G:/FINAL CUT/MARSHALL Chapter 15: Gentlemen, Citizens, and Justice In 1873 Alfred Marshall (19--), an Englishman, gave a speech

to the Cambridge Reform Club entitled The Future of the Working Class where he addressed the question of whether there were limits on the amount of improvement working people could expect in their lives. He came to the conclusion that we cannot all be equally rich and powerful, but we can all be gentlemen (sorry ladies). He observed that skilled artisans were learning to value education and leisure more than the mere increase of wages and material comforts, and that [They are] steadily developing independence and manly respect for themselves, and therefore, a courteous respect for others; they are steadily accepting the private and public duties of citizens; [they are] steadily increasing their grasp of the truth that they are men and not producing machines. They are steadily becoming gentlemen. [Check accuracy of quote.] Alfred Marshall talked about working men assuming the duties of gentlemen. The privileges of gentlemen would undoubtedly be reserved for real gentlemen. Alfred Marshall believed that the sorry physical, moral, and intellectual state of working men was due to their long hours of heavy, deadening, and soul-destroying labor which put civilization beyond their grasp, but he believed that this kind of work would eventually be eliminated through mechanization, and, like artisans, humbler workers would learn to value education and leisure more than mere increases in wages and material comforts. Alfred Marshall believed that the state needed to compel only one thing of individuals. It needed to compel children to go to primary school, because the uneducated cannot appreciate, and therefore freely choose the good things that distinguish the life of a gentleman from that of the working classes. [The state] is bound to compel them and to help them make the first steps upwards; and it is bound to help them, if they will, to make many steps upwards. Free choice would take over as soon as the capacity to choose had been created through compulsory schooling. Alfred Marshall seems to have believed in the autonomous model of literacy that I discussed in Chapter 10 -- if you teach people to read as well as, say, the average fourth grader, all of the knowledge, wisdom, and culture in print is available to them, and they will just naturally pursue it in the style of Abe Lincoln. Generations of teachers will tell you that its just not so. In 1950 T. H. Marshall (another Englishman, but no relation to Albert Marshall) revisited Alfred Marshalls topic in series of addresses, later to be published as an essay entitled
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Citizenship and Social Class (1950). In the 75 years since Alfred Marshalls speech it was clear that all Englishmen had not become gentlemen, and T. H. Marshall proposed that the status we all ought to aspire to is not the hierarchical, class-laden status of gentleman, but the egalitarian status of citizen. (Henceforth all instances of Marshall will refer to T. H. Marshall) Citizenship is a status bestowed on those who are full members of the community (p.18). The urge toward citizenship is an urge towards a fuller measure of equality unlike social class which is a system of inequality (p. 18). Marshall laid out his understanding of the modern concept of citizenship, social class, and the free market economy and the relationships between these institutions. He believed that citizenship was made up of three kinds of rightscivil rights, political rights, and social rights that were won first by the upper classes beginning about 1700 and passed down to the less fortunate. Civil rights are necessary for individual freedom -- freedom of movement, speech, thought and religion, the right to own property, and to conclude contracts. Civil rights were won in the courts between 1700 and 1800. Political rights are the rights to participate fully in the political process -- to vote and hold office, to assemble, demonstrate, form political parties, and petition. Political rights were won in the legislatures between 1800 and 1900. Social rights are the rights to economic security and to live the life of a cultivated human being according to the prevailing standards of the society. They are the rights to a decent standard of food, housing, health care, and education, and access to the common culture of the nation. The struggle for social rights began in the public schools around 1900. Marshall believed the struggle would be complete by 2000. The right to justice has a special status in that it underlies all three categories of citizenship rights. Around 1700 with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, three powerful forces appeared: the modern concept of citizenship, a free market economy, and a social class system. Modern citizenship is a system of equality predicated on justice. The free market and social class are systems of inequality that can function perfectly well without justice. Therefore, citizenship has been in competition with the free market economy and social class for 300 years. Social class conflicts with civil rights. The continuing civil rights movement, for example, attests to the fact that persons with lower social status have been denied freedom of
