How does social class effect education?
This link should take you to the instructions and readings needed to complete https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_jlbzHG5CzOIB5Seq8I-O-axgi-Sxbe2dX59nKByJWI/edit
PostInstructions:
1. After reading and annotating Freire’s and Anyon’s pieces, mine them for evidence you could
use to explain how you think education relates to class in this country and how you think it
should relate and why.
Write your mini essay in a separate document, and make sure it
includes the following elements:
a. A clear/appealing title that reflects your thesis or does some work to help set it up for your
reader
b. An introduction that introduces your topic in an appealing way, making your reader want to
keep reading
c. At least three paragraphs, using evidence (quotes, paraphrases, summaries) to support and
develop your thesis.
d. A powerful conclusion that drives your thesis home.
Required Readings
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. New York:
Continuum, 2007 (1993).
CHAPTER 2
A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school,
reveals its fundamentally narrative character. This relationship involves a narrating subject (the
teacher) and patient, listening objects (the students). The contents, whether values or empirical
dimensions of reality, tend in the process of being narrated to become lifeless and petrified.
Education is suffering from narration sickness.
The teacher talks about reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and
predictable. Or else he expounds on a topic completely alien to the existential experience of the
students. His task is to “fill” the students with the contents of his narration–contents which are
detached from reality, disconnected from the totality that engendered them and could give them
significance. Words are emptied of their concreteness and become a hollow, alienated, and
alienating verbosity.
The outstanding characteristic of this narrative education, then, is the sonority of words, not their
transforming power. “Four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem.” The student
records, memorizes, and repeats these phrases without perceiving what four times four really
means, or realizing the true significance of”capital” in the affirmation “the capital of Para is
Belem,” that is, what Belem means for Para and what Para means for Brazil.
Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to
72 ·PAULO FREIRE
memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers,” into
“receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the
better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the
better students they are.
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the
teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and
makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the
“banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends
only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity
to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the
people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and
knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis,
individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention,
through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world,
with the world, and with each other.
In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider
themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an
absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates
education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students
as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he· justifies his own
existence. The students, alienated like the slave in the Hegelian dialectic, accept their ignorance
as justifying the teacher’s existence–but, unlike the slave, they never discover that they educate
the teacher.
The raison d’etre of libertarian education, on the other hand, lies in its drive towards
reconciliation. Education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by
reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students.
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED· 73
This solution is not (nor can it be) found in the banking concept. On the contrary, banking
education maintains and even stimulates the contradiction through the following attitudes and
practices, which mirror oppressive society as a whole:
(a) the teacher teaches and the students are taught;
(b) the teacher knows everything and the students know nothing;
(c) the teacher thinks and the students are thought about;
(d) the teacher talks and the students listen–meekly;
(e) the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined;
(f) the teacher chooses and enforces his choice, and the students comply;
(g) the teacher acts and the students have the illusion of acting through the action of the
teacher;
(h) the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt
to it;
(i) the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority,
which she and he sets in opposition to the freedom of the students;
(j) the teacher is the Subject of the learning process, while the pupils are mere objects.
It is not surprising that the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable,
manageable beings. The more students work at storing the deposits entrusted to them, the less
they develop the critical consciousness which would result from their intervention in the world as
transformers of that world. The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them,
the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality
deposited in them.
The capability of banking education to minimize or annul the students’ creative power and to
stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the
world revealed nor to see it transformed. The oppressors use their “humanitarianism” to
preserve a profitable situation. Thus they react almost instinctively against any experiment in
education which stimulates
74·PAULO FREIRE
the critical faculties and is not content with a partial view of reality but always seeks out the ties
which link one point to another and one problem to another.
Indeed, the interests of the oppressors lie in “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not
the situation which oppresses them”; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that
situation, the more easily they can be dominated. To achieve this end, the oppressors use the
banking concept of education in conjunction with a paternalistic social action apparatus, within
which the oppressed receive the euphemistic title of “welfare recipients.” They are treated as
individual cases, as marginal persons who deviate from the general configuration of a “good,
organized, and just” society. The oppressed are regarded as the pathology of the healthy
society, which must therefore adjust these “incompetent and lazy” folk to its own patterns by
changing their mentality. These marginals need to be “integrated,” “incorporated” into the
healthy society that they have “forsaken.”
The truth is, however, that the oppressed are not “marginals,” are not people living “outside”
society. They have always been “inside”–inside the structure which made them “beings for
others.” The solution is not to “integrate” them into the structure of oppression, but to transform
that structure so that they can become “beings for themselves.” Such transformation, of course,
would undermine the oppressors’ purposes; hence their utilization of the banking concept of
education to avoid the threat of student conscientizacao.
The banking approach to adult education, for example, will never propose to students that they
critically consider reality. It will deal instead with such vital questions as whether Roger gave
green grass to the goat, and insist upon the importance of learning that, on the contrary, Roger
gave green grass to the rabbit. The “humanism” of the banking approach masks the effort to
turn women and men into automatons–the very negation of their ontological vocation to be
more fully human.
1. Simone de Beauvoir, La Pensee de Droite, Aujord’hui (Paris); ST, El
Pensamiento politico de Ia Derecha (Buenos Aires, 1963), p. 34.
75 P E D A G 0 G Y 0 F THE 0 P PRESS E D ·
Those who use the banking approach, knowingly or unknowingly (for there are innumerable
well-intentioned bank-clerk teachers who do not realize that they are serving only to
dehumanize), fail to perceive that the deposits themselves contain contradictions about reality.
But, sooner or later, these contradictions may lead formerly passive students to turn against
their domestication and the attempt to domesticate reality. They may discover through
existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become
fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process,
undergoing constant transformation. If men and women are searchers and their ontological
vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may perceive the contradiction in which banking
education seeks to maintain them, and then engage themselves in the struggle for their
liberation.
But the humanist, revolutionary educator cannot wait for this possibility to materialize. From
the outset, her efforts must coincide with those of the students to engage in critical thinking and
the quest for mutual humanization. His efforts must be imbued with a profound trust in people
and their creative power. To achieve this, they must be partners of the students in their relations
with them.
The banking concept does not admit to such partnership–and necessarily so. To resolve the
teacher-student contradiction, to exchange the role of depositor, prescriber, domesticator, for
the role of student among students would be to undermine the power of oppression and serve
the cause of liberation.
Implicit in the banking concept is the assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the
world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is
spectator, not re-creator. In this view, the person is not a conscious being (corpo consciente);
he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty “mind” passively open to the
reception of deposits of reality from the world outside. For example, my desk, my books, my
coffee cup, all the objects before me–as bits of the world which surround me–would be “inside”
me, exactly as I am inside my
76·PAULO FREIRE
study right now. This view makes no distinction between being accessible to consciousness and
entering consciousness. The distinction, however, is essential: the objects which surround me
are simply accessible to my consciousness, not located within it. I am aware of them, but they
are not inside me.
