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Lana O’Neill
Jan Rieman
English 1101X
February 10, 2010

Critical Interpretation

Jean Anyon is a professor at the City University of New York, who has written

several books, and is the author of “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”

(Anyon, 225). This article is a result of an experiment of five elementary schools in New

Jersey. After observing the interaction of teachers with students and their teaching

practices in varying social class communities, it is discovered that there is a “hidden

curriculum”. Basically, Anyon describes this hidden curriculum as a change in the

teacher’s attitude toward students, how they teach the information, and the use of

resources based on the social class of the area that the school is located. Anyon reveals

that the teachers change to prepare the students for the jobs that they think, based on their

social class and the social class of their parents, that they will have in the future. The first

two schools were “working class schools”, in which the majority of the parents had blue

collar jobs, 15% were unemployed, less than 30% of the mothers worked, and 15% of the

families were considered to be at or below the federal poverty line (Anyon, 230). The

third school was considered a “middle class school”, where most of the parents had blue

collar jobs but the jobs were mostly middle management (Anyon, 230). The fourth

school was an “upper class school” and the fifth school is called an “Executive Elite

school” (Anyon, 231), where the parents had higher paying jobs and the area in which

they were located was of a higher social class. The similarities between the schools were

that the teachers asked questions, they had rules, homework, textbooks, and tests (Anyon,

231). Despite the similarities, Anyon found that each school was teaching its children
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differently. The working class schools students had little decision making or choice, the

textbooks weren’t used, the teacher referred to classroom objects as hers, learning wasn’t

interactive with the majority of the class being spent copying notes, and following the

right steps to find the answer was the main concern (Anyon, 234-235). The middle class

school focused on getting the right answer, some choice and decision making was

involved, textbooks were used, and the teacher asked more questions to involve the

students (Anyon, 236). The upper class school used a lot of independent but creative

learning assignments, a lot of explanations and expressions of ideas, more activities

instead of just copying notes, and the children’s opinion was very valued (Anyon, 240-

241). In the Executive Elite School, children were required to use reasoning to figure out

the problems, correct answers were not important, bells are not used to announce the end

of class, and the children’s movement was rarely monitored (Anyon, 242-245). Anyon

believes that the different methods of teaching are determined by the area which the

school is located and that as the social class improves, so does the teaching.

It wasn’t surprising to learn about this hidden curriculum because it appears to

me that the teaching does differ depending on the location of the school, however I don’t

think that it is intentional. I think that if the school is located in a less fortunate

neighborhood then it probably doesn’t have as much money, therefore it can’t afford the

best teachers. Anyon mentions that the children in the working class schools are

“developing abilities and skills of resistance” (247) which I think can pose a problem for

the teacher if students are resisting the work assigned. According to this article, the

teachers in the working class schools rarely involved the students and their opinions,

which makes me wonder if this is because the students have behavioral problems, or if
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the students have behavioral problems because they are not being given a change to get

involved. In my opinion, the students have behavioral problems because they think that

the teacher doesn’t respect them.

If the school has the materials needed, such as textbooks, it makes sense to give

them to the students, but the lower class schools didn’t. I think that the teachers are

afraid to use the books because they think that the students wont respect them, which is

probably true, however I think that they wouldn’t respect them because they feel the

teacher doesn’t trust them. This is the same situation as the movie Freedom Writers. In

this movie, a teacher starts working at a very poor school and is told she is not allowed to

let the kids use the textbooks because they wont respect them and the school cant afford

to buy new ones. The school feels this way because the books they have are already torn

and the students have a history of being disrespectful towards the school’s property.

When the teacher raises the money herself and buys brand new books for the students,

they take care of them because they feel trusted and they appreciate the effort that their

teacher has made. I believe that if the teacher shows the students respect, then their

behavior in the classroom will improve.

