Definition of ethnicity and social class
Ethnicity refers to a particular group that has common characteristics and such characteristics include language, origin, religion, culture as well as ancestry. This is an issue of historical as well as biological fact and can not be altered by the culture in which an individual is brought up or grows up in. Talking about culture, this refers to what individuals develop to make them be able to have the adaptation of their world. Such developments may involve areas such as language, tools that boost prosperity, customs as well as traditions that give a definition to values and give organizations to social interactions, the religious beliefs among others.
Culture plays a major role in determining the beliefs and practices that turn out to be associated with a particular ethnic group and offers its unique identity. Identity can either be personal identity, ethnic identity or social identity.
On the other hand, the social class refers to the group of individuals that belong to the same economic, social or even educational status. Anyon Jean classifies these groups as the working class, middle class, and upper class. The working class mostly consists of those people who are involved in unskilled work. The middle class is a wider category in which we have the lower middle class and the upper middle class. This class consists of individuals ranging from those who have well paying jobs to those engaged in white collar jobs. The upper class consists of the top executives in multinational corporations among other elites.
Anyon uses the idea of the social class to carry out an investigation in schools. The schools investigated are of different levels and the differences in levels are determined on the basis of the social class in which the parents belong (Anyon 1).
Summary of the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples
According to this report, the Aboriginal peoples are among the poorest people in Canada. About half of the total number of children either living on reserve or off-reserve live in abject poverty. Basing on the census of 1991, over 60 percent of families especially in Regina, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg carry on with their lives under poverty line. The main problem that brings about these people not to be able to get away from poverty is the lack of formal education. Most of the Aboriginal children are faced with unemployment. Many of them regard going to school to be futile as there is a belief among them that the job prospects for them are very minimal.
What the Aboriginal children have gone through while in the residential school structure has made a contribution to dissatisfaction with formal education chances. These children were taught in an education system that was well suited for the white than the Aboriginal children. Give regard to the different styles of teaching as well as learning of the Aboriginal peoples.
Most of the parents of these children who went through negative experience while in the formal school system and this turns out to be the reason as to why they are not very much willing to pressurize their children to go and pursue higher education.
The children in the First Nations from those families that are isolated who my want to go to high school in most cases have to go away from reserve leaving their families behind. Consequently, after doing this, it is very much harder for some of the children to go back home in order to produce a bridge between the gaps of the worlds.
In conclusion, the obstacles to education do not just make it harder for the Aboriginal peoples to get away from the “welfare cycle” but as well hamper economic development among the Aboriginal communities. Most of these people do not possess the expertise to come up with strategic plans that can be effectual for economic development of their communities (Anon. Highlights from the report of the royal commission on Aboriginal peoples 22).
Position of family and school in supporting children’s development
There was the opening of what would turn out to be a network of residential schools in the year 1849. This was for the Aboriginal children and this was done in Alderville, Ontario. At this point, the government together with the church had concluded that from their view the problem of Aboriginal independence could be offered a solution by taking the Aboriginal children away from families and going to instill the ways of the prevailing society in the course of about eight years of residential education away from home.
These residential schools did a lot of harm. The children, who were very young, as young as six years of age, were taken away from their families for a period of ten months per year or for even a longer period of time in a year. These children were banned from speaking the only languages they were aware of. More so, the children were taught to refuse the homes they belonged to as well as their heritage and worse enough, they were even taught to reject themselves. Among the children, many of them were subjected to physical withdrawal and even some of them went through abuse.
The removal of children from their families was among the major disruptions. The children who are taken away from their families are detached from their roots and get along with their life without having any idea of what it means to be a First Nation member. Yet they are separated from their new families as well as their new communities by noticeable difference and in most cases caused to experience shame about their origins while their original communities and extended families to which they belong are snatched a portion of the generation that has to follow.
Anyon’s article
- Anyon’s definition of the social class centralizes on the idea of the level of income that is dependent on the kind of job one does. She classifies the schools on the basis of the nature of the work and the level of income the parents of the stands have. She classifies schools in five major categories.
The first category is classified as the working class schools and most of the parents here have bleu-collar jobs. In this category, a third or less of the parents are involved in skilled jobs and remaining portion are involved in either semi-skilled or unskilled jobs.
The second category of the middle class in which there is a small group of those engaged in blue-collar jobs who are skilled and the well-paid workers like the printers, construction workers among others. This category consists of people having middle class white-collar-jobs.
The third category consists of people who are in the upper middle-class who are predominantly professional. Such people include corporate lawyers, executives in advertising interior designers, among other professionals.
The last category consists of people who are in the upper class. This class consists of people who are of the capitalist class who include the top executives in major multinational corporations.
- Anyon suggests that schools are organized to produce students with different characteristics suitable for jobs at different social class levels. Some educators have argued that only do schools bring about certain outcomes in students, but variations among students in terms of social class bring about certain institutional arrangements in schools.
According to Anyon’s suggestion the fifth-graders of varied economic backgrounds are by now being trained to take on particular rungs in the social; set-up. Among the schools, there are those that are of the students whose parents of the high social classes and these students are being prepared to become future professionals in such fields as medicine, law, and the business field.
According to her investigations, she found that the level at which the students are prepared to occupy particular positions is dependent on the social status of the parents for the students in the schools. The level of preparation of the students increases as one move towards the higher level of the social class.
This implies that schools in the communities that are rich are in better positions to prepare students than those that are found in relatively poor communities. The schools in wealthy communities prepare students for the jobs that are more desirable. However, the differences in schools do not lie so much in the resources in terms of methods of teaching or the education philosophies but in the level of the commitment of the teachers to produce the students to fit in different positions of jobs at different levels of status.
As one moves up the social ladder there is a tendency for the schools having the possibility to design systems that can enable to accommodate the students of a particular social ladder. For instance, those schools having students coming from very rich families are aware that the parents have the expectations to have their children to acquire an education of high quality in order for them to come and fit in the status they are used to.
- The findings of Anyon in her investigation might have been affected by the style of individual teachers. For instance, different teachers have varied styles of teaching. A teacher might be able to maintain his or her teaching style regardless whichever the school in terms of social status of the parents.
More so, among the schools that have the students whose parents are of high class, the teachers might have changed their style of teaching only just because they are under investigation and this might not be the normal true picture in the usual activities during which no investigation is going on.
Anyon found that there is a likelihood of the existence of the process of teaching students that is tailored differently for separate social classes in what she refers to as a hidden curriculum. However, all of these schools, regardless of the social classes, all the schools train the students in order to fit in society. All the schools do not actually have their all their students succeeding but what is noticeable is that all the students after going through the school end up being better people academically than at the time they were joining the school.
Works Cited
Anon. “Highlights from the report of the royal commission on Aboriginal peoples.” Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. 2010. Web.
Anyon, Jean. “Social class and hidden curriculum of work.” Journal of education Vol. 162, no.1, fall 1980. Web.