It follows logically from the banking notion of consciousness that the educator’s role is to
regulate the way the world “enters into” the students. The teacher’s task is to organize a
process which already occurs spontaneously, to “fill” the students by making deposits of
information which he or she considers to constitute true knowledge. 2 And since people
“receive” the world as passive entities, education should make them more passive still, and
adapt them to the world. The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is
better “fit” for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well suited to the purposes of
the oppressors, whose tranquility rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have
created, and how little they question it.
The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe
for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority
can continue to prescribe. The theory and practice of banking education serve this end quite
efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, 3 the methods for evaluating “knowledge,”
the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this
ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.
The bank-clerk educator does not realize that there is no true security in his hypertrophied role,
that one must seek to live with others in solidarity. One cannot impose oneself, nor even merely
2. This concept corresponds to what Sartre calls the “digestive” or “nutritive”
concept of education, in which knowledge is “fed” by the teacher to the
students to “fill them out.,. See Jean-Paul Sartre, “Une idee fundamentale de
la phenomenologie de Husserl: L’intentionalite,” Situations I (Paris, 1947).
3. For example, some professors specify in their reading lists that a book should
be read from pages 10 to 15–and do this to “help” their students!
77 PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED·
co-exist with one’s students. Solidarity requires true communication, and the concept by which
such an educator is guided by fears and proscribes communication.
Yet only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s thinking is
authenticated only by the authenticity of the students’ thinking. The teacher cannot think for her
students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is
concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.
If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the
subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.
Because banking education begins with a false understanding of men and women as objects, it
cannot promote the development of what Fromm calls “biophily,” but instead produces its
opposite: “necrophily.”
While life is characterized by growth in a structured, functional manner, the necrophilous person
loves all that does not grow, all that is mechanical. The necrophilous person is driven by the
desire to transform the organic into the inorganic, to approach life mechanically, as if all living
persons were things …. Memory, rather than experience; having, rather than being, is what
counts. The necrophilous person can relate to an object–a flower or a person-only if he
possesses it; hence a threat to his possession is a threat to himself; if he loses possession he
loses contact with the world …. He loves control, and in the act of controlling he kills life. 4
Oppression–overwhelming control–is necrophilic; it is nourished by love of death, not life. The
banking concept of education, which serves the interests of oppression, is also necrophilic.
Based on a mechanistic, static, naturalistic, spatialized view of consciousness, it transforms
students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men
to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power.
4. Fromm, op. cit., p. 41.
78 PAULO FREIRE
When their efforts to act responsibly are frustrated, when they find themselves unable to use
their faculties, people suffer. “This suffering due to impotence is rooted in the very fact that the
human equilibrium has been disturbed. “5 But the inability to act which causes people’s anguish
also causes them to reject their impotence, by attempting
… to restore [their] capacity to act. But can [they], and how? One way is to submit to and identify
with a person or group having power. By this symbolic participation in another person’s life,
[men have] the illusion of acting, when in reality [they] only submit to and become a part of
those who act. 6
Populist manifestations perhaps best exemplify this type of behavior by the oppressed who, by
identifying with charismatic leaders, come to feel that they themselves are active and effective.
The rebellion they express as they emerge in the historical process is motivated by that desire
to act effectively. The dominant elites consider the remedy to be more domination and
repression, carried out in the name of freedom, order, and social peace (that is, the peace of the
elites). Thus they can condemn–logically, from their point of view–“the violence of a strike by
workers and [can] call upon the state in the same breath to use violence in putting down the
strike.”7
Education as the exercise of domination stimulates the credulity of students, with the
ideological intent (often not perceived by educators) of indoctrinating them to adapt to the world
of oppression. This accusation is not made in the naive hope that the dominant elites will
thereby simply abandon the practice. Its objective is to call the attention of true humanists to the
fact that they cannot use banking educational methods in the pursuit of liberation, for they would
only negate that very pursuit. Nor may a revolutionary society inherit these methods from an
oppressor society. The revolutionary society which practices banking education is either
misguided or
5. Ibid., p. 31. 6. Ibid. 7. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society
(New York, 1960), p. 130.
79 PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED
mistrusting of people. In either event, it is threatened by the specter of reaction.
Unfortunately, those who espouse the cause of liberation are themselves surrounded and
influenced by the climate which generates the banking concept, and often do not perceive its
true significance or its dehumanizing power. Paradoxically, then, they utilize this same
instrument of alienation in what they consider an effort to liberate. Indeed some “revolutionaries”
brand as “innocents,” “dreamers,” or even “reactionaries” those who would challenge this
educational practice. But one does not liberate people by alienating them. Authentic
liberation–the process of humanization–is not another deposit to be made in men. Liberation is
a praxis: the action and reflection of men and women upon their world in order to transform it.
Those truly committed to the cause of liberation can accept neither the mechanistic concept of
consciousness as an empty vessel to be filled nor the use of banking methods of domination
(propaganda, slogans-deposits) in the name of liberation.
Those truly committed to liberation must reject the banking concept in its entirety, adopting
instead a concept of women and men as conscious beings, and consciousness as
consciousness intent upon the world. They must abandon the educational goal of
deposit-making and replace it with the posing of the problems of human beings in their relations
with the world. “Problem-posing” education, responding to the essence of
consciousness–intentionality–rejects communiques and embodies communication. It
epitomizes the special characteristic of consciousness: being conscious of, not only as intent on
objects but as turned in upon itself in a Jasperian “split”–consciousness as consciousness of
consciousness.
Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information. It is a learning
situation in which the cognizable object (far from being the end of the cognitive act)
intermediates the cognitive actors–teacher on the one hand and students on the other.
Accordingly, the practice of problem-posing education entails at the outset that the
teacher-student contradiction to be resolved. Dialogical relations–indispensable to the capacity
of cognitive
80 · PAUL 0 FREIRE
actors to cooperate in perceiving the same cognizable object-are otherwise impossible.
Indeed, problem-posing education, which breaks with the vertical patterns characteristic of
banking education, can fulfill its function as the practice of freedom only if it can overcome the
above contradiction. Through dialogue, the teacher-of-the-students and the
students-of-the-teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with
students-teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is
himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They
become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on
“authority” are no longer valid; in order to function, authority must be on the side of freedom, not
against it. Here, no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other,
mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are “owned” by the
teacher.
