This notion of Class and Classism is still bouncing around my head. Before I continue with this line of thought, I want to clarify a few things. a-[e] wrote a piece that touched on some of these same notions. He took exception to the way I broke out the classes. I want to clarify that the classes that I am defining are social, not economic.
To that end, although economically your average white collar middle manager is no where near the CEO of the corporation he works for; socially they follow the same mores and hold to the same basic values and beliefs. We are not blind to the economics here, the economic status of individuals, will certainly have a lot to do with placement of an individual in the strata that exists within the Class.
That is same reason that I separate the Urban Poor from the Rural Working class. They may find themselves in the same tax bracket, but they do not have much in common in regards to mores and values. I label them as Urban and Rural, but these labels do not necessarily point to where the members of this Class Live. These labels describe where the values these classes embrace came from. There are people who are members of the Rural Working class who live in Suburban and Urban areas, but their values and mores would fit in rural Ohio or Texas.
Commenter, tantric siren, observes that I didn’t address the role education plays in promoting the class structure and by extension Classism. I did not mention in that post, but I certainly will address it here. The way we run our schools in this day and age has everything to do with the perpetuation of Classism in America.
The Public Schools serve to sort children into the proper class and keep them there. I’m not talking about a teacher who believes that blacks are lazy. I’m sure that happens, but what I’m talking about is actually built into the system. Good teachers as well as bad teacher are promoting it. It starts with the separating the ’smart’ kids from the ‘average’ kids. This is done at a very young age. The ’smart’ kids are separated from the others and get a more rigorous and challenging curriculum.
How are the smart kids picked out? Some fancy testing? No it is left to the teacher’s judgment. I have all the respect in the world for those who choose to teach. But neither that choice, nor the subsequent training, makes them qualified judges of intelligence. I’m sure there are plenty who would argue this point with me. But I feel strongly about this one. How are the teachers making these assessments? They are identifying the ’smart’ kids as though who are the better readers, have better math skills and those who are generally better prepared and follow instructions best.
One might think at first glance that this is a perfectly reasonable criterion for picking out the ’smart’ kids. But let’s look a little deeper. In grades 2, 3 and 4; can we really tell who has an aptitude for Math or English? No, we cannot. What we can see is performance. I assert that what we are really measuring in this process is not aptitude or intelligence, but the social background of the child. The schools ask that children come to kindergarten familiar with the alphabet and able to count and a couple of other basic things like that. Children of Middle Class families will, in all likelihood, come very prepared. On the other hand children from the Rural Working Class are much less likely to come to school with this background. And children from families that are Urban Poor almost certainly will not be prepared at all.
As the children progress through school, the differences in Class continue to be emphasized. The Children of the Middle Class will most likely get the most support and help at home with their school work. Those parents are the most likely to go to Teacher Conferences and communicate with the teachers in a way that the teacher’s are comfortable with. Even Johnny Middle Class is struggling with math, his parents will help the teacher to see what the problem is. At the same time, Suzy Working Class may be having the same problem, but her parents, who know that they were never very ’smart’ at math, assume that there is no problem, Suzy just doesn’t get it. Freddy Urban Poor’s parents on the other hand resent the schools system and ignore communication from the teachers.
The result of all of this is that the Middle Class kids are filtered into the ’smart classes.’ The names change depending on time and place, but the concept is constant. These students then receive the best recourses, the best teachers and the encouragement to go to college. Why the ’smart’ kids get more while everyone else gets less, is also symptomatic of the role that class plays I education. Common sense would tell us, that the ‘average’ and ‘dumb’ kids need more help and therefore more resources. Unfortunately, schools are run by common sense, they are run by the Board of Education. The Board members are elected officials, who have to publicly answer to the tax-payers. And guess which class is most mobilized in local politics: the Middle Class, of course. So the decisions of the Board reflect time and again the notion that the kids of the most influential members of community need to be taken care of.
Don’t think that this possible? I assure you it is. A local school system came up with a proposal to eliminate leveling, to mix the kids together and assure that they all received good instruction. When the proposal was put in front of the Board of Education, parent after parent stood up to say that they did not want their kids, the ’smart’ kids, to have to be in the class room with those others. The sentiment was, if we share the resources equally amongst all the children, it would cut into the ’smart’ kids’ chances at going to their chosen University.
In other words, they felt that it was fine to educate these other children, but not at the expense of their child receiving the finest education the system could provide. The result of this, over time, has been that we have a system that has schools inside of schools; a school for the children of the Middle Class and a school for everyone else.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are children from the other classes who are bright and push themselves who end up in the top classes. And there are Middle Class children who are unmotivated and maybe not so bright who drop down in to the ‘average’ classes. But as a rule, this how it works for most.
Can this be fixed? In theory, it would not be hard to implement. All we need to do is give all children the same level of education. But the reality is much more complicated. The Middle Class controls the School Board, and they want to see this system perpetuated. And even if some liberal minded members of the Middle Class could push through these reforms, it wouldn’t matter. The Middle Class would pull their children from public education, and either home school or send them to private schools. They would then demand Vouchers or fewer taxes spent on the schools, since they did not use them. ”Why should we support these schools?” They would ask. We have already seen this happen in the inner cities. Without the support of the Middle Class, the schools fail.
I wish I had better answers. I do not. But it seems to me that many of us have been participating blindly in this system of Classism. It is my hope that through awareness, some changes can be made.
