Elementary Schooling and Distinctions of Social Class

Jean Anyon/Rutgers University

There now exists a good deal of theoretical argument that asserts the role of education in industrial societies is to reproduce an unequal system of social classes. 1 However, we still have very little empirical understanding of the mechanisms by which curricula and classrooms actually contribute to the production or reproduction of distinctions and relations of social class, z And though I make no claim to have achieved an adequate dialectic of theory and experience from my own work, I do argue that, until we have a more fully developed empirical base to our understanding of how schools act as agents of social reproduction, we cannot be sure of the accuracy of our theories or of the practicality of our prescriptions for what should be done. In a recent ethnographical study, I have begun to investigate how distinctions of social class are produced and reproduced in five elementary schools. I will discuss this in a further section. I would state here, however, that I hope, through this study and much more empirical work, to complement recent theorizing and arrive at a useful set of suggestions for what we should, and should not do, about schools and social change. This paper is divided into two sections. The first section addresses reproductive education - - ways elementary schools may produce and reproduce distinctions of social class. Here I will first articulate a theoretical assumption of my own, and then summarize reproductive characteristics of fifth grades in a working-class school and an affluent professional school from my study) In the second section, I invite educators to intervene against processes of reproduction. To that end, I introduce a pedagogical program for non-reproductive education. The program is informed in part by the objective and subjective conditions that I found in the schools and in part by a theoretical model that I will develop. This model involves notions of contradictory social consciousness, the dialectic of cultural activity and social change, and the importance of situated, class-specific, transformative pedagogics. I will briefly apply l~he model to reproductive characteristics of the working-class and affluent professional classrooms.

Reproductive Education
A theoretical assumption informing my empirical work on production/reproduction in classrooms is based on the argument that while students and teachers certainly produce meanings in classrooms, these meanings are produced within boundaries and multiple constraints that ordinarily overdetermine their general form and substance. Such overdetermined classroom productions help to produce social actors who, in their behavior in society, produce and reproduce the "system."
1 I8 Interchange / Vol. 12, Nos. 2-3, 1981

While power and domination may determine what is produced in classrooms - - for example, the power of administrators to hire, and especially to fire; or the domination of ideology in standard curriculum materials (see, e.g., Anyon, 1979) - - such constraints of power are not always responsible. Rather, as Anthony Giddens (1979) has argued, social actors reproduce the system (e.g., social structures) largely by the totality of their (uncoerced) everyday productions. When a person produces a sentence in standard English for instance, he or she contributes to the reproduction of the language - - of its syntax and its meaning. While this notion of production/reproduction through everyday activity expresses the overdetermination of multiple causation, it does not preclude the possibility for change. Rather it highlights the fact that social actors have - - by necessity - - a degree of conscious or unconscious knowledge of what they do (e.g., knowledge of the language and of its appropriate use) and knowledge of the society and its multiple constraints (e.g., knowledge of the power of administrators). People can thus be held accountable for their actions (keeping in mind, of course, their degree of social and economic power or powerlessness). The importance of everyday activity to social reproduction also implies that people who are encouraged to act in ways that challenge received forms and ideas can make important contributions to a struggle against cultural and economic reproduction. For example, the aggressive "street" dialects of some blacks and working-class whites and the counter-cultural lifestyles of many students in the 1960s can be seen as forms of cultural resistance to the domination of white middle-class culture and language. 4 As such, oppositional language and subgroup cultural innovations are potentially transformative of the dominant language and culture - - as, for example, happened with the counter-culture of the 1960s when much of the lifestyle, sexual attitudes, middle-class drug use, and feminist assertiveness became incorporated in one form or another into mainstream American culture, now profoundly different from what it was in the 1950s. One of the major points to be made in this paper, however, is that educators can do a great deal to transform cultural expressions of resistance into direct political action to change the economic and social system. I will now briefly discuss reproductive aspects of the schools in my observational study. The five schools were in contrasting social-class settings - - in what I call working-class, middle-class, affluent-professional, and executiveelite communities, s I have identified a number of reproductive differences among these schools, differences that involve school work, school knowledge, and forms of student resistance. In interpreting the significance of these differences for the reproduction of an unequal system of social classes, I argue that they contribute in the following ways: by emphasizing work skills and capacities in different social classes appropriate to the reproduction of the division between manual and mental labor in American society; by transmitting (as accurate and legitimate) class-based curriculum knowledge and dominant reproductive social ideologies; and by providing an institutional arena in which children may develop indirect (partial and cultural) rather than direct (political and 'politicized') responses to resisting oppression and resolving contradictions.

