Thinking differences in different socio economic class students

In addition to the general view, the three-year study found two very different sets of attitudes toward learning and school. These different attitudes follow socio-economic class lines. Our schooling is producing 5 different socio-economic classes .Here we only discuss about 2 main classes.

You can figure out for rest of  3 or 4  socio-economic groups .

working class Schools

Students from a working class, or blue-collar (lower-middle class) school district generally perceived school as a place where passivity and conformity were the order of the day. Learning meant quietly following orders. The teacher is supposed to present facts and the students are supposed to accept the facts without question.

The teacher has all the “right” answers, and there is no dialogue between teacher and pupil, no exchange of ideals. When asked why they were in school, most if not all of the students said, “I have to stay in school to graduate, to get a good job.” The boys felt that if they didn’t graduate, their only future was a physically demanding job,, “where you end up breaking your back.” The girls thought that if they didn’t graduate their only future was menial work.

The view from the working class school is negative and depressing. These schools seem to be merely processing one generation of students after another. If this education has any impact it is only to perpetuate certain conventional assumptions and stereotyped values. The major assumption is that memorization (or rote learning) is the same thing as thinking. The stereotyped values are those that promote obedience and conformity.

A theorist has recently suggested that such working-class schools are, in fact, an accurate reflection of the larger working-class community. He suggests that the schools socialize and educate children to take their places on the assembly lines, in the offices, and in the stores of the country. If performing routine work assignments, following orders, and never asking questions are the qualities these working environments require, then the working class schools are educating their students for just those jobs. The study reported above indicated that the students themselves transmitted and accepted these values. They saw school as an acceptable and necessary waste of time.

Elite Class Schools

The three-year study found that elite class students’ attitudes differed significantly from those of working class students. The Elite school building, the teachers, and the setting were all dramatically different. Indirect lighting and carpeted floors/AC rooms, well-trained and competent teachers, green grass and well-groomed surroundings provided a sharp contrast to the bettered buildings, the minimally trained teachers, and the tenement houses of the working-class district. You would expect these advantages, plus well-stocked libraries, low teacher pupil ratios, and modular scheduling, to produce significantly different student attitudes. You might not expect the differences that were found, however.

The elite class students were significantly more negative toward schooling than the urban students. In spite of the apparent advantages in the suburban schools, the students found school to be boring, oppressive, filled with busy-work. Their major motives for studying (and these students did an average of two to three hours of homework each night), were almost totally extrinsic or functional: “You have to study, to get good grades, to go to college,” was their frequent explanation. The pressure for academic achievement was enormous, yet the reasons for study were strictly vocational. In fact, the students were aware of this discrepancy: “I know we are supposed to say we want to go to a liberal arts college for general learning, but for me it’s to take pre-law.” We could just as appropriately substitute pre-medicine, pre-dentistry, pre-engineering, pre-business administration—pre-anything! Little intrinsic interest in learning, ideas, or any kind of independent thinking was ever expressed.

In the elite high school, then, the students seemed almost trapped between two contradictory forces. They disliked school, found little academic stimulation, perceived learning as vocational preparation and yet they did not drop out. Instead, they worked and studied very hard to get good grades—“to get into a good college, to get a good job, to earn enough money, to buy a house in the suburbs and put my kids through the same thing,” as one boy put it.