Comments on Class in the Class Room

I agree that a class-based approach is both fairer and likely to be more effective. But man, class is a loaded issue in this country. Just look at your own language: "It is a disadvantage to have classmates who ...fail to go on to college."

As though whether or not to attend college was purely a personal decision and not affected by economics. And that "failure" to attend college was a personal failing on the order of excessive television watching.

I think Flamingbanjo is reading too much into the word "fail," IMO. If I "fail" to take a shower today (my day off) it won't be a personal failing, although those who encounter me may beg to differ.

Josh is right, liberals need to tackle class not race. This is the best time, but the cons have been on the offensive on the topic for years (if someone broaches the subject, usually in regards to taxes, they accuse liberals of promoting "class war") so it will have to be smartly played to counter that. Most of us here at slog know better, but the general population does not.

Matt: Oh, and comparing not going to college to not showering isn't classist?

I'm kidding. My point is just that class is not something we as Americans talk about very well, possibly because of nearly a century of red-baiting making all discussions of class taboo. Even liberals who claim great sympathy for the downtrodden and who would never, ever say the bad things that Michael Richards said can frequently be found looking down their noses at the uneducated NASCAR fans who haven't read the same books that they read in college or who otherwise lack their level of progressive enlightenment. It was all over that "Urban Archipilego" article in this very paper as well as "Fuck the South" and any number of others.

It's there in a slightly more subtle form every time you hear a college-educated liberal recommend "education" as the solution to every possible problem. It carries a built-in assumption that everybody has the same access to higher education (and that there is no difference between a state college degree and an ivy league degree) and it also implies a tacit acceptance of a form of class-based discrimination on this basis. Again, many liberals I know who would be up in arms over racial discrimination in hiring practices are perfectly fine with a hiring process that, for instance, privileges college graduates (based largely on how expensive the school was) even when the degree has nothing to do with the job skills required.

It's sort of like how if you hear an American using the term "proletarian" there is virtually zero chance that the speaker is in fact a proletarian.

Point taken. And I know what you mean about liberals being classist (oh, I hate using a new "-ist" word, but it does make it easier to talk about). What most of us from the upper middle class (from whence most of us who went to college came - like my use of the word "whence?") have absorbed the millenia-old attitude that we have to take care of the lower classes, that they can't do it for themselves. It will take a lot of self-reeducation to overcome.

Class is a taboo subject in this country. Read Lies My Teacher Told Me. And thing think back on whether you were taught anything at all about the labor movement in high school.

Matt from Denver:
While I get your point about attitude adjustment towards "the lower classes", social justice needs to acknowledge that the ability of lower ses individuals to help themselves may well be limited by their circumstances. Hence the Need for social justice. And while college education is now required for jobs which don't seem to actually use the academic skills achieved, and while societies legitimately need individuals willing to work the "undesireable" jobs that don't require education, I still believe that education is tied closely enough to upward class mobility that it can be a useful solution for individuals, although probably not for society at large.

Interesting article. Seems like a much better approach.

This shouldn't be framed in terms of "class". It's specifically about income and making sure that it's fairly distributed across the different public schools.

Public schools with high income demographics have more parent involvement and raise more money (donations, auctions, bake sales, etc). Under this proposal, poor kids would benefit from these extra resources as well. Who wouldn't support that?

BTW: Seattle's tie-breaker policy, whether based on class or income, has almost no impact on integration. It appears that if you give people a choice in schools, they will sort themselves along racial/economic lines.

who wouldn't support that? Ha! The rich families wouldn't. They don't want to send their kids to schools in poor areas.

But I think this is a good idea, and better addresses what I think is the biggest hurdle to success - money, not race.

I would feel stupid claiming this were it not for the fact that I am writing under an assumed name (so I'm not really bragging), but back when I was in high school I realized that a solution to the whole Affirmative Action controversy was to just use income instead of race. Since racial/ethnic minorities tend to be lower income, well, problem solved. I kept thinking that this was such a simple solution, there must be something wrong with it; everyone I asked, though, said it made sense. If anyone can point out a major flaw, please let me know.

Also, I agree with Sean that the word class does not have to come in. Talking about class is, for better or worse, divisive, and it is not really clear how they are defined, what they mean. Upper Class, according to Wikipedia, is more a social distinction than an economic one. Anyway, income is real, and poverty is a real barrier.

I would say the next major social issue in this country should be income inequality - it is staring us all in the face and we don't know what to do about it.

Jude: Income=Class.

Ditto. "Income" is just a nicer way of putting it.

Re: 10, 11 - Maybe, but a) "income" sounds better than "class" to American ears and b) not everyone agrees with you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_upper_class
"it should be noted that class status and wealth can be two different things."

Hmm, as usual, things turn out to be not as simple as they seem.

Jude -- point taken. Thanks for the reminder.

I have kids in public school (not in Seattle, though.) There is no way I am providing any personal financial information to the school district. It's none of their business. But without it, how is a parent's "class" to be determined?