Reproductive Aspects of the Working-Class School Work Patterns - - Predominant patterns of work activity that I observed in the two fifth grades in this working class school involved repetitive rote procedures
119

and copious mechanical activity such as copying teachers' notes from the chalkboard, following posted arithmetic procedures for adding, subtracting, dividing, or multiplying, following grammatical rules for filling in words on language arts dittoes, and answering teachers' questions; most of these question were rather to ascertain whether children had done the assigned work than to invite reflection or sustained creative thought on a problem or task. An additional characteristic of most of the work was that assignments were rarely tied either to the children' s own conception of a problem Or to their conception of a strategy for carrying out a task; nor was most of the work connected to any apparent larger project or concern.. Individual activities often seemed fragmented, unconnected to each other, and without inherent meaning - - other than that the student was "told" to do them. The following example is illustrative. In math, when two-digit division was introduced, the teacher gave a four-minute lecture on what the terms were called - - which number in the example was the divisor, the dividend, quotient, and remainder. The children were told to copy what she said in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow in solving the problems, saying" This is how you do them." She listed the steps on the board, and they appeared several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front chalkboard: "Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring Down." The students often did examples of two-digit division. After each set of examples, the teacher would go over the problems with them, telling them for each what the procedure was and rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves. She would say "3 into 22 is 7; do your subtraction and 1 is left over." Neither during the week that two-digit division was introduced nor at any other time did I hear any discussion of the idea of grouping in division or see any use of mathematical manipulables (such as pebbles or sticks, cuisenaire rods, or geoboards). I did not observe any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other mathematical process or to relate the steps to an actual or possible thought (cognitive) process of the children. I did not hear such terms as dividend, and quotient used again throughout the school year. At some point, one of the classes seemed confused. The teacher said "You're confusing yourselves. You're tensing up. Remember, when you do this, it's the same steps over and over again - - and that's the way division always is." Several weeks later, after a test, a group of her students "still didn't get it," and she made no attempt to explain the concept of dividing things into groups or to give them manipulables for their own investigation. Instead she went over the steps with them again and told them that they needed more practice. Mechanical, routine work procedures dominated activity in spelling, punctuation, grammar, social studies, and reading-- developing capacities and skills more appropriate as preparation for adult wage labor demanding submission to routine than for professional or managerial work demanding sustained conception, problem-solving, or creativity.
School Knowledge - - School knowledge in the fifth grades in this working-class

school was not so much bodies of ideas or connected generalizations, as fragmented f a c t s and behaviors. Teachers spoke of knowledge as "the basics" and

indicated that by this they meant behavior skills such as how to multiply and divide, how to syllabify, how to sound out words and write sentences, and how to follow directions. One teacher explained that this kind of "stuff" was "all the children would understand or use." Sometimes, as in social studies (and in occasional natural science lessons), 120

knowledge was fragmented facts. In American history, for example, the fifth graders were given a smattering of facts about the business products of each state, dates of national events, and names of men in the business, military or politically dominant groups. The social studies text purchased for use in this school (The American Nation: Adventure in Freedom by FoUet, 1975) had an accompanying workbook called a "reinforcement" booklet. The text itself was striking in the paucity of information it contained. The book, intended as a year's work, is divided into 16 "lessons." There are from one to four paragraphs of history in each lesson, a vocabulatory drill, and a review and skills exercise to check what the teachers guide states is "recall and retention." The guide explains the sparsity of information by saying that an important criterion of teaching materials for "educationally deficient students" is that "[e]extraneous subject matter and excessive details should be eliminated in order to present subjects and concepts that are important and also within the students' comprehension range" (TG, p. 39). The teachers guide also states that "It ought to be said at the outset that students with educational deficiencies are not always able to succeed in an inquiry lesson that places great demands on them" (TG, p. 8). "You should follow fairly regular patterns from day to day so that the students do not become confused or distracted" (TG, p. 8). The students should be "conditioned" to make "organized responses" (TG, p. 11). The students should be "trained in the techniques of assembling information" (TG, p. 16). "Tests should seek to determine the students' retention of factual matter and their reading and comprehension" (TG, p. 23). Social studies classroom knowledge in the fifth grades in this school was usually inculcated by copying teacher's board lists of state products and state facts, vocabulatory drill work in the "retention" booklet, and filling in blanks on work sheet dittoes. There was no sustained inquiry in the social studies classes I observed. School knowledge did not include knowledge of the history or social interests of the working class. What little social information the students were exposed to was fragmented facts about the politically, financially or militarily powerful groups, facts that appeared to provide little conceptual or critical understanding of the world or of the students' place in it. In many ways, the twenty students I interviewed at this school were less ideologically mystified than many students in other schools in the study. Most of them had a realistic sense of the limitations on their own futures. They indicated how.hard it would be to get jobs ("you have to have skills"; "only if the boss likes you"; "they ought to make more jobs"; "they could make more jobs if they wanted to"). They also indicated that they probably would not go to college (they wouldn't have the money; they weren't smart enough; their grades would not be good enough). And they thought that their school was not helping them ("they don't teach us nothin"'; "they don't help us"; "they don't take us alone"). This penetrative awareness of the limits on their own "equality of opportunity" was accompanied, however, by a real mystification and lack of knowledge of actual social process. At least in part because of the dearth of social studies information, they did not seem to know much about the world or American society (and considerably less than the children in other schools in the study). For example, they could not explain, as could children in the affluent professional school, what corporations are, what inflation is, what an economy, a culture, or a civilization is, or what banks do. Several spoke of the United States as "the best place in the world" almost in the same breath as they spoke of their own limited futures. 121

