Connections to Other Readings: Finn, Kozol and Delpit
The Finn reading was an ideal follow up to the Kozol article. In the preface Finn addresses the idea that in the US we see illiteracy as the source of social problems that will become liabilities for “the rest of us.” The belief, as common as it is misguided, is that “if we could raise their level of literacy they would join the haves” leaving the ranks of the have-nots with the have-nots eventually disappearing.
Accompanying that notion is the myth that “our schools offer literacy equally to all comers, but somehow the have-nots refuse to take us up on our offer. They’re not smart enough or they’re lazy or simply perverse”. Finn does not believe this, of course, and goes on to explain that in the US we have created two kinds of education: empowering education and domesticating education. As Finn stated, “When rich children get empowering education nothing changes. But when working-class children get empowering education you get literacy with an attitude.” Unfortunately the kids who need empowering education are not getting it.
Additionally, Kozol provided us with many examples of the two-tier education of the haves and have-nots, of the “expensive” and “cheap” children. He documents the experiences of the latter whose schools, materials, educational resources and the very systems and curriculum by which they are educated are different from the rich and even from the middle class. These schools are subpar in funding, content and personnel and would not be tolerated by those with power, money or a voice. He tells us that the education provided children who are poor and those of color are meant to direct them toward work that is routine in nature requiring little critical thinking and certainly no post-secondary education. Inner-city kids are being groomed for “careers” as cashiers. Students in this world are not educated to learn but to follow directions as the future worker bees of America.
Also, Finn discusses Jean Anyon’s findings about fifth grade classes she observed 20 years ago. These findings have been repeatedly supported by more recent research according to Finn. Anyon reveals multiple tiers of education and divides the schools she observed in terms of economics. The schools she visited were as follows: working class, middle class, affluent professional and executive elite. Salaries of parents whose children are in the executive elite schools are in the top 1% in the nation and for the affluent professional, the top 10%. Middle class incomes were above the US average but well below the top 10%. The working class parents were skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled blue collar workers. The unemployed made up 15% of this group. Parents (and future generations) of those in the top two types of schools are the decision makers and power brokers of our world. The middle class is made up of social workers, accountants and middle managers.
Furthermore, Finn confirms what Kozol found 30 plus years ago and continues to find today. Inner city kids are in the ‘ghetto track’ to paraphrase the student named Fortino who said to Mireya in Kozol’s article, “You’re ghetto, so we send you to the factory.” Finn too found that when he taught he was “schooling these children not to take charge of their lives but to take orders” with classroom control, not learning, being his priority.
Specifically, Finn informs us that Anyon found that in the working-class schools knowledge was presented as “fragmented facts isolated from wider bodies of meaning and from the lives and experiences of the students. Work was following steps in a procedure.” This item made me think of Delpit who was concerned that kids were not getting the big picture or ‘the why’ of their tasks as well as the recognition that process was emphasized over product.
In addition Anyon went on to describe the working-class schools as requiring “little decision making or choice” needed to complete tasks. “Teachers rarely explained why work was being assigned or how it was connected to other assignments. Work was often evaluated in terms of whether the steps were followed rather than whether it was right or wrong.”
This is the complete opposite experience of learners in the affluent professional school and especially for those in the executive elite school. Anyon gave an example of a girl in a working-class school saying that she had a better way to achieve a task being presented but not explained by the teacher. That teacher shot that girl down (an exchange that would get a teacher in the elite and affluent schools fired!) and told her to conform to her methods as all others would be wrong. This would never happen in the top tier schools. Kids (really do) rule in those schools! There teachers want children to “think for themselves and to make sense of their own experience.”
Overall, the concept of work itself was defined differently within each school. Kids in the uppermost tier are educated to lead others, to take control and actually practice their sense of authority in the class. They are allowed to take the reins and seem to be the bosses of the teachers who see themselves in a lower class than the kids they teach. They are being groomed to take over the world! The next tier of affluent children were “learning to create products and art… learning to find rewards in work itself and to negotiate from a powerful position with those (the executive elite) who make the final decision on how real capital is allocated.” They too expect and are offered power in our society.
