Social Reproduction

The readings for this week, especially the article about Mountain View and Ground View schools reminded me of a quote from that article "Still Separate Still Unequal," by Jonathan Kozol.  Kozol interviewed some students at a school like Ground View about their school and the classes available to them, like sewing and hairdressing 1 and 2.  One particularly astute kid explained it this way: "The owners of sewing factories need laborers. It’s not going to be their own kids. You’re ghetto so we send you to the factory. You’re ghetto, so you sew."  Schools like Mountain View trains students to be working class or poor adults.  It sends these students the message that they aren't valued.  The metal detectors, ID badges, and prominently displayed class schedules send them the message that they are expected to misbehave.  That they are expected to be criminals.  And, perhaps, by now, we are all beginning to realize this.  I think we all know that something needs to be done about this.  

The flip side is trickier, though.  Should we be changing Mountain View?  These kids are learning the opposite of the kids from Ground View.  They are learning to be executives.  They are learning to lead.  Is there anything wrong with that?  Isn't that the ideal? I'm not so sure.  They are also learning to be entitled.  They are learning that they are the norm.  That everything that is different from them is "less than", not simply "different from."  

And to a certain extent, we learn the same thing.  As Saltman explains, when we think of kids from working class and poor backgrounds as having "risk factors," "we assume that the privileged position is the norm, the benchmark, or the ideal against which other identities will be judged."  But an identity that includes an overdeveloped sense of entitlement is not ideal.  The flip side of inequality is privilege.  To have true equality, we need to equally consider both.