Why Is It So Hard To Teach About Class?
(A revised version of a paper presented in 2002 at the 6th annual conference of the Poverty-Class/Working-Class Academics Discussion List, Long Island University, Southampton, NY)
Introduction
When I first proposed this paper, I was in the throes of teaching Social Issues, my college’s required race, class and gender course. Although I had been teaching some version of this course for about twenty years, I was never really satisfied with my coverage of social class. Over the years, my presentation of race and gender issues had become richer and more pedagogically sound. But, despite my own identification as a working-class academic, and my involvement in working-class scholarship and politics, I just couldn’t seem to turn on the lights in students’ eyes when it came to teaching about social class. I also sensed that, despite my own disappointment, I was still doing much better than others who taught this and similar courses. While the terms race, class and gender roll nicely off the tongue, the class segment seemed to stick in the throats of many of my colleagues—somehow never, or only very quietly finding expression in their classrooms.
The basic reasons why it is so hard for many people to teach about class, and for many students to hear them, are not difficult to discover. In the broader society race and gender are generally acknowledged as important social issues–social class is not. While references to race and gender explicitly permeate all forms of media, class is rarely visible. Gregory Mantsios, in Media Magic: Making Class Invisible shows how the myth of our classless society is perpetuated by a media that fixes our attention on the glamorized rich; ignores or demonizes the poor; and convinces us that most folks are middle-class (Rothenberg, 2001). Jennifer Campbell, in the introduction to an article entitled, Teaching Class (1996), says, “In this nation whose central myth was and remains the rise of the individual ever-upwards through social and financial strata that, cloud-like, apparently fade away as they are passed through, ‘class’ remains an unspoken category.” And Janet Zandy tells us that in the United States, class is cloaked. She informs us that, “Even bringing up the issue of class seems vaguely impolite, even un-American.” (1996)
Thus our young people are serenaded by the mantras of—a classless society, upward mobility and the limitless rewards of individual effort. And the schools reinforce these siren songs by presenting the story of our nation from the perspective of those at the top while invisibilizing those who are closer to the bottom. Zandy tells us that, “When the story is told from the top down, we learn about the feat of building the railroad, how it opened new frontiers, and provided jobs. We may not hear that 10,000 Chinese and 3000 Irish got the opportunity to earn about $1 a day; and die by the 100s building those railroads.” She goes on to ask, “What if labor history were half as well known as entertainment trivia? What if the Ludlow Massacre were as familiar to school children as sightings of Elvis?” (1966). And to compound the problem, when many of these students reach our classrooms, they are looking for a credential, a passport, a ticket to the next “cloud” on the mobility ladder. The last thing they want to hear about is class-consciousness and systemic barriers. And even if we do successfully introduce some notion of “social stratification,” the world around these students tells them that if class does exist, it just refers to how much money you make; it’s just steps on a ladder to the top.
My sense of how hard this all is became crystallized when I sat down to prepare this year’s version of a perspective-taking exercise that I have used before. In this exercise, I ask students to immerse themselves in media that is produced by and for a group that is oppressed in our society– a group whose oppression they do not share. Thus I ask male students to thoroughly read Ms. Magazine. I ask white students to listen to talk shows on a local Afro-Carribean radio station, or watch an issue-oriented TV show anchored by a person of color. I ask straight students to read Out magazine or The Advocate. This time, in looking at the assignment, I realized that I hadn’t included social class– even I had fallen into the trap of making class invisible! As soon as I realized this, I set about trying to expand the assignment. But I was immediately confronted by the lack of poverty-class/working-class media similar to those based on race, gender or sexual- orientation. I finally turned up several accessible union newsletters and a newspaper produced by an organization of people who were homeless—I went with these.
As the semester entered its final weeks, the segment of my course that turns attention fully to social class drew near. My general frustration and the Perspective-Taking incident motivated me to work harder than ever to figure out how to teach my students about social class. I altered the syllabus and did a few things that I had never done before, and I think that they worked—well, at least better than anything ever has in the past. So in the rest of this paper, I will share with you what I did in my course; report some indicators of the impact upon my students; and arrive at some conclusions. Then, if time permits, we can together return to the question in the title and perhaps share some of our secrets.