We see here then the potential production of a somewhat contradictory state of consciousness: a practical, penetrative understanding combined with an underdeveloped, fragmented theoretical system. The received ideology that was being transmitted did not appear to be totally believed, yet it was sometimes used to defend the nation (at least in interviews). Ironically the children did not, and may not ever, know the history of their own social class - - the American working class. Such non-history about their own and other groups in society is a "forgetting" that has quietistic, reproductive consequences. Thus, we see the possible production of social actors in the working class who will reproduce the system not only because they lack direct power or access but also because they are without coherent group ideologies and theories to motivate and direct transformative activity and because, in the absence of s u f f i c i e n t p r a c t i c a l information of the economic and political world, they will be unable to utilize the actual penetrative understandings they already have.
- - Most students in the working-class fifth grades attempted to resist assigned work. I observed two general kinds of resistance: active (often group) resistance and passive resistance by individuals. Examples of active group resistance were when the students acted together to sabotage the work flow by falling out of chairs, by fighting or fussing about things unrelated to work, by teasing each other, breaking pencils, not "knowing" the assigned page, and by not "knowing" what they were supposed to do or how to do it. Active resistance (but n o t necessarily of the group) included oppositional use of language: the students sometimes asked questions to waste time, to divert the teacher from assigned work, to cause trouble, and to get the teacher so angry that he or she would "yell" at them but would forget about the assignment. But unlike some students in the affluent professional school, these students never made concrete demands about what t h e y - - as individuals or as a group - - would like to do or learn. In expressing passive resistance, many children appeared to withdraw, to distance themselves from classroom events. This withdrawal sometimes took the form of not paying attention, of pretending not to pay attention, and sometimes of disavowing (e.g., in interviews) the importance or value of school knowledge. Both active and passive resistance were often successful in that the teachers would give their classes less demanding ("easier") work - - or none at all - - to avoid a struggle. But consequently, the resistance hurt the students, because it meant they were taught even less. These types of student resistance to degrading work involved, then, attempts to ease the situation through language and other defensive actions - - but without changing the power relations or making fundamental demands. In as much as resistance contributed to the students being taught skills primarily suitable for manual labor, their resistance was ultimately reproductive of their social class position. Often, their resistance was simply group cohesiveness without a positive or offensive goal, leading to their type casting as social actors who, while they might resist institutional oppression, had developed only p a r t i a l and i n d i r e c t methods of warding off coercive and degrading conditions. Student Resistance

Reproductive Aspects of the Affluent Professional School W o r k P a t t e r n s - - Predominant patterns of work activity that I observed in the fifth grades of this affluent professional school involved activities that attempted to foster creativity, independent thought, and personal development. A common goal expressed by teachers was to help the students "think for themselves" and "meet their potential." The fifth grade teacher whom I 122

observed was continually asking the students to express and apply ideas and concepts, to expand and illustrate ideas, and to decide what were appropriate methods of carrying out tasks and solving problems. The products of work in this fifth grade were often written stories, editorials or essays - - and the teacher engaged the students in some form of creative writing every day. Other common products were representations of social studies' concepts in mural, graph or craft form. The teacher encouraged the children to make their products "different from everybody else's" and to show originality. She wanted their work to exhibit good design and, equally important, to fit empirical reality. Many math, social studies and science projects had students trying to interpret some aspect of the physical or social world. The teacher often evaluated a student's work for the quality of its expression and for the appropriate match of the plan (or conception) to the task. Often, the student's own satisfaction with the product was an important criterion for its evaluation. When right answers were called for - - as in commercial materials like SRA, the science programs, and in math - - it was important that the students decide on an answer as a result of thinking about the ideas involved in what they are being asked to do; teacher's hints were often t o " Think about it some more" or "What do you think?" or "Does that make sense?" The following examples are illustrative. The class sent home a sheet requesting each child's parents to fill in the number of rooms in their house, the number of cars they had, the number of television sets, refrigerators, games etc. Each child had to figure the average number of a certain type of possesion owned by the fifth graders. Each child had to compile the " d a t a " from all the sheets. A calculator was available in the classroom to do the mechanics of finding the average. Some children decided to send sheets to the fourth grade families for comparison. Their work had to be "verified" by a classmate before it was handed in. Each child (helped, if necessary by his or her family) had made a geoboard for use in the classroom. The teacher asked the class to get their geoboards from the side cabinet and to take a handful of rubber bands. " I would like you," she said, "to design a figure and then find the perimeter and area. When you have it, check with your neighbor. After you've done that, please transfer it to graph paper and tomorrow I'll ask you to make up a question about it for someone. When you hand it in, please let me know whose it is and who verified it. Then I have something else for you to do that' s really fun. (Pause) I want you to find the average number of chocolate chips in three cookies. I'll give you three cookies and you have to eat your way through, I'm afraid!" Then she went around the room and gave help, suggestions, praise, and, when they were getting noisy, admonitions. They worked sitting or standing up at their desks, at benches in the back or on the floor. A child handed the teacher his paper and she commented " I ' m not accepting this paper. Do a better design." To another child she said " T h a t ' s fantastic! But you'll never find the area. Whey don't y o u draw a figure inside (the big one) and subtract to get the area?" The attitude that work is intended to develop the individual's powers of thought, creativity, and discourse ability was sometimes contradicted and constrained in this school because there were often "right answers" and because the students often did a task not to express or to "develop" themselves but "because the teacher wants us to." Individual creativity and expressiveness were also constrained by the increasing rationalization and standardization of school knowledge in commercially prepared programs - - for example, several sets of SRA, EDL Listen and Think, Reading for Concept, The Yearling, and science programs such as Elementary Science Study (ESS) and Science - 123