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movement (whites only) and speech and their rights to own property have been limited. Many would argue that today civil rights have been extended to all United States citizens in theory and in law although custom and differing levels of education still limit the civil rights of many poor and working class individuals in fact. Social class conflicts with political rights. Everyone is presumed able to participate in politics on equal terms, but in the past, custom and law determined who could engage in political activity based on class. For example, the activities of the Corresponding Societies were viewed as sedition. Today the legal barriers to political activity based on class are gone, but there is still a strong correlation between political activity and class status Social class conflicts with social rights. Unequal social rights more or less define social class. If everyone had full and equal social rights there would be no class system Curiously, the free market economy does not conflict with civil rights. In a free market economy every individual is theoretically engaged in an unfettered struggle for economic gain, and so individual rights, particularly the right to own property and to enter into contracts, are necessary to a free market economy. The free market economy comes into conflict with political rights when democratically elected governments regulate the workings of the free market through passing tariffs, or enacting environmental protections that affect trade and manufacturing, for example The free market economy comes into its most serious conflict with social rights. Social rights dictate, for example, that full time workers deserve a living wage, that a minimum standard of health care should be available to everyone, and that the government should provide jobs or unemployment insurance in periods of high unemployment. But in a free market economy wages, access to health care and rates of employment are determined by market forces. When legislatures pass minimum wage laws, they enhance social rights, but they limit the freedom of the market. On the other hand, when legislatures cut unemployment benefits, they unleash free market forces, but they curtail social rights. Milton Friedman, the ultra-conservative University of Chicago economist, believed that the only education the government owes citizens consists of basic job-related skills; any education beyond this should be made available only to those able and willing to pay the market price for it. And so most public school education infringes on the free market. Social rights have an additional and extremely important role in that without social rights, people are not able to fully exercise their civil and political rights. Poor, uneducated people are
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hardly in a position to assert their right to free speech or to run for office, for example. Marshall, a champion of citizenship and especially social rights, didnt believe that the free market or social class could be abolished, or that in fact they should be abolished. He believed that between 1850 and1900 the concept of citizenship gained momentum, and it inspired efforts to remove the real impediments to the enjoyment of civil and political rights that grew out of an unequal distribution of wealth, that is class and a free market economy. When the process was completed through winning social rights through education, there would be a kind of equality quality of life equality shared by all citizens. The skyscraper [referring to the class structure of the very high and the very low] would become a bungalow with an insignificant turret. [Check this quote.] The schools were to be, therefore, the final principal venue of the 300-year march toward full citizenship for everyone. According to his thinking, schools provide children the knowledge and skills necessary to make a decent living as adults. A decent living provides adults with a decent standard of housing, clothing, food, and health care. Furthermore, schools provide children with the knowledge and skills that give them access to the common culture of the nation through the study of the liberal arts and sciences history, art, music, literature, mathematics, and science. Of course knowledge of liberal arts and sciences contribute to a persons economic salability as well. But he recognized that children do not appear to have equal capacities nor are they all equally willing to put forth the effort required for this kind of learning, and so schools cannot provide equal income and equal access to the national culture for every citizen. His plan was to let all students compete for high-status educational programs on the basis of examinations. He believed that students who are smart and work hard would earn high scores on examinations, get places in high-status school programs, enter high-status, high-paying professions, and end up with more money and status than the average citizen regardless of the socio-economic status of their parents. On the other hand, those who are not smart or dont work hard earn low scores on examinations, are assigned to low-status school programs, enter low-status occupations, and must be satisfied with a modest standard of living and little status regardless of the socioeconomic status of their parents. This setup came to be called "meritocracy, a term that was coined in the 1958 novel The Rise of the Meritocracy by Michael Young, who ridiculed the idea. Some version of meritocracy
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has always been part of the American psyche. It became further entrenched about the same time as Marshall wrote with the rise of the testing movement and the eventual importance of scores on tests like the SAT in making college admission decisions. These aptitude/achievement tests were originally intended to give more access to elite colleges like Harvard and Stanford to bright students of modest origins rather than confine it to the hereditary elite (bright or not) as had been the case for generations. [Put in more detail from Lehman?] But Marshall was wrong about meritocracy in four ways: 1. Poor and working class children are not as well prepared for elementary school as middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite children, and so poor and working class childrens test scores are related to the socio-economic status of their parents from the start. 2. Poor and working class children do not attend the same schools as middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite children. 3. Poor and working class children who earn high test scores against all odds do not have equal access to higher education, especially high-status higher education as more affluent peers. Social class and economic variables appear to intervene. 