In Response to Against Schooling

In Response to Against Schooling: Education and Social Class by Stanley Aronowitz


Today I had the opportunity to address the concept of elite while going over some new spelling words with my 8th grade class and at the same time expand their understanding of critical literacy. The "fill-in-the-blank" exercise in their spelling book designed to strengthen the students' understanding of the words had a sentence much like this: The cream-of-the-crop is called the ________. Elite was the correct answer.

When we were going over the answers I stopped on that example and told them I was troubled by that statement. I said that sometimes we refer to top athletes as elite because they have earned that title through years of hard work and dedication. However, we sometimes refer to the wealthy members of society as the elite. I asked them if having money made anyone better or smarter or more valuable than anyone else as the phrase "cream-of-the-crop" suggests. I asked them if the rich students going to expensive, fancy private schools in the East that are designed to prepare them for universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are actually any smarter or "better" than they are. We had a short but interesting discussion. I'm glad I had a chance to make that point.

I told them that what we just did is called Critical Literacy, and it is very important that they begin to notice misrepresentations such as that in their reading . They need, to become aware of biased, bigoted, and/or racially prejudiced statements and bring them to the attention of others because literature is full of those types of statements. I explained that most of them had been taught that those were "normal" ideas that were just accepted, but that they should challenge them.