The best school, in my opinion is the middle class school because it taught the

students how to get the right answer but also allowed for some creativity. The teacher

explained her decision making process and involved the students when teaching. The

teacher and students still relied on bells to change classes, which means that some rules

and structure were still visible. Also, the students respected the teacher and the

classroom materials because they were given a chance to use them and the teacher

offered them respect in return, unlike the working class schools. The middle class school
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sounds most like the schools that I have always gone to and it seems to have been an

effective system. In my schooling experience, my teachers taught using workbooks and

textbooks which, although sometimes shared, were distributed to every student. The

teachers, also, explained why answers were reached and why decisions in the classrooms

were made. Through explaining these things to the students, they gained an

understanding for the decision making process and were able to fully understand

concepts. These skills helped to prepare me for my later school years. The middle class

schools are a good mixture of rules and freedom; it allows the students to be creative, yet

shows that getting the correct answer is still important.

I think that the Executive Elite School is too high quality thinking for fifth

graders. I wouldn’t want my kids to go to this school because as Anyon said, it is

“reasoning through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically

sound and of top academic quality” (242). I don’t think that this is an effective way to

teach such young children because they aren’t ready for this type of deep thinking. At

such a young age, I think in order for them to learn, children must stay both entertained

and interested. Also this article mentions that the correct answers are not given by the

book or the teacher (Anyon, 243), which I think could pose a problem in later school

years because correct answers are going to become important at some point in one’s

educational career. At a college level, I think that this teaching method would be

appropriate, but until then I think that the middle class school is the best choice.
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Resources

Anyon, Jean. "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work." Writing Conventions.

Eds. Lu and Horner. New York: Pearson, 2008. 225-51. Print.

Self-assessment

From the critical inquiry to the critical interpretation I have changed many things.

I have added more quotes to deepen my thoughts about Anyon’s article and I have

restructured paragraphs and rewrote sentences to make it more clear to the reader

what my main idea was. According to my peer reviewers, my main idea is clear.

I think that the strengths of my paper are that it stays on topic and I can relate it to

life experiences. What I think needs work are the sentence structures and my in

text citations. Also, I found it hard to contradict my original ideas.

Lana,

Thanks for the thoughtful self-assessment. It’s nice that you reflect on what your

peer group readers said about your work. You didn’t necessarily need to contradict your

original ideas, but I did expect you to at least challenge your original assumptions. Your

interpretation and analysis here is rich, so it’s evident that you’ve thought carefully

about Anyon’s work. You do a very good job of pulling in examples to support your

work from other sources, like the movie you mention and your own experience. You

also do a nice job of moving beyond mere summary and making connections and

drawing conclusions about what you understand about this issue.

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What I encourage you to work on in your revision is thinking about you’re your

introduction and your conclusion. You want your readers to have a fair idea of what you

hope to show in your paper from the beginning, so make that clear. You also want to

lead your reader back out of your paper and not just drop them in what feels like the

middle of a thought. And, like I say in the marginal comment, consider how you may be

able to condense your summary in the second paragraph.

Dr. Rieman,

I don’t understand what you mean when you comment, “ I wonder if it’s worth

mentioning Anyon’s research was inspired by similar finding outside the US?”

I was just thinking that Anyon’s work was inspired by similar findings in other parts of

the industrialized world and that readers might find this interesting.

Thank you with your help using parenthetical documentation, I thought that we had to put

the author every time. Also where you said, “you could condense your summarizing

here”, I’m not sure where you mean. Do you mean simplify my whole summary?

Yes. It’s a wonderful and very accurate summary, but you probably don’t really need that

much detail to give the overall gist of Anyon’s work. That said, remember always that

it’s your paper and if you feel you need that much summary to make sense to your

readers, then keep it all.

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Because I thought that the length was necessary to include all the needed information for

my paper. I agree with the rest of your comments and I am aware that I had some

grammatical and spelling errors. You’re critiques were very helpful.

Thank you,

Lana O’Neill