The banking concept (with its tendency to dichotomize everything) distinguishes two stages in
the action of the educator. During the first, he cognizes a cognizable object while he prepares
his lessons in his study or his laboratory; during the second, he expounds to his students about
that object. The students are not called upon to know, but to memorize the contents narrated by
the teacher. Nor do the students practice any act of cognition, since the object towards which
that act should be directed is the property of the teacher rather than a medium evoking the
critical reflection of both teacher and students. Hence in the name of the “preservation of culture
and knowledge” we have a system which achieves neither true knowledge nor true culture.
The problem-posing method does not dichotomize the activity of the teacher-student: she is not
“cognitive” at one point and “narrative” at another. She is always “cognitive,” whether preparing
a project or engaging in dialogue with the students. He does not regard cognizable objects as
his private property, but as the object of reflection by himself and the students. In this way, the
problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the
PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED· 8l
students. The students-no longer docile listeners-are now critical co-investigators in dialogue
with the teacher. The teacher presents the material to the students for their consideration, and
re-considers her earlier considerations as the students express their own. The role of the
problem-posing educator is to create; together with the students, the conditions under which
knowledge at the level of the doxa is superseded by true knowledge, at the level of the logos.
Whereas banking education anesthetizes and inhibits creative power, problem-posing education
involves a constant unveiling of reality. The former attempts to maintain the submersion of
consciousness; the latter strives for the emergence of consciousness and critical intervention in
reality.
Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and
with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge.
Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context,
not as a theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and
thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed
by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.
Education as the practice of freedom–as opposed to education as the practice of
domination–denies that man is abstract, isolated, independent, and unattached to the world; it
also denies that the world exists as a reality apart from people. Authentic reflection considers
neither abstract man nor the world without people, but people in their relations with the world. In
these relations consciousness and world are simultaneous: consciousness neither precedes the
world nor follows it.
La conscience et le monde sont donnes d’un meme coup: exterieur par essence a la
conscience, le monde est, par essence relatif a elle. 8
8. Sartre; op. cit .. p. 32.
82 •PAULO FREIRE
In one of our culture circles in Chile, the group was discussing (based on a codification 9) the
anthropological concept of culture. In the midst of the discussion, a peasant who by banking
standards was completely ignorant said: “Now I see that without man there is no world.” When
the educator responded: “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that all the men on earth were to
die, but that the earth itself remained, together with trees, birds, animals, rivers, seas, the stars
… wouldn’t all this be a world?” “Oh no,” the peasant replied emphatically. “There would be no
one to say: ‘This is a world’.”
The peasant wished to express the idea that there would be lacking the consciousness of the
world which necessarily implies the world of consciousness. I cannot exist without a non-I. In
turn, the not-I depends on that existence. The world which brings consciousness into existence
becomes the world of that consciousness. Hence, the previously cited affirmation of Sartre: “La
conscience et le monde sont donnes d’un meme coup.”
As women and men, simultaneously reflecting on themselves and on the world, increase the
scope of their perception, they begin to direct their observations towards previously
inconspicuous phenomena:
In perception properly so-called, as an explicit awareness [Gewahren], I am turned towards the
object, to the paper, for instance. I apprehend it as being this here and now. The apprehension
is a singling out, every object having a background in experience. Around and about the paper
lie books, pencils, ink-well, and so forth, and these in a certain sense are also “perceived”,
perceptually there, in the “field of intuition”; but whilst I was turned towards the paper there was
no turning in their direction, nor any apprehending of them, not even in a secondary sense.
They appeared and yet were not singled out, were not posited on their own account. Every
perception of a thing has such a zone of background intuitions or background awareness, if
“intuiting” already includes the state of being turned towards, and this also is a “conscious
experience”, or more briefly
9. See chapter 3.-Translator’s note.
83 PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED·
a “consciousness of” all indeed that in point of fact lies in the co-perceived objective
background. 10
That which had existed objectively but had not been perceived in its deeper implications (if
indeed it was perceived at all) begins to “stand out,” assuming the character of a problem and
therefore of challenge. Thus, men and women begin to single out elements from their
“background awareness” and to reflect upon them. These elements are now objects of their
consideration, and, as such, objects of their action and cognition.
In problem-posing education, people develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist
in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a
static reality, but as a reality in process, in transformation. Although the dialectical relations of
women and men with the world exist independently of how these relations are perceived (or
whether or not they are perceived at all), it is also true that the form of action they adopt is to a
large extent a function of how they perceive themselves in the world. Hence, the
teacher-student and the students-teachers reflect simultaneously on themselves and the world
without dichotomizing this reflection from action, and thus establish an authentic form of thought
and action.
Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis come into conflict.
Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain
facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets
itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education
regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking
education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them
critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot
completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from
10.Edmund Husserl, Ideas-General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology
(London, 1969), pp. 105-106.
84 ·PAULO FREIRE
the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more
fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection
and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are
authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation. In sum: banking theory and
practice, as immobilizing and fixating forces, fail to acknowledge men and women as historical
beings; problem-posing theory and practice take the people’s historicity as their starting point.
Problem-posing education affirms men and women as beings in the process of becoming–as
unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality. Indeed, in contrast to
other animals who are unfinished, but not historical, people know themselves to be unfinished;
they are aware of their incompletion. In this incompletion and this awareness lie the very roots
of education as an exclusively human manifestation. The unfinished character of human beings
and the transformational character of reality necessitate that education be an ongoing activity.
Education is thus constantly remade in the praxis. In order to be, it must become. Its “duration”
(in the Bergsonian meaning of the word) is found in the interplay of the opposites permanence
and change. The banking method emphasizes permanence and becomes reactionary;
problem-posing education–which accepts neither a “well-behaved” present nor a predetermined
future–roots itself in the dynamic present and becomes revolutionary.
Problem-posing education is revolutionary futurity. Hence it is prophetic (and, as such, hopeful).
Hence, it corresponds to the historical nature of humankind. Hence, it affirms women and men
as beings who transcend themselves, who move forward and look ahead, for whom immobility
represents a fatal threat, for whom looking at the past must only be a means of understanding
more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future. Hence, it
identifies with the movement which engages people as beings aware of their incompletion–an
historical movement which has its point of departure, its Subjects and its objective.
85 PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED·
The point of departure of the movement lies in the people themselves. But since people do not
exist apart from the world, apart from reality, the movement must begin with the human-world
relationship. Accordingly, the point of departure must always be with men and women in the
“here and now,” which constitutes the situation within which they are submerged, from which
they emerge, and in which they intervene. Only by starting from this situation–which determines
their perception of it–can they begin to move. To do this authentically they must perceive their
state not as fated and unalterable, but merely as limiting–and therefore challenging. Whereas
the banking method directly or indirectly reinforces men’s fatalistic perception of their situation,
the problem-posing method presents this very situation to them as a problem. As the situation
becomes the object of their cognition, the naive or magical perception which produced their
fatalism gives way to perception which is able to perceive itself even as it perceives reality, and
can thus be critically objective about that reality.