4. On the other hand, middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite children who are not very bright or lazy or both still find their way into higher education (often high-status higher education). Once again, social class and economic variables appear to intervene. 5. Marshall believed that civil and political rights had been won by the upper classes and passed down to the less fortunate. In his view social rights too would be passed down in the schools without contention. History and current experience teach us otherwise 1. Poor and working class children do not have the same preparation for elementary school as middle class, affluent professional, and executive elite children. Generations of scholars have found that the economic status of families is the most powerful factor in predicting childrens school success. For example, in the 1960s the US Department of Education funded a huge project that came to be known as The First Grade Studies (143 HCLR) to determine once and for all which method of teaching beginning reading was most successful. After __ years of study in a carefully controlled experiment involving __ teachers and __ children the results were that no one method appeared to be decisively superior. The two variables that did make a difference were teachers (some got better results (or worse results) no matter what method they used) and the socioeconomic characteristics of children in the classrooms. The latter had a greater effect than the former. [Check out these facts.] There was hardly a pause in the fierce debate over which method would solve the problem of children with low reading scores. It
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continues today unabated. A study done in 2002 (Lee and Burkham) found that by age 5, the average cognitive scores of children with the highest socio-economic status were 60 percent higher than the scores of children with the lowest socio-economic status and that poor children have more health and behavioral difficulties than affluent children, which of course negatively impacts school performance. These authors acknowledged that class intersects with race and ethnicity in educational outcomes, but they found that social class alone accounts for almost all differences in cognitive measures -- more than race, ethnicity, or whether the child comes from a one parent or two parent home. [ANYON 66 Lee and Burkham. See also Rothsrtein for more such data] (Anyon 66). [P. 65 par 3.] Class trumps race in nearly every statistic that Rothstein (2004) cites to describe the racial achievement gap When it comes to statistically teasing out the factors that contribute to school success in terms of scores on standardized tests, social class accounts for most of the differences between white and black students; that is, poor students tend to score low and rich students tend to score high be at the top, no matter what their race and no matter what the test. (Rothstein, 2004, pp. 51-56).] In addition to cognitive measures, the self-defeating (as far as schooling goes) tendencies fostered by oppositional identity among working-class students and the conflicts between working-class discourse and school discourse continue have adverse effects on the school achievement of working-class students as they proceed through school. By and large, workingclass homes and communities simply do not prepare children for progressive schooling or highstakes tests, while the culture of rich childrens homes, communities, and schools do. 2. Anyons study and the Brownstoners story demonstrate that rich and poor children in America do not attend the same schools (if they do, they are not in the same classrooms), and the character of the education they receive is dramatically different. Poor and working class children attend schools where content consists almost entirely of isolated facts learned through memorization and where they are rewarded for being docile and obedient. Recall that in Anyons working class school even students with above average IQ test scores were using a social studies text designed for slow students [check Anyons term] and the teacher was skipping certain pages in the arithmetic text because they were too hard. Students in such schools might acquire informational literacy and be encouraged to cross the border into the middle class, but they are not given much that will enhance their social rights if they dont
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choose to or are unable to be border crossers. The richer the children are, the more likely they are to attend schools where content consists of problem solving, analysis, and criticism (the kind of knowledge and skills measured on the SATs), where they are rewarded for being inquisitive and assertive and where there is continuous reflection on the social class structure of society with a spin that it is right and natural that their families are powerful and need to maintain power. All of this contributes maintaining and enhancing social rights of already advantaged students. Furthermore, school districts in most states that educate the largest number of poor students get about a thousand dollars less per student than districts that educate the fewest poor students. These differences per child translate into enormous differences per school. In New York, for example, the state with the largest discrepancy ($2150 per child), a school of 400 students in a rich district would receive $860,000 more per year than a school of 400 students in a poor district. [FN Anyon p. 63, 4. See essay in UEWA.] In a 199_ California law suit, plaintiffs seeking equitable funding for schools charged that schools attended by poor and working class children were schools that shock the conscience. The plaintiffs charged that these schools lacked trained teachers, necessary educational supplies, classrooms, even seats in classrooms, and facilities that meet basic health and safety standards The state did not