Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work Reading Response

         "The Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work" is an article written by Jean Anyon, and Educator at Rutgers University, Newark. She observed five elementary schools over the course of a year. The things that she observed were interesting. Elementary schools in different economic environments teach and prepare students in different ways. According to Anyon, there are four different classifications of schools. There are the "working-class schools", the "middle-class schools", "Affluent Professional schools", and "Executive Elite schools". Each type of school prepares the students differently. As you can imagine, the working class schools are at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, all the way up to the executive elite schools at the top of the ladder.
       In the working class schools, students are expected to do their work with as much effort as they can give. Work is not always about getting the right answer. They are almost always given steps and a procedure for getting the answer, little decision making is involved. Teachers rarely explain to the students why they have been given the assignment.  In the middle class schools, success means getting the right answer. Effort is considered in the grading of the students' work, but mainly, the teachers are looking for the right answer. Even though it is most important for students to get the right answer, effort is still evaluated to an extent. Usually in these types of schools, the answer is found without an extreme amount of effort, perhaps in books, class notes, or from the teachers lesson. Teachers will sometimes explain to the students the relation of the assignment to what they are learning. A teacher might explain the relation of the work to life, or even to a potential career path. In the affluent professional school, teachers are doing less teachers for the assignment or for the test and more teachers for the rest of the students life. Students in this type of school have to carry out a lot more thought on their own than the students in their respective schools lower on the socio-economic ladder. Students also have to do a lot of critical thinking and analysis of ideas. A lot of the students work relates to life or to a potential career, or at least to work that they will have further on in their academic careers. Teachers will often explain the reasons for the assignments that the students are completing. The last type of school is the Executive Elite School. In this type of school, students are trained for success. The assignments that they are given relate directly to life and careers. Students are sometimes asked to relate the assignments themselves. Critical thinking is a very large part of this type of school. Students are trained to think about their potential career as early as 4th or 5th grade. If you compare a student from this type of school to a student of the same age from the working class school, you will find them vastly different. Another big difference in these schools are the involvement of parents. In the affluent professional school, parents are heavily involved in their child's education, sometimes they even pay large amounts of money to ensure that the education that the student is receiving is top notch. In the working class schools, parents don't care as much, and even if they do, most of the time, their is little that they can do to help their child get a good education because of financial constraints and time constraints. Most of the parents of these children work very hard, often at two or three jobs to barely be able to provide for their children.
        I think that Anyon argued her point well that students of different economic backgrounds get very different types of education. She explains each type of school thoroughly and gives examples of how students are taught from each type of school. She explains the processes of teaching and helps us understand why each school is the way it is. Obviously Anyon assumes that the reason for these different types of schools are because of financial reasons and a lack of resources. I wonder why the government would let their be such a large gap in the education of children. All children should have an equal chance to have a good life/career. When some students are being so well prepared for careers and others are barely even being prepared for middle school, everything is not equal. I would like to know if the government has any plans towards bridging this education gap.
       I definitely agree with the point of view of Jean Anyon. She makes good points. She shows how the schools really operate. I agree that there is a big difference in the education of students from different economic backgrounds. This is a big reason that some students have better reasoning and analytical skills. I think that something definitely needs to be done about this gap.
       "These differences may not only contribute to the development in the children in each social class of certain types of economically significant relationships and not others but would thereby help to reproduce this system of relations in society." This is my golden line from the article because it gives a good explanation of the article and why these processes of different kinds of schooling are bad. It also gives a good overview of what the article is about.