A deepened consciousness of their situation leads people to apprehend that situation as an
historical reality susceptible of transformation. Resignation gives way to the drive for
transformation and inquiry, over which men feel themselves to be in control. If people, as
historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control
that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity. Any situation in which some
individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence. The means
used are not important; to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change
them into objects.
This movement of inquiry must be directed towards humanization–the people’s historical
vocation. The pursuit of full humanity, however, cannot be carried out in isolation or
individualism, but only in fellowship and solidarity; therefore it cannot unfold in the antagonistic
relations between oppressors and oppressed. No one can be authentically human while he
prevents others from being so. Attempting to be more human, individualistically, leads to having
86 · PAUL0 FREIRE
more, egotistically, a form of dehumanization. Not that it is not fundamental to have in order to
be human. Precisely because it is necessary, some men’s having must not be allowed to
constitute an obstacle to others’ having, must not consolidate the power of the former to crush
the latter.
Problem-posing education, as a humanist and liberating praxis, posits as fundamental that the
people subjected to domination must fight for their emancipation. To that end, it enables
teachers and students to become Subjects of the educational process by overcoming
authoritarianism and an alienating intellectualism; it also enables people to overcome their false
perception of reality. The world–no longer something to be described with deceptive
words–becomes the object of that transforming action by men and women which results in their
humanization.
Problem-posing education does not and cannot serve the interests of the oppressor. No
oppressive order could permit the oppressed to begin to question: Why? While only a
revolutionary society can carry out this education in systematic terms, the revolutionary leaders
need not take full power before they can employ the method. In the revolutionary process, the
leaders cannot utilize the banking method as an interim measure, justified on grounds of
expediency, with the intention of later behaving in a genuinely revolutionary fashion. They must
be revolutionary–that is to say, dialogical–from the outset.
From Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work
JEAN ANYON This essay first appeared in Journal of Education, Vol. 162, no. 1, Fall 1980.)
It’s no surprise that schools in wealthy communities are better than those in poor communities,
or that they better prepare their students for desirable jobs. It may be shocking, however, to
learn how vast the differences in schools are – not so much in resources as in teaching methods
and philosophies of education. Jean Anyon observed five elementary schools over the course of
a full school year and concluded that fifth-graders of different economic backgrounds are
already being prepared to occupy particular rungs on the social ladder. In a sense, some whole
schools are on the vocational education track, while others are geared to produce future
doctors, lawyers, and business leaders. Anyon’s main audience is professional educators, so
you may find her style and vocabulary challenging, but, once you’ve read her descriptions of
specific classroom activities, the more analytic parts of the essay should prove easier to
understand. Anyon is chairperson of the Department of Education at Rutgers University,
Newark;
Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public
schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational
experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and Gintis1
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. Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michael W. Apple
focusing on school knowledge, have argued that knowledge and skills leading to social power
and regard (medical, legal, managerial) are made available to the advantaged social groups but
are withheld from the working classes to whom a more “practical” curriculum is offered (manual
skills, clerical knowledge). While there has been considerable argumentation of these points
regarding education in England, France, and North America, there has been little or no attempt
to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and classrooms in this
country.3
This article offers tentative empirical support (and qualification) of the above arguments by
providing illustrative examples of differences in student work in classrooms in contrasting social
class communities. The examples were gathered as part of an ethnographical 4 study of
curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices in five elementary schools. The article
attempts a theoretical contribution as well and assesses student work in the light of a theoretical
approach to social-class analysis.. . It will be suggested that there is a “hidden curriculum” in
schoolwork that has profound implications for the theory – and consequence – of everyday
activity in education….
The Sample of Schools
… The social-class designation of each of the five schools will be identified, and the income,
occupation, and other relevant available social characteristics of the students and their parents
will be described. The first three schools are in a medium-sized city district in northern New
Jersey, and the other two are in a nearby New Jersey suburb.
The first two schools I will call working class schools. Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs.
Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs.
During the period of the study (1978-1979), approximately 15 percent of the fathers were
unemployed. The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white. The following occupations
are typical: platform, storeroom, and stockroom workers; foundry-men, pipe welders, and
boilermakers; semiskilled and unskilled assembly-line operatives; gas station attendants, auto
mechanics, maintenance workers, and security guards. Less than 30 percent of the women
work, some part-time and some full-time, on assembly lines, in storerooms and stockrooms, as
waitresses, barmaids, or sales clerks. Of the fifth-grade parents, none of the wives of the skilled
workers had jobs. Approximately 15 percent of the families in each school are at or below the
federal “poverty” level;5 most of the rest of the family incomes are at or below $12,000, except
some of the skilled workers whose incomes are higher. The incomes of the majority of the
families in these two schools (at or below $12,000) are typical of 38.6 percent of the families in
the United States.6
The third school is called the middle-class school, although because of 5 neighborhood
residence patterns, the population is a mixture of several social classes. The parents’
occupations can be divided into three groups: a small group of blue-collar “rich,” who are skilled,
well-paid workers such as printers, carpenters, plumbers, and construction workers. The second
group is composed of parents in working-class and middle-class white-collar jobs: women in
office jobs, technicians, supervisors in industry, and parents employed by the city (such as
firemen, policemen, and several of the school’s teachers). The third group is composed of
occupations such as personnel directors in local firms, accountants, “middle management,” and
a few small capitalists (owners of shops in the area). The children of several local doctors attend
this school. Most family incomes are between $13,000 and $25,000, with a few higher. This
income range is typical of 38.9 percent of the families in the United States.7
The fourth school has a parent population that is at the upper income level of the upper middle
class and is predominantly professional. This school will be called the affluent professional
school. Typical jobs are: cardiologist, interior designer, corporate lawyer or engineer, executive
in advertising or television. There are some families who are not as affluent as the majority (the
family of the superintendent of the district’s schools, and the one or two families in which the
fathers are skilled workers). In addition, a few of the families are more affluent than the majority
and can be classified in the capitalist class (a partner in a prestigious Wall Street stock
brokerage firm). Approximately 90 percent of the children in this school are white. Most family
incomes are between $40,000 and $80,000. This income span represents approximately 7
percent of the families in the United States.8
In the fifth school the majority of the families belong to the capitalist class. This school will be
called the executive elite school because most of the fathers are top executives (for example,
presidents and vice-presidents) in major United States-based multinational corporations – for
example, AT&T, RCA, Citibank, American Express, U.S. Steel. A sizable group of fathers are
top executives in financial firms in Wall Street. There are also a number of fathers who list their
occupations as “general counsel” to a particular corporation, and these corporations are also
among the large multi-nationals. Many of the mothers do volunteer work in the Junior League,
Junior Fortnightly, or other service groups; some are intricately involved in town politics; and
some are themselves in well-paid occupations. There are no minority children in the school.
