Talking point 8

Jean Anyon - Social class and the hidden curriculum of work

"In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently"
This was a novel idea for me. School for me usually involved worksheets, tests, and one-word right-or-wrong answers. I think this is why I still prefer objective testing styles over subjective ones, because this is what I am familiar with. I think that as a teacher it would be a great idea for me to show my students that I value their ideas and thought processes enough to want more than a one word answer from them.

"In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers"
Another foreign concept for me. Even in college I have had classes where the professor only cared if you could come up with the one correct answer, not the route you took to arrive there. I have actually had a college professor say to a student in a freshman psychology class "You're a freshman, you don't get to have an opinion yet"

"School experience, in the sample of schools discussed here, differed qualitatively by social class"
This is a main issue of this article. Unfortunately, it's obvious to everybody that schools definitely differ greatly amoung the social classes. This just serves as one more roadblock placed in the way of lower social-class and minority populations by the "culture of power". It is one more way that certain people are kept "in their place"