Education and Class

While I normally clench my teeth when reading  anything that seems to be essentializing class (“middle class people are like …. working class people are like…”), I’m instead nodding at parts of  this post on the Civic Fabric blog that speaks to how middle-class and working-class parents may work from different conceptualizations of the term “individualism”.

I read Kussorow’s (cited in the CF post) book American Individualisms: Child Rearing and Social Class in Three Neighborhoods a few years ago and liked much of it. I paused to highlight this passage:

The basic difference in these forms of individualism lies in the Queens [working class] parents’ conceptions of the child’s self as a singular “unit” against the world, as contrasted to the view held by Parkside [upper middle-class] parents of the child’s self as a singular unit “opening up” or out into the world.  A toughening, hardening, thickening of the boundaries of the self is thus part of the process of child development for Queenstown parents  … For Parkside parents, the socialization of soft indvidualism involves a more fluid conception of the self in which the child is encouraged to loosen the self, express feelings, unfold, and open out into the world.

But I think that I might read this through different lenses than some others might.

I think of my own parents who, from the moment of my birth,  had aspirations that I would be “better” than them.  I think of how they knew, at some level, that I was headed for situations in which being tough and tenacious would serve me infinitely better than would coming to  understand myself as a  gently unfolding flower.

Given the circumstances of their own lives, they had to have had some sense  that I’d face situations in which I would be positioned against the worlds  they hoped I’d enter.

And they were right.

I look back to my own schooling for any evidence available my parents that they could let their (and my) guard down as they steered me toward the middle class.  I believe that my parents sensed, as we did as students, that many of our teachers saw working with us as evidence of their own failed ambitions and that they blamed our parents for our many shortcomings.

They had to understand that it was unlikely that anyone would be waiting with open arms as I first stepped into their social terrain.  They had to understand that the odds were against me.

So while I’m intrigued by the civic questions in CF’s post about class differences in the readiness to embrace educational change (and share his intrigue with questions of how digital learning might better serve poor and working class kids), I want to pivot from his recommendation that perhaps the parents of these kids shouldn’t retain local control of their schools.

What if working class parents’ lives weren’t shaped by circumstances that require toughness and hardness?  What if educators who are puzzled that working class children don’t talk readily about their feelings understood that their parents’ days are laced with frustration and humiliation — and that no one wants to hear about that?

What if, rather than asking parents “what do you think of this idea that we assume is best for your children”, they instead sometimes asked “what do you want for your children and how can we work together on that?”

How would working class parents raise their children then?

So, in part, I’m annoyed today because a Big Deal journal just sat on my submission for 14 months before sending me a “revise (a lot) and resubmit”.

If a first generation student on my campus was that late turning in a project – without explanation –there’d be grumbling in the lunch room about how “those kids” just can’t get their acts together.  Tongues would wag.

But in the bigger picture, I’ve been thinking about the challenges of publishing work about class when frankly, there are still a lot of academics who aren’t yet clear about why class matters.

Some of the specific challenges I see:

1. A  dearth of reviewers who are current with how the field is developing.

Thus, reviewers  have sometimes critiqued my papers for not confirming (or even citing) Anyon’s classroom study from 30 years ago — a study of schooling in  very different economic times and in very different ed policy climate.

And on two different conference proposals, reviewers have been dismayed that I’m not citing heavily enough from Bowles and Gintis, a text I read in college in the 70s.

If I hadn’t read much in the  field of math education since 1982, I’d never be asked to be a gatekeeper for current research in that field. But I’m often amazed at how reviewers of my work seem to simultaneously be trying to establish their own credibility by pulling out the “classics” while questioning mine for having moved on.

2. The persistent conflation of race and class in the literature.

I recently  scanned the indices of a  number of popular education texts on critical pedagogy. What do you find when you look up  “social class”?  Discussions about poor urban kid of color.  Over and over.  Read the descriptions  for sessions in the AERA program indexed as “social class”?  Nearly all are cross referenced with “urban education”.

Thus, many reviewers seem not to know how to make sense of work that interrogates class more broadly.  In one recent manuscript, I’d clearly explained that I was writing about how white teachers make sense of their class backgrounds when working with privileged and with working class kids in their suburban schools.  A reviewer wrote that “race is the elephant in the room”.

Huh?

3.  Limited general understanding of social class, and therefore an expectation that every manuscript start from the ground up.

In a recent article I had stated as background (and cited a number of supporting references) that in the U.S., most people just assume that they’re middle class.   A reviewer would not recommend publication until I explained why that was the case.

Well, that would take pages, wouldn’t it?  And those references that I cite?  They’ve already talked about that question at length.

Reviewers have too often expected me shape my writing to fill their own particular  gaps in knowledge, or to make every manuscript “Social Class 101″ .  We’re not yet at a point where we can assume basic background knowledge among reviewers.   See  challenge # 1 above.

4. Dismissing the question.

White reviewers reading submissions on race, and men reviewing submissions on gender know, at some level, that they need to bracket their own experiences into some place off to the side.  They know — because these are the norms of scholarship — that their perspectives are incomplete.

Middle class reviewers of works on poor and working class experiences still sometimes want to dismiss the significance of even asking about class.

5. A “zero sum” mentality.

At nearly every conference presentation on class that take the conversation beyond urban education that I’ve been in (my own presentations and others), someone stands up and makes a speech about how, if we start talking about class, white people will have an excuse to stop talking about  race.    Another version of this is that people talking about class are really arguing that class is more important than race.

As if white people are already talking so much about race.

And as if we can’t have multiple and overlapping conversations.

As if there’s nothing to be learned about race by also talking about intersections with class.

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So, before I get more worked up (14 months!)  I’ll add just two more things.

If you’re in a position to review manuscripts on class and education for journals and conferences, be sure that you’ve checked that box on the “professional interests”  forms in which we volunteer for such work.  And if you haven’t volunteered to be a reviewer, please do.

And, I’ll ask: what obstacles are you all seeing to publishing and/or getting access to solid work on class and education in these complicated times?

How can we  forward?