Social Issues, Spring 2002
This 100 level course is divided into six segments. The first introduces students to social science and includes a look at research, socialization and social control, critical thinking, and the role of ideology. Some attention to social class emerges from an article entitled, What Scholars Can Tell Politicians About the Poor (Rothenberg, 2001) and from William Ryan’s classic, Blaming the Victim (1976).
The second section introduces the psychology of diversity. Here we explore the processes that distort the ways that members of, majority, privileged, oppressor groups perceive and interact with people who are othered, disadvantaged, oppressed. This section utilizes a social constructionist persepective and introduces the concepts of hegemony, social categorization, stereotyping, self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotype threat. Three readings in this section involve issues directly related to social class. In Requiem for the Champ, June Jordan paints a bleak picture of the bitterly poor neighborhood where Mike Tyson grew up, and contrasts it with her own somewhat less devastated surroundings a few miles away. While explicitly not excusing Mike Tyson’s sins, she tries to shift some of the reader’s anger away from the person and onto the systemic forces contributing to the existence of such poverty (Rothenberg, 2001). Bruce Blaine, in his discussion of the ways that stereotype threat impairs the performance of African-American and all female students, includes research that extends this effect to all students who are “economically disadvantaged” (2000). And finally, Studs Terkel, in, C.P. Ellis, tells the story of a former Klan leader who becomes a civil rights and union activist when he comes to recognize that his own class interests are the same as those of his poor and working-class Black neighbors (Rothenberg, 2001).
Next we take a detailed look at U.S. immigration policy from Colonial times to the present day. In preparation for this, students complete a ‘Family History’ paper in which they attempt to discover their own immigrant roots; trace succeeding generations up to their own; and note things such as education, occupation and mobility patterns. We begin this section with forced immigration and read original legislative, court and constitutional documents that justified the enslavement of Africans (and the less than human status of Indigenous inhabitants and arrivals from Asia) (Rothenberg, 2001). This is followed by a review of the full sweep of U.S. immigration history, with specific attention paid to the roles of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, sexual-orientation and social class.
In terms of social class, we explicitly look at the ways in which poorer people have been and are still denied the opportunities that this country represents—which for some literally means the opportunity to survive. Here we examine the nineteenth century banning of contract labor; the banning and deportation of those who were “likely to become a public charge”; the cursory screening of first and second-class steamship passengers versus the rigorous, custodial processing of those who arrived in steerage; the twentieth century “achievement” of a literacy test; the highly discriminatory “quota system”; the sharp distinction between political and economic refugees; the denial of social service and medical benefits to both undocumented and documented immigrants; and preferential visas for those with degrees, special skills or the economic means to invest $500,000 or $1,000,000 in creating a business. This section of the course represents an application of Zandy’s notion of looking at history from the bottom up. From the top down, all of these restrictions make perfect sense; from the bottom up, it’s a very different story.
In the next section of the course, we return to the psychology of diversity. But here, as with immigration, the perspective shifts from that of the privileged to that of those who are othered or oppressed. Here we explore the concept of stigma; the psychological and social impact of oppression; and ways in which people cope with being othered. One article in this section, Johnson’s, When Money is Everything, Except Hers, demonstrates these dynamics in the story of a poverty-class middle-schooler who confronts many obstacles in her largely affluent community (Rothenberg, 2001).
The last major section of the course attempts to use the concepts that have been developed, to examine–Social Issues in a World of Us and Them. It is here that social class is most fully explored. This is the piece of the course that I pulled together in a new way after writing the proposal for this paper.
Teaching About Social Class
- session 1
I began with economics and the realities of social stratification. Students had read the Mantsios article on making class invisible, but had not read anything about economics or stratification. I began the first class session with a true-false test that exposed some economic realities of social class in America. [e.g., “T or F From 1990 to 1999, average CEO pay increased 535%, while average worker pay increased 32.3%.” “T or F If the minimum wage had risen at the same rate as executive pay over the last three decades, it would stand at nearly $41 an hour as opposed to $5.15.” “T or FAbout 45 million people, overall, live in poverty.”]. After students had circled their choices, I announced that all of these items were, in fact, true; and then processed the general shock and disbelief that followed.