attempt to refute these claims. It fought the suit on other grounds. When Arnold Schwarzenegger (sp) was elected governor, he ordered the state to settle, essentially because he agreed with the plaintiffs. Oakes 9-13 Lee and Burkham (2002) found that However school quality is defined in terms of higher student achievement, more school resources, more qualified teachers, more positive teacher attitudes, better neighborhood or school conditions, private vs. public schools the least advantaged U. S. children begin their formal schooling in consistently lower quality schools. This reinforces the inequalities that develop even before children reach school age. (p. 3 original P. 66 Anyon) 3. In spite of all this, a certain number of working class students do exceptionally well in school and on tests like the SAT, but their chances of entering college programs that lead to high-status professions remain remote, and in fact, they are becoming increasingly remote. In 2003, one out of five poor students (bottom one-quarter in family income) who had outstanding SAT scores (top one-quarter) did not even enroll in college. A generation ago Pell grants for high achievers from poor families covered 84 percent of in-state university costs. In 2003, Pell grants covered 42 percent of in-state university costs. Even with grants and staggering loans, the
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average poor student fell $3,800 short of covering a years college costs. As I write this (2006) Congress is debating a deficit reduction bill that will hit college aid the hardest. (NYT Bob Herbert p. A17 2/2/06 the Machete Budget) [Check facts and rewrite in final draft]. And so, more and more low-income, high achievers are barred from college. Those who do attend, despite outreach efforts and scholarships, are likely to attend a lower-status institution. Many must work during the school year, contributing to lower grades, a high drop out rate, and less promising futures for those few who graduate. [Replace the quote differences will only widen]. [Check all these figures. Some seem inconsistent.] 4. On the other hand, wealthy students who are not very bright or industrious continue to find their way into college, and frequently into elite colleges. George W. Bush is the grandson of a senator, and the son Barbara Bush, a publishing heiress (Macmillian?), and George H. W. Bush, a senator and later president. Although he is alleged have a very modest SAT score, he was admitted to Yale where he brags about being a C student. He winks at his own youthful hell-raising that included driving under the influence. There is plenty of evidence that George is not all that bright and that he did not work very hard in school. Nevertheless, he has a bachelors from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. [Check out and cite Gail Sheehys article in 2000] In 2003, 35 percent of students from families with less than $25,000 income attended college while 80 percent of those from families with more than $75,000 income did. Even among top achievers, only 78 percent from low-income families [with high test scores] ... attend collegeabout the same as the 77 percent of rich kids who rank at the bottom academically (Symonds, 2003, p. 68). This means that if you have high test scores and are poor you have about the same chance of attending college as if you have low test scores but are wealthy. How can anyone square this with meritocracy? 5. It is astonishing that Marshall saw so clearly that if the working class were to win social rights and full citizenship, the powerful institutions of class and the free market economy would necessarily lose, yet he proposed meritocracy, as the solution. Meritocracy demands no concessions from the institutions of class or the free market economy. Marshall did not factor the role of struggle into his analysis. He believed that in the past citizens rights had been won by the upper classes in the past and that the urge toward equality [check] would continue in its inevitable, non-contentious way. I believe this was a serious flaw in his analysis. To paraphrase Frederick Douglass, power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. Discover what people will submit to and you have discovered how
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much injustice will be imposed upon them and will continue until they resist. . The schools have always been political. They support the status quo, and therefore they are neither controversial not contentious. If citizens are finally able to win social rights through the schools, the schools must seriously challenge the status quo, and the process will be both political and contentious. Marshalls rosy outlook might be explained by two facts. First, he was upper middle class himself and may have looked more benignly on the class system than those less fortunate. Secondly he believed that the goal of universal social rights and full citizenship had been nearly accomplished in Great Britain when he wrote in 1950 and would be fully accomplished by the end of the 20th century. A Labour government had established extensive public housing, a national health service, and had plans to make public schools of such high quality that practically no one would think of sending their children to private schools or of seeking private medical care. These advances in social rights have been beaten back by conservative governments beginning with Margaret Thatcher at about the same time citizens rights have come under attack in the United States (where social rights had never advanced as far as in Great Britain) beginning with the Reagan administration. The scheme Marshall described and that became known as meritocracy is seriously flawed by nave, simplistic understanding of the relationships between education, income, and social rights. It does not describe a way to extend social rights to the poor and working class. Its another border crossing scheme. It is flawed as well by the implied understanding that social rights will be won without struggle. Poverty, which can be thought of as a condition where people are denied social rights, creates barriers to educational success that no teacher, principal, high stakes test, or zerotolerance discipline policy can surmount. Low wages, shortage of jobs, lack of public transportation to available jobs, hiring discrimination, wage discrimination based on gender, and poor health care create conditions in poor and working class families that affect childrens ability to achieve, and no educational reform can affect these factors. When low income parents get better jobs and increased family supports, their children are more successful in school. In a review of the data from five programs that provided income supplements to poverty wage workers in 2001, the Manpower Development Research Association showed that family income supplements as low as $4,000 per year improved
