want to win the race, it really does pay to have a bit of a head start. And being born white, male and middle class is pretty well winning the trifecta (sorry, Melbourne Cup day – hopefully that will be the last of the racing metaphors). Now, that doesn’t guarantee that you actually win, but it does give you one hell of a head start. Except, of course, that NO ONE wants to believe they have ever been advantaged in life. The funniest example of this was one day listening to Gina Rinehart (who was until recently the richest woman in the world) talk about how she was a self-made woman. Which I suppose is true enough, up to a point. Of course her father was estimated to be worth $125 million in 1990 shortly before he died and left her his fortune, but I’m sure she was only born into that family after hard work, grit and determination. If Gina can convince herself she hasn’t received any benefits in life, hasn’t been provided with any shortcuts, it should be a piece of cake for the rest of us to convince ourselves of exactly the same thing.
The problem only arises when someone or something challenges our pleasant vision splendid of ourselves. And that is pretty much what the author of this one does to the poor buggers she interviews. She interviews teachers, parents and school administrators and basically rubs their noses in the fact that they not only have received benefits from a system that are systematically denied to other parents (because those parents are not middle class) but also that they often get these benefits on the basis of the conscious efforts they make to advantage their own children, and this is often at the direct expense of other children.
The bits that were particularly interesting where when she asked if everyone who goes to school in America gets an equal chance to succeed. The meritocracy myth can’t work if this isn’t the case, of course. The myth doesn’t ‘work’ by actually providing an equal starting place for everyone, but in convincing everyone that remarkably unequal starting places are, in fact, all effectively the same. Many of these mothers answered that all schools are the same, that you have exactly the same chance of a good education no matter which school you go to – after all, this is America (all this is said while the first strains of the national anthem start in the background with the mothers placing their right-hand over their heart…) Then the author asked them why it would be that they drive past two or three schools so as to drop their children off at the not-so-local middle class school. Uncomfortable silence. Sometimes the mothers would say that while anyone can succeed in such schools that they drive their children past the problem is that their child just isn’t self-disciplined enough to be successful in such schools – the little darling needs more structure and discipline. Poor people’s kids are lucky in that they need neither of these things to be successful, which is fortunate, as they couldn’t afford the school fees in a more middle class school.
The point of this book isn’t just to show how good the author is at making self-righteous middle class mothers feel uncomfortable while talking about their kids. The thing is that this stuff is over-determined – we live in a highly competitive society and any advantage you can get for your family is probably something you will grab with both hands. Sure, looking too deeply into the mirror might not make you feel all that great about yourself, but a little Vaseline smeared on the glass hides a multitude of sins so that no one can tell the difference between left-wing egalitarian and selfish pig.
Except, and this is the bit I found most interesting in this book, that there is a view that these mothers want a particularly progressive form of education for their kids to go with the sort of faux liberal beliefs. As the author explains, there are basically two flavours of education – right wing nasty education that basically involves lots of testing and what Freire called ‘the banking model’ – where the teacher is the banker and has all the knowledge and he (yep, he) tries to deposit as much of that knowledge into the empty heads of his students as he can.
The other flavour has various names, generally ‘constructivist’ or ‘progressive’. This is the idea that people (even students) learn stuff when they need it and so what you would be better off doing is creating authentic and realistic learning situations and letting them muck in and learn stuff for themselves. This doesn’t mean just leave them sitting there until they get so bored they decide they might as well learn some stuff – but quite the opposite, it means finding ways to make learning imperative. The assumption has long been that middle class types are much more likely to want the second kind of education for their kids – but this research found quite the opposite – basically the mothers were saying, open their skulls, if necessary, and stuff their heads full of good-old-fashioned 3Rs.
A large part of this book is devoted to a description of the author’s hometown and education bureaucrats she has known and loved (well, known). I found this quite interesting, but I can see that others might not. Still, if you were going to read this book and you got a bit bored at this point, skip it and read the end of the book, the last chapter essentially – which is a really, really lovely summing up.
This is an important piece of research for a number of reasons, I think – not least because the education system really is set up for white, middle class people – and being shown how advantage works in our favour is important. You see, the problem with cognitive dissonance is that the best and most effective way of avoiding feeling the pain it can cause is to find a way to blame the victim. Been advantaged by white privilege? It’s not really white privilege, it is that black people aren’t really fully human. Been advantaged by the patriarchy? Everyone knows women have smaller brains. Been advantaged by social class? You’ve worked hard to deserve all of your advantages in life and anyway we live in a meritocracy, so if those lazy bastards had just got up off their bums for five minutes and worked as hard as you have they would be just as well off.
Being reminded all this is nine-parts rubbish is an important part of life and might even, if only in my more optimistic moments, perhaps one day mean our moving towards a fairer society.
Displaying 1 of 1 review