Next, I taped the poster from Stephen Rose’s, Social Stratification in the United States: The New American Profile Poster (2000) to the blackboard. With this poster, which is periodically updated, Rose provides a graphic portrait of the adult population of the United States stratified by income and by wealth. Each figure of a person on the graph represents 160,000 people and denotes occupation, race, and family type. In the accompanying text, which combines both government and alternative statistics, Rose discusses a Poverty Line, a Low BudgetLine, a Medium Budget Line and a High Budget Line. I next passed out his capsule descriptions of the possessions and life-styles of people at each of these lines, and marked each line on the blackboard at the appropriate level on the chart.
Two weeks before this class I had asked students to find out the gross household income of their parents (or themselves) and to write it down anonymously along with the occupations of the major breadwinner(s). After discussing some realities revealed by the poster, I collected these anonymous income reports. I then placed each of these incomes on the chart, starting with my own. We then processed the results in a lively discussion. Given the general population of the college, the few students whose families ranked near the top of the 32 inch high chart were surprised to learn that the chart would have to go up several stories to include the incomes that fell above them. Other students who always thought of their families as middle-class discovered that they were not. Most agreed that I was grossly underpaid.
- session 2
Now that social class as economics and stratification had been introduced, it was time to move into ways of thinking about the lived realities of social class beyond just looking at income and to introduce the notion of “class cultures.” For the next session I assigned Zandy’s work(1996), an excerpt from Donna Langston’s, Tired of Playing Monopoly? (1998), Ken Oldfield’s, Exhibit 1 (2002), and a recent newspaper article about what could be called, “environmental classism.” (2002).
I began the class with an exercise that I adapted from one that I had experienced at
several conferences. This exercise begins with everyone lined-up, shoulder-to-shoulder against a back wall, facing forward. People are instructed to continue looking only forward. The facilitator then reads out a series of statements with the instructions to take either one step forward or one step backward if the statement applies to them. Thus the facilitator would say, “If while growing-up, you had music or dance lessons outside of school, take one step forward”; If while growing-up your family received food stamps, take one step backward.” This is a very powerful exercise. When it ends, people are typically spread out across the room. Some people have advanced to the front wall and stand pressed against it. Others have not moved very far from the rear wall, and stand looking at the backs of those in front of them. When the facilitator asks everyone to turn around, those at or near the front see, for the first time, how far ahead of others they have advanced. Then everyone sits in a circle to discuss the experience.
I had always wanted to use this exercise in my classes, but was reluctant to do so. At conferences, I was a voluntary participant—one who could leave at any time without consequence. The situation for students is, however very different. Doing this exercise in a class would mean forcing poor and working-class students to out themselves, and to then become centers of attention, willing or not, during subsequent class discussion. In fact, at a meeting of the Social Issues faculty, one of my middle-class colleagues told the group about a wonderful exercise that he had used in class—it was this exercise. Before I could even respond, one of my poverty-class sisters raised the issues of outing and spotlighting and hopefully raised the consciousness of those in the room.
Well, with a lot of thought, I finally figured-out how to do the exercise in a way that protected everyone. First I had students pick, out of a hat, a number from 1-36 (the number of students in the class). Then I distributed an answer sheet and asked students to write only the number that they had drawn from the hat on the back. The answer sheet would allow students to record and tally forward and backward moves anonymously while remaining at their desks. I then told the class how the exercise is usually done; assured them that their anonymity would be protected; asked them to keep their eyes on their own papers; and urged everyone to be honest in their responses. After the exercise was completed, I projected a grid that represented the room with boxes for each possible position where someone could have wound up. I then collected the answer sheets and, as the students watched for their identifying number to appear, filled-in the grid with everyone’s final position– including my own. We then processed the exercise and linked it to a series of discussion questions based upon the reading.
