Blog # 6 Patrick Finn - Literacy with an attitude - Different education for different people

Blog # 6 Patrick Finn - Literacy with an attitude - Different education for different people





Patrick Finn looked at a 1970s study by Jean Anyon where she explained the differences between what she called

Working Class schools, Middle Class schools, Affluent Professional schools, and Executive Elite schools. 


Working Class schools: Follow directions and do mechanical , low paying work.

Middle Class schools: Follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society producing and running smoothly. 

Affluent Professional schools:Learn to create products and art “Symbolic capital” and at the same time find rewards

in work itself and negotiate from powerful position


Executive Elite schools: Learning to be the masters of the universe. 


My SL site would fall into the category of providing a Middle Class Education because it strives to provide cultural

relevant pedagogies, multilingual approach, community approach, inclusiveness, anti-racist education and abolitionist

teaching to it’s students. In contrast, the population of the school is composed by a majority of working class

socioeconomic status, therefore creating a need to balance Working class education vs.middle class education.

Even though my service school’s goal and efforts are directed to providing a middle class education, the population

is a low income class, which makes it hard to balance the reality of the students with high quality instruction efforts a

nd social justice practices that contradict the population’s backgrounds. 


Attached an interesting documentary about an example of how working class education was directed to train

people just enough to perform certain jobs in manufacturers for example, but not enough education to become

doctors, engineers, or artists like writers or painters and the argument was that at the time there was already enough

upper class people that met those characteristics, but they needed working class people. 


History about Working school of education 




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