I am a Grenade

Jean Anyon's paper about the "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work" outlines a study performed in a few elementary schools in order to see how social class differences are being 'set up' in the school systems.  In the first part of the paper, definitions for social class are laid out as a series of relationships to production of capital, relationships to authority, and relationships to capital itself.

I found this article to be extremely engaging and right now I am trying to think of people that I can share this with.  The differences in teaching styles across the different school types was extremely interesting--especially the implications this makes for replicating class divide.  This is a direct confrontation to the idea that as long as everyone goes to school they have the same opportunities.  Clearly this is not the case, as totally different sets of skills are being taught depending on what "class" the school is in.  It is so frustrating, now, realizing that I was not taught the same caliber of creativity and analysis that children in the "Executive Elite" school were (or rather, I did not realize that it was possible for children in general to learn like this--I thought that the working and even middle class school teaching styles are all that children that age could comprehend).  The Executive Elite school reminded me very much of college--and college is the only time during my school career that I actually felt as though I was learning something, instead of just regurgitating memorized material.

(As an aside, I thought it was funny that my copy of this was used on the back to record inventory count for a work-related event)


The page reads:

SOME GENERAL VALUES OF WORKING CLASS CULTURE
[These are some observations of general cultural values and tendencies and are not meant to be cultural stereotypes but recognitions]

1. COMMUNICATION: To the Point
Direct (even blunt), sometimes impassioned, accepts arguing
Functional (not reflective)
Story Telling--Passing on values, history
Speak the truth (Yet keep it in the family)
Humor--Laugh to survive--Getting Down to it

2. FAMILY: Blood Ties
Support each other
Stay close to home
Parental rule--Often Patriarchy
Persistence and Ingenuity: Making do--Getting by
Sacrifice

3. COMMUNITY: Neighborhood
Mutual Respect and Cooperation
Democratic & Egalitarian
Treat others fairly, especially the "little guy"
Often denial and anger
Difficulty is seeing multiple perspectives

4. WORK ETHIC:  Work as fabric of life
Providing for family
Hard work and Follow through
Respect for tools & maintenance
Having a good job
Functional & Practical--Getting things done
Time is money--Work sets schedule

5.  EDUCATION: Get One
Value basic education--
as a means of achieving "a good life"
as a means of achieving "freedom of choice"
But not too much education--"Don't forget where you came from."
__________________________________________________

"When even the free-marked-oriented magazine The Economist argues--as it did in a special feature in October--that the magnitude and nature of the country's inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong"

The main point to OXFAM's briefing on "How Wealth and Income Extremes Hurt Us All" is to convince the reader that focusing on just extreme poverty is not enough.  It is important to focus on the "inequality and the extreme wealth that contributes to it" (1).  The article outlines how inequality is "reaching levels never before seen" and is "getting worse" showing disturbing statistics like "In the US the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled since 1980 from 10% to 20%" and "For the top 0.01% it has quadrupled" (1).  These statistics show the reader just how unequal the rich and the poor are.  Perhaps it asks the question "just why would any one person need that much money, when people are literally starving?"--it highlights the greed of the top percents.

The article also discusses how extreme wealth and income effects economic efficiency, politics, corruption, the environment, and ethics.  This perhaps suggests that all other crises would be tremendously improved by paying attention to extreme wealth and extreme inequality that exists in the world.  By the end of the article, OXFAM urges the world to "end extreme wealth by 2025" stating that "in a world of increasingly scarce resources, reducing inequality is more important than ever.  It needs to be reduced and quickly" (4).  Overall, this is a tight and to-the-point persuasive essay on the dangers of the wealth gap.

"In unequal societies, highly educated, computer-using elites are surrounded by majorities with little education and no computer access, dragging down their productivity. This decreases young people's incentive to get more education and business' incentive to invest in computers, since the payoff will be smaller" (3).

"One method of simplifying social problems is to see them as resulting from countless individual failures of personal character.  According to this view, people are jobless because they're lazy, they're homeless because they lack forehandedness, they're addicted because they have no moral discipline" (351).

This is the issue with individualism--one of the main ideologies holding together classism.  As other writers have pointed out (as I have discussed in previous blog posts), individualism is the distraction from systematic issues that are the root cause to poverty, oppression, and in this particular case--drug abuse.  With this view out of the way, we can examine the systems beneath that benefit those who control them, and hurt those it takes advantage of.  It makes no logical sense for groups of people to simultaneously be "too lazy" or to have "no moral discipline"--there is always a root cause to joblessness and homelessness.

The average person (i.e. not politician necessarily, but the typical person you would meet on the street) opposing welfare and government assistance is not someone that I enjoy spending a great deal of time with.  But lately, I feel as though this anti-poor discourse has gotten worse (or I am becoming more aware of it) and has seeped into the mindsets of my closer family members (who I thought were more liberal).  The media does an excellent job at twisting the blame of a failing economy onto supposed "rampant welfare fraud"