- session 3
My presentation of social class, which extended into a third one hour and forty minute session, was greatly enriched by excerpts from a PBS video called, People Like Us: Class in America. This two hour production by Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez (2001) is an excellent resource. The video is divided into four parts: 1. Bud or Bordeaux: the Choices you Make Reveal Your Class, 2. High and Low: A Tour Through the Landscape of Class, 3. Salt of the Earth: Blue Collar Life in a White Collar World, and 4. Belonging: Understanding the Rules of the Game. It features a few “experts” like Paul Fussell, Barbara Ehrenreich and Stanley Crouch–but it mostly features “ordinary” people living and talking about their lives. To my eye, the tape is unnecessarily long, a bit uneven and could have been edited differently. But, nonetheless, it is a wonderful contribution that is filled with material that can be effectively used in college classrooms and other settings.
I extracted seven excerpts of varying lengths and sprinkled them through the second and, especially the third sessions of my focus on social class. These seven segments run for a total of fifty-three minutes. The first involves a good discussion of the lack of true contact between people of different classes (2 minutes); the next one deals with the class spectrum, the intersection of race and class, and the belief that, “we are all middle-class” (10 minutes); the third, called Tammy’s Story, introduces the life of a working-poor woman and her two sons—it is one of the only places in the tape where attention is focused on poverty-class people (7 minutes); the fourth segment discusses some aspects of the discrimination and lack of respect that poor and working-class people face (4 minutes); the next segment, one of the most outrageous, discusses “romanticizing” the working-class and then shows a festival in Baltimore where middle-class people parody the working-class for prizes–it ends with a group of yuppies “slumming” in working-class bars (9 minutes); the sixth segment deals with mobility, and basically asks the question, “can you ever go home again?” by following a young Appalachian woman who goes off to college and then on to a middle-class job in Washington, D.C. (12 minutes); the final segment looks at high school students in a predominantly affluent community and contrasts the values, hopes and aspirations of those who are economically advantaged and those who are not (9 minutes).
Results
As I said earlier, I do believe that, despite the inherent difficulties, I taught my students about social class more effectively than ever before. I believe that for many of them I made class visible. I believe that many of my students began to see that class privilege and class oppression are as real as inequalities based upon race, sex and sexual-orientation. I believe that I got many of them to begin to think about the realities of social class beyond income; the realities of “class cultures”–values, worldviews, lifestyles and the structuring of choices. Some of my beliefs are based upon what went on in the classroom. Discussion was often lively; debates were frequent. Concepts, statistics and points from the material were remembered and used. The in-class exercise was often referred to and segments in the video were used as reference points. Some of the working-class students seemed empowered and chose to share some pride and some pain. A few of the more privileged students publicly dealt with some issues of guilt, while others simply discussed positive and negative features of their class cultures. Several students continually pushed for discussions of solutions—ways to make things better. Of course I realize that words said in class might not mean all that much—especially when the instructor is an out working-class academic and when class participation is 15% of the grade. But I can say that these discussions seemed to show that many students were actually thinking about and understanding some of the dynamics of social class.
In addition to these observations and impressions I was also pleased with my students’ written work. One requirement of the course asks students to write several one page questions about, or discussions of, one of the assigned readings. Seven of the fourteen Question/Discussion papers written about readings from the social class segment said something worth noting.
In responding to Media Magic: Making Class Invisible, one student wrote,
“I also noticed that the media tries to keep bad characteristics of our country away from society. In turn they continually tell us how terrible other countries are. For example, we often hear about the poor starving boy in Somalia, but not the one in New York City.”
(And a second student made a similar observation.)
Responses to Decloaking Class: Why Class Identity and Consciousness Count included, “This article was very interesting to me. It reminded me of when I was growing up and my mother used to tell me…’that person has no class.’ I don’t think that people even realize what that statement truly says…This article definitely opened my eyes to the ‘ghost-like’ world of class. You have to realize something exists before you can fix it.”
And,
“I agree 100% that the working-class is invisible because it has been invisible to me. When I see people who take my order or clean my rugs I don’t think about their lives and what they need to do to make it. I have always been so concerned about the poor and homeless but never stopped to think or even see the people around me who struggle to make it. I think a lot needs to change.”