A P r o c e s s A p p r o a c h (SAPA) - - which were available in boxed sets in each

classroom. Finally, the freedom to express oneself, to "discover" and to experiment in the classroom was also being challenged by increasing academic pressures, by the escalating fears of parents, and by the desire of school administrators that the students performed well academically so that they could get into the "good" colleges. However, the emphasis throughout on conceptualization and expression and on cognitive development (rather than on simple facts and mechanical "skills") remained central features of work in this affluent professional school. Such activities develop capacities and skills appropriate to the production of social actors who will be better prepared than children from the working-class school to do society's "mental labor" - - e.g., professional, intellectual, executive, and managerial work.
S c h o o l K n o w l e d g e - - School knowledge in the fifth grades in this affluent

professional school was more abundant, difficult, analytical, and conceptual than knowledge in the working-class school. It also, in contradistinction to the working-class school, involved frequent attempts to engage the children in inquiry and in solving problems conceived by themselves. The social studies series used in all classrooms was AUyn and Bacon's "Concept and Inquiry Program." This program emphasizes what it calls "higher concept" learning. Unlike the series in the working-class school, it discusses at length such analytical topics as social class, the power of dominant ideas, and "competing world views." The district fifth grade curriculum was intended to cover Ancient Civilization (e.g., Sumer and Ancient Greece and Rome) and Latin America. The fifth grade that I observed spent eight of ten months on Sumer and Ancient Greece and Rome. The teachers' guides to the series repeatedly emphasize that "conceptual learning should never degenerate into rote memorization followed by boring, parrotlike regurgitation of facts" ( A n c i e n t Civilization, p. 3). The guide lists thirty "performance objectives" for fourth and fifth grade social studies. Although caUed "performance" objectives, almost all are conceptual rather than behavioral (in contrast to the working-class social studies series). Typical performance objectives for the fourth and fifth grades follow: " T o understand the roles of savings, capital, trade, education, skilled labor, skilled managers, and cultural factors (religious beliefs, attitudes toward change) in the process of economic development." " T o understand the power of controlling ideas." " T o understand that the controlling ideas of Western culture came largely from two preceding cultures: the Judaic and Greco-Roman." " T o know what is meant by the two world views of Western civilization and to perceive their implications." " T o distinguish a mixed economy from a totalitarian system and to identify the United States as a nation with mixed economy and the Soviet Union as a nation with a totalitarian system." "Given a description of class structure and inter-class tension, to explain the idea of class struggle or class war as in the Roman Republic" (Teachers Guide, pp. 8-12). The social science in this school legitimated for the children the power and cultural products of their own class. There was, for example, considerably less space in the series volumes and considerably less time in the classrooms devoted to the working, peasant, or slave classes throughout history than to the aristocracy, land-owning, military, and financially and politically powerful groups. There was little opportunity in the curriculum and classroom to study the cultural products of r e s i s t a n c e - - of, say, working-class, slave or black opposi124

tions to the landowning, politically and militarily dominant groups; whereas there were many opportunities to study white European music and composers, and to learn about American, European, Greek, and Roman art, architecture, dominant literatures, and philosophy. Although the class point of view together with cnlturai products of the working and other dominated classes were excluded from the curriculum, there was considerably more concern expressed in this school about alleviating problems of racism, sexism, and poverty - - including constant admonitions in the social studies series itself, from the school principal, and from the Board of Education (in the form of, for example, Sexism Awareness workshops). School knowledge in the affluent professional school was reproductive, then, in that it legitimated the knowledge and cultural products of the students' own social class and was relatively silent on the points of view of groups who might compete with the affluent for social power and ideological support. The school made available in socially legitimate form considerably more information about society and about dominant social attitudes and ideologies than did the working-class school. The students in this affluent professional school were being taught conceptual and analytical knowledge and were developing an ideological and knowledge base more appropriate to reproducing their own social class position than to making changes in it.
S t u d e n t R e s i s t a n c e - - The students' resistance to demands placed on them and

