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Critique Paper - Classicism

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The established educational system we have today has been criticized on several accounts that it conditions individuals to certain ways of life without their consent. Arguments are made that they are taught to adapt a certain way of life that will ultimately classify them in a certain economical class in accordance to where the pupil comes from. Jean Anyon provides a thorough analysis in her document, "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work , when she brings to light that teachers instruct with different methods in correlation to the wealth of the location of the school. Anyon argues certain students are oppressed of their rights to become fully independent individuals when they are in less affluent areas while in the contrary, wealthier areas stress the limits of human capacity by having students question and strategize methods for approaching almost every given assignment. Students in areas of higher poverty percentages are receiving an instructional type education that familiarizes them to a work environment where receiving orders is the only what they know. The research and analysis put forth by Anyon not only receives my full support for what it brings light to on modern day education, it establishes a intricate controversy on what may be a modern day "hidden curriculum , a modern day slavery, classism. It is the separation of people through social classes by omitting and providing a downgraded curriculum to one group of pupils and providing enlightening, self-guiding information to the other. Data collected from five different schools across the state of New Jersey with drastically different income levels demonstrate the different types instruction provided to students by teachers, an appalling practice that is not in accordance to what my definition of an equal opportunity education declares and should offer. The types of instruction given is significant for it maintains society in the same social position they are at whether it be ten years into the future from now or forty. Anyon notes "School experience ¦differed qualitatively by each social class of certain types of economically significant relationships ¦  [11], after citing the strategies and methods used by teachers to instruct a class. Methods from obeying and executing orders to having students break down problems to solve are only a couple of ways the schools complete their job. It's important to note that because of these differences in classroom teaching, social classes remain the same over a span of decades in not only the areas studied, but to be believed across the nation as well. Better put, "In the contribution to the reproduction of unequal social relations lies a theoretical meaning and social consequence of classroom practice [11], which reinforces the idea that perhaps stable levels of poverty

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