Almost all the family incomes are over $100,000 with some in the $500,000 range. The incomes
in this school represent less than 1 percent of the families in the United States.9
Since each of the five schools is only one instance of elementary education in a particular social
class context, I will not generalize beyond the sample. However, the examples of schoolwork
which follow will suggest characteristics of education in each social setting that appear to have
theoretical and social significance and to be worth investigation in a larger number of schools.
The Working Class Schools
In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is
usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The
teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other
assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and
perhaps meaning or significance. Available textbooks are not always used, and the teachers
often prepare their own dittos or put work examples on the board. Most of the rules regarding
work are designations of what the children are to do; the rules are steps to follow. These steps
are told to the children by the teachers and are often written on the board. The children are
usually told to copy the steps as notes. These notes are to be studied. Work is often evaluated
not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the
right steps.
The following examples illustrate these points. In math, when two-digit division was introduced,
the teacher in one school gave a four-minute lecture on what the terms are called (which
number is the divisor, dividend, quotient, and remainder). The children were told to copy these
names in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow to do the problems,
saying, “This is how you do them.” The teacher listed the steps on the board, and they appeared
several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front wall: “Divide, Multiply, Subtract,
Bring Down.” The children often did examples of two-digit division. When the teacher went over
the examples with them, he told them what the procedure was for each problem, rarely asking
them to conceptualize or explain it themselves: “Three into twenty-two is seven; do your
subtraction and one is left over.” During the week that two-digit division was introduced (or at
any other time), the investigator did not observe any discussion of the idea of grouping involved
in division, any use of manipulables, or any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other
mathematical process. Nor was there any attempt to relate the steps to an actual or possible
thought process of the children. The observer did not hear the terms dividend, quotient, and so
on, used again. The math teacher in the other working-class school followed similar procedures
regarding two-digit division and at one point her class seemed confused. She said, “You’re
confusing yourselves. You’re tensing up. Remember, when you do this, it’s the same steps over
and over again–and that’s the way division always is.” Several weeks later, after a test, a group
of her children “still didn’t get it,” and she made no attempt to explain the concept of dividing
things into groups or to give them manipulables for their own investigation. Rather, she went
over the steps with them again and told them that they “needed
more practice.”
In other areas of math, work is also carrying out often unexplained fragmented procedures. For
example, one of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a 1-inch grid on
their paper without telling them that they were making a 1-inch grid or that it would be used to
study scale. She said, “Take your ruler. Put it across the top. Make a mark at every number.
Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on
top of every number. Now draw a line from…” At this point a girl said that she had a faster way
to do it and the teacher said, “No, you don’t; you don’t even know what I’m making yet. Do it this
way or it’s wrong.” After they had made the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them
she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the
scale of 1 inch equals 1 mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, “Don’t cut it until I check it.”
In both working-class schools, work in language arts is mechanics of punctuation (commas,
periods, question marks, exclamation points), capitalization, and the four kinds of sentences.
One teacher explained to me, “Simple punctuation is all they’ll ever use.” Regarding
punctuation, either a teacher or a ditto stated the rules for where, for example, to put commas.
The investigator heard no classroom discussion of the aural context of punctuation (which, of
course, is what gives each mark its meaning). Nor did the investigator hear any statement or
inference that placing a punctuation mark could be a decision-making process, depending, for
example, on one’s intended meaning. Rather, the children were told to follow the rules.
Language arts did not involve creative writing. There were several writing assignments
throughout the year but in each instance the children were given a ditto, and they wrote answers
to questions on the sheet. For example, they wrote their “autobiography” by answering such
questions as “Where were you born?” “What is your favorite animal?” on a sheet entitled “All
About Me.”
In one of the working-class schools, the class had a science period several times a week. On
the three occasions observed, the children were not called upon to set up experiments or to give
explanations for facts or concepts. Rather, on each occasion the teacher told them in his own
words what the book said. The children copied the teacher’s sentences from the board. Each
day that preceded the day they were to do a science experiment, the teacher told them to copy
the directions from the book for the procedure they would carry out the next day and to study
the list at home that night. The day after each experiment, the teacher went over what they had
“found” (they did the experiments as a class, and each was actually a class demonstration led
by the teacher). Then the teacher wrote what they “found” on the board, and the children copied
that in their notebooks. Once or twice a year there are science projects. The project is chosen
and assigned by the teacher from a box of 3-by-5-inch cards. On the card the teacher has
written the question to he answered, the books to use, and how much to write. Explaining the
cards to the observer, the teacher said, “It tells them exactly what to do, or they couldn’t do it.”
Social studies in the working-class schools is also largely mechanical, rote work that was given
little explanation or connection to larger contexts. In one school, for example, although there
was a book available, social studies work was to copy the teacher’s notes from the board.
Several times a week for a period of several months the children copied these notes. The fifth
grades in the district were to study United States history. The teacher used a booklet she had
purchased called “The Fabulous Fifty States.” Each day she put information from the booklet in
outline form on the board and the children copied it. The type of information did not vary: the
name of the state, its abbreviation, state capital, nickname of the state, its main products, main
business, and a “Fabulous Fact” (“Idaho grew twenty-seven billion potatoes in one year. That’s
enough potatoes for each man, woman, and…”) As the children finished copying the sentences,
the teacher erased them and wrote more. Children would occasionally go to the front to pull
down the wall map in order to locate the states they were copying, and the teacher did not
dissuade them. But the observer never saw her refer to the map; nor did the observer ever hear
her make other than perfunctory remarks concerning the information the children were copying.
Occasionally the children colored in a ditto and cut it out to make a stand-up figure
(representing, for example, a man roping a cow in the Southwest). These were referred to by
the teacher as their social studies “projects.”
Rote behavior was often called for in classroom work. When going over 15 math and language
art skills sheets, for example, as the teacher asked for the answer to each problem, he fired the
questions rapidly, staccato, and the scene reminded the observer of a sergeant drilling recruits:
above all, the questions demanded that you stay at attention: “The next one? What do I put
here?. . . Here? Give us the next.” Or “How many commas in this sentence? Where do I put
them . . . The next one?”
The four fifth grade teachers observed in the working-class schools attempted to control
classroom time and space by making decisions without consulting the children and without
explaining the basis for their decisions. The teacher’s control thus often seemed capricious.
Teachers, for instance, very often ignored the bells to switch classes – deciding among
themselves to keep the children after the period was officially over to continue with the work or
for disciplinary reasons or so they (the teachers) could stand in the hall and talk. There were no
clocks in the rooms in either school, and the children often asked, “What period is this?” “When
do we go to gym?” The children had no access to materials. These were handed out by
teachers and closely guarded. Things in the room “belonged” to the teacher: “Bob, bring me my
garbage can.” The teachers continually gave the children orders. Only three times did the
investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic
“please,” or “let’s” or “would you.” Instead, the teachers said, “Shut up,” “Shut your mouth,”
“Open your books,” “Throw your gum away-if you want to rot your teeth, do it on your own time.”