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childrens school achievement as measured by test scores and teachers ratings by 10 to 15%. Studies have shown that small improvements in childrens school achievement can translate into larger differences later. (Anyon p 68) One of the programs reviewed, The New Hope Program (1994 and 1998) in Milwaukee, targeted parents living in two inner-city areas of Milwaukee. Participants had to be over 18 with an income below 150% of the poverty level, and able to work at least 30 hours a week. Nearly 90% of the participants were single mothers. Eighty percent were receiving public assistance. Participants got earnings supplements, subsidized health insurance, subsidized child care, and help in getting jobs. The programs annual cost per family was $5,300. After 2 years and again at 5 years, New Hope families were compared to a group of families who were in similar circumstances, but were not in the program. The academic performance of children in the program was better, particularly in reading and literacy. The effect was slightly better for boys than girls. Adolescents reported more engagement with schools and higher expectations of finishing college. New Hopes results are consistent with other programs that have improved childrens outcomes by providing wage supplements and subsidized child care for their families (Anyon 70). There is also evidence that simply increasing childrens economic well-being reduces negative behavior which is likely to translate into better behavior and performance in school. In 2003, a longitudinal study of 1420 children ages 9-13 in rural North Carolina was completed. A quarter of the children was from a Cherokee reservation. Psychological tests were given each year of the study. At the start of the study about 68% of the children were living below the poverty line. On average poor children exhibited more vandalism, stealing, and bullying than children who were better off economically. About half way through the study a casino on the reservation began distributing profits to Cherokee families. By about the sixth year of the study these dividends reached $6,000 per person. Negative behaviors for children in these families who were no longer poor dropped by 40%, down to a level equal to those children in the study who had never been poor. If poverty is the culprit, whats the solution? Up until recently the solution has been a belief in our old friend border crossing. But border crossers leave the poor and working class one by one and the poor and working class are left untouched without improvements in their social rights or school performance. What if we asked, How can schools improve the social and economic well-being of poor and working class families as a whole so that schools that serve
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them will not be hamstrung by the negative effects of too little money in the homes of their students? This is not about the logically impossible task of making everyone middle class. Its about improving the lot (the social rights and citizens rights) of the working class as a whole. [Go through the entire ms. and use working class alone (not poor and working class) wherever possible.] The meritocracy formula --education determines income, and income determines access to higher standards of housing, medical care, and so on -- works for border crossers. That is why it is so dear to the hearts of most Americans. But it misses the fact that education accounts for only about a third of the differences in income levels of adult workers when factors such as gender, ethnicity, access to health care, and unionization are considered. Gender affects earning potential. Women high school graduates make less than male high school dropouts. Women with masters degrees earn less than men with bachelors degrees alone. A 1991 study found that in traditionally womens occupations, except nursing and teaching, (child care, hairdressers, receptionists, for example) job requirements were increasing while wages were falling. There are no effective laws to guarantee equal pay for comparable work. Those on the books are rendered ineffective by governments policies of turning a blind eye or under-funding agencies charged with enforcing the laws. Lafer found that effective laws to give women equitable pay would enable 40 percent of poor working women to leave public assistance. Race and ethnic discrimination affect earning potential as well. Minority workers at every level of education make less than whites with comparable education. (Anyon 34) Over time black and Latino entry-level workers have increased their skills, both in absolute terms and as compared to whites, but at the same time their wages have fallen relative to whites. Access to health care has a profound effect on economic well-being. Marshall considers it a social right. Parents should not be forced to decide whether to pay the rent or buy their childs asthma medication. Either decision is likely to adversely affect the childs school performance. The United States is the only developed nation without some form of universal health care. Labor unions have been the most reliable and effective organizations through which the poor and working class have asserted their rights and improved their social and economic position with reference to the middle and upper classes. In 2000 union wages were 28.4 percent higher than wages for unorganized workers, and because union workers often win medical