to the contradictions inherent in their schooling took somewhat different form from those generally disruptive tactics in the working-class school. In this affluent fifth grade, resistance was manifest in what I will call extreme individualism or narcissism. A student would say that he or she didn't want to do a certain assignment yet; he or she hadn't finished what he or she was doing n o w ; he or she didn't want to do the SRA - - "it's stupid" - - but wanted to read library books; he or she wanted to do the social studies project in her or his o w n way. The teacher constantly complained that she had to be careful not to "hurt their little egos" or "thwart their creativity." In this affluent professional classroom, narcissism was a form struggle against the attempted rationalization and externalization of work; it was a means of resisting the commodification of knowledge into packaged and "alien" form; and it was an attempt to resolve contradictions between stated goals of creativity (including thinking for oneself), and the encroaching reality of external demands. The students tried to make sense of society, but as one boy stated, "there are so m a n y p r o b l e m s !" Try as they might to think independently (as they were asked to do) they got caught in a web of externally produced pressures and "right answers." One way of resolving these contradictory messages was a partial withdrawal into devotion to the self. Thus, while the students may have had a perspicacious and penetrative way of dealing with the conflicting demands of their immediate environment, their resistance also revealed a measure of ideological mystification. Their mode of resistance implicitly assumed (in conformity with the curriculum and the teachers I observed) that changes in the individuals in society would actually resolve such problems as personal alienation (or product commodification and standardization) and would, for example, remove the conditions and causes of racism, sexism and poverty in society. The actual solutions to these problems would, of course, involve not only changes in individuals (and the culture), but also changes and redistributions in which groups got economic and political power from everyday transactions. 125

Non-Reproductive Education

The educations discussed above suggest ways in which school work, school knowledge, and student modes of resistance may contribute to the reproduction of the social division of labor (manual and mental), class-based social ideologies, and partial (reproductive) solutions to oppression and contradiction. I would like now to offer educators a range of suggestions for confronting classroom contributions to the cultural and economic reproduction of social class. A theoretical model will be developed here that is intended for use at any educational level. 6 The model will then be applied to the elementary settings in the working-class and affluent professional schools discussed above.
Theoretical Model

The model incorporates notions of contradictory or dual social consciousness, a dialectical view of social change, and a set of situated (class-specific), transformative pedagogics.
Consciousness ~ In order to develop a pedagogical program for social change,

we have to consider the nature of consciousness - - in particular, social consciousness. We know, of course, that Mind is complicated and consists of a multiplicity of attributes - - two of which are consciousness and unconsciousness. I want to highlight here the fact that, consciousness is also contradictory - - as Antonio Gramsci pointed out long ago (Gramsci, 1978). With Gramsci, I would argue that people have a practical consciousness which coexists with a somewhat contradictory theoretical, ideological consciousness. 7 Practical consciousness is in part a mixture of class prejudices and myths, fragments of the dominant social ideologies or theories, regional and other cultural taboos, and social and religious directives - - what Gramsci called "common sense." Practical consciousness is not all socially reproductive, however. It also contains within it a kernel of penetrative practical understanding or "good" sense (Gramsci, 1978). This kernel of good sense develops as children and adults negotiate in the world - - as they learn "the system" and how to play or "beat" the system. Good sense includes cultural modes of resistance to oppressions and exploitations at school, at home, at work, and by institutions of the media; it includes linguistic and life-style expressions of resistance to the dominant culture; and it includes everyday attempts to resolve the class, race, gender and other contradictions one faces. It is thus somewhat transformative of one's immediate environment, of one's received culture and daily experience. But it is not necessarily transformative of the larger system of power relations, although it can be; practical consciousness is only sometimes "politicized," with systemic transformation as a goal. Generally, the kernel of good sense in practical consciousness is constrained and thwarted ~ not only by the existing social relations of power and control, but also by the fragments of ideology (such as " y o u can't fight city hail") and the myths, stereotypes, and racial and sexual prejudices within common sense itself. This practical consciousness exists side by side with, and sometimes in uneasy contradiction with, theoretical consciousness. Theoretical consciousness is constituted by dominant social ideologies or "explanations" for things, such as the entire network of labels and ideas which provide the dominant set of legitimate categories for perceiving and explaining society. Parts of the dominant ideology may be believed and warmly espoused (as in passionate expressions of patriotism); other parts may be merely tolerated as "what they say, or want us to believe"; and other parts are viewed cynically or with disbelief. It is, 126

however, not easy to disregard the explanations entirely, as they are transmitted by major institutions throughout one's childhood and adult life. Theoretical consciousness, in contrast to good sense, is transmitted by institutions like the school and is a source of both mystification and oppression. Of importance, however, theoretical consciousness also contains a transformative potential. It can be shown for what it is - - in contradiction to much of our experience and our good sense. In other words, it can be exposed, and use made of the discrepancies thus revealed in efforts to replace the dominant theories with those that grow directly from personal, class, race, and gender experiences and from cultural oppositions.

