Summary of social class and the hidden curriculum of work

1- Equity

2- Equality

3- Diversity

4- Advocacy

5- social justice

Trustees of Boston University SOCIAL CLASS AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF WORK Author(s): Jean Anyon Source: The Journal of Education, Vol. 162, No. 1, EDUCATION, IDEOLOGY AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM (WINTER 1980), pp. 67-92 Published by: Trustees of Boston University Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42741976 Accessed: 08-09-2018 02:46 UTC

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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 67

SOCIAL CLASS AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF WORK

Jean Any on Rutgers University

This article discusses examples of work tasks and interaction in five elemen- tary schools in contrasting social class communities. The examples illustrate dif- ferences in classroom experìence and cuniculum knowledge among the schools. The paper also assesses student work in each social setting in the light of a theo- retical approach to social class analysis. It is suggested that there is a " hidden cur- riculum" in school work that has profound implication for theory- and practice- in education.

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 cur- riculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and Gintis ( 1976), for example, have argued that students from 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 (1977), Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977), and Michael W. Apple (1979), focusing on school knowledge, have argued that knowledge and skills leading to social power and reward (e.g., medical, legal, manageri- al) are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes, to whom a more "practical" curriculum is of- fered (e.g., manual skills, clerical knowledge). While there has been con- siderable argumentation of these points regarding education in England, France, and North America, there has been little or no attempt to investi- gate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and class- rooms in this country.1

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 study of curricular, pedagogical and pupil evaluation practices in five elementary schools.* The article attempts a theoretical contribution as well, and assesses stu- dent work in the light of a theoretical approach to social class analysis. The organization is as follows: the methodology of the ethnographical

*The research was funded by Rutgers University Research Council and will be reported in detail elsewhere.

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study is briefly described; a theoretical approach to the definition of social class is offered; income and other characteristics of the parents in each school are provided, and examples from the study that illustrate work tasks and interaction in each school are presented; then the con- cepts used to define social class are applied to the examples in order to assess the theoretical meaning of classroom events. It will be suggested that there is a ' 'hidden curriculum" in school work that has profound im- plication for the theory- and consequence- of everyday activity in education.

METHODOLOGY

The methods used to gather data were classroom observation; inter- views of students, teachers, principals, and district administrative staff; and assessment of curriculum and other materials in each classroom and school. All classroom events to be discussed here involve the fifth

grade in each school. All schools but one departmentalize at the fifth grade level. Except for that school where only one fifth grade teacher could be observed, all the fifth grade teachers (that is, two or three) were observed as the children moved from subject to subject. In all schools the art, music, and gym teachers were also observed and interviewed. All teachers in the study were described as "good" or "excellent" by their principals. All except one new teacher had taught for more than four years. The fifth grade in each school was observed by the investigator for ten three-hour periods between September 15, 1978 and June 20, 1979.

Before providing the occupations, incomes, and other relevant social characteristics of the parents of the children in each school, I will offer a theoretical approach to defining social class.

SOCIAL CLASS

One's occupation and income level contribute significantly to one's social class, but they do not define it. Rather, social class is a series of re- lationships. A person's social class is defined here by the way that person relates to the process in society by which goods, services, and culture are produced.2 One relates to several aspects of the production process pri- marily through one's work. One has a relationship to the system of ownership, to other people (at work and in society) and to the content and process of one's own productive activity. One's relationship to all three of these aspects of production determines one's social class; that is, all three relationships are necessary and none is sufficient for determin- ing a person's relation to the process of production in society.

Ownership Relations. In a capitalist society, a person has a relation

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to the system of private ownership of capital. Capital is usually thought of as being derived from physical property. In this sense capital is proper- ty which is used to produce profit, interest, or rent in sufficient quantity so that the result can be used to produce more profit, interest, or rent- that is, more capital. Physical capital may be derived from money, stocks, machines, land, or the labor of workers (whose labor, for in- stance, may produce products that are sold by others for profit). Capital, however, can also be symbolic. It can be the socially legitimated knowledge of how the production process works, its financial, managerial, technical, or other "secrets." Symbolic capital can also be socially legitimated skills- cognitive (e.g., analytical), linguistic, or technical skills that provide the ability to, say, produce the dominant scientific, artistic, and other culture, or to manage the systems of in- dustrial and cultural production. Skillful application of symbolic capital may yield social and cultural power, and perhaps physical capital as well.

