I sit here reflecting on both the research paper written by Jean Anyon, “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” and the article by Professor X “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower”, I am struck with a profound thought. I have been asking myself some of the very same questions from the Professor X article. Have I screwed up? “I am trying desperately to get to a place where I do not have to”? “I am showing up for class exhausted from working my full-time job, carrying a briefcase overspilling with the contents of my hectic life”. So many of his statements rang true. The most profound thought I’ve had recently, even prior to reading these two papers, “Am I prepared educationally to enter into the college learning experience?

As I sit in class some nights thinking “why does this sound so foreign to me”, “I’m not really sure what they mean by that”, “I really don’t ever think I’ve had to write an essay” or “I don’t ever remember talking about that in school” I start to question my preparedness. Then, enters Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”. BINGO!!! No, I was never prepared for this…

I was actually eleven years of age when Anyon’s study was underway. How ironic that I could have actually been one of those elementary school students she was researching.

Reading Senior High School

Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, I entered into my educational experience in an intercity school system made up of clusters of elementary schools throughout the “Urban Jungle”. The daughter of two blue-collar workers, dad a candy line worker and mom a sewing machine operator in a local mill, they did the best they could to get me into the Northeast section of the city as we just moved into the home that would turn out to be the one I grew up in and to which they still live, just before my kindergarten years

                                                                                                                     

The Northeast section was thought to be the more affluent section of the city, but, it was still the city. I would categorize it into a combination of “working class schools” and “middle-class schools” from Anyon’s research. And looking back on the quality of my education, it is very much the building blocks contributing to who I am today.



12th and Marion Elementary School

It saddens me to think that the path of children’s success can be based on the “class” their parents find themselves in, which in many cases is the result of the “class” of their parents and grand-parents, etc. To find facts behind research showing the lack of encouragement for creativity, self-thought, and quite frankly, free-will in the working and middle class schools, I’m not sure why the need to “control” the learning experience in this way was encouraged. Is it any wonder I sit and question myself even to this day?

I stated at one point that I felt I lacked guidance from my school system. I was never really encourage to pursue anything other than enter into the working class, take a few business courses, general accounting, typing (computers were not on the scene yet) and dictation, “you can become a secretary, it will keep you out of the factories”. I was not prepared to be a Doctor or Lawyer or Executive, but prepared for the “cubicle farm”. This is why I’m trying so desperately to get to the place I WANT to be. To prove that the classification you were labeled with as a child is just that, only a label. Labels can be ripped off and replaced. But it is a very eye opening experience to begin to understand a little more each day how children are most often times products of their environment. Again the question arises… Nature or Nurture?