Processes of Social Change - - in order to develop a transformative pedagogics, we need also to examine how social change occurs. It is important, for example, to acknowledge the relationships between cultural activity and economic transformation, and to aknowledge that, in differing historical circumstances, cultural and economic change contribute with different strengths to processes of social transformation. For example, it is certainly true that major economic changes have led, in certain countries at certain times, to dramatic changes in cultural forms and processes - - as in the forms of education and the processes of work and art following the economic revolutions in China and Cuba. Conversely, however, cultural activity often contributes to, or even determines, the actual form and extent of economic change - - as, for example, in the period between the Civil War and World War I in the United States and also the period of the Great Depression. In these periods, both economic reform and economic revolution were possible outcomes of the concentration and ultimate collapse of capital. The final outcome of reform, however, was in large measure determined by class struggle - - that is, by cultural activity among people. The outcome was not economically determined. It seems to me that we are today at a particular historical juncture in which the dialectic between cultural activity and economic change is particularly acute. Capitalism is becoming increasingly unmanageable and increasingly difficult to rationalize ideologically. Because of the material and legitimation crises, popular ideological equivocation or opposition is likely. Rejection can take many forms, however. It can take the form of right-wing facism - - as among the working classes in Germany in the '20s and '30s; or it can take the form of support for socialism-communism - - as in various groups in the U.S. in the 1930s. It is within this possibility of radically differing alternatives that appropriately politicized cultural work is needed - - to make a crucial difference. One way that educators can make a contribution to such work is through a socially-situated, class-specific, politicizing education. Transformative Pedagogics - - The final part of the model, then, is a prescriptive methodology. Such methods must deal with the objective and subjective conditions that characterize a situation. Inasmuch as objective and subjective conditions may differ in differing circumstances and environments, so the political pedagogy should be adjusted. Transformative pedagogy would attempt to effect a political consciousness in students. It would develop and politicize students' own cultural expressions, identifications, and resistances. It would attempt to encourage students, within the context of their own race and gender, and (of even more importance) in their consciousness of themselves as members of a certain social class, to develop coherent explanations for events - - their own ideology. Political edu127

cation would encourage them to use this ideology as the basis for socially transformative activities. Thus, I see major pedagogical methods to be: (One) to identify and to use penetrative good sense in challenging common sense, received theoretical consciousness, and dominant ideology. I speak in general of Freire's concept of learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against them (Freire, 1972). But I also speak more specifically of (Two) transforming persons' and groups' existing resistances and cultural innovations into potentially effective political practice. Included here is not only the notion of practice as direct or confrontational activity but also, quite centrally, what Anthony Giddens has called discursive penetrative power - - the development of linguistic communicative competence. And, as Terry Eagleton (1980) reminds us, the political use of speech (as in writing) is political practice, because it changes people. Finally I see, with Gramsci, that incorporated into transformative education, there should be (Three) the development by social actors of counter ideologies to the dominant - - of a theoretically elaborated point of view generated by themselves as a result of their knowledge of histories, their own group and class experiences, their own good sense, the past historical polemics of members of their own group and class, and our political pedagogy. I see these counter ideologies as unified sets of categories and analyses that express oppositional points of view and that can direct politically transformative work. To place these suggestions in a particular locale, I will prescriptively apply them to the working-class and affluent professional classroom settings discussed above. 8 Application of the Model
Using P e n e t r a t i v e C o n s c i o u s n e s s - - T h e first part of the effort involves identifying and using good sense to challenge common sense, theoretical consciousness, and received ideology. In the working-class fifth grade, I would begin by using the fact that, as a result of their resistances, we know many of the students to have an intuitive (and some a quite explicit) understanding that their teachers are not "helping" them; they feel they are getting short shrift. These penetrations can be used to challenge dominant ideologies of equal opportunity and the students' own social mystifications. I would make this intervention in several ways. In the affluent professional fifth grade, I would proceed somewhat differently in directing their penetrative good sense to effect political awareness. I would use the fact that, as a result of resistances, we know that some of them see through the "system"; despite exhortations to be creative, to experiment, and to think for themselves, the "system" makes this very difficult; school work is often imposed, knowledge prepackaged, and answers chosen. And in resistance to these contradictory demands, the students withdraw into preoccupation with self. I would attempt to show them that, as a response, this will be only partially successful in reducing or changing the demands of the "system" and that, indeed, it is not a suitable response for a large portion of the population. Not everybody can "afford" narcissistic self-absorption. I would attempt to show them what their privileged position in society implies, and try to engender a bit of guilt on their part, and generate discussion as to whether such privilege is fair and just in society. To do this, I would make available to them working-class and black histories and ask them to compare their own lives with the lives of these others in society. I would attempt to have them use the experiences of o t h e r groups to reflect on limitations in the ideology of equality

