Recognizing Class in the Classroom | Part 1

It is difficult to find resources for teaching that incorporate class difference. Teaching to Transgress, by bell hooks, is an exception. She declares: “Class is rarely talked about in the United States; nowhere is there a more intense silence about the reality of class differences than in educational settings” (p. 177). Continuing, hooks observes that the belief that we are participating in the educational process in order to “move up” the class ladder is simply assumed. We can hardly pronounce the word “higher” in “higher education” without presuming a desire for class power. This means that the values of class elites pervade educational institutions and classrooms. The Education Trust concludes that today, in the United States, rampant economic inequality means that colleges are transformed into “… playgrounds for the children of the wealthiest in our country and the world” (Nichols & Santos). Even the most well-endowed schools, as this report documents, do very little to educate students from working-class families. Consequently, as Ryan and Sackrey assert: “In short, our conclusion is that the academic work process is essentially antagonistic to the working class, and academics, for the most part, live in a different world of culture, different in ways that also make it antagonistic to working-class life” (p. 107, emphasis in original). 

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to discussing class in educational contexts today is a political climate that constantly sets cultural identities, such as race and gender, over against class. In this environment, even the mention of the word “class” arouses fear that the problems of racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination will be pushed aside. This is understandable, given that media pundits, for instance, repeatedly attribute Trump’s victory to “the white working class.” Some progressives, noting the racist and sexist rhetoric of the Trump campaign, have concluded that class talk is therefore nothing but a cover for racism. This debate is not enlightening. As I have noted in some of my writings, class power is implicated in the production of racism, sexism, and xenophobia; and therefore class-based, racially-based, and gender-based oppressions rise and fall together. This is not an either/or.

So, what can we do as teachers? First, we would do well to amplify the voices of African-Americans, Hispanics, and others in the room from marginalized populations. This is not the same as beginning with an abstract discussion of intersectionality that starts out from racism. I am talking about paying attention to particular people who are in the room: what they think, how they feel, and what is expressed through their bodies, especially when matters touching on class come up during discussion. As hooks reports: “Often, African Americans are among those students I teach from poor and working-class backgrounds who are most vocal about issues of class” (p. 182). My own history in the classroom fits hooks’ reflection. I am no authority as to the reasons for this. I do recall my own experience, as a white male coming from the working class sitting in university and graduate school classes. I was extremely anxious to fit in and to please my professors. One result was that I usually hid my working-class roots. In retrospect, in addition to avoiding shame, I suspect I was unconsciously attuned to the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist biases within higher education, and was not willing to buck a system I was well-poised to partake in when I completed my training. Could it be that students from marginalized groups implicitly understand they are less likely to be “admitted” in the same way, and thus are more willing to share their class-related life experience?

(To be continued)

References:

hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. 

Nichols, Andrew Howard, & Santos, José Luis (August, 2016). A Glimpse Inside the Coffers: Endowment Spending at Wealthy Colleges and Universities. Washington, DC: The Education Trust. Retrieved from: LINK.

Ryan, Jake, & Sackrey, Charles. (1996). Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc.