Analysis of 'Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work'
Context Analysis of “From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Summary. In Jean Anyon’s essay “From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, Anyon shares her discovery of a “hidden curriculum” within schools in differing economic and social classes. Anyon observes five elementary schools throughout one school year to compare and distinguish how fifth-graders from different economic classes are being taught and how their quality of education affects their development and the cycle of unjust social relations in employment.
As a social activist, professor of educational policy in the Urban Education Doctoral Program at the City University of New York, and a Fellow of the National Education Policy Center since its start (NEPC,1), Anyon is undeniably passionate and well versed about the class system’s effect on education. Anyon’s profession and devotion for quality education is apparent in this essay as well as in her life, work and purpose as she conveys her knowledge through analyzing the disparities in lower-level or “working class” schools to the middle class, professional, and executive elite schools. She argues that students in upper socio-economic classes are accommodated into an education that prepares them for high-paying careers and that less fortunate students are taught without technique, this accommodation consequently determining their futures as blue or white collar job workers. Anyon presents a most compelling argument as she runs through her findings.
Anyon begins her essay acknowledging that scholars in the political economy have argued that public schools “make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes”. She mentions Bowles and Gintis, authors of “Schooling in Capitalist America” as one of those scholars and mentions that students in different socio-economic backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behavior that corresponds to traits that are rewarded in different occupational ranks. Anyon’s ability to present gripping information from credible scholars, especially in the very beginning of her essay, exhibits her credibility and values as a writer who knows the difference between credible and useful information versus misleading and dull information.
Anyon also addresses the weaknesses of her findings disclosing that “further research should be conducted in a large number of schools to investigate the types of work tasks and interactions in each to see if they differ in the ways discussed here”. This addresses the assumptions and questions her specific audience, professional educators, may have. Considering she had only investigated five schools comprising of two working class schools, and one each of middle-class, affluent professional, and executive elite schools, Anyon conveys that she is aware of the small sample size in her study, but also reminds her audience that there have been others that have proven students’ and/or their families’ socio-economic status affects their education, pointing out that sociologists of education, Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bordieu, as well as educational theorist Michael W. Apple have argued that “knowledge and skills leading to social power and regard are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes”.
Further proving her credibility through her life, work, and purpose, Anyon is also an author of many books that concern the relation between socio-economic status and quality of education such as “Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban and Educational Reform”, “Marx and Education”, and “Radical Possibilities: Public Policy, Urban Education, and a New Social Movement”. According to Margalit Fox from The New York Times, “Professor Anyon spent her career analyzing the web of socioeconomic factors that make public schools work — or fail”. It is evident that standards of education were important to Anyon because these books are most of which Anyon has written, along with many articles, which indicates that most of her literature and life works were on the topic of the standard of education and its importance in our society.
Anyon also expresses her values in many of her works, revealing most of the purpose in her writing. One example of this is in Anyon’s “Ghetto Schooling: A Political Economy of Urban and Educational Reform” in which she says “to really improve ghetto childrens’ chances, then, in school and out, we must ultimately, therefore, eliminate poverty; we must eliminate the ghetto school by eliminating the underlying causes of ghettoization” exhibiting her assertiveness in pushing for the understanding of the importance of a proper, just education and how valuable it could be for many.
To conclude, Jean Anyon, esteemed scholar, prolific author, and advocate for fair education, put forth an amazing argument by exhibiting her credibility through her life, work, and purpose, setting her essay “From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” and herself as examples of how an author’s life, work, and purpose are important in conveying relevance and grasping the full picture of one’s writing.