The ownership relation that is definitive for social class is one's rela- tion to physical capital. The first such relationship is that of capitalist. To be a member of the capitalist class in the present-day United States, one must participate in the ownership of the apparatus of production in society. The number of such persons is relatively small: while one per- son in ten owns some stock, for example, a mere 1.6 percent of the population owns 82.2 percent of all stock, and the wealthiest one-fifth owns almost all the rest (see New York Stock Exchange, 1975; Smith and Franklin, 1974; Lampman, 1962).

At the opposite pole of this relationship is the worker. To be in the United States working class a person will not ordinarily own physical capital; to the contrary, his or her work will be wage or salaried labor that is either a source of profit (i.e., capital) to others, or that makes it possi- ble for others to realize profit. Examples of the latter are white-collar clerical workers in industry and distribution (office and sales) as well as the wage and salaried workers in the institutions of social and economic legitimation and service (e.g., in state education and welfare institutions).3 According to the criteria to be developed here, the number of persons who presently comprise the working class in the United States is between 50 percent and 60 percent of the population (see also Wright, 1978; Braverman, 1974; Levison, 1974).

In between the defining relationship of capitalist and worker are the middle classes, whose relationship to the process of production is less clear, and whose relationship may indeed exhibit contradictory charac- teristics. For example, social service employees have a somewhat contra- dictory relationship to the process of production because, although their income may be at middle-class levels, some characteristics of their work are working-class (e.g. they may have very little control over their work). Analogously, there are persons at the upper income end of the middle

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class, such as upper-middle-class professionals, who may own quantities of stocks and will therefore share characteristics of the capitalist class. As the next criterion to be discussed makes clear, however, to be a member of the present-day capitalist in the United States, one must also par- ticipate in the social control of this capital. Relationships Between People. The second relationship which con-

tributes to one's social class is the relation one has to authority and con- trol at work and in society.4 One characteristic of most working-class jobs is that there is no built-in mechanism by which the worker can con- trol the content, process, or speed of work. Legitimate decision making is vested in personnel supervisors, in middle or upper management, or, as in an increasing number of white-collar working-class (and most middle- class) jobs, by bureaucratic rule and regulation. For upper-middle-class professional groups there is an increased amount of autonomy regarding work. Moreover, in middle- and upper-middle-class positions there is an increasing chance that one's work will also involve supervising the work of others. A capitalist is defined within these relations of control in an enterprise by having a position which participates in the direct control of the entire enterprise. Capitalists do not directly control workers in phys- ical production and do not directly control ideas in the sphere of cultural production. However, more crucial to control, capitalists make the deci- sions over how resources are used (e.g., where money is invested) and how profit is allocated. Relations Between People and Their Work. The third criterion which

contributes to a person's social class is the relationship between that per- son and his or her own productive activity - the type of activity that con- stitutes his or her work. A working-class job is often characterized by work that is routine and mechanical and that is a small, fragmented part of a larger process with which workers are not usually acquainted. These working-class jobs are usually blue-collar, manual labor. A few skilled jobs such as plumbing and printing are not mechanical, however, and an increasing number of working-class jobs are white-collar . These white- collar jobs, such as clerical work, may involve work that necessitates a measure of planning and decision making, but one still has no built-in control over the content. The work of some middle- and most upper- middle-class managerial and professional groups is likely to involve the need for conceptualization and creativity, with many professional jobs demanding one's full creative capacities. Finally, the work that charac- terizes the capitalist position is that this work is almost entirely a matter of conceptualization (e.g., planning and laying-out) that has as its object management and control of the enterprise. One's social class, then, is a result of the relationships one has, large-

ly through one's work, to physical capital and its power, to other people

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at work and in society, and to one's own productive activity. Social class is a lived, developing process. It is not an abstract category, and it is not a fixed, inherited position (although one's family background is, of course, important). Social class is perceived as a complex of social relations that one develops as one grows up-as one acquires and develops certain bodies of knowledge, skills, abilities, and traits, and as one has contact and opportunity in the world.5 In sum, social class describes relation- ships which we as adults have developed, may attempt to maintain, and in which we participate every working day. These relationships in a real sense define our material ties to the world. An important concern here is whether these relationships are developing in children in schools within particular social class contexts.

