Imagining the Future: Growing Up Working Class; Teaching in the University

Educational Foundations, Summer 2003 by Hursh, David

Further, my writing skills were deplorable. In seventh grade I frequently failed the weekly spelling test, resulting in numerous detentions meant to prod me to study. In twelfth grade I managed to write a four-page essay that was one long incoherent paragraph. And while I read novels on my own, in English class the answers to teachers' questions about what we read seemed to me too subjective, therefore posing too much of a risk for me to raise my hand and offer answers. While I usually managed a 'C' in English, I failed one quarter.

In contrast, math and science were not only perceived as masculine subjects, they were easier because they had clear obj ective answers that can be determined using the proper procedure. Math and science, then, were the subjects in which I excelled.

Therefore, my primary goal entering high school was to get grades good enough to divert attention from myself and avoid detention, which would keep me from getting home to play sports. I began high school in the vocational track.

However, in the spring of my freshman year, a school administrator announced in the boys' study hall (we were divided by sex for study hall and gym) that a test (I was to later learn an IQ test) would be given for those interested in majoring in either architecture or electrical or mechanical engineering. Since the study hall teachers were prone to give detention en masse for boys throwing spitballs, taking a test seemed safer than study hall. On the test I exceeded the minimum score and began tenth grade majoring in architecture. At the same time, although I did not realize it until thirty years later, I was also admitted to the honors program.

Admission to the architecture program significantly altered my gender and class identity. Now I spent not only my time after school but also most of my school day in the company of males. Only two females enrolled in architecture with a few more in science and math. Further, since standardized tests scores highly correlate with social class, most of my classmates were from professional upper middle-class families.

During my senioryear all my architectural classmates applied for college. They advised me regarding colleges to which I might apply and I sent away for applications. But when I received the applications, because I had never talked with anyone who had a baccalaureate degree (although clearly my teachers did) I did not know whether to fill out the pages for undergraduate school or, because I was a high school graduate, to apply for graduate school. I decided to fill out the front of the applications, applied to undergraduate school, was admitted, and, because I had no way to evaluate programs, decided on Kansas State University, 1500 miles from New York City.

Before heading west, I had to earn money to help pay for college. In the summer between high school and college 1 began my first full-time job working with my brother in a factory assembling pool tables. It was in that and a subsequent factory that I first encountered race as an issue. In both factories salaried management were White and hourly workers were almost all Black or Puerto Rican. My brother and I became friends with the hourly workers, including socializing outside of work. As a factory worker I saw myself as no more intelligent than the other blue-collar workers. However, I was privileged because as a White college student the routine and demeaning factory work was only temporary. In school and at work I was becoming aware of class distinctions. In school middle-class students were knowledgeable of post-secondary education, had the cultural capital that I did not have. But in the factory, because I had the opportunity for a career rather than just a job, I was becoming middle class (Adams, Blumenfield, Casteneda, Hackman, Peters, Zuniga, 2000).