The excerpt from Tired of Playing Monopoly drew a defensive response,
“I realize what the author was trying to accomplish, but I do think that he (sic.) went a little overboard and gave too much power to class. I feel that the author should have included the fact that there are exceptions to his statements. His strong statements left me feeling helpless and a little angry because he makes our world seem like an unchangeable place. I think that pessimistic attitudes such as this allow people to make excuses for their lack of effort in trying to overcome the boundaries of social class.”
Another student wrote,
“I have to admit that society has taught me to determine one’s class solely on the basis of money and wealth. I think that it is unfortunate that I have grown to look at one’s class in such a way.”
And a third said, “I was able to relate to the second part of this article when the author spoke of going on vacation. My family went to Disney World, I think three times, two of which we drove to save money. For us, vacation meant going to my Grandma’s down the shore or going to Pennsylvania for a few days. I had plenty of friends who took big, expensive vacations to an island or other country and my family thought, ‘Wow, it must be nice.’”
And finally, a young Philippine national who has been in the U.S. for a year and a half studying to be a nurse, responded to Exhibit 1 with,
“After I read the article for a second time, I was shocked that a teacher could do such a thing, but he is actually just following the order and in the process he thought the student would see the reality of life. Being new in this country, I have no idea about politics here but I guess it is the same wherever you are.”
And then there was the perspective-taking assignment (see p. 2). Eleven (most likely) middle-class students chose to immerse themselves in poor or working-class media. Nine of those papers made me believe that these students had, indeed, learned some important things about social class in the course. One student saw a homeless man who collected and redeemed aluminum cans as being a member of the working-poor. She praised his motivation and likened it to that of Tammy in the video tape who walked twenty miles a day to and from a job at Burger King. Another student used articles from Poor Magazine to illustrate Mantsios’ discussion of how the media makes class invisible. By shifting between top down and bottom up perspectives, he showed how a man arrested for sleeping on a park bench could be portrayed as a nuisance and an eyesore, or as a real person living a real life made difficult by systemic forces. Other students reported epiphanies similar to some of those discussed above. Others pointed-out the operation of processes like stereotyping and blaming the victim. One took the perspective of low wage immigrant workers in protesting the negative sentiments and abuses that they suffer. He then shifted to his middle-class American vantage point and asked his peers why it is so hard to see that, “Every person in America who works is an integral part of the American economy.”
The most encouraging paper that I read came from a young woman who had spent time reading articles from Teamsters for a Democratic Union. She was outraged by an article about ways in which employers with dangerous worksites, discouraged workers from reporting injuries (and collecting Workman’s Compensation) by offering monetary rewards to “injury-free” individuals, groups, teams, departments, etc. She wrote,
“This article made me angry and it really got me thinking. These employers treat their employees more like animals than like human beings…I had no idea of the risks taken to make a living by some people…In situations such as these, I see how great the importance of unions really is…This article made me realize how much easier it has been for my family. There has never been a day when I felt afraid when my father or mother would become injured at work…The worst part is that I am twenty-one years old and I did not realize until this year that some people are freer than others.
She then goes on to relate this article to Ryan’s concept of Blaming the Victim. She writes,
“They rewarded the workers for not getting injured which at first sounds like a good thing. It seems that the employers are concerned about their employees and that they are trying to avoid injury. However what they are truly doing is much worse. They are saying that injury is the fault of the workers…Without even realizing it, people are left with the idea that workers are lazy, careless, stupid, etc. and that they need to be rewarded in order to work properly. There is a law instated to protect workers, and still employers have found a way to take it off their shoulders and blame their workers…The ideology of blaming the victim is very real and needs to be exposed.”
Many students also did well with questions relating to social class on the final exam.
Conclusion
I wrote the original version of this paper twenty years ago, six years before I retired from college teaching. My goal was to present the difficulties involved in teaching about social class and offer suggestions for overcoming them. I still think that teachers at all levels, and others involved in educating about class issues, will find value here. I also believe that a more general audience might take away much to think about from this paper.
