Working Class, Working Lives: Examining Deborah Hicks

Deborah Hicks’ Reading Lives: Working-Class Children and Literacy Learning is a text thoroughly embedded in a theoretical framework of critical inquiry, with focus in both feminist and Marxist thought. That said, the weaving of theory with the case studies of two working-class White students, combined with the authors’ background and experiences in the working class, provide a platform for a comprehensive view of how issues of class – and to a lesser extent gender — impact literacy education.

The book is divided into six chapters that are easily separated into four categories. In the first two chapters, she outlines a theoretical framework and provides a rationale for the thinking underlying her research. Further, chapter three allows the author to contextualize her research by situating it in her own working class background and experiences. After establishing both professional and personal contexts, Hicks uses chapters four and five to document the case studies of a working class girl and working class boy. Finally, the last chapter serves to integrate the three areas – professional research, personal experience, and case study results – in order to draw conclusions and make recommendations. The blend of theory and research Hicks provides is both fascinating and worthwhile.

Hicks (2002) begins by establishing that “students’ engagements with literacies – or institutional modes of talking, reading, and writing – are connected with their own histories, formed with others whom they value and love” (p. 1). While the idea that people are the products of socially constructed realities is not new (Vygotsky, Foucault, Gee, etc.), she uses it as a basis to understand “how working-class students engage with middle-class literacies and how those engagements are interwoven with relations with others (pp. 1-2). Hicks justifies the decision to research working-class White students by explaining that it would allow a more specific focus on the function of class, as there are many poor and working-class White families in the United States, and because “[t]heir treatment in school systems and in society at large can be oppressively hegemonic in ways that are submerged because of the hidden nature of class consciousness in the United States” (p. 4).

Indeed, it is my experience that Americans generally are not as class conscious as other cultures, many in Europe, for example. As a high school English teacher whose school is equally divided between poor and working class students and middle to upper class students, when I’ve asked students to identify themselves on the basis of class, the majority of them consider themselves to be middle class – an interesting paradox. Perhaps this is a result of year after year of lessons about the American dream and emphasis on individualism. Nevertheless, I have also found a disparity in the populations of the various English courses I teach, where my remedial students overwhelmingly come from the working class and my advanced students from the middle to upper classes, that has drawn me to investigate this oddity, where one might assume, based on the school’s socioeconomic composition, that there would be an equal number of each in these classes.

One of Hicks’ main arguments is that “educators can work with students to bring to awareness the silencings and oppressions that can be embedded in texts and their readings” (p. 31). Beyond that, however, is a requisite knowledge of class functions and expectations that, in part, determine the ways students not only perceive education, but also operate in the classroom. Hicks’ text provides a framework of critical inquiry, as it is “a research that challenges … that reads [situations] in terms of conflict and oppression … and a research that seeks to bring about change” (Crotty, 1998, p 113). But given that the majority of educators come from the middle class and represent middle class values and expectations that “interfere[] with the individual’s ontological and historical behavior to be more fully human” (Freire, 2002, p. 55), particularly if the individual is steeped in the culture of a different class, the best Hicks – and all of us – can hope for is that her research will serve to educate teachers so they can become facilitators, or partners, with their students, allowing them to “more fully … enter into reality so that, knowing it better, [they] can better transform it” (Freire, 2002, p. 39). The idea is not to relinquish working class identities or values, but to embrace them while learning how to engage in the system, with the idea that engagement can eventually result in transformation (Hicks, 2002, pp. 151-159).

It is important to note, though, as Chubb (1929) did almost a century ago, that English as a discipline “must be regarded as a form of self-expression, in which character values and culture blend; not simply a formal exercise, but an adventure in self-discovery and self-realization” (p. 420). If the values of poor and working class children are valued on par with the middle class values emphasized in most schools, then all is for naught.

A product of the working class, Hicks draws from her experiences to further situate her research, providing first-hand knowledge of the struggle many working class children face as they vacillate between the values and discourses privileged at home versus those privileged by the middle class in school (p. 44). She describes her school experiences as ones that “did a lot to teach [her] the values associated with being a successful schoolgirl: obedience, accuracy, conformity, work” (p. 47), attributes prized in working class environments. Her experience as a student who did what teachers told her to do is not unlike my own experiences growing up in a working class family, living in a working class neighborhood, and attending a working class school. For such students, school acts as practice for the often mind-numbing factory or service work that is expected of them.

