Money Matters

Money Matters It's no secret that schools in high-income communities are better than those in low- income communities, or the fact that students are being better prepared for desirable jobs. It’s astonishing to learn how huge the difference in education from wealthy communities and those from a poor community. In “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, Anyon observes five different schools for a whole school year of fifth graders; two working class schools, one middle-class school, one affluent professional school, and an executive elite school. Anyon’s research indicated that students are being prepared to occupy particular jobs on the social ladder. Students are being set on course of education to prepare them for jobs within their own social economic status. The first two schools Anyon observed were the working class schools. These schools are mostly made up of students with parents that have blue-collar jobs or earn at $12000 or less a year. The jobs these parents include: platform, storeroom, and stockroom workers, foundry-men, pipe welders, and boilermakers, etc. In these two schools, students are taught to follow step by step procedures that are “usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice” (173). The teachers don’t explain why they assign the work, how they might have a connection with other assignments, or what the assignment’s main point is. Text books are available for use, but rarely used for teachers make their own ditto or examples to show the class. Students are told to write down the steps and to study them. Work in these schools is not graded whether the answers are wrong or right, they are graded on if they followed the correct procedure. Unlike middle class schools, these students are being prepared for blue collar jobs, which require no thinking, and to follow procedures that were taught to them. The middle class school.is made up of students whose parents make $13000