Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

When Sennett and Cobb (1972) named this choice fraternity versus ability, they were referring specifically to the choices available to working class children in school. They further pointed out that schools are a competitive environment, with only a few spots at the top, as such they are designed to create winners and losers, the “few” and the “many.” They concluded that the losers in the school system forge a sense of self-respect by being nobodies together. But I suspect that highly educated people overconceive the immediate influence of schools on working class kids’ self-esteem, certainly in secondary schools, and underestimate the power and pull of working class community. The immediate experience of being part of a very tight group that approaches school success by turning it on its head must also be factored into the education equation. Still, my friends and I certainly did, collectively, protect ourselves and one another from “teacher shit.” Indeed, that is an understatement. Kids like us didn’t compensate for bad grades and negative attention from teachers, we reveled in it. We cut up, acted up, acted out, and took delight in our ability to “turn this classroom into a circus!”