One class migrant recalled her struggles in high school: “Learnedness itself was suspect, and making a display of learning was simply not done; in school as elsewhere, the worst failure of character was to get a ‘swelled head.’ You could do intellectual work, though, if you called it something else. We called it religion.”41 For many in the working class, churches provide the kind of mental exercise, stability, hopefulness, future orientation, impulse control, and social safety net many in the professional elite get from their families, their career potential, their therapists, and their bank
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