A lot has changed in the last twenty years, but a lot has not. The Occupy Wall Street movement and the presidential candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren certainly brought more attention to the economic realities of social class. Struggles over the minimum wage and access to health care have been given considerable attention in the media. For a brief moment during the COVID crisis, “essential workers” were even portrayed as heroes.
On the other hand, much of mainstream media still glamorizes the wealthy and demonizes the poor. Striving for ever upward mobility is still presented as the American way. Class discrimination persists, but is rarely discussed. Working-class values continue to be ignored. Middle-class culture is still the default perspective.
The Social Issues course was part of a movement to make school curricula more inclusive. Now, twenty years later similar efforts have become a loud, public, political battleground with some jurisdictions requiring a broadening of perspectives and others forbidding it. But still, most of the noise is focused on race and gender—if a school library does have a dusty book about labor history, I doubt that anyone has noticed.
by David Greene
References
Avicolli, Tommi, He Defies You Still: Memoirs of a Sissy, (see Rothenberg) https://radicalteacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/radicalteacher/article/view/162/96
Blaine, Bruce, The Psychology of Diversity, Mayfield Publishing Co. 2000
Campbell, Jennifer, Teaching Class, College Literature, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), p.116
Johnson, Dirk, When Money is Everything, Except Hers, (see Rothenberg) https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/14/us/when-money-is-everything-except-hers.html
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria, (see Rothenberg) https://vonsteuben.org/ourpages/auto/2015/2/23/48981760/The%20Myth%20of%20the%20Latin%20Woman.pdf
Jordan, June, Requiem for the Champ, (see Rothenberg)
Kolker, Andrew and Alvarez, Louis, People Like Us: Class in America, 2001 https://www.pbs.org/video/people-us-trailer/ (available in segments on youtube). https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=People+Like+Us%3A+Class+in+America
Langston, Donna, Tired of Playing Monopoly?, in Whitehorse Cochran, Jo, Langston, Jo Whitehorse Cochran, Langston, Donna, and Woodward, Carolyn, eds. Changing Our Power: An Introduction to Women’s Studies, Kendall-Hunt 1998 https://collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Tired_of_Monopoly_Langston.pdf
Mantsios, Gregory, Media Magic: Making Class Invisible (see Rothenberg)https://www.studocu.com/en-us/document/the-university-of-tennessee/social-work-practice-with-groups-organizations-and-communities/mantsios-2010-media-magic/20717300
Newman, Katherine, What Scholars Can Tell Politicians About the Poor, (see Rothenberg)
Oldfield, Ken, Social Class and Public Administration: A Closed Question Opens, , Administration & Society 35(4):438-461, September 2003
Rose, Stephen, Social Stratification in the United States: The New American Profile Poster, The New Press, 2000
Rothenberg, Paula, Race, Class and Gender in the United States 5th ed., Worth Publishers, 2001
William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, (see Rothenberg)
Seifman, David, Mike Pushes Incinerators—But Not in His Backyard, NY Post, 3/26, 2002.
Terkel, Studs, C.P. Ellis, (see Rothenberg)
Wright, Richard The Ethics of Living Jim Crow: An autobiographical Sketch, 1937 Federal Writers Project. https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=c2xjdXNkLm9yZ3xlbmdsaXNoLTExLWFwLWxhbmd1YWdlLWNvbXBvc2l0aW9ufGd4OjIyMzY1NjdlY2Y2OGM1ODI
Yunker, Theresa, When Street Harassment Gets Nasty, On The Issues, 1996. https://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/1996summer/sum96harass.php
Zandy, Janet, Decloaking Class: Why Class Identity and Consciousness Count, Race, Gender & Class Vol. 4, No. 1, Race, Gender & Class: Working Class Intellectual Voices (1996), pp. 7-23
Recommended Reading
Jensen, Barbara, Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America, Cornell University Press, 2012.
Metzgar, Jack, Bridging the Divide: Working-Class Cultures in a Middle-Class Society, Cornell University Press, 2021