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insurance and pension plans, the total package for union workers were as much as 50 percent higher. (Anyon p. 32) The differential is most pronounced in service occupations, the fastest growing sector of the economy, and it is more pronounced for women than men. Union women earned 30 percent higher wages than non-union women workers doing the same work; union men earned 19 percent higher wages than non-union men doing the same work. For whites the union versus non-union differential was 27 percent; for black workers it was 37 percent; for Hispanic workers it was 55 percent. (33A) Since the federal government turned so blatantly pro business beginning with the Reagan administration, laws protecting union workers and union organizing have been repealed, and federal policy has allowed businesses to fire or penalize workers for attempting to form unions. In 1978 25 percent of the U. S. workforce was unionized. In 2000 that figure was down to 14 percent. On the day I write this the New York Times reported that U. S. corporations and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce are attempting to prevent China, the only nation in the world where Wal-Mart employees are unionized, from passing pass laws favorable to unions. (Look for update) Although a four-year college degree makes a dramatic difference in a workers income (in 1999 income for a college graduate was on average 74% higher than for a high school graduate) (Anyon 34), Lafer (2002) argues that when high school dropouts are working in non-union jobs, they are likely to increase their earning potential by $2.25 an hour by finishing high school. If, instead, they stay on the job and help to organize their workplace, their earning potential is likely to increase by more than $5.50 an hour. High school graduates who contemplate some college training short of a bachelors degree would do three times better organizing than going back to school. (2002 p. 78) 33A This is particularly sobering for poor and working class students and their teachers at a time when Pell grants and other government programs designed to support low income students efforts to finish college have been slashed. [Update $ slashed from government loans.] Policy and law at the local, state, and especially federal level can enhance social rights (usually by limiting the free play of the free market and social class) or they can limit social rights (usually by allowing the free play of the free market and social class). For decades after World War II, minimum wage laws maintained low-paid workers income at about the median for industrial workers. [Check her wording. Wouldnt that mean workers worked below minimum wage?] Today, nearly ten million workers (9% of the population) work minimum
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wage jobs where pay is so low that year-round, full-time employees live in poverty. In 200_ half of Wal-Mart full time employees were eligible for food stamps. (21) Taxpayers who subsidize businesses that pay low wages by picking up the tab on food stamps and health care for their workers dont blame the businesses; they blames the workers. The predominant antipoverty program of the federal government is job training, but graduates cannot find jobs. Entry level jobs have migrated to the suburbs, frequently because federal development money goes to suburbs, enabling them to lure employers away from cities with tax incentives. There is little public transportation linking the cities to the suburbs, and of course the availability of public transportation is determined by federal policy. Government policy and law could provide a progressive tax structure, protection for unions and union organizing, protection from job discrimination, equal pay for equal work, and better public transportation connecting workers with jobs. They could provide a minimum wage that would lift full-time workers out of poverty, medical insurance, and financial aid to students in higher education. These reforms would relieve the financial stress on working-class families and remove some of the obstacles to school success for their children. They are not radical ideas; they are, in fact, modest proposals. Many of them have worked in the United States in the past, and all of them are commonly accepted throughout the industrialized world. Most importantly, all these government policies could be brought about by an informed and organized electorate. Poor and working class people can improve their citizenship rights in two ways individually or collectively. As individuals, they can go to college and become doctors or lawyers, or they can run for the city council, or they can become star athletes or entertainers. For the vast majority of poor and working class students each of these routes to acquiring social rights is about as realistic as the next. On the other hand, they can band together to demand living wage legislation, universal health care, better public transportation to increase employment opportunities, equal funding for their childrens schools, and they can join or form unions to get better pay and benefits. Everyone will have a little more change in their pockets and more decent standards citizenship rights, actual rights, not theoretical rights. Working class schools certainly do not prepare working class students to attain social rights collectively. Working class schools expend nearly all their energy on preparing students to improve their lot by individual advancement border crossing, reinforcing the meritocracy myth, while, in fact, the route to acquiring social rights for a vast majority of their students is collective struggle, not individual achievement.
