Reclaiming Class: Women, Poverty and the Promise of Higher Education in America

Radical Teacher, Summer, 2005 by Rebecca Hill

RECLAIMING CLASS: WOMEN, POVERTY AND THE PROMISE OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA

Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L Dahlberg, eds. (Temple University Press, 2003)

The product of the conference "From Welfare to Meaningful Work through Education," held at Hamilton College in 1999, Vivyan C. Adair and Sandra L. Dahlberg's Reclaiming Class is one of several recent collections of essays by academics from working-class backgrounds about their experiences in colleges and universities both as students and as teachers. In its introduction, the editors mention the most recent and influential, C.L. Barney Dews and Carolyn Law's This Fine Place So Far From Home: Voices of Academics from the Working Class (1995); Michelle Tokarczyk and Elizabeth Fay's Working Class Women in the Academy: Laborers in the Knowledge Factory (1993); and Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey's Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class. (1993). Also mentioned is the classic discussion of the experience of "upward mobility," The Hidden Injuries of Class, by Jonathan Cobb and Richard Sennett (1972).

What differentiates this book from the essay collections of the mid-1990s is its focus on what the editors term "poverty class" women and its discussion of contemporary welfare policy's effects on poor women who seek university education. In section one, "Educators Remember," professors from poverty-class backgrounds describe their experiences in academia and connect them to larger patterns of ideology about poverty. In section two, "On the Front Lines," students and graduates of professional programs describe their efforts to complete their educations despite the punishing effects of welfare reform. The final section, "Policy, Research and Poor Women," synthesizes research about women, education, and welfare policy done over the last ten years.

Despite volumes of research connecting college education to upward mobility for women, the book shows that increasingly punitive welfare policies penalize women for attempting to educate themselves to achieve financial independence. Not only policy-mandated changes but also stereotypes about welfare mothers, along with the historical class biases of the academy, make the entire educational process itself painful, even with its potential for long-term benefits. The costs of increasing drop-out rates are high, not only for the students, but for society as a whole. Indeed, contributor Lisa Brush argues in her essay about battered women and welfare policy: "The United States cannot afford a welfare and education system that sanctions poor women for taking a beating."

In Reclaiming Class, the personal essays by teachers and students from backgrounds in poverty reveal the experiences of a "hidden" class within higher education. In "Educators Remember," five essayists use various contemporary theories to interpret their experiences in graduate programs where they often felt shamed and exploited by teachers and other students. Vivyan C. Adair uses Foucault to describe poverty's marks on her body. Nell Sullivan and Sandra Dahlberg use frameworks from ethnic and sexuality studies to argue that class prejudice is similar to racism and homophobia. Lisa K. Waldner's essay, "If You Want me to Pull Myself Up, Give Me Bootstraps," makes reference to several important sociological works on stratification to connect her personal experiences to larger patterns and makes the important point that "failing to differentiate between private troubles and public issues occurs because welfare mothers are not considered among the deserving poor." Also in this section, Jocelyn K. Moody's especially strong essay, "To Be Young, Pregnant and Black," challenges sociological literature about middle-class Black attitudes about welfare by describing the ordeal of being in college and receiving welfare-sponsored prenatal care that came with blaming looks and negative comments from Black welfare staff workers: "If you can afford to go to that college, you don't need to be here." Despite the odds, all these women were able to complete their degrees--partly because of pre-welfare reform policies. Echoing the insights of previous books about working-class academics, many of the authors express great ambivalence about the effects of their college educations on their experiences of home. They also articulate resentment of the middle-class norms in the academy that "presumed [the] desire of the poverty class ... to transcend class boundaries."

The worst experiences represented are those of women attempting to achieve education following the passage of The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996. In section two, "On The Front Lines," essayist Tonya Mitchell was compelled to leave school after only a few months, because she was certified "work ready" and would be dropped from TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) if she did not immediately take a low-skill, low-mobility job. Mitchell writes,

"Although one of my professors went with me to petition the state, to show transcripts and to testify about my promise as a student, my case was denied and I was forced to 'be responsible' and 'work first.'" The essays in this section show dramatically how the new welfare reform laws act out negative stereotypes about poor women, for example, shaming children in welfare families by notifying teachers and administrators of the person's public assistance. Such knowledge can lead to lowered expectations for these children and makes it harder for them to use education as a ladder out of poverty.