Finn: Literacy with an Attitude

Reflections: Anyon, Finn, and Schooling for Station

 "Those who are smartest and work hardest go furthest?" 

- Patrick J. Finn

     Finn ends his chapter describing Anyon's study of the varying school environments students find themselves in, with the question above. Specifically, the types of school environments students find themselves in based on their socio-economic status. In the United States, despite our folkloric ideology proclaiming meritocracy and "equal opportunity for all," Anyon's work asserts that their are vastly differing school tracks which guide students on paths which align to their station based on income, wealth, and class. As Finn admits near the end of the chapter, "Anyon's conclusions seemed wildly radical and oversimplified to me... this class culture distinction sounded as severe as the caste system in India."(Finn, 24). But just as Anyon's work was clarified and supported by Finn's experience in the classroom, I also found myself recognizing the "clear class culture perpetuation" I have witnessed in the schools I've worked in: experiences which align alarmingly well with the observations and analyses of Anyon's research conducted in the 1978 to 1979 school year. 

    The answer Finn asserts, and I would support, is that in fact -- no, American meritocracy is a fiction. Arguably the system's of knowledge production which are guarded in the ivory tower of the university are heavily implicated, but Anyon's work disturbs so deeply becuase it suggests that such systematic disparities of opportunity do not simple begin from above and reign down below -- they begin from the bottom up, starting with the elementary education a student recieves. Despite our best efforts as individual educators, the processes of segregation in schooling opportunity are something we all contribute to. 

     I've worked in a handful of school environments, but they exist in stark enough contrast to eachother that I see reflections of Finn and Anyon clearly. I worked in a K-5 charter school serving a primarily black student demographic, which Anyon would likely classify as a working class school despite its aspirations to instill middle class values and work ethic in its student body. I worked in a private Waldorf school, which despite its professed middle class values was clearly an affluent professional space with a minority of elite professionals in the midst of the broader parent and alumni community.  The highschool I attended and worked at briefly as a instructional coach was a deeply middle-class school, with a minority of affluent professionals and working class families mixed in. I worked in a primarily latino serving charter school which was clearly a working class school but had a majority middle class teaching body, supported by working class support staff, and administered by a small cohort of affluent professionals. I currently substitute teach in both affluent professional, and executive elite private school spaces. 

    Finn's overview and analyses of Anyon's work enhances and clarifies many experiences I've had in these school spaces. While it was easy to contrast the private and public charter school environments I've inhabited, there were layers Finn describes which clarify the divides. My firsthand experiences of differences of instructional aim, delivery of content, off-the-record criticisms or stereotypes attributed to the student community, forms of discipline and behavior shaping, and the concentrations or omissions within curricular content are all reflected in Anyon's work. Interestingly, I can observe that in the 30 to 40 years since Anyon's study when my own experiences have taken place, a shallow nuance overshadows easy classifications such as she describes: perhaps classroom teachers, school staff, and administrators (mosty having been trained with awareness of Anyon's work and all having been subject to it based on their class positionality) are affecting what I might call surface level obscurities of the divides. For example, at the black excellence charter I worked at the student body's experience was working class through and through based on the details Anyon outlines while the stated mission professed middle class to affluent professional aspirations and values. This disconnect, enhances my understandings of student behavior as well as the tensions between support staff and the classroom teachers and administrators I observed. My working class support staff peers professed anger and resentment of the "fairytales being sold" by the admin; on the other hand, classroom teachers and admin were critical of the "lack of buy-in and care" they observed in the parent community (and at times, the support staff). This was contrasted sharply by the Waldorf school which I worked at after my few years at the charter. There, an affluent class of parents and middle class climbers bought their children access to the creative, artistic, and symbolic capital imparted to them by working class and middle class professional teachers. Any "ultra rich" in their midst were saving the striving for excellence attributable to that class, for the highschool and college experiences their children would surely enjoy at elite private and ivy league schools. In my current sub environments, I contrast an affluent professional space with a clearly executive elite space, and see Anyon's descriptions of environment, pedagogy, behavior, and teacher perspectives all reflected. Right down to the idyllic affluent professional spaces Finn describes, contrasted to the entitlement and freedom exhibited by the executive elite children (as well as their teachers deference, and acknowledgment of their lower station when compared to their students). 

     Like Finn, I would also like to hope that "a child's expectations are not determined on the day [they] enter kindergarten," (Finn, 25) but in order to affect relevant change we need to acknowledge reality and strategize how to best address its inequities and the resulting injustice. I made a point of reading the introduction and first chapter in addition to the assigned second chapter, and I find the application of Paulo Freire's work -- heralded and demonized in turn, in the Precious Knowledge documentary -- exciting and hopeful. I ordered Finn's book, dusted off my copy of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and I look forward to learning more about how to instill the Literacy with an Attitude that Finn describes within my own future work environments. 

"Then again, it is possible that I am naive... but I'd rather fall into hopeful naivety with the expectation of one day being able to change, than to cross my arms today in fatalist yielding, giving up all possibility of change"    

- Paulo Freire

The above quote is from the video linked here, which I liked because it was brief and featured footage and audio of Freire and his original peasant school, while also describing some of his primary teaching concepts.      

While I was unable to find anything about Patrick J. Finn, I did enjoy this PBS produced mini-doc by Otherwords describing "the reading wars," and contemporary shifts in our understandings around teaching literacy (as well as the tenaciousness of practices which aren't working). The video discusses phonics, whole language theory, cueing, and the science of reading. I find it noteworthy that in the context of Finn and Anyon, the outcomes of the whole language theory implementation essentially deferred the responsibility of teaching literacy to the home environment (and thus perpetuated the class based achievement divides that Anyon described).