The two tiers that make up the majority, the working and middle class children, are both learning to follow orders. The working class learned to do mechanical low-paying work, taking the ‘ghetto track’ in school, as it is too often the only one offered. Middle class kids did not fare much better but are seen as able to learn how to do the “mental work that keeps society producing and running.” If they cooperate within the power structure they would have “rewards that well-paid middle class work makes possible outside the workplace” implying that satisfaction or fulfillment is not found in work.
In closing, I cannot help but get the sense that the inner-city and less affluent kids in our country are being punished. Kids in Kozol’s article believe that they are being hidden, as if they and the issues they face just in their schools (forget about the rest of their lives for the sake of argument) do not exist. I do not know if they are being punished because they are reminders of what some of us came from, even generations ago, or perhaps what we may go to with the next stock market downturn or job loss. I can only guess that somehow they remind us or cause us to think of something about us that we do not wish to see. Whatever “it” is, it needs to be acknowledged and named in order to be changed.
As Finn wrote, “the status quo is the status quo because people who have the power to make changes are comfortable with the way things are. It takes energy to make changes, and the energy must come from the people who will benefit from the change.” To some extent I agree. Then again, I agree with Delpit who stated that change does not come from the bottom up, not from the powerless. To me it seems that change must come from those with power, with pressure from below because to some extent, they must allow change to happen. In spite of the opposing philosophies the goal is the same: empower the masses through meaningful education and literacy.
The Finn reading was an ideal follow up to the Kozol article. In the preface Finn addresses the idea that in the US we see illiteracy as the source of social problems that will become liabilities for “the rest of us.” The belief, as common as it is misguided, is that “if we could raise their level of literacy they would join the haves” leaving the ranks of the have-nots with the have-nots eventually disappearing.
Accompanying that notion is the myth that “our schools offer literacy equally to all comers, but somehow the have-nots refuse to take us up on our offer. They’re not smart enough or they’re lazy or simply perverse”. Finn does not believe this, of course, and goes on to explain that in the US we have created two kinds of education: empowering education and domesticating education. As Finn stated, “When rich children get empowering education nothing changes. But when working-class children get empowering education you get literacy with an attitude.” Unfortunately the kids who need empowering education are not getting it.
Additionally, Kozol provided us with many examples of the two-tier education of the haves and have-nots, of the “expensive” and “cheap” children. He documents the experiences of the latter whose schools, materials, educational resources and the very systems and curriculum by which they are educated are different from the rich and even from the middle class. These schools are subpar in funding, content and personnel and would not be tolerated by those with power, money or a voice. He tells us that the education provided children who are poor and those of color are meant to direct them toward work that is routine in nature requiring little critical thinking and certainly no post-secondary education. Inner-city kids are being groomed for “careers” as cashiers. Students in this world are not educated to learn but to follow directions as the future worker bees of America.
Also, Finn discusses Jean Anyon’s findings about fifth grade classes she observed 20 years ago. These findings have been repeatedly supported by more recent research according to Finn. Anyon reveals multiple tiers of education and divides the schools she observed in terms of economics. The schools she visited were as follows: working class, middle class, affluent professional and executive elite. Salaries of parents whose children are in the executive elite schools are in the top 1% in the nation and for the affluent professional, the top 10%. Middle class incomes were above the US average but well below the top 10%. The working class parents were skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled blue collar workers. The unemployed made up 15% of this group. Parents (and future generations) of those in the top two types of schools are the decision makers and power brokers of our world. The middle class is made up of social workers, accountants and middle managers.
Furthermore, Finn confirms what Kozol found 30 plus years ago and continues to find today. Inner city kids are in the ‘ghetto track’ to paraphrase the student named Fortino who said to Mireya in Kozol’s article, “You’re ghetto, so we send you to the factory.” Finn too found that when he taught he was “schooling these children not to take charge of their lives but to take orders” with classroom control, not learning, being his priority.