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If youre middle class you live day to day without being preoccupied with meeting basic wants. You have decent housing, clothing, food, schooling, and medical care. Thats what it means to be middle class. I dont mean that our middle class does not obsess about these things. I mean they dont really need to worry about being turned out onto the street, dressing in shabby clothing , raising illiterate children, or suffering or dying for lack of medical care. If thats your condition and the condition of the folks around you (your social class), you can better your position in two ways collectively or individually. Collectively, you can band together with citizens who find themselves in a similar condition (your social class) and get your street paved (increasing the value of everyones property), or your taxes reduced (fattening everyones pocket book). Or, individually, you can compete for a better job (a teacher becomes a principal for increased income and status) or run for the city council (improving your status). Middle class and more affluent schools and classrooms prepare students to do both these things. Middle class students have the basic social, economic, and academic scaffolding vis--vis school discourse that defines what it means to be middle class, and so meritocracy, a scheme of individual competition, begins to make sense. Yet, its still far from fair: The richer the students, the higher the scaffold But if youre poor or working class you must be preoccupied with getting and maintaining decent housing, clothing, food, schooling, and medical care. Thats what it means to be poor and working class. You really do need to worry about being turned out onto the street, dressing in shabby clothing, going hungry, raising illiterate children, or suffering or dying for lack of medical care. If thats your condition and the condition of the folks around you (your social class), you can better your position in two ways collectively or individually. You can band together with your fellow citizens (your social class) and form a union to get better pay and medical benefits, work for living wage legislation or universal health care, or better public transportation to increase employment opportunities, or funding for your childrens schools equal to funding for wealthier childrens schools. Everyone will have a little more change in their pockets and more decent standards of the social rights that citizenship guarantees. Or you can take an individualistic route. You can become a star athlete or entertainer or go to college and become a lawyer (giving you more money) or you can run for the city council (giving you more status). For the vast majority of poor and working class students each of these routes to social rights is about as realistic as the next. Working class schools certainly do not prepare working class students to attain social rights collectively. Poor and working class students are not imbued
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with Freirean motivation (which such collective efforts require); they are reminded every day in every way that they are powerless and have no reason to ever expect to be powerful. Working class schools expend nearly all their energy on preparing students to improve their lot by individual advancement border crossing, reinforcing the meritocracy myth, while, in fact, the route to acquiring social rights for a vast majority of their students is collective struggle, not individual achievement. Of course we need to keep sponsoring border crossers [use Schutz language] but the solution for the vast majority of poor and working class students is a collective solution, and our continual (if unconscious) harping on individualistic solutions not only doesnt help most kids. It derails the real solution. It reinforces the working class belief in individualistic solutions and self blame. Poor and working class life (2 jobs, housing mobility, etc.) destroys or discourages collective feeling in poor and working class communities. Schools reinforce this tendency. Organizing outside school around schools and bringing students into the process does increase solidarity and create a collective narrative in poor and working class classrooms. Nothing else will. No Finn family success without union movement and increased status of Irish through Democratic machine politics. Teachers of poor and working class students should be aware of these facts. Rather than expending all their energy on the few border crossers [what percent of lower 50 percentile in $ kids finish college?] and consigning the rest to the category of those who failed because they couldnt or wouldnt do whats natural, they should offer those who choose to go to work after high school an education that will better prepare them to improve the status of the workers they will become. Oster/Anyon Alfred Marshall had faith in intrinsic motivation1: If you teach people to read at a basic level, they will find it so personally rewarding that they naturally continue to read and improve and freely choose the good things that distinguish the life of a gentleman from that of the working classes. Alfreds vision was clearly one of border crossers. T. H. Marshall, on the other hand, believed in extrinsic motivation: Nearly everyone wants the material rewards that education promises, and so they will put forth the effort to do as well as they can in the contest for the prizes that meritocracy offers. Once again, poor and working class winners in this contest
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Belief in intrinsic motivation has much in common with the autonomous model of literacy 15