THE SAMPLE OF SCHOOLS

With the above discussion as a theoretical backdrop, 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 stu- dents 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 stock- room workers; foundrymen, pipe welders, and boilermakers; semiskilled and unskilled assembly-line operatives; gas station attendants, auto mechanics, maintenance workers, and security guards. Less than 30 per- cent of the women work, some part-time and some full-time, on assem- bly 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" level6; most of the rest of the family incomes are at or below $12,000, except some of the skilled workers whose in- comes are higher. The incomes of the majority of the families in these two schools (i.e., at or below $12,000) are typical of 38.6 percent of the families in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979, p. 2, table A).

The third school is called the Middle-class School , although because of neighborhood residence patterns, the population is a mixture of several social classes. The parents' occupations can be divided into three groups:

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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 in- dustry, and parents employed by the city (such as firemen, policemen, and several of the school's teachers). The third group is composed of oc- cupations such as personnel directors in local firms, accountants, "mid- dle management," and a few small capitalists (owners of shops in the area). The children of several local doctors attend this school. Most fami- ly incomes are between $13,000 and $25,000 with a few higher. This in- come range is typical of 38.9 percent of the families in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979, p. 2, table A). 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 (e.g., 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 ma- jority, and can be classified in the capitalist class (e.g., a partner in a pres- tigious 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 per- cent of the families in the United States.7

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, (e.g., presidents and vice presidents) in major U.S. -based multinational corporations- for example, ATT, RCA, City Bank, American Express, U.S. Steel. A sizable group of fathers are top executives in financial firms on 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 multination- als. 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 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 (see Smith and Franklin, 1974).

Since each of the five schools is only one instance of elementary edu- cation in a particular social class context, I will not generalize beyond the sample. However, the examples of school work which follow will suggest characteristics of education in each social setting that appear to have the-

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oretical and social significance and to be worth investigation in a larger number of schools.

SOCIAL CLASS AND SCHOOL WORK

There are obvious similarities among United States schools and classrooms. There are school and classroom rules, teachers who ask ques- tions and attempt to exercise control and who give work and homework. There are textbooks and tests. All of these were found in the five schools.

Indeed, there were other curricular similarities as well: all schools and fifth grades used the same math book and series (Mathematics Around Us, Scott Foresman, 1978); all fifth grades had at least one boxed set of an individualized reading program available in the room (although the vari- ety and amounts of teaching materials in the classrooms increased as the social class of the school population increased); and, all fifth grade language arts curricula included aspects of grammar, punctuation and capitalization.8

This section provides examples of work and work-related activities in each school that bear on the categories used to define social class. Thus, examples will be provided concerning students' relation to capital (e.g., as manifest in any symbolic capital that might be acquired through school work); students' relation to persons and types of authority regard- ing school work; and students' relation to their own productive activity. The section first offers the investigator's interpretation of what school work is for children in each setting, and then presents events and interac- tions that illustrate that assessment.

The Working-class Schools. In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechani- cal, 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 pro- cedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. Avail- able textbooks are not always used, and the teachers often prepare their own dittoes or put work examples on the board. Most of the rules regard- ing 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 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 ac-

cording 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 (i.e., which number is the divisor, dividend, quotient, and remainder). The children were told to

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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 for each problem what the procedure was, rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves: "3 into 22 is 7; do your subtrac- tion 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 ma- nipulates, 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, etc., 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 divi- sion 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 manipulates 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 one-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a one-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 bot- tom. 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, us- ing the scale of one inch equals one mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, "Don't cut 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

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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, depend- ing, 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 ques- tions on the sheet. For example, they wrote their "autobiography" by answering such questions as "Where were you born?" "What is your fa- vorite 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 owns 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 proj- ect is chosen and assigned by the teacher from a box of three-by-five-incn cards. On the card the teacher has written the question to be 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 mechani- cal, rote work that was given little explanation or connection to larger contexts. In one school, for example, although there was a book avail- able, 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 U.S. 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" (e.g., "Idaho grew 27 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 oc- casionally 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

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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 oral work. When go-

ing over math and language arts skills sheets, for example, as the teacher asked for the answer to each problem, he fired the questions rapidly, stac- cato, 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 offi- cially 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 materi- als. 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." In- stead, 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 seatllU" If the children got permission to leave the room they had to take a written pass with the date and time.

