I’ve read this article about three times now. The Marxist ideal of transformation doesn’t obsess me as much as my conclusion that the differences in “school knowledge” that Anyon describes, as dictated by social class, are true, and have become more deeply entrenched each year since she wrote this piece (in 1981).
Tomorrow my students get an earful. They have the (un?)fortunate fate of a teacher insistent on being honest with them about the state of the world and one who refuses to let them get away with any less thinking than the “Executive Elite Class” does, regardless of their situation of birth. I can’t dictate the outcome of students’ lives, but I can insist on providing them with options.
Click here to read Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and School Knowledge.”
A Rockridge Life 