are border crossers. After the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s a third kind of motivation was suggested -- Machiavellian motivation.2 If you go to an overcrowded high school where fewer than half the teachers are fully certified and more than half the students drop out, and unemployment in your neighborhood is double the regional average, and housing is substandard, and nearly everyone is without health insurance, and your little sister goes to a school where they just paved the playground for a teachers parking lot, and you want to become better educated and learn the discourse of power (perhaps becoming a union member or activist or organizer or teacher or lawyer or office holder with a passion for social justice) so you can fight to get families like yours a better deal, thats Machiavellian motivation. But Machiavellian suggests duplicity and deceit. I believe that the kind of motivation described here has more to do with Freire than with Machiavelli, and so I prefer to call it Freirean motivation Motivation plays an interesting role in poor and working-class schools. Most teachers in these schools do not think much about intrinsic motivation (except, perhaps, to wish the students had it), but they talk a lot about extrinsic motivation (and also wish the students had it). They repeatedly refer to learning things because they will be on the test. When they find outstanding students they encourage them with the promise of going to college and by inference joining the middle class. These are, of course, potential border crossers, students who are willing, perhaps eager, to adopt middle-class values, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and ways of communicating and abandon their own. This is far different from Freirean motivation. Working-class students with Freirean motivation may learn middle-class values, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, and language, but not to replace their own. Instead, they learn to operate in middle-class or even executive elite cultures in order to beat the middle-class and executive elite at its own game and thereby address the inequities and injustices suffered by their own communities, the way organized labor and the old Democratic Party once did in order to effect government policy and to stand up to corporations and big money interests. But most Americans do not participate much in politics. Only 14% of us belong to political organizations. Of these, only 20% attend meetings. Fewer than 10% were asked to and agreed to participate in community political activity (in the previous year?). Americans have
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Oller and Perkins (1978)

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become isolated, autonomous citizens on the receiving end of mailings and TV commercials. They are involved only insofar as they elect elites to do the real work of politics and government. Political activity is limited to writing a check for your favorite candidate and voting on Election Day. Paul Osterman reports that even Henry Waxman, a liberal congressman whom I admire, does not have a grass roots organization. His campaign is run out of a public relations office owned by another congressmans cousin. Contemporary politics is characterized by falling participation and a tilt toward the top the rich participate more than the poor. Barber aptly describes it as a thin democracy. Seventy-four per cent of the members of Common Cause have at least a 4 year college degree. Forty two percent have a graduate or professional degree. Fourteen per cent have some graduate school. Eighteen per cent have a four year degree. Average family income of members of Common Cause is nearly double the national median. In 2000, 54% of Americans in the bottom 20% economically voted while 88% of Americans in the top 20% economically voted. (123) In 1989, when compared to people whose family income was under $15,000 per year, Americans whose family income was $75,000 or more were 3 times more likely to be involved with informal community activities, 2 times more likely to be affiliated with a political organization, 4 times more likely to have worked in a campaign, and 2 times more likely to have engaged in protest activities. Ordinary citizens are protected from the callousness, greed, and self-interest of the powerful, and in some cases from honestly-held conservative values and beliefs, only by elaborated legal rights, not by healthy citizen participation. Improving government has become a matter of increasing the satisfaction of clients as consumers of government largess. (172 Osterman.) This often springs from a lack of respect for citizens capacity to participate in government in any real way because its simply too complicated for them. But poor and working class Americans were not always so politically inactive. During the New Deal voting rates increased across the board. In 1972, when civil rights and the Viet Nam War were on the agenda 60% of Americans in the bottom 25% economically voted while in 2000 only 51% voted of this same group voted. Laws, rules, and regulations interpreted and enforced by a professional class of politicians have proven inadequate in protecting the interests of ordinary citizens. The education that protects the interests of a vast majority of the poor and working class will look more like the Corresponding Societies of late 18th century or Freires culture circles [if Alinsky put in above
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or Alinskys neighborhood organizations] (which are in fact remarkably similar) than Marshalls meritocracy.

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