The Crescendos of Social Class within Education: A Pedagogy of Surveillance in Tracking the Other

Abstract

This case study explores how high school teachers view their students in relation to social class backgrounds and ability to engage with pedagogy and curriculum within their schooling experience. I observed how social class affects teacher to student engagement through a reproduction of consciousness within the structure of schooling experience. Often, teachers from the majority group struggle to create constructive dialogues with students from diverse backgrounds that have historically been marginalized in their ability to engage in schooling. This often is embedded in their social class position which creates defensiveness on their part when confronting issues around race and class. Racial and class caste systems continue to serve as barriers in which social mobility is impeded through the high school experience. Discourses around normative teaching practices continue to invoke the otherness of students through a surveillance enacted by social class Keywords: social class; social reproduction; high school education; surveillance