CLASS

One definition: Classism is prejudice, discrimination, mistreatment, neglect of or lack of respect for any human and their rational needs (food, clothing, shelter, education, respect, communication, etc.) based on people’s socioeconomic class.

• Classism is extremely complex. It involves economic exploitation, beliefs, attitudes and prejudices, terrorization, violence, invalidation, etc.
• Schools play a central role in maintaining classism.
• All (from every socioeconomic class) children’s learning is diminished by the effects of institutionalized and personal class bias

Putting it all together, success and failure in the American economy and all that goes with it, are increasingly a matter of the genes that people inherit. (The Bell Curve, p. 91)

Anyone who is intelligent has made his way out of the working class."

UC Math professor in a discussion on The Bell Curve.

". . . all the measures of the government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer."

William Henry Harrison,

9^th President, speech October 1^st, 1840

"There is little doubt that child poverty, which is much higher in the United States than in any other Western Countries, as well as higher now than two decades ago, is scarring the (cognitive) development of our nation’s children."

Greg J Duncan. Economic deprivation and early childhood development. ERIC document #ED 356076.

It would be extremely naive to expect the dominant classes to develop the type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.

Paulo Freire, (The Politics of Education)