Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America

by Barbara Jensen

Finn (1999) summarized Anyon’s work well: The working class children were learning to follow directions and do mechanical, low-paying work, but at the same time they were learning to resist authority in ways sanctioned by their community. The middle class children were learning to follow orders and do the mental work that keeps society producing and running smoothly. They were learning that if they cooperated they would have the rewards that well-paid, middle class work makes possible outside the workplace. The affluent professional children were learning to create products and art, “symbolic capital,” and at the same time they were learning to find rewards in work itself and to negotiate from a powerful position with those (the executive elite) who make the final decisions on how real capital is allocated. The executive elite children? They were learning to be masters of the universe.