Thoughts on Education and Class

Thoughts on Education and Class

Education is one important ingredient in the mix that determines a person's social class position. The overwhelming majority of Americans are educated through the public school system. There is a huge disparity between the funding, resources, and ultimate outcomes of the richest and poorest schools. Clear and overwhelming research supports this fact but most people in this country know this instinctively or from personal experience. As I continue my study on social class in America, I draw from my own personal experience in the public education system. I was born in Washington, D.C. and lived in a suburb not far outside the city. My single mother worked at The Pentagon and sent me to a private preschool for two years then on to public kindergarten through first grade in the town of Annandale. This is part of Fairfax County, Virginia which according to my research (IES, 2016), is one of the wealthiest school districts in the country. I showed promise and I believe this had a major impact on my early development.

However, these privileges were short-lived. We had to move down South after the passing of my grandmother and subsequent loss of income and childcare that she provided. This was a complete culture shock for me, and I began to genuinely hate school. To further complicate things, my mother lost the government job she held for twenty-one years for reasons that were no fault of her own, chief among them being lack of adequate childcare. We were forced to rely on government assistance in the form of welfare, food stamps, and Section 8 HUD housing for several years.

The financial constraints impacted my education in various ways. Purchasing school clothes and supplies became more difficult and the lack of disposable income created problems financing things like school functions, book fairs, fall festivals, field trips, social gatherings, birthday presents for other children, and delayed our first purchase of a home computer and encyclopedia.  

As time went on, I became more acclimated to the Southern school system and I was lucky enough to have a very caring and brilliant fifth-grade math teacher. Her name was Dr. Nelda Lowrance and she was the first teacher I ever knew who earned her Ph.D. I loved her class and I became engaged in learning math under her tutelage. She noticed that I did very well in some areas and recommended to my mother I be tested for placement in the gifted program. Looking back, this should have been done much earlier because of my performance in pre-school. I was happy to be in a smaller class with more individualized attention while finishing elementary school yet gifted education for middle and high school fell under the umbrella of special education and most all available resources went towards meeting the great need of the developmentally challenged children.

 I really appreciate what Dr. Lowrance did to help me learn and achieve at a higher level. I feel that having such a great teacher at that formative age allowed me to reach for possibilities above which my circumstances were trying to ground me. I mean that in a literal sense because at age sixteen I began taking flying lessons at our local airport. The economic challenges continued to be oppressive but having that confidence in my abilities allowed me to do it. When I was nineteen, I enrolled at MTSU. I was ineligible for loans that would supplement my education and reduce the number of hours I needed to work. I was one year too old to receive the lottery scholarship at the time. Thank goodness many things have changed since 2003.

I often explain my early college difficulties away as immaturity. That lets people know that I am now wise enough to take personal responsibility for my actions and that I have grown to accept them rather than blaming society for my own personal failures. Yet,  I know that was only a small part of it since at seventeen years old I was responsible enough to be a night shift manager at Wendy’s with keys to the building and a solo pilot with the endorsement of a former full Cornel in the Air Force who logged over 16,000 flight hours in his career. The real reason I faced such difficulty was directly related to my socioeconomic problems. I spent many years working and hopping from job to job in restaurants, at drive-through windows, waiting tables, stocking shelves in stores, running cash registers, working in factories, driving forklifts, bartending, and most recently at a car title pawn shop. I spent years trapped in a cycle of consumer debt.

I tried to go back to college several times, but each time I found myself unable to juggle work, the hour-long commutes each way, managing my disabilities, and the coursework. I believed that I was solely responsible for my failure in college. However, as time went on many structural and societal things began to change. Technology got better, Middle Tennessee got access to broadband Internet, the Tennessee lottery scholarship began applying retroactively to adults, I was classified as an independent rather than a dependent student for financial aid purposes, D2L was developed, more online courses became available, I was older and had a car that was paid for, the disability and access center began offering more comprehensive services, Walker library was built and offered more services, two on-campus parking garages were built, an additional math tutoring lab was added, MT one-stop was established, discount textbooks became available near campus and from Amazon, student health services was established, campus intersections were replaced with roundabouts alleviating traffic, the University writing center was established, and I finally had healthcare insurance with the passing of the Affordable Care Act known colloquially as Obamacare. Additionally, MTSU now offers academic amnesty for people in similar situations, however, I already paid out of pocket and repeated many classes before that program became available.

All of these are great advantages for students at MTSU, yet I must admit I sometimes think about how I will have to compete with these better equipped younger graduates in the job market who have benefited from these changes simply by being in the right place at the right time.

              It is true that I am older now but what exactly made me a “nontraditional” student?  I enrolled at the traditional age. I didn't choose to start a business, have a family, or some other goal that would take the place of my goal of earning a college degree. I didn't make any notable life mistakes. I've never been in trouble with the law or gotten involved with drugs. According to mtsu.edu, over 40% of students are classified as nontraditional. Is this simply a way to sugarcoat the fact that there are structural and economic problems that thwart our ability to compete with so-called traditional students?

 We know that there is mutual incomprehension among the diverse strata of social classes in the United States. The aggregation of barriers to access in learning communities, traditional norms, and economic factors are often a result of an inadequate political framework that dominates public education in the United States.

Conservative approaches to education have been abysmal lately. According to theatlantic.com, “At the beginning of the 2010s, 58 percent of Republicans believed that colleges and universities had a positive impact on the course of the country, according to the Pew Research Center. As the decade nears its close, that number has fallen precipitously: It now sits at 33 percent, with the majority of the drop occurring from 2015 to 2017.” Therefore, we must breakdown this morally bankrupt ideology while at the same time working the system that currently exists.

This has wide-reaching applications outside of the educational community period when rehabilitating prisoner’s education is the number one way to reduce recidivism. According to bard.edu, prison inmates who receive college degrees while incarcerated have a 4% recidivism rate compared to the 50% recidivism rate that is typical of non-graduates. Education is the key to escaping poverty and becoming a productive citizen. However, conservatives argue that these prisoners should not have the opportunity to go to college While incarcerated in a taxpayer-funded facility.

In conclusion, I feel there are many ways that meet we must work to deconstruct the current socioeconomic system and replace it with a more equitable and sustainable system that provides equal opportunity regardless of social stratification. The 2020 election is quickly approaching, and it seems there has never been a more important time in history to understand these issues and work to achieve positive outcomes that will benefit our society and future generations.

References

https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/2016303.pdf

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/08/republicans-conservatives-college/596497/

https://bpi.bard.edu/press-clip/the-global-search-for-education-if-you-teach-them-they-will-grow/