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Simone Southerland

Professor Jan Rieman

English 1101-022

February 1, 2010

Thank God For The Opportunity To Learn How To Read And Write

I wonder how many kids would go to school if they didn’t have to. Not all

children have the desire to learn. Not all children want to sit in a classroom all day. Not

all children like interacting with so many different people on a day-to-day basis.

Sometimes it takes a collective effort from a child’s parents, family, and friends to create

a deeper desire to further their education. Luckily here in the United States, all children

are entitled to a free education for at least 13 years of their life.

Jean Anyon, a professor at City University in New York, performed a study in the

late 70’s on a group of schools in Northern New Jersey to test the argument “that public

schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of

educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes.”

(Page 225) She published the results of her study the Journal of Education in an article

entitled Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. In this article, she breaks dow

the different social classes to give the reader her method of classifying the schools in her

study. She then “offers the investigator’s interpretation of what school work is for

children in each setting, and then presents events and interactions that illustrate that

assessment.” (Page 232) She concludes her article saying that although “the investigator

could introduce evidence to show that the following increased as the social class of the
community increased … increased variety and abundance of teaching materials in the

classroom…higher social class background and more prestigious educational institutions

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attended by teachers and administrators; more stringent board of education requirements

regarding teaching methods…” (Page 246), this is not the primary concern. She says “the

primary concern is to reflect on the deeper social meaning, the wider theoretical

significance, of what happens in each social setting.” (Page 246)

Anyon’s article deals strictly with public schools. A good portion of a public

school’s budget is funded with local property taxes. If the property taxes for a certain

area are used to fund only the schools in that area, you would end up having schools that

are unequally funded. That would greatly explain Anyon’s findings in here research.

Schools that have more money can afford to hire better teachers and purchase more

learning materials. The parents of the children in those schools tend to be more involved

because so much of their money is funding those schools. The children tend to be more

accepting to what is expected of them in the school probably because of their

environment at home.

If schools were funded equally across the U.S. on a per-student basis, would that

change the attitudes of the teachers and students found in all of Anyon’s classifications of

schools? Would that change the “expectations and demands regarding student

achievement on the part of the teachers, parents, and administrators.”? (Page 246) I think

it would. Most people tend to do a better job when there’s more money involved and

they have the proper tools to do their job well. I think teachers would have more patience

with the students. More funding to some of the poverty stricken schools may help

purchase more educational equipment to make learning more exciting to the students.
 Parents have a major role to play when it come to the education of their child.

We have so many amenities that are free to the public here in the U.S. that no one can

truly

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complain of not having a fair chance to move up in society because of their given

education through the school system. There are libraries that offer many programs

geared towards education that are available to children and parents. Most of the public

schools and local community centers have after school programs that have tutoring

services and other educational activities as well. Parents have to step up to the plate and

take charge of their child’s education. Those that have the money can pay someone else

to do it, but the parents that are of lesser means have to use their own time, time they may

not have.
Works Cited

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

Eds. Lu and Homer. New York: Pearson, 2000. 225-51. Print.