In The Moral Significance of Class, Andrew Sayer writes:
Condescension, deference, shame, guilt, envy, resentment, arrogance, contempt, fear and mistrust, or simply mutual incomprehension and avoidance, typify relations between people of different classes. Some people may be, or want to be, respectful, considerate, and warm to individuals from other classes, but the inequalities themselves are likely to frustrate their attempts by tainting them with suspicions of condescension, disrespect, or unwanted familiarity.
Clearly, more stands in the way of poor and working class kids than their test scores. When peer relationships form along class lines, and when teachers act as representatives of the middle class, can teachers name the implicit tensions, the wariness, the incomprehension for they are? Can teachers become credible to kids from backgrounds very different from their own without first acknowledging the social distances from which teachers and kids view each other across class boundaries?
Education and Class 