No war but the Class War

"...public schools in the complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and Glintis for example, have argued that students in different social-class backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behaviors that correspond to personality traits allegedly rewarded in the different occupational strata-- the working-classes for docility and obedience, the managerial classes for initiative and personal assertiveness."

I think it's important when thinking about a topic like this to consider what is being labeled "working-class" I say this because especially when you listen to political discourse it seems that everyone who isn't taking in at least a million dollars is "middle class" (example bush tax cuts for the "middle class") In Jean Anyon's study the working class of this New Jersey school district have an average family income of 12,000$ 15% are at or below the federal poverty income line. Less than 1/3 of fathers are in skilled labor, 15% are unemployed with 30%+ having working mothers. The school studied as working class had an 85% white population. I think its a fairly reasonable definition of working class especially with the statistics showing a majority of parents in unskilled labor. Now the quote itself is what I was rantingly happy about the Mclaren reading, the focused and critical equivocation that the system of organization which is the ideological base for the state-business power infrastructure has a direct impact on almost every structure branching off of it. So as when a Capitalist system in which the top 22% of the population own 87% of the capital income of the national economy the system they erect to indoctrinate children into this social structure is designed to maintain this stratification. The majority of the reading goes on to justify this point.

The working class-school: "work is following the steps of a procedure. the procedure is ussually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making and choice... One teacher explained to me, "simple punctuation is all they'll ever use."
It's interesting how threatening and scary it could be to teachers and other power holders to see a young white child talking to a black child about the autobiography of Malcolm X they just read. Imagine that they were inspired to be educated, organized, and active like Malcolm X, why, they might actually change something.

compared to the Executive Elite school: "Work is developing one's analytical intellectual powers. Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top ACADEMIC (emphasis added) quality."

When they define academia and control its easy for them to indoctrinate their children into it. Then when the children of the lower classes make an attempt to confront them intellectually and their told they can't even participate in the argument unless they know the "proper" vocabulary it shuts down discussion in much the same way as the "silenced dialogue

Marxists; getting things done since 1848

"The development of an underclass in American society can be linked not only to econmic stratification due to capitalist relations of exploitation but also to racial stratification."

I was sooooo very happy to hear someone say that one of the broad factors for racial stratification is right beneath its surface, economic stratification. And to top it off McLaren even openly convicts the capitalist system as its cause. It ties in Delpit and Macintosh because it not only recognizes the structuralism of the culture of power but calls it and its causes out by name.

"Resistance, then, is a process in which the working-class student further solidifies his or her position in the lowest tier of the class system, helping to confirm the views established by critical theorists that a nations educational system is subservient to its economic system."

I have two things to say about this quote. First is, YES! EXACTLY! when an economic system emphasizes core values as a means of attaining livelihood those values will bleed into every other system under it and human personality as a whole. Second as McLaren continues he goes on to say this emphasize of working-class and manual labor ideals is counter productive. I don't think it this falls into the same pitfall as Delpit in assuming that the way to abolish a culture of power is to first assimilate into it. The working class are still the backbone of society and therefore when they come to see themselves as such in a organized fashion that can thus abolish the system which keeps in the lowest of classes from the outside.


"Because the school system is structured tacitly to reinforce and reward middle-class values, attitudes, and behavior (therefore penalize the "deprived" by omission), educators and the public alike often assume that the failure of schools to educated disadvantaged is really the failure of the girls themselves."


The system is not broken, it isn't failing. In fact it is succeeding brilliantly it keeps the classes were they are and degrades their traditions and ways so as to make children reach for the assertions of the ruling class and imitate them. You can not fix what is not broken, you can only tear it down and rebuild anew.

some Cheese with your wine?

quote 1: "Despite the claim by the right that race-based scholarships amount to a double-standard (since scholarships for folks of color are considered legitimate, but white scholarships aren't), in truth, the standard is simple, straightforward and singular: persons belonging to groups that have been systematically marginalized in this society, should have opportunities targeted to them, so as to allow for the development of their full potential which otherwise might be restricted by said marginalization."

This extends passed both scholarships and race. When we talk about social services as if their "entitlements" we succumb to the same myth as the one propagated by the young republicans at Boston U. I think that article does a phenomenal job in proving its point through this and similar passages that the logic of the BU GOP doesn't fit. But I also hope that people take it passed that and see that this logic doesn't apply to most of the situations in which it gets brought up (unemployment, affirmative action, immigration, etc)


quote 2:"In effect, these are not scholarships based on race, but rather, scholarships based on a recognition of racism"

I think the one appropriate comment to this is, ZING
Wine:1 Boston U. GOP: 0

quote 3:"Bigotry is defined as "intolerance," and the behavior or attitude of someone who holds "blindly and intolerantly to a particular creed or opinion." Surely scholarships for people of color are not predicated on intolerance for whites, nor are they based on some kind of blind contempt for whites as a group. Rather they are rooted in the quite reasonable belief that people of color have been singled out for mistreatment on the basis of race, and thus, special efforts should be made to provide full opportunity to them "

This is, I think, such a vital clarification. Nothing is more aggravating then hearing middle class white Christians talk about how everyone is really actually racist towards them and biased against them. It does go back to the Delpit reading and the Carlson reading as well,these people have never really known what it is to be held back by their race or orientation and thus are completely ignorant of what it means to have that held against you. So when their privilege is stripped and the playing field at least partially equalized they feel cheated, cheated for their advantage.

"One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing. " Emma Goldman

The simple fact that this piece criticized the drive towards a reawakening of the Noblesse Oblige would have made it a winner with me already. Add to that the literary style in which a line is drawn so subtly towards the importance of deep and strong analysis of social ills and situations rather then a petite bourgeoisie-like moment of sympathy for the victims of social and institutional crimes make this article a treasure. In the end i feel the article makes a simple and old point, thought without action and action without thought are both equally counter productive and equally egotistical. Back on the subject of noblesse obilge the authors Joseph Kahne and Joel Westheimer compare the classic bourgeoisie sympathy card of Noblesse Oblige to the conservative lobby towards charity based service learning compared to deep analytic social  alaysis of change oriented service learning. As both Joel and Joseph say, "The experience was structured to promote giving rather than to provide the kind of understanding needed for the development of caring relationships.As a result, the student's description of the event lacked the perspective and input of those she was helping...The distance between the one caring and the one cared for diminishes.Unfortunately, in many service activities, students view those they serve as clients rather than as a resource." To me all it takes is one more of their quotes speaks for itself, ""Democratic politics," Benjamin Barber writes, "has become something we watch rather than something we do." Citizenship in a democratic community requires more than kindness and decency; it requires engagement in complex social and institutional endeavors. Acts of civic duty cannot replace government programs or forms of collective social action. Citizenship requires that individuals work to create, evaluate, criticize, and change public institutions and programs."