Teachers made every effort to control the movement of the children, and often shouted, “‘Why
are you out of your seat??!!” If the children got permission to leave the room, they had to take a
written pass with the date and time….
Middle-Class School
In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right
answers, one gets a good grade. One must follow the directions in order to get the right
answers, but the directions often call for some figuring, some choice, some decision making. For
example, the children must often figure out by themselves what the directions ask them to do
and how to get the answer: what do you do first, second, and perhaps third? Answers are
usually found in books or by listening to the teacher. Answers are usually words, sentences,
numbers, or facts and dates; one writes them on paper, and one should be neat. Answers must
be given in the right order, and one cannot make them up.
The following activities are illustrative. Math involves some choice: one may do two-digit division
the long way or the short way, and there are some math problems that can be done “in your
head.” When the teacher explains how to do two-digit division, there is recognition that a
cognitive process is involved; she gives you several ways and says, “I want to make sure you
understand what you’re doing-so you get it right”; and, when they go over the homework, she
asks the children to tell how they did the problem and what answer they got.
In social studies the daily work is to read the assigned pages in the textbook and to answer the
teacher’s questions. The questions are almost always designed to check on whether the
students have read the assignment and understood it: who did so-and-so; what happened after
that; when did it happen, where, and sometimes, why did it happen? The answers are in the
book and in one’s understanding of the book; the teacher’s hints when one doesn’t know the
answers are to “read it again” or to look at the picture or at the rest of the paragraph. One is to
search for the answer in the “context,” in what is given.
Language arts is “simple grammar, what they need for everyday life.” The language arts teacher
says, “They should learn to speak properly, to write business letters and thank-you letters, and
to understand what nouns and verbs and simple subjects are.” Here, as well, actual work is to
choose the right answers, to understand what is given. The teacher often says, “Please read the
next sentence and then I’ll question you about it.” One teacher said in some exasperation to a
boy who was fooling around in class, “If you don’t know the answers to the questions I ask, then
you can’t stay in this class! [pause] You never know the answers to the questions I ask, and it’s
not fair to me-and certainly not to you!”
Most lessons are based on the textbook. This does not involve a critical perspective on what is
given there. For example, a critical perspective in social studies is perceived as dangerous by
these teachers because it may lead to controversial topics; the parents might complain. The
children, however, are often curious especially in social studies. Their questions are tolerated
and usually answered perfunctorily. But after a few minutes the teacher will say, “All right, we’re
not going any farther. Please open your social studies workbook.” While the teachers spend a
lot of time explaining and expanding on what the textbooks say, there is little attempt to analyze
how or why things happen, or to give thought to how pieces of a culture, or, say, a system of
numbers or elements of a language fit together or can be analyzed. What has happened in the
past and what exists now may not be equitable or fair, but (shrug) that is the way things are and
one does not confront such matters in school. For example, in social studies after a child is
called on to read a passage about the pilgrims, the teacher summarizes the paragraph and then
says, “So you can see how strict they were about everything.” A child asks, “Why?” “Well,
because they felt that if you weren’t busy you’d get into trouble.” Another child asks, “Is it true
that they burned women at the stake?” The teacher says, “Yes, if a woman did anything
strange, they hanged them. [sic] What would a woman do, do you think, to make them burn
them? [sic] See if you can come up with better answers than my other [social studies] class.”
Several children offer suggestions, to which the teacher nods but does not comment. Then she
says, “Okay, good,” and calls on the next child to read.
Work tasks do not usually request creativity. Serious attention is rarely given in school work on
how the children develop or express their own feelings and ideas, either linguistically or in
graphic form. On the occasions when creativity or self-expression is requested, it is peripheral to
the main activity or it is “enriched” or “for fun.” During a lesson on what similes are, for example,
the teacher explains what they are, puts several on the board, gives some other examples
herself, and then asks the children if they can “make some up.” She calls on three children who
give similes, two of which are actually in the book they have open before them. The teacher
does not comment on this and then asks several others to choose similes from the list of
phrases in the book. Several do so correctly, and she says, “Oh good! You’re picking them out!
See how good we are?” Their homework is to pick out the rest of the similes from the list.
Creativity is not often requested in social studies and science projects, either. Social studies
projects, for example, are given with directions to “find information on your topic” and write it up.
The children are not supposed to copy but to “put it in your own words.” Although a number of
the projects subsequently went beyond the teacher’s direction to find information and had quite
expressive covers and inside illustrations, the teacher’s evaluative comments had to do with the
amount of information, whether they had “copied,” and if their work was neat.
The style of control of the three fifth-grade teachers observed in this school varied from
somewhat easygoing to strict, but in contrast to the working-class schools, the teachers’
decisions were usually based on external rules and regulations–for example, on criteria that
were known or available to the children. Thus, the teachers always honor the bells for changing
classes, and they usually evaluate children’s work by what is in the textbooks and answer
booklets.
There is little excitement in schoolwork for the children, and the assignments are perceived as
having little to do with their interests and feelings. As one child said, what you do is “store facts
up in your head like cold storage – until you need it later for a test or your job.” Thus, doing well
is important because there are thought to be other likely rewards: a good job or college.10
Affluent Professional School
In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently. The
students are continually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts. Work involves
individual thought and expressiveness, expansion and illustration of ideas, and choice of
appropriate method and material. (The class is not considered an open classroom, and the
principal explained that because of the large number of discipline problems in the fifth grade this
year they did not departmentalize. The teacher who agreed to take part in the study said she is
“more structured this year than she usually is.) The products of work in this class are often
written stories, editorials and essays, or representations of ideas in mural, graph, or craft form.
The products of work should not be like anybody else’s and should show individuality. They
should exhibit good design, and (this is important) they must also fit empirical reality. The
relatively few rules to be followed regarding work are usually criteria for, or limits on, individual
activity. One’s product is usually evaluated for the quality of its expression and for the
appropriateness of its conception to the task. In many cases, one’s own satisfaction with the
product is an important criterion for its evaluation. When right answers are called for, as in
commercial materials like SRA (Science Research Associates) and math, it is important that the
children decide on an answer as a result of thinking about the idea involved in what they’re
being asked to do. Teacher’s hints are to “think about it some more.”
The following activities are illustrative. The class takes home a sheet requesting each child’s
parents to fill in the number of cars they have, the number of television sets, refrigerators,
games, or rooms in the house, and so on. Each child is to figure the average number of a type
of possession owned by the fifth grade. Each child must compile the “data” from all the sheets.
