Social Class, Schooling, and Salaries

It comes as no surprise to me that the new set of basic skills required for a middle class job are more demanding than they were twenty years ago, when any warm body close to the action was a viable candidate for hire.  In Murnane and Levy’s book Teaching the New Basic Skills, they reify this reality and affix it to a set of new basic skills that are demanded of the middle class in the late 20^th and 21^st century: the ‘hard skills’ of perfunctory mathematics, problem solving and reading abilities, and the ability to use basic functions on a computer; and the ‘soft skills’ of being able to work in groups, and the ability to make effective presentations.  Murnane and Levy maintain, through reporting on the modern hiring procedures of Diamond Star Motors, Honda, and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, that companies now hire college graduates when 20 years ago they would have hired high school graduates, because present day high school graduates lack the new set of basic skills required to perform these jobs.  In other words, the nature of the work has evolved, but the quality of the high school graduate in America has not.  Hence, college graduates are hired instead.  This has, naturally, lead to an increasing variance in average salary between the 21^st century high school graduate and that of the 1970’s high school graduate. 

In short, a high school degree is not worth what it once was.  For instance, if a male and female high school graduate were married and started a family in 1993 they would have had a tough go at it, since their combined yearly income would barely reach $35,000. 

What is particularly troubling is when I consider the thesis of Murmane’s article (the economic and skills disparity between high school and college graduates is increasing) alongside Jean Anyon’s research in Social Class and School Knowledge, where she studies the academic rigor variance – among other things - between working, middle, upper, and affluent classes in public schools.  Anyon observes a proliferation of rote factual memorization skills taught in working class and middle class schools, with little to no teaching of the history and ideology of socio-economic class disparity.  Moreover, Anyon described affluent class and upper class teachers encouraging students to think for themselves, in contrast with teachers from the other two classes that do not.  Therefore, working class and lower-middle class students will, by and large, leave schools without the new set of basic skills Murnane and Levy conclude are necessary for the modern working force.  It seems to me that lower class students are being prepared for the hegemonious structures and rote routines of prison instead of being prepared for the work force.

Thus, what is needed for working class and lower-middle class students is a school that embeds class conflict history and ideology into curriculum; also needed is a school that encourages analytical thought and open-ended questions instead of mechanical memorization of useless facts.  Unfortunately, as I think about my own experiences teaching working class and lower-middle class students, it seems that few schools like this exist.  What I have seen is a surplus of no-excuses schools that have uniformly strict discipline codes and boot camp routines.  Those within these schools argue that working class students thrive in highly structured environments due to a lack of structure in their lives outside of academia.  However, there are various forms of highly structured school models that do not fall under the banner of ‘No Excuses’ – for instance, Montessori schools.  In the latter, there is an emphasis on hands on learning and analysis as opposed to isolated rote learning.

Anyon, J. (1981). Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11(1), 3-41. http://www.jstor.org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/openurl?volume=11&date=1981&spage=3&issn=03626784&issue=1&

Murnane, R. & Levy, F. (1996). Preparing to meet the future, Skills for middle-class wage, and Five principles for managing frontline workers. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 (pp. 1-10, 19-51, and 62-79) in Teaching the new basic skills. New York: The Free Press.