Social Class Effects On Education

Social class has always had an effect on different aspects of people’s lives. However one effect that has recently come to light is social class’s affect on education. Social class is no longer just a harmless label for many; it affects the education of many students around the United States. Anyon’s Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, Mantsios’ Class in America, and Kozol’s Still Separate, Still Unequal all touch on the topic of how social class effects education in public schools in the past and present. All three authors bring something important to an analysis of the relationship and so taking from each author helps best describe how the American public school system fails to give students of the lower class equal opportunities

Anyon argues that schools have different curriculum and ways of teaching for students of different social classes. These different types of education correspond to personality traits that are deemed appropriate in different occupations. Working classes require obedience and compliance while upper class occupations require creativity and ingenuity. In a social experiment, Anyon reflects on how different schools representing different social classes differ in teaching style. Students in “working class” schools learn in a mechanical way that requires rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. Students are not allowed to think for themselves rather the teacher is the one who thinks for them. For example, after a science experiment the teacher wrote questions to be answered on a note card for the students to answer. The students were not allowed to come up with their own questions. The teacher also told them how much to write and what books to use. The teacher explained to the observer that they must tell the students what to do or the students would not be able to do it. Students that were enrolled in “middle class” schools were given a little bit more freedom than the students of the working class. The students were still required to follow directions; however the directions often required some figuring, choice, and decision making. The children must often figure out by

One of Mantsios’ realities is that class standing has a significant impact on chances for educational achievement. Mantsios defines class by family income and the effectiveness of education based on standardized tests such as the SAT. In a study for the Carnegie Council on Children, a relationship can be seen between social class and scores on standardized tests. As the family income of a student increases so do the median SAT scores. Richard De Lone came to the conclusion that the higher the student’s social class, the better the chance that he/she will get higher grades. William Sewell showed a positive correlation between class and overall educational achievement. When the top quartile was compared with the bottom quartile, he found that students from upper-class families were twice as likely to obtain training beyond high school and four times as likely to attain a post-graduate degree. Sewell’s research proved that the higher the social class a student belonged to, the greater the probability of higher educational achievement. This study relates to the conclusions of Anyon that different social classes are given different curriculums and teaching styles which very well can affect school performance as shown in De Lone’s study. As Mantsios shows how the different teaching styles discussed in Anyon effects academic performance, Kozol exposes why some