Patrick J. Finn's book Literacy with an Attitude has been my favorite reading by far. It had a lot of thoughtful points on Jean Anyon's discoveries in the classroom. His discussion made me think of my own theory and I am curious of the class's thoughts on it: Class is relative and fake. It is vastly subjective with its only objectivity in the P of SCHWAAMP. While it is upheld socially and people experience various effects of the social classes, it is impossible to dismantle because it only exists in relation to itself. The goal should be happiness, gratitude, accomplishment, and prosperity-- not just in monetary ways like overcoming class separation suggests.
Reason #1: The inherent fear of the unknown will always cause groups to form in society. People tend to assimilate where they are most comfortable. This is a pattern exhibited in every place in society, no matter how much we try to dis
mantle it. Think about the argument over societal and systemic racism. Now look to the government. Since the civil rights act of 1964, racism has not been allowed governmentally. But when we look to statistics, there is a clear-cut difference in prosperity between races in fields such as college attendance, incarceration rates, home ownership, wages, and more. And we can keep fighting the government for equal rights but surprisingly, there is not more that the government can do. Redlining is illegal in theory, but it still happens socially. Not through the government but through societal standards. We place people into boxes and ship them away where we feel they belong.
Reason #2: Equalizing the P of SCHWAAMP only causes reliance on other levels of oppression to form groups. I fear this would break the world. So now there is no room for growth in property owning (because to get rid of classes would mean to equalize everyone's economic status). So now everyone is forced to work the same job? Is everyone is forced to do the same number of hours? How would we measure this? Per person? Per household? As I've mentioned before, groups are inevitable to form in societies it is just in human coding. Now these groups would be based on what? I hate to bring this up but now we are talking about eugenics of sorts. The Christian white straight males will be the most prosperous group based on actually no merit at all, just because they are Christian and white and straight and male. Getting rid of classes is not possible unless we turn to communism. And at that point it is not something that would benefit anyone.
So, in my theory, societal groups are inevitable and actually a necessity. So, if class is inevitable, how do we create fairness within that reality?
We first need to decide what is it that makes a child worthy of moving up into a higher class. Is it intelligence, rote memorization, willingness to learn, or anything else? Is that even for us to decide? Now how do we catch students raised in lower class up to higher class. Like the culture of power theory suggests, not every student is brought up in the same environment and some need to catch up before being able to expand. What ever happened to holding students back who were not ready to move on to the next grade level. I believe this would totally level the playing field.
I welcome opposing arguments that challenge this theory and deepen our understanding.