Beyond this, moreover, are considerations of gender. Hicks discusses how working class values add another dimension, where strict roles and responsibilities are expected according to one’s gender (pp. 48-50). Similarly, Kristeva (1989) writes that the struggle for gender autonomy goes well beyond class struggle to include “[t]he political demands of women; the struggles for equal pay for equal work, for taking power on an equal footing with men; [and] the rejection, when necessary, of the attributes traditionally considered feminine or maternal” (p. 197). Others, like Lacan, “hold[] that the phallus will always dominate and women will always be at the margins of the Symbolic Order” (Crotty, 1998, pp. 168-169).

If one accepts these ideas, then, naturally, the implication is that the struggle affects all women, regardless of class. But if class is a factor as well, then the plight of the working class woman is limited not only by gender, but also by economic status – a double whammy that renders women as helpless as cultural fabrications paint them to be in their “attempt to confront the injustice of a particular society or sphere within a society” (Kincheloe & McLaren, 1998, p. 278). It is because of the multiple complications of class, gender, and school that Hicks makes the argument that “reductive categories of analysis” are not suited to describing the fluidity of a situation, and where “[n]arratives are suited to elaborating the web of relations that make up individuated histories” (p. 52).
This is how Hicks lays the foundation for introducing the first of two case studies, the plight of Laurie, a working class girl living with strong working class women. Ironically, the strength she is forced to assume at home is not compatible with the expectations of the classroom, where “[a]s much as Laurie wanted to be a successful student, she encountered serious trouble that revolved around the material and emotional stresses of working-class family life” (p. 63). The oldest child in a family headed by a single mother, she often struggled between the roles of home and school. While at home she assumed “the role of caretaker,” at school she was considered a mere child, a situation Hicks describes as both empowering and complicating (p. 65). In fact, Hartman (2006), citing an ethnographic study by DeBlase-Tryzna, writes “that in order for working-class girls to successfully navigate the school culture, they had to separate their public and private lives, and they had to leave their home discourse out of school” (p. 87), essentially rendering them to a school existence of disconnection and silence, a situation reflected by Hicks in Laurie’s “valuing of her goodness within school contexts,” where goodness and obedience translated into “gaining power as a girl” (p. 67). Although Laurie understood this aspect of school, Hicks explains that “she seemed lost and unsure amid the new academic practices of a successful first-grader” (p. 70). After working with Laurie for three years, and seeing her fall more and more behind due to the complications between home and school, Hicks asserts that teachers must be committed to understanding their students, “a kind of commitment and knowledge that is getting hard to achieve amid the stresses of teaching in contemporary educational contexts” (p. 96), where large classes and dictated curricula often result in students like Laurie falling between the cracks. She imparts teachers with the advice that they “have to contend with their own class specific histories and the feelings they evoke, as the girls they teach learn which kinds of fictions will be safe to write, voice, and live in school” (p. 97). While Hicks is on target with her advice, one can only hope that teachers are able to properly address the needs of individual students in the face of increasing class sizes and constricting curricula.

The subject of Hicks’ second case study, a working class young boy named Jake, resulted in a more dismal outcome than that of Laurie, demonstrating that the “minimal effect on Jake’s educational experiences speaks to the dissonances between institutional practices of schooling and working class values” (p. 99). I found it interesting that, as a researcher, Hicks is forthcoming about the issues she had in studying Jake, a subject that did not allow her to establish the type of close relationship she had with Laurie, and where she considered her role “with a certain degree of outsider status” (p. 99), even though the study was very similar. She admits that her study of Jake forced her to “work[] hard to understand passions and interests that in many cases [she] did not share” (p. 100), likening her interactions with him to the typical student-teacher relationship. While she identifies Jake as a “gifted learner” in the context of his working class home, where he engaged in hands-on tasks with his father, she notes that his learning style was at odds with “institutional expectations” that dictated activities that consisted of “verbal narration, writing, or drawing” (p. 101). For Jake, “[a] task had to be something that needed to get done” or else he deemed it “stupid” (p. 104). At home, “he was thriving as a young apprentice in family hobbies and in his father’s business” while “struggling with academic practices in school” (p. 123), not unlike Laurie’s dual roles. After studying him for three years, Hicks makes the argument that when Jake was in a classroom that emphasized a hands-on, inquiry learning approach, like the reader’s workshop, he was more successful, but when his learning style was at odds with the teaching style, he was not (pp. 132-135). Although Hicks doesn’t really discuss differentiated instruction, this chapter makes a strong argument for classrooms that allow such flexibility, particularly when there are such stark differences between the discourses of home and school.