A calculator is available in the classroom to do the mechanics of finding the average. Some
children decide to send sheets to the fourth-grade families for comparison. Their work should be
“verified” by a classmate before it is handed in.
Each child and his or her family has made a geoboard. The teacher asks the class to get their
geoboards from the side cabinet, to take a handful of rubber bands, and then to listen to what
she would like them to do. She says, “I would like you to design a figure and then find the
perimeter and area. When you have it, check with your neighbor. After you’ve done that, please
transfer it to graph paper and tomorrow I’ll ask you to make up a question about it for someone.
When you hand it in, please let me know whose it is and who verified it. Then I have something
else for you to do that’s really fun. [pause] Find the average number of chocolate chips in three
cookies. I’ll give you three cookies, and you’ll have to eat your way through, I’m afraid!” Then
she goes around the room and gives help, suggestions, praise, and admonitions that they are
getting noisy. They work sitting, or standing up at their desks, at benches in the back, or on the
floor. A child hands the teacher his paper and she comments, “I’m not accepting this paper. Do
a better design.” To another child she says, “That’s fantastic! But you’ll never find the area. Why
don’t you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?”
The school district requires the fifth grade to study ancient civilization (in particular, Egypt,
Athens, and Sumer). In this classroom, the emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the
culture of the people of ancient times. The following are typical activities: the children made an
8mm film on Egypt, which one of the parents edited. A girl in the class wrote the script, and the
class acted it out. They put the sound on themselves. They read stories of those days. They
wrote essays and stories depicting the lives of the people and the societal and occupational
divisions. They chose from a list of projects, all of which involved graphical presentations of
ideas: for example. “Make a mural depicting the division of labor in Egyptian society.”
Each wrote and exchanged a letter in hieroglyphics with a fifth grader in another class, and they
also exchanged stories they wrote in cuneiform. They made a scroll and singed the edges so it
looked authentic. They each chose an occupation and made an Egyptian plaque representing
that occupation, simulating the appropriate Egyptian design. They carved their design on a
cylinder of wax, pressed the wax into clay, and then baked the clay. Although one girl did not
choose an occupation but carved instead a series of gods and slaves, the teacher said, “That’s
all right, Amber, it’s beautiful.” As they were working the teacher said, “Don’t cut into your clay
until you’re satisfied with your design.”
Social studies also involves almost daily presentation by the children of some event from the
news. The teacher’s questions ask the children to expand what they say, to give more details,
and to be more specific. Occasionally she adds some remarks to help them see connections
between events.
The emphasis on expressing and illustrating ideas in social studies is accompanied in language
arts by an emphasis on creative writing. Each child wrote a rebus story for a first grader whom
they had interviewed to see what kind of story the child liked best. They wrote editorials on
pending decisions by the school board and radio plays, some of which were read over the
school intercom from the office and one of which was performed in the auditorium. There is no
language arts textbook because, the teacher said, “The principal wants us to be creative.” There
is not much grammar, but there is punctuation. One morning when the observer arrived, the
class was doing a punctuation ditto. The teacher later apologized for using the ditto. “It’s just for
review,” she said. “I don’t teach punctuation that way. We use their language.” The ditto had
three unambiguous rules for where to put commas in a sentence. As the teacher was going
around to help the children with the ditto, she repeated several times, “where you put commas
depends on how you say the sentence; it depends on the situation and what you want to say.
Several weeks later the observer saw another punctuation activity. The teacher had printed a
five-paragraph story on an oak tag and then cut it into phrases. She read the whole story to the
class from the book, then passed out the phrases. The group had to decide how the phrases
could best be put together again. (They arranged the phrases on the floor.) The point was not to
replicate the story, although that was not irrelevant, but to “decide what you think the best way
is.” Punctuation marks on cardboard pieces were then handed out, and the children discussed
and then decided what mark was best at each place they thought one was needed. At the end
of each paragraph the teacher asked, “Are you satisfied with the way the paragraphs are now?
Read it to yourself and see how it sounds.” Then she read the original story again, and they
compared the two.
Describing her goals in science to the investigator, the teacher said, “We use ESS (Elementary
Science Study). It’s very good because it gives a hands-on experience–so they can make sense
out of it. It doesn’t matter whether it [what they find] is right or wrong. I bring them together and
there’s value in discussing their ideas.”
The products of work in this class are often highly valued by the children and the teacher. In
fact, this was the only school in which the investigator was not allowed to take original pieces of
the children’s work for her files. If the work was small enough, however, and was on paper, the
investigator could duplicate it on the copying machine in the office.
The teacher’s attempt to control the class involves constant negotiation. She does not give
direct orders unless she is angry because the children have been too noisy. Normally, she tries
to get them to foresee the consequences of their actions and to decide accordingly. For
example, lining them up to go see a play written by the sixth graders, she says, “I presume
you’re lined up by someone with whom you want to sit. I hope you’re lined up by someone you
won’t get in trouble with.”…
One of the few rules governing the children’s movement is that no more than three children may
be out of the room at once. There is a school rule that anyone can go to the library at any time
to get a book. In the fifth grade I observed, they sign their name on the chalkboard and leave.
There are no passes. Finally, the children have a fair amount of officially sanctioned say over
what happens in the class. For example, they often negotiate what work is to be done. If the
teacher wants to move on to the next subject, but the children say they are not ready, they want
to work on their present projects some more, she very often lets them do it.
Executive Elite School
In 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 quality. A primary goal of thought is to conceptualize rules
by which elements may fit together in systems and then to apply these rules in solving a
problem. Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life.
The following are illustrative. The math teacher teaches area and perimeter by having the
children derive formulas for each. First she helps them, through discussion at the board, to
arrive at A = W X L as a formula (not the formula) for area. After discussing several, she says,
“Can anyone make up a formula for perimeter? Can you figure that out yourselves? [pause]
Knowing what we know, can we think of a formula?” She works out three children’s suggestions
at the board, saying to two, “Yes, that’s a good one,” and then asks the class if they can think of
any more. No one volunteers. To prod them, she says, “If you use rules and good reasoning,
you get many ways. Chris, can you think up a formula?”
She discusses two-digit division with the children as a decision-making process. Presenting a
new type of problem to them, she asks, “What’s the first decision you’d make if presented with
this kind of example? What is the first thing you’d think? Craig?” Craig says, “To find my first
partial quotient.” She responds, “Yes, that would be your first decision. How would you do that?”
Craig explains, and then the teacher says, “OK, we’ll see how that works for you.” The class
tries his way. Subsequently, she comments on the merits and shortcomings of several other
children’s decisions. Later, she tells the investigator that her goals in math are to develop their
reasoning and mathematical thinking and that, unfortunately, “there’s no time for manipulables.”
