Talking Points #7

Peter McLaren

1. .."the lived sense of difference of these students in their everyday class-based culture expresses a realistic understanding of their future options in the labor force, an understanding acquired from their families, peers, and the values encoded into working-class life in general." (228)

I found this particular quote both disturbing and very real. I feel that many students look to the lifestyle that their families have (mostly parents) and feel that not only can they not do better, but that maybe they don't deserve to do better. I feel that these students are at a constant struggle, that even if they did try their hardest, they feel that because no one around them is succeeding, that they cannot succeed either.

2. "For many economically disadvantaged students, success in school means a type of forced cultural suicide, and in the case of minority youth, racial suicide..when compared to dropouts, they were significantly more depressed, less politically aware, less likely to be more assertive in the classroom if they were undergraded, and more conformist." ( p.229).

I felt that this was a very powerful quote as well, I feel that if a student did want to stay in school and not drop out like the majority of his/her classmates, then he/she would feel outcasted. Why should they committ themselves to more social abuse, when dropping out and "following the crowd" was so much easier? I feel that even if a student wanted to stay in school, they would be ridiculed by everyone around them which would make staying focused that much harder.

3. "One way in which girls combat class-bound and oppressive patriarchal features of school is to assert their "femaleness," to replace the officially sanctioned code of neatness, diligence, application, femininity, passivity, and so on, with one that is more womanly, even sexual, in nature." (p.231).

Of all the quotes, I found this one to be the saddest. I felt pity for the girls that felt they needed to replace such feminine traits with other ones "sexual ones". I feel that these girls are conforming to what their society wants them to, they are giving into the pressures to look and dress a certain way. Instead of "asserting their femaleness" they are giving into the male demands of their peers and transforming themselves as sexual objects.

I found this article extremely interesting, and I found myself agreeing with many of the things that I read throughout the essay. I thought that students do often feel pressure from the surrounding community to do certain things, with the girls in the above example, instead of what they are aiming for "asserting femaleness" they are actually doing the opposite. Instead of students taking advantage of public school, they are dropping out and conforming to what everyone else in society is doing. They feel that school is less important than giving into their "street smarts". If they do in a sense become successful, they are committing social suicide.