The control that the teachers have is less than they would like. It is a result of constant struggle with the children. The children continually resist the teachers' orders and the work itself. They do not directly chal- lenge the teachers' authority or legitimacy, but they make indirect at- tempts to sabotage and resist the flow of assignments:

Teacher: I will put some problems on the board. You are to divide.

Child: We got to divide? Teacher: Yes.

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Several children: (Groan) Not again. Mr. B, we done this yesterday. Child: Do we put the date? Teacher: Yes. I hope we remember we work in silence.

You're supposed to do it on white paper. I'll ex- plain it later.

Child: Somebody broke my pencil. (Crash- a child falls out of his chair.)

Child: (repeats) Mr. B.; somebody broke my pencil! Child: Are we going to be here all morning? (Teacher comes to the observer, shakes his head and grimaces, then smiles.)

The children are successful enough in their struggle against work that there are long periods where they are not asked to do any work, but just to sit and be quiet.9 Very often the work that the teachers assign is "easy," that is, not demanding, and thus receives less resistance. Sometimes a compromise is reached where, although the teachers insist that the chil- dren continue to work, there is a constant murmur of talk. The children will be doing arithmetic examples, copying social studies notes, or doing punctuation or other dittoes, and all the while there is muted but spirited conversation- about somebody's broken arm, an afterschool disturbance of the day before, etc. Sometimes the teachers themselves join in the con- versation because, as one teacher explained to me, "It's a relief from the routine."

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 deci- sion making. For example, the children must often figure out by them- selves 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 in the right order, and one can not 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 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

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textbook and to answer the teacher's questions. The questions are almost always designed to check on whether the students have read the assign- ment 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 answer 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 proper- ly, to write business letters and thank-you letters, and to understand what nouns and verbs and simple subjects are." Here, as well, the 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 criti-

cal 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 chil- dren, however, are often curious, especially in social studies. Their ques- tions 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 ex- ample, 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, "OK, good," and calls on the next child to read.

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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 79

Work tasks do not usually request creativity. Serious attention is rarely given in school work to how the children develop or express their own feelings and ideas, either linguistically or in graphic form. On the oc- casions when creativity or self-expression is requested, it is peripheral to the main activity, or it is "enrichment, " 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 pro- jects, either. Social studies projects, for example, are given with direc- tions 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 illustra- tions, 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 ex- ternal 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 school work 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 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 con- tinually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts. Work involves in- dividual thought and expressiveness, expansion and illustration of ideas, and choice of appropriate method and material. (The class is not con- sidered 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

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80 BOSTON UNIVERSITY

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 everybody else's and should show individuality. They should exhibit good design, and (this is important), they must also fit empirical reality. Moreover, one's work should attempt to intepret or "make sense" of reality. The relatively few rules to be followed regarding work are usually criteria for, or limits on, individual activity. One's pro- duct is usually evaluated for the quality of its expression and for the ap- propriateness 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, etc. Each child is to figure the average number of a type of posses- sion 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 "veri- fied" 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 hand- ful 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 grades to study ancient civiliza- tions (in particular, Egypt, Athens, and Sumer.) In this classroom, the

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JOURNAL OF EDUCATION 8 1

emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the culture of the people of an- cient 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 them- selves. They read stories of those days. They wrote essays and stories depicting the lives of the people and the societal and occupational divi- sions. They chose from a list of projects, all of which involved graphic representations of ideas: for example, "Make a mural depicting the divi- sion of labor in Egyptian society."

Each child 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 authen- tic. They each chose an occupation and made an Egyptian plaque repre- senting 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, 1 '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. Oc- casionally 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 rhebus story for a first grader whom they had interviewed to see what kind of story the child liked best. They wrote editorials on pend- ing 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 per- formed 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 observ- er arrived the class was doing a punctuation ditto. The teacher later apol- ogized 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 un- ambiguous 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.

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82 BOSTON UNIVERSITY

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 para- graph 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 chil-

dren and the teacher. In fact, this was the only school in which the in- vestigator 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 negotia-

tion. 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." The follow- ing two dialogues illustrate the process of negotiation between student and teacher.