In her final chapter, “Hybrid Languages of Inquiry,” Hicks discusses how three scholars – Nussbaum, Rose, and Bahktin – frame her thinking about the dissonance between working class and school cultures. Nussbaum frames her understanding of the importance of how narrative discourses reveal “changes in identities, beliefs, practices, and understandings” (p. 138) that can help teachers understand students and attempt to connect with them. Further, Rose offers “a critique of more reductive views of why some students fail to appropriate the literacies of schools” while “attempt[ing] to portray students’ engagement with literacies as complex aspects of lives” (p. 141). Lastly, she turns to Bahktin to understand that “social dialogue would be empty and meaningless without the ‘weight’ of moral relationship” (p. 147). When combined with her own experiences as a woman who grew up in a working class environment, Hicks circles back to the beginning, where she argues that literacies are socially constructed, complex engagements. If teachers are unable to see this – the richness and complexity of students’ situated histories – then working class students are destined to fail (pp. 151-152).

While I don’t disagree with her, I do wonder about the outcome. Even if teachers recognize this and reach out to their students, there is no guarantee that students will embrace them. We do agree that the main struggle in this endeavor “is one of confronting the hegemony of an educational system” (p. 158). It does seem that the system is what dominates, not the individual histories that collectively comprise it. In my experience, after reaching out to students, some come with open arms while others run away as quickly as they can, a testament to the complexities that Hicks acknowledges. At the same time, when thinking of those who do run away, I wonder if I am being presumptuous to think that my discourse is one that should be privileged. And by entertaining the notion of enticing students to enter what is now my middle class world – because I, like Hicks, am the product of the working class – aren’t I just functioning as part of the institutional hegemony? Or, as Freire writes, am I helping my students understand the discourse so they are able to be empowered and work from within to destroy it? Such questions make me keep coming back to the question of whether our system is intended to function in a gate keeping capacity.

References

Chubb, P. (1929). The teaching of English in the elementary and the secondary school: Revised and largely rewritten. New York: Macmillan Company.

Crotty, M. (1998). The foundation of social research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Freire, P. (2007). Pedagogy of the oppressed. (M.B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.

Hartman, P. (2006). “Loud on the Inside”: Working class girls, gender, and literacy. Research in the Teaching of English 41(1), 82-117.

Hicks, D. (2002). Reading lives: Working-class children and literacy learning. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kincheloe, J.L., & McLaren, P.L. (1998). Rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. In N. Denzin & Y.S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research: Theories and issues (pp. 260-299). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

Kristeva, J. (1989). Women’s time. In C. Belsey & J. Moore (Eds.), The feminist reader: Essays in gender and the politics of literary criticism (pp. 197-217). New York: Basil Blackwell.

Professor Michael Moore on Education Reform

Although my blog presence has been somewhat absent lately, I’ve been doing a lot of research regarding education reform issues, such as socioeconomic disparities in standardized testing and teacher quality, two issues that Georgia Southern Literacy Professor Michael Moore addresses in the following articles that appeared last month (February 2010) in the Savannah Morning News and Savannahnow.com.  Moore positions his pieces for a broad audience, yet, as a public school secondary English teacher, they resonate strongly with me.

“Teacher pay plan flunks” appeared on February 2nd.

“Running schools like a business”  appeared on February 26th.

Thanks to Allen Webb, professor of English education at Western Michigan University, for the links.

NCTE 2009: Philadelphia

An evening view of downtown Philadelphia.

I’ve spent the last several days exploring downtown Philadelphia, the site of the National Council of Teachers of English’s annual convention, where I’ll be presenting a session along with W. Douglas Baker, from Eastern Michigan University, and Colleen Tucker, from Saginaw, “Providing Opportunities for Students to Read Between the Lines of (Con)Texts.”

Here is the PowerPoint I developed for my portion of the presentation, “Reading and Interpreting Texts from Multiple Angles”:

NCTE 2009: Reading and Interpreting Texts From Multiple Angles