Almost a half century ago, the famed sociologist James Coleman conducted a study of the factors that most powerfully influence academic achievement for American students.Authorized by Congress as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Coleman Report analyzed 600,000 students in 4,000 schools. Many expected that the study would find that per pupil expenditure drives achievement, or that racial segregation does. But Coleman found something different: the biggest predictor was the socioeconomic status of the family a child comes from.The second biggest predictor? The socioeconomic makeup of the students in the school a child attends. Today, low-income students stuck in high-poverty schools are educationally two years behind low-income kids who are able to attend more affluent schools.With Class Rules: Exposing Inequality in American High Schools, another veteran sociologist, the educator, scholar, and author Peter W. Cookson Jr. (whom I’ve known since 2010), returns to Coleman’s central idea, with an interesting twist.Employing qualitative rather than quantitative methods, Cookson finds that the socioeconomic status of the students in a school affects much more than academic outcomes.He finds that high schools “pass on class position through rites of passage that instill in students the values, dispositions, and beliefs of their class.” Certain schools groom students to be leaders, while others channel adolescents into the laboring class. The manner is not as explicit as the way West Point graduates become Army officers or seminaries graduate clerics, but it nevertheless happens with great consistency.Cookson writes that “almost nobody discusses this function of schooling, but it is very real.” High schools have a “latent curriculum,” a set of rules and norms that are written in considerable measure by fellow students.Almost as importantly, high schools also have different physical narratives that send what Cookson calls “unspoken messages.” “Do I go to a school that is beautiful, well equipped, and mirrors back to me a sense of privilege,” he asks, “or do I go to a school that reflects back to me poverty, disorganization, and confusion?”
we know now that this has and is by design partly to keep those in the less affluent areas dumbed down, we all have heard horror stories of teachers failing the kids or condescending of their aspirations,
when the one who is charged with lifting that kid up slaps him down it destroys their desire to attain from a sense of they can't by the one they looked up to as the know all educator.
destitute areas can still excel if the teachers were teachers and a positive environment is created if only within the school it inspires.
Almost a half century ago, the famed sociologist James Coleman conducted a study of the factors that most powerfully influence academic achievement for American students.
Authorized by Congress as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Coleman Report analyzed 600,000 students in 4,000 schools. Many expected that the study would find that per pupil expenditure drives achievement, or that racial segregation does. But Coleman found something different: the biggest predictor was the socioeconomic status of the family a child comes from.The second biggest predictor? The socioeconomic makeup of the students in the school a child attends. Today, low-income students stuck in high-poverty schools are educationally two years behind low-income kids who are able to attend more affluent schools.With Class Rules: Exposing Inequality in American High Schools, another veteran sociologist, the educator, scholar, and author Peter W. Cookson Jr. (whom I’ve known since 2010), returns to Coleman’s central idea, with an interesting twist.Employing qualitative rather than quantitative methods, Cookson finds that the socioeconomic status of the students in a school affects much more than academic outcomes.He finds that high schools “pass on class position through rites of passage that instill in students the values, dispositions, and beliefs of their class.” Certain schools groom students to be leaders, while others channel adolescents into the laboring class. The manner is not as explicit as the way West Point graduates become Army officers or seminaries graduate clerics, but it nevertheless happens with great consistency.Cookson writes that “almost nobody discusses this function of schooling, but it is very real.” High schools have a “latent curriculum,” a set of rules and norms that are written in considerable measure by fellow students.Almost as importantly, high schools also have different physical narratives that send what Cookson calls “unspoken messages.” “Do I go to a school that is beautiful, well equipped, and mirrors back to me a sense of privilege,” he asks, “or do I go to a school that reflects back to me poverty, disorganization, and confusion?”
we know now that this has and is by design partly to keep those in the less affluent areas dumbed down, we all have heard horror stories of teachers failing the kids or condescending of their aspirations,
when the one who is charged with lifting that kid up slaps him down it destroys their desire to attain from a sense of they can't by the one they looked up to as the know all educator.
destitute areas can still excel if the teachers were teachers and a positive environment is created if only within the school it inspires.
Almost a half century ago, the famed sociologist James Coleman conducted a study of the factors that most powerfully influence academic achievement for American students.