Specifically, Finn informs us that Anyon found that in the working-class schools knowledge was presented as “fragmented facts isolated from wider bodies of meaning and from the lives and experiences of the students. Work was following steps in a procedure.” This item made me think of Delpit who was concerned that kids were not getting the big picture or ‘the why’ of their tasks as well as the recognition that process was emphasized over product.
In addition Anyon went on to describe the working-class schools as requiring “little decision making or choice” needed to complete tasks. “Teachers rarely explained why work was being assigned or how it was connected to other assignments. Work was often evaluated in terms of whether the steps were followed rather than whether it was right or wrong.”
This is the complete opposite experience of learners in the affluent professional school and especially for those in the executive elite school. Anyon gave an example of a girl in a working-class school saying that she had a better way to achieve a task being presented but not explained by the teacher. That teacher shot that girl down (an exchange that would get a teacher in the elite and affluent schools fired!) and told her to conform to her methods as all others would be wrong. This would never happen in the top tier schools. Kids (really do) rule in those schools! There teachers want children to “think for themselves and to make sense of their own experience.”
Overall, the concept of work itself was defined differently within each school. Kids in the uppermost tier are educated to lead others, to take control and actually practice their sense of authority in the class. They are allowed to take the reins and seem to be the bosses of the teachers who see themselves in a lower class than the kids they teach. They are being groomed to take over the world! The next tier of affluent children were “learning to create products and art… learning to find rewards in work itself and to negotiate from a powerful position with those (the executive elite) who make the final decision on how real capital is allocated.” They too expect and are offered power in our society.
The two tiers that make up the majority, the working and middle class children, are both learning to follow orders. The working class learned to do mechanical low-paying work, taking the ‘ghetto track’ in school, as it is too often the only one offered. Middle class kids did not fare much better but are seen as able to learn how to do the “mental work that keeps society producing and running.” If they cooperate within the power structure they would have “rewards that well-paid middle class work makes possible outside the workplace” implying that satisfaction or fulfillment is not found in work.
In closing, I cannot help but get the sense that the inner-city and less affluent kids in our country are being punished. Kids in Kozol’s article believe that they are being hidden, as if they and the issues they face just in their schools (forget about the rest of their lives for the sake of argument) do not exist. I do not know if they are being punished because they are reminders of what some of us came from, even generations ago, or perhaps what we may go to with the next stock market downturn or job loss. I can only guess that somehow they remind us or cause us to think of something about us that we do not wish to see. Whatever “it” is, it needs to be acknowledged and named in order to be changed.
As Finn wrote, “the status quo is the status quo because people who have the power to make changes are comfortable with the way things are. It takes energy to make changes, and the energy must come from the people who will benefit from the change.” To some extent I agree. Then again, I agree with Delpit who stated that change does not come from the bottom up, not from the powerless. To me it seems that change must come from those with power, with pressure from below because to some extent, they must allow change to happen. In spite of the opposing philosophies the goal is the same: empower the masses through meaningful education and literacy.
I love how summarized this article and connected it to other readings in class. I also feel that our urban students and students of low-socio economic class are being pushed to the side. There is no one person to blame or that one person that can fix the problems. I think that change will occur with the problem being brought to the surface or what it is, discrimination. Once we start using taboo words, people of authority and power will be more likely to pay attention to it.
ReplyDeleteHoly crap Danielle was awake working at 4:09 am
ReplyDeletesorry off topic.
Holy crap is right! :-)
ReplyDelete**************************************
It is true that as Johnson (or was it Delpit?? this summer has been a blur) said, we must use the word(s) even if it makes people mad or squeamish. And that word and problem IS discrmination. You are right.
This is a great summary of the article! In your summary you describe one part of the article where a student tries to explain a different way of solving the problem, but the teacher refuses to listen and tells her to do it the way she was taught. This reminded me of Delpit's article. Delpit states, "I tentatively attribute the problem to teachers' resistance to exhibiting power in the classroom." She goes on to say, "the teacher cannot be the only expert in the classroom. To deny students their own expert knowledge is to disempower them."
ReplyDeleteJenn: Thanks for bringing that back to Delpit and how children are disempowered. That is the complete opposite of kids in the affluent and executive elite schools described by Anyon.
ReplyDelete