Re: FULL OF ADMIRATION (was RE: Slightly extended (was Re: [Futurework] David Ricardo, Cavema n Trade vs. Modern Trade

[Robert E. Bowd]

Hi Keith and Harry,   With the utmost respect for the both of you, I submit the following.  I consider my working class roots to be as impeccable as yours.  Like you, I share a strong work ethic, an innate survival instinct, and a passion for a society better than the one into which I was born.   My father came to Canada as child labour, as a Barnardo home boy, from England.  Until he was 16 he was effectively free farm labour, separated from his biological family in Cambridgeshire, and marginalized by the Canadian family whom he served.  He suffered emotional and physical abuse, was not allowed to eat with them, and was denied an education beyond the second grade.  Shame characterized his life as he wandered the back streets, away from a public gaze, and tended the gardens of the rich, in my hometown.  My mother was crippled by polio, from the time she was 4 years old.  She had many side illnesses in pre-Medicare Canada.  I was raised in poverty and knew about hunger and class marginalization as a child and bear that psychological imprint as an adult.   The social capital of the Welfare State, after World War 11, and the ideology of equal opportunity, allowed me to get an education.  It was the luck of context, however, not any special merit on my part.  I suspect it is similar with the two of you, respectively.  In a family of five, I am the only one who finished high school and went on to university education.  There are many, many bright working class youth as capable as I am, and as you are.  However, current educational reforms are limiting the kinds of opportunities we were able to partake of.    I became a teacher and went many, many rounds, with a class stratified school system, on behalf of my working class students.  As an educational researcher, my only interest has been in what happens to working class children in essentially middle class schools.  My current project, "Whose Standards?: Performance Standards, Globalization, and the Restructuring of School Knowledge" is part of my attempt to understand what is happening to working class kids under the current school reforms in relation to the paradigm shift in the way kid's achievment and teacher accountability is benchmarked using high stakes testing.  The project has been supported by SSHRC funding and several scholarships.  I have had lots of contact with powerful and wealthy people.  I have been a political activist and president of the riding association of a former Ontario Finance Minister.  But who cares?  I don't think it has anything to do with what I contribute to this list.  Rightly, or wrongly, I see this list as a place for me to learn from some very smart people, exchange views, and get information, a lot of which I keep for use in my work.   My view is that the working class has largely been written off in the current neoliberal reforms, despite the rhetoric of equity.  Failure rates and drop out rates are increasing.  The savage inequalities that have injured the working class and minorities still exist.   I can assure you that to imply that there is a correlation between being working class and supporting private education is absolutely spurious.  I worked for several years on large scale surveys of public attitudes towards education in Ontario and we found no evidence that working class respondents, in significant numbers, were supportive of this kind of change.  In fact, most working class activists see private education as a threat to working class opportunity.     Studies of working class resistance indicate that some working class youth internalize the meritocratic myths of middle class schooling and thrive within them.  Paul Willis's classic study of working class resistance called such kids "ear'oles."  But many resist the class cultural agenda, that often includes the belittlement of working class work and working class identities and engage in cultural resistance.  You and Harry may well be examples of the former, but I am an example of the latter.  High school was a cultural dead space, for me.  You support private education.  I differ and support public education.  Vouchers and charter schools do not help working class kids.   The research is pretty clear that the best predictor of success, in schooling, is the neighborhood you live in.  Taking only the matter of reading scores, the higher your parent's socio-economic status, the higher your reading level.  High stakes testing is producing similar correlations.   No personal disrespect is intended towards either you, Keith, or Harry, and I will state unequivocally my respect for you both.  If I have written anything that has offended you, I offer my most deepfelt apologies for doing so.   Respectfully submitted, Bob   Keith wrote:   It is strange, is it not, that you and I, both working class, and who know what it's all about at every level of society from top to bottom, should be the ones (the only ones on this list as far as I can make out) who are calling for private schools. IT IS BECAUSE THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION, DUMBING DOWN FOR THE PAST CENTURY AT EVERY OPPORTUNITY, IS THE GREATEST INJUSTICE THAT HAS BEING DONE TO MOST ORDINARY WORKING PEOPLE'S CHILDREN BECAUSE BASIC SKILLS ARE NO LONGER TAUGHT. They are now being left defenceless just at the time when we should be vastly upgrading our skills.