Nashaya Lyons-Watson

9/24/15

English 1100

Prof. Young

Education at its Finest

Social class and education. Did you ever think those two were intertwined closely? Does your social class dictate the quality of education you get today? Those questions are brought up throughout Jean Anyon’s article “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”. She examined many of schools throughout New Jersey in the 1980s that aligned with the social classes of Working-Class, Middle-Class, Affluent Professional, and Executive Elite. Looking at all of them I closely relate to middle-class considering that is where my parents stand. I went to a public school in the South Orange-Maplewood district. I would say that I received a good education from there from start to finish. I believe that the curriculum has strayed away from that idea of what should be taught to you based on your social class. I have observed personally how some of Anyon’s statements are worn and not related to today's world. Going off of my educational experiences my teachers would almost always encourage us to talk and ask questions in any class or outside of class.

Even with sensitive topics that were happening in the media they wanted to hear our opinion and what we through off it. An example would be our walk out last year for Ferguson we were told to come back in but our principal also told us that she was proud that we had spoken up and expressed out rights. Taking that into account my school was very welcoming to all of our individual voices in the classroom as well as outside of it. Along with expressing ourselves they let us analysis and take in every experience our classes had to offer.

Such as in our science classes like biology, chemistry, forensics and physics we did the experiment ourselves with some guidance from our teachers. Experiment that messed with mixing chemicals testing the limits of gravity and other sorts. They would give us handouts with directions to follow, but not to get a right answer but a result we could analysis and make something of. Realizing that I notice that it contradicts some of Anyon’s points on how the middle-class education is offered. In the beginning of her paragraph about the middle class she states “In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer.” It wasn’t always that cut and dry they wanted us to understand and analysis the answer we got in any class. In addition I know that analysing was a big thing for my English classes. My English classes were filled with many opportunities to analysis a readings and to question it. We also got to write many different type of papers from research papers, to short stories, and even poems. Following that my English classes didn’t just consist of simple grammar. We might have not talked about it as often but they didn’t stop at grammar for everyday life. They made sure we were prepared to write anything that was thrown our way. Compared to the article “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” this wouldn’t follow what was stated. What Anyon says on middle-class writing is “simple grammar, what they need for everyday.” “They should speak properly, to write business letters and thank-you letters and to understand nouns and verbs and simple subjects are.” Doesn’t seem to match today’s schooling in any way. I would say my school more dotes upon the likeness of the Affluent Professional. I say this because how she describes the atmosphere of that certain social class relates to my experiences in the middle-class area. She states in the affluent professional section that “Work is creative activity carried out independently. The students are continually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts.” Seeing this statement describes my middle-class education, although it was written to apply to the affluent professional this makes me see that Anyon’s research is flawed. If I could change one thing about her research I would probably make it a longitude one showing the growth of the school system and the changes. Just like the world and its people are evolving so is the school system. A lot has changed since 1980 and this research can no longer reflect on what today brings.