{"id":139,"date":"2011-10-24T00:35:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-24T00:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/2011\/10\/24\/why-do-we-teach-that\/"},"modified":"2011-10-24T00:35:04","modified_gmt":"2011-10-24T00:35:04","slug":"why-do-we-teach-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/2011\/10\/24\/why-do-we-teach-that\/","title":{"rendered":"“Why Do We Teach That?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyday in the United States school children are exposed to rags-to-riches stories. Children gather round on the rug and listen to the teachers they adore read to them about \u201cself-made\u201d men like Abraham Lincoln. They learn from their history and social studies books that the United States is a meritocracy where anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps if they are willing to work hard 1<\/a>. Over the course of their public education students learn this lesson well; work hard, take advantage of your opportunities, and you will certainly be successful. By the time students come into my 101 class this is a painfully unremarkable story. When I recount it in class their response is a unanimous, \u201cYeah. Duh. So what?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there anything wrong with teaching school children the world is theirs for the taking? You just have to work hard?\u201d I ask them. Typically my students struggle to find a single issue with teaching the \u201cpull yourself up by your bootstraps\u201d ideology. \u201cIs it true?\u201d I ask them \u201cCan anyone be successful as long as they work hard and take advantage of their opportunities?\u201d Nearly the entire class smirks at the obviousness of my question. Someone responds with a, \u201cWell, No.\u201d \u201cNo? And yet we teach it to our children without a second thought. Doesn\u2019t that strike you as odd?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would a conflict theorist ask here?\u201d \u201cWho benefits?\u201d someone chimes out. \u201cYes, that\u2019s right. So who benefits if we tell everyone in the United States that they can get ahead if they work hard, despite that being at best only partially true?\u201d A hand pops up, \u201cThose who are already successful benefit because it makes them look good.\u201d \u201cExactly. Ok, now let\u2019s ask the inverse. Who suffers?\u201d Perplexed silence fills the room for the next 120 seconds. \u201cAnyone? Take a shot at it.\u201d No takers today. \u201cOk then, help me with this: If I am a child and I hear my teacher tell the class that all you need to be successful is a good work ethic and my parents are wealthy, then what must I think about my parents?\u201d \u201cThey worked hard?\u201d says multiple students simultaneously. \u201cYes, of course. And what if my parents struggle to put food on the table? What if I know for certain that my family is not successful or worse what if I know that my parents are poor? Then what would the \u2018bootstrap\u2019 myth tell me about my parents?\u201d A single hand raises slowly, \u201cThen your parents must not be hard workers.\u201d \u201cThink about that for a minute. What a powerful lesson to teach our children. If your family is rich, they earned it. If your family is poor, they\u2019re lazy. Why on earth would we teach that in school?\u201d <\/p>\n

From here my students are ready to explore stratification, hegemony, justifying rationales, and all the rest of it. It\u2019s starts with an innocuous story and ends with a class on the front of their seats, needing to know more.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Footnotes:<\/p>\n

\n

1.<\/a> Loewen, James. 1995. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong.<\/em> New York: The New Press<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyday in the United States school children are exposed to rags-to-riches stories. Children gather round on the rug and listen to the teachers they adore read to them about \u201cself-made\u201d men like Abraham Lincoln. They learn from their history and social studies books that the United States is a meritocracy where anyone can pull themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1982,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30624,30593],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-discussion","category-classinequality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1982"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/sociologysource\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}