Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Peter Siner

Talking Points

From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work
JEAN ANYON

1.“In a sense, some whole schools are on the vocational education track, while others are geared to produce future doctors, lawyers, and business leaders.”

This generalized concept seems to be quite broad considering the study was done using only five different schools out of the thousands in the United States. The author doesn’t really note the school locations as far as state or even city or town. I am personally very skeptical that school boards base their agenda off of what they want their students to be especially considering most of the concepts and regulations are state wide and not restricted to one individual school. If this study were to be taken more seriously they probably should have broadened their horizon and studies a few more schools in states across the country. Another factor that is not put in detail is if the elementary schools are private or public and which is which.  These schooling methods don’t necessarily have to be linked to the occupation of the parents but the average family income the children have in the different schools. Obviously a student in a poor family with laborers as parents, in a poor neighborhood, and attending a poor school is going to have a different life than a student coming from a family of doctors, living in a rich neighborhood and attending a private school. It seems as if a lot of these studies try to focus on linking two aspects of something that don’t necessarily exist.

2. “In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice”

“In the executive elite school, work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers”

Just the way the author words these two very different schools, the first having manufacturing/laborer parents and the second with parents with affluent professionals. The first reads that the students follow steps while the second describes the children as developing analytical intellectual powers, kind of a strong set of characteristics for a child? In many elementary schools the way students learn is very “to the book” and not all schools allow their children to free flow. This is after all elementary school; if it were high school or college these two very different descriptions of the school would make much more sense.

The school district requires the fifth grade to study ancient civilization (in particular, Egypt, Athens, and Sumer). In this classroom, the emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the culture of the people of ancient times.

The students that have parents that are doctors and lawyers etc. seem to have a much more extensive workload. In the fifth grade this particular school was teaching their students about ancient civilizations and recreating the culture of the people. This seems like quite a bit to ask for from fifth grade CHILDREN. However this might make a little more sense if the doctor and lawyers parents were paying tuition like bill for their children to be in the schools, which would make sense if the families are so wealthy. A private school that charges for enrollment and is in charge of educating the children of the rich is not going to be performing as well as the school in the city that instructs their fifth graders to read 10 pages a night. It only makes sense that a school like this would out-perform an average public school. It seems once again there are flaws to the study done. It isn’t hard to find cases of extremity in anything if you search hard enough for it. The question for me is what is the biggest factor? The correlation between the parent’s occupations and the school lesson plan, or the correlation between the areas income and the school plan?