While right answers are important in math, they are not “given” by the book or by the teacher but
may be challenged by the children. Going over some problems in late September the teacher
says, “Raise your hand if you do not agree.” A child says, “I don’t agree with sixty-four.” The
teacher responds, “OK, there’s a question about sixty-four. [to class] Please check it. Owen,
they’re disagreeing with you. Kristen, they’re checking yours.” The teacher emphasized this
repeatedly during September and October with statements like “Don’t be afraid to say you
disagree. In the last [math] class, somebody disagreed, and they were right. Before you
disagree, check yours, and if you still think we’re wrong, then we’ll check it out.” By
Thanksgiving, the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of
whether they agreed with the answer that had been given.
There are complicated math mimeos with many word problems. Whenever they go over the
examples, they discuss how each child has set up the problem. The children must explain it
precisely. On one occasion the teacher said, “I’m more–just as interested in how you set up the
problem as in what answer you find. If you set up a problem in a good way, the answer is easy
to find.
Social studies work is most often reading and discussion of concepts and independent
research.
There are only occasional artistic, expressive, or illustrative projects. Ancient Athens and Sumer
are, rather, societies to analyze. The following questions are typical of those that guide the
children’s independent research. “What mistakes did Pericles make after the war?” “What
mistakes did the citizens of Athens make?” “What are the elements of a civilization?” “How did
Greece build an economic empire?” “Compare the way Athens chose its leaders with the way
we choose ours.” Occasionally the children are asked to make up sample questions for their
social studies tests. On an occasion when the investigator was present, the social studies
teacher rejected a child’s question by saying, “That’s just fact. If I asked you that question on a
test, you’d complain it was just memory! Good questions ask for concepts.”
In social studies–but also in reading, science, and health–the teachers initiate classroom
discussions of current social issues and problems. These discussions occurred on every one of
the investigator’s visits, and a teacher told me, “These children’s opinions are important – it’s
important that they learn to reason things through.” The classroom discussions always struck
the observer as quite realistic and analytical, dealing with concrete social issues like the
following: “Why do workers strike?” “Is that right or wrong?” “Why do we have inflation, and what
can be done to stop it?” “Why do companies put chemicals in food when the natural ingredients
are available?” and so on. Usually the children did not have to be prodded to give their opinions.
In fact, their statements and the interchanges between them struck the observer as quite
sophisticated conceptually and verbally, and well-informed. Occasionally the teachers would
prod with statements such as, “Even if you don’t know [the answers], if you think logically about
it, you can figure it out.” And “I’m asking you [these] questions to help you think this through.”
Language arts emphasizes language as a complex system, one that should be mastered. The
children are asked to diagram sentences of complex grammatical construction, to memorize
irregular verb conjugations (he lay, he has lain, and so on …), and to use the proper participles,
conjunctions, and interjections in their speech. The teacher (the same one who teaches social
studies) told them, “It is not enough to get these right on tests; you must use what you learn [in
grammar classes] in your written and oral work. I will grade you on that.”
Most writing assignments are either research reports and essays for social studies or
experiment analyses and write-ups for science. There is only an occasional story or other
“creative writing” assignment. On the occasion observed by the investigator (the writing of a
Halloween story), the points the teacher stressed in preparing the children to write involved the
structural aspects of a story rather than the expression of feelings or other ideas. The teacher
showed them a filmstrip, “The Seven Parts of a Story,” and lectured them on plot development,
mood setting, character development, consistency, and the use of a logical or appropriate
ending. The stories they subsequently wrote were, in fact, well-structured, but many were also
personal and expressive. The teacher’s evaluative comments, however, did not refer to the
expressiveness or artistry but were all directed toward whether they had “developed” the story
well.
Language arts work also involved a large amount of practice in presentation of the self and in
managing situations where the child was expected to be in charge. For example, there was a
series of assignments in which each child had to be a “student teacher.” The child had to plan a
lesson in grammar, outlining, punctuation, or other language arts topic and explain the concept
to the class. Each child was to prepare a worksheet or game and a homework assignment as
well. After each presentation, the teacher and other children gave a critical appraisal of the
“student teacher’s” performance. Their criteria were: whether the student spoke clearly, whether
the lesson was interesting, whether the student made any mistakes, and whether he or she kept
control of the class. On an occasion when a child did not maintain control, the teacher said,
“When you’re up there, you have authority and you have to use it. I’ll back you up.”
The executive elite school is the only school where bells do not demarcate the periods of time.
The two fifth-grade teachers were very strict about changing classes on schedule, however, as
specific plans for each session had been made. The teachers attempted to keep tight control
over the children during lessons, and the children were sometimes flippant, boisterous, and
occasionally rude. However, the children may be brought into line by reminding them that “It is
up to you.” “You must control yourself,” “you are responsible for your work,” you must “set your
own priorities.” One teacher told a child, “You are the only driver of your car-and only you can
regulate your speed.” A new teacher complained to the observer that she had thought “these
children” would have more control.
While strict attention to the lesson at hand is required, the teachers make relatively little attempt
to regulate the movement of the children at other times. For example, except for the
kindergartners the children in this school do not have to wait for the bell to ring in the morning;
they may go to their classroom when they arrive at school. Fifth graders often came early to
read, to finish work, or to catch up. After the first two months of school, the fifth-grade teachers
did not line the children up to change classes or to go to gym, and so on, but, when the children
were ready and quiet, they were told they could go–sometimes without the teachers.
In the classroom, the children could get materials when they needed them and took what they
needed from closets and from the teacher’s desk. They were in charge of the office at
lunchtime. During class they did not have to sign out or ask permission to leave the room; they
just got up and left. Because of the pressure to get work done, however, they did not leave the
room very often. The teachers were very polite to the children, and the investigator heard no
sarcasm, no nasty remarks, and few direct orders. The teachers never called the children
“honey” or “dear” but always called them by name. The teachers were expected to be available
before school, after school, and for part of their lunchtime to provide extra help if needed.
The foregoing analysis of differences in schoolwork in contrasting social class contexts
suggests the following conclusion: the “hidden curriculum” of schoolwork is tacit preparation for
relating to the process of production in a particular way. Differing curricular, pedagogical, and
pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skills in each social
setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to
physical and symbolic capital,11 to authority, and to the process of work. School experience, in
the sample of schools discussed here, differed qualitatively by social class. These differences
may not only contribute to the development in the children in each social class of certain types
of economically significant relationships and not others but would thereby help to reproduce this
system of relations in society. In the contribution to the reproduction of unequal social relations
lies a theoretical meaning and social consequence of classroom practice.
The identification of different emphases in classrooms in a sample of contrasting social class
contexts implies 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 and to see if similar potential relationships are uncovered. Such research could
have as a product the further elucidation of complex but not readily apparent connections
between everyday activity in schools and classrooms and the unequal structure of economic
relationships in which we work and live.