Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Abstract

Scholars . . .  have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experiences and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes.  Bowles and Ginitis, 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).  . . . [T]here has been little or no attempt to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary school and classrooms in this country.

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.

                                                                                    -- Jean Anyon

The complete text of Anyon's essay is available at: http://www.jeananyon.org/docs/anyon-1980.pdf