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Summary Of Social Class And The Hidden Curriculum Of Work By Jean Anyon

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In "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work", Jean Anyon examines how social class affects the quality of the education a child receives. Before writing this piece, Anyon researched by observing classroom behavior in five different elementary schools from four different social classes: the working class, middle class, professional class, and elite class. She did this for a full year, and noticed many discrepancies in the quality of education between schools: different skills and behaviors were emphasized/rewarded, and the teachers treated students much differently. Anyon's conclusion after this is that why teachers behave differently in schools of different social classes is because of a "hidden curriculum" that only prepares students …show more content…

More value is placed on children and families with more money, while working-class schools often receive incredibly poor education. As Anyon states, "Differing curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize differing cognitive and behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital, to authority, and to the process of work." (151) When pupils at lower-class schools are only instructed to memorize and not to think for themselves, they're set up to be at a large disadvantage to those who've received an upper-class education and learned how to draw their own conclusions and really assert themselves. This disadvantage manifests primarily in the types of jobs available to such students after graduation, and subsequently, the social class that they'll fall into given their income level. Working-class students are more likely to get blue-collar jobs, while students from the professional or elite class will land higher up the corporate ladder. If this dangerous trend continues to occur, there'll be almost no chance for working-class or middle-class students to move up the various social classes or create a better life, since they've been subject to a far poorer education than their wealthier

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When taking a look into Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, readers are apprised of the hidden agendas many schools have. In this article, Anyon focuses on the curriculum and student-teacher interaction from five New Jersey elementary schools located in different communities with different levels of socioeconomic status. Anyon attempts to find evidence of the differences in student work in schools in wealthy communities versus those in poor communities, in an effort to bolster the argument that public schools in society provide different forms of knowledge. Through her researcher, she was able to determine that working class schools limited students; the students were given steps to follow and they were graded based on how well they followed directions—this level of education was preparing students for the labor force as blue collar workers. In addition, the affluent professional school and the middle-class school focused on attaining the correct answer, but allowed individuals to have a choice of appropriate method and material.

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