128

of opportunity and of individualistic solutions. I would assess with them some collective means of solving social problems. As in the working-class school, I would develop a curriculum unit on the history of work and make available examples of the different types of work done by different groups. I would pay more attention here to the increasing conflicts between professionals and financially powerful groups, to the increasing bureaucratic and state control of work, and to the increasing rationalization of the labor of people in professional jobs. I would try to make the students aware that they - - as members of an affluent, educated social class - - are in an excellent position to provide leadership in movements for social change and that, as such, they would gain in p o w e r from attempts to dislodge the present capitalist class.
Politicizing Cultural Resistance - - My goal here would be to transform the

students' opposition language and other cultural expressions of resistance into politically aware activity. In the working-class school, this would mean attempting, first, to have them assess why they resist, how they do so, and what the consequences for themselves are. I would discuss with them the possibility of more effective political action in such situations: for example, getting them to bring their parents to school and confi:ont, as a group, the teachers and administrators (as, indeed, parents in affluent communities sometimes do). I would discuss with them the questions that they often ask teachers, telling them I think those questions are often to cause trouble and to waste time. I would attempt to show them how others have used language to oppose oppressive conditions in more effective ways. To this end, I would make available (in excerpted or in oral form) working-class and other oppositional literatures the stories, polemics, diaries, and letters of blacks, women, slaves, prisoners, immigrants, and union organizers. I would discuss the political intentions of some of these writers and the activities that have been motivated by some of the writing. I would discuss the activities themselves - - the unionizing activity, the slave rebellions, and the civil rights activity. A goal here would be to have the students use these examples to reflect on the efficacy of their own resistances. An important part of the politicization of the students' cultural forms would be to bring in oppositional music. I would make available to them the music that has accompanied and motivated union organizing in the U.S. and in civil rights marches and demonstrations and also anti-war music such as those southern plantation songs that expressed slave escape codes. I would discuss with the students what resistance the music reflected and the various politically oppositional activity it motivated. An enduring intention in all of these activities with working-class students would be to encourage in them self-love and self-reflection - - a form of narcissism. I would encourage, however, a collective narcissism: a collective self-love of themselves as a class made up of blacks, whites, members of both sexes, and various ethnicities. One can argue that such collective self-love is a necessary preparation for collective emancipation (Aronowitz, 1980). In the affluent professional school, the task of politicizing the students' resistance would take such forms as using their creative writing skills and conceptual training to communicate to others the needs of the greater social collectivity. I would attempt to show them that, as possible future writers, intellectuals, and executives, they might some day have social power. I would encourage a critique of this power by having them read and contemplate the feelings in the literature of oppressed groups and also in the oppositional 129

literature of their own group - - for example in The Cherry Orchard or Crime
and Punishment.

A key to the development of the political capabilities inherent in the affluent students' good sense and opposition to commodification and rationalization is to encourage them to investigate other contradictions and irrationalities in the system. I would engage them in study of controversial social issues -such as the profitability of sexism, union-busting, the activities of the multi-nationals, or the concentration of wealth and spread of poverty. A goal here would be that they reflect on the possibilities of individual vs group and of cultural vs political solutions as well as on the contradictory nature of present economic arrangements.
Developing Counter Ideologies - -

The point here is to use the students' perceptions of injustice and contradiction - - the meanings they draw from their own experience, from history, and from their political education - - and encourage them to develop a coherent point of view that they feel expresses their own interests and solutions. Part of this theoretical statement would be a proto-plan for how they would achieve these interests as a social group. In the working-class school, after I had challenged the children's own apparent powerlessness and their mystification (and hopefully aroused some class anger and class identity), I would make available to them some of the plans and hopes of past social activists such as Emma Goldman, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Eugene Debs, Mao Tse Tung, Huey Newton, Malcolm X, and perhaps Jane Fonda. I would discuss the hopes and dreams of these persons and contrast the disappointing ways some of their plans have worked out in other countries - - for example, the loss of political freedom in the Soviet Union. I would also compare with the students various types of political plan: conservative, reform and radical. And I would have them focus their thoughts on their own experience and perspicacity, their own community, and themselves as a group - - with common interests and needs and with oppositions to groups that now have power. In the affluent professional school, I would engage the students in different kinds of planning. While I would make available the plans of past political activists, I would discuss with these students the relatively affluent background of some of these people and ask what might have prompted affluent men and women to identify with the oppressed in their society. I would also discuss with them the fact that, in many social upheavals in other countries, members of the intelligentsia, the educated classes, have themselves taken power (Gouldner, 1979). Hopefully, I would engender sensitivity in the students to the needs of the poor and working-classes, and I would raise with them that solutions to the problems of these groups (as well as to their own problems) might necessitate collective restructuring of society. I would encourage the students to argue with me, to critique my views, and to come up with a plan for designing a new society. I would encourage them to design a society that would neither oppress them with its contradictions and limitations nor oppress others with poverty and exploitation.
Conclusion

I have attempted to develop an educational program that utilizes contradictions and the differing conditions in the schools I studied. Such a plan could not, of course, be carried out unless there were teachers who wanted to implement the strategies and who were willing to take the occupational risks. Here I consider my own work as a university educator, together with the work of other 130

university educators, is important. We are at an interesting level of production in society: we help to produce consciousness in those who will take part in producing the next generation. We can thus contribute to non-reproductive educations for the young by politicizing our own students.