Authorized by Congress as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Coleman Report analyzed 600,000 students in 4,000 schools. Many expected that the study would find that per pupil expenditure drives achievement, or that racial segregation does. But Coleman found something different: the biggest predictor was the socioeconomic status of the family a child comes from.The second biggest predictor? The socioeconomic makeup of the students in the school a child attends. Today, low-income students stuck in high-poverty schools are educationally two years behind low-income kids who are able to attend more affluent schools.With Class Rules: Exposing Inequality in American High Schools, another veteran sociologist, the educator, scholar, and author Peter W. Cookson Jr. (whom I’ve known since 2010), returns to Coleman’s central idea, with an interesting twist.Employing qualitative rather than quantitative methods, Cookson finds that the socioeconomic status of the students in a school affects much more than academic outcomes.He finds that high schools “pass on class position through rites of passage that instill in students the values, dispositions, and beliefs of their class.” Certain schools groom students to be leaders, while others channel adolescents into the laboring class. The manner is not as explicit as the way West Point graduates become Army officers or seminaries graduate clerics, but it nevertheless happens with great consistency.Cookson writes that “almost nobody discusses this function of schooling, but it is very real.” High schools have a “latent curriculum,” a set of rules and norms that are written in considerable measure by fellow students.Almost as importantly, high schools also have different physical narratives that send what Cookson calls “unspoken messages.” “Do I go to a school that is beautiful, well equipped, and mirrors back to me a sense of privilege,” he asks, “or do I go to a school that reflects back to me poverty, disorganization, and confusion?”
we know now that this has and is by design partly to keep those in the less affluent areas dumbed down, we all have heard horror stories of teachers failing the kids or condescending of their aspirations,
when the one who is charged with lifting that kid up slaps him down it destroys their desire to attain from a sense of they can't by the one they looked up to as the know all educator.
destitute areas can still excel if the teachers were teachers and a positive environment is created if only within the school it inspires.
In Class Rules, Cookson paints portraits of five schools spanning the socioeconomic spectrum, four of which he has studied for decades: Highridge Academy, an elite private boarding school; wealthy suburban Meadowbrook High; Riverside High, in a middle-class neighborhood; Patrick Henry High, in a rural working-class community; and Roosevelt High, in a destitute urban area. (All names have been changed to protect the privacy of the subjects.)
Cookson examines the quite distinct “class rites of passage” in these schools. At Highridge, the boarding school, students are educated amid 1,000 acres of carefully manicured grounds. The halls are adorned with oil paintings, and the driveways are lined with “large majestic oak and maple trees [that] signal that Highridge was not born yesterday,” Cookson writes. The food is “abundant, tasty and healthy,” sports are an obsession, and gossip centers around vacation plans.At upper-middle-class Meadowbrook, the physical plant is impressive. The parking lot is filled with expensive foreign cars (in the student section) and more modest American-made cars (where the teachers park). Police are present, but only to direct traffic.Middle-class Riverside is modest: there are few playing fields, and the architecture, Cookson writes, “echoes that of the small office buildings found in the area,” with “no wasted money on charm, no individuality.”At working-class Patrick Henry, there are no large fields, and the buildings are made of brick and cinder block. With low ceilings and few windows, Cookson writes, “the school was built with cost savings and functionality in mind.” There is no need for police to direct traffic because most students ride the bus and can only dream of owning a car. But police are readily called by teachers for other reasons.Meanwhile, underclass Roosevelt, located in the South Bronx—in the poorest congressional district in the country—has dimly lit hallways, no outside recreation facilities, and a high chain-link fence surrounding the faculty parking lot. Students must go through airport-like security to enter the building, and there is a permanent police presence within the school. “The Bronx is in your face,” Cookson writes.
socially economic position has always dictated the pecking order. unwillingness to share breeds resentment from those less fortunate and those that are exhibit disdain and repulsiveness to those they consider to be beneathe them.
this is why our wise Pres. seeks to correct this phenomonon the republicans choose to phrase it as "taking your money and giving it to the poor" two things first it's a lie, second he means fairness, level playing fields to have the opportunity to rise. what's yours is yours but skulduggery keeps it on the backs of poor and disenfranchised to carry he weight.
99% v. 1% remember how smug and all hat those in the 1% were just because those who aspired to get on the same street was unthinkable, if you have the power you also have the ability to chang. recognize becauuse they do throughout history which republicans have forgotten have these things call rebellion all were not put down some made it, feeling lucky, punks?