Notes:
The previous paper was presented at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, November 19, 1980. An earlier version of part of this paper will appear in shortened form in the U.S. journal, Social Texts. 1. See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Passeron (1977); Basil Bernstein (1977); Bowles and Gintis (1976); Michael Apple (1979); Henry Giroux (1980); Geoff Whitty (1977); and others. 2. The handful of available studies include Sharpe and Green (1975); Leacock (1965); Willis (1977); Karabel (1972); and Rist (1973). 3. This research investigated five elementary schools to assess reproductive differences among them. It is reported in Anyon (1980; 1981a, in press; and 1981b, forthcoming). 4. For interesting discussions of subculture as a form of cultural resistance in England, see Hall and Jefferson (1975). 5. The working-class school discussed here was so labeled because the majority of fathers (and approximately a third of the mothers) worked in semi-skilled, unskilled, or skilled industrial occupations. Most family incomes in the school population were at or below $12,000 during the period of the study (1978-1979), with the exception of some skilled workers whose family incomes were somewhat higher. (Approximately 39 per cent of the families in the U.S. had incomes in this range during the period of the study. [U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1979, p. 2, Table A]). The affluent professional school discussed here was so labeled because a majority of the fathers and a few mothers were affluent professionals - - such as cardiologists and other doctors, corporate lawyers and executives, interior designers, and professionals in advertising. Most family incomes were between $40,000 and $80,000 during the period of the study, as were 7 per cent of U.S. families. (The 7 per cent figure is an estimate based on figures in the U.S. Bureau of the Census [1979] page 2, Table A. See also Smith and Franklyn, [1974]). The other schools included in the study, but not discussed here, were another working-class school, a middle-class school, and an executive elite school, chosen as well for the predominant job types and income levels of the parents (as indicators of relations to capital of the parents). 6. Inasmuch as increasing numbers of educators are disemployed from schools and inasmuch as "education" can take place in trade unions, prisons, churches, and community groups (as well as in schools), the theoretical model of transformative pedagogy developed here is one that is equally applicable to all such settings. 7. My development of these concepts here will differ in several respects from Gramsci's own. 8. The activities which I have chosen in order to apply the model may, of course, differ from activities that others would have chosen.

References
Anyon, J. Ideology and United States history textbooks. Harvard Educational Review, 1979, 40, 361-386. Anyon, J. Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 1980, 163, 67-92. 131

Anyon, J. Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 1. No 1 (Spring 1981), 3-42. Anyon, J. Schools as agencies of social legitimation. Journal of Curriculum theorizing, in press. To be reprinted in International Journal of Political Education. Apple, M. Ideology and curriculum. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. Aronowitz, S. On narcissism. Telos, 1980, 44, 65-74. Bernstein, B. Class, codes and control: Volume 3 - - Towards a theory of educational transmissions. Second edition. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. Reproduction in education, society and culture. Beverly Hills, California: Sage, 1977. Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York: Basic Books, 1976. Eagleton, T. Ideology, fiction, narrative. Social Text, 1980, 2, 62-81. Freire, P. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Translated by Myra Berman Ramos. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972. Giddens, A. Central problems in social theory: Action, structure and contradiction in social analysis. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1979. Giroux, H. Beyond the correspondence theory: Notes on the dynamics of educational reproduction and transformation. Curriculum Inquiry, in press. Gouldner, A. The future of intellectuals and the rise of the new class. New York: Seabury, 1979. Gramsci, A. Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers, 1979. Hall, S. & Jefferson, T. Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain. London, England: Hutchinson, 1975. Karabel, J. Community colleges and social stratification. Harvard Educational Review, November 1972, 42, 521-562. Leacock, E. Teaching and learning in city schools. New York: Basic Books, 1969. Rist, R. The urban school: A factory for failure. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1973. Sharp, R. & Green, A. Education and social control: A study in progressive primary education. Boston, Mass.: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. Smith, J. & Franklin, S. The concentration of personal wealth, 1922-1969. American Economic Review, 1974, 64, i62-167. Taxel, J. The outsiders of the American Revolution: The selective tradition in children's fiction. Interchange, 1981 Vol. 12, No. 3. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Current Population Reports, Series P-60, no. 118. Money income in 1977 of families and persons in the United States. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979. Whitty, G. & Young, M. Society, state and schooling, Sussex: Falmer Press, 1977. Willis, P. Learning to labor. Lexington: Heath, 1977.

132