My Educational Biography - Personal Statement Example

Growing up in Florida might sound glamorous to people living is colder climates, but it’s really not all that different than growing up in Chicago orNew York if you are a working class kid. Life is pretty much the same, except for the climate when you have been raised with middle class values and have been taught that the best way to move up in life is through the attainment of a college degree or some sort of specialized training. That is what education was in my house when I was growing up. It was viewed as a ladder to a better life, plain and simple. It was viewed as a bridge to a world that did not include unpaid overtime and worries about layoff notices. I am far from the end of my educational experience, but looking back, I can really see just how wrong, and right my parents were when they told me that education would give me opportunities at a life they would never obtain. The first lesson I learned in school was about authority. I learned that you did not question it. My parents were the type of parents that were always on the side of the school. They had a sort of conflicted relationship with public schools because they both had a difficult time in school. On the one hand, they recognized that the people in school were professionals and were there to teach me. They had a lot of trust in my individual teachers and always believed what they said. If I went home and said, “Mrs. Kershaw smacked my had with a ruler today!” they would ask me, “Well, what did you do?” They never questioned a teacher’s authority to discipline or teach me, so this taught me to listen and obey my teachers. On the other hand, my parents were almost paranoid about the institution of education. They were suspicious of the people at the very top. The superintendents, principals and specialists that ran the school and were responsible for the big picture were viewed as lazy and wasteful. Nothing they did was every OK with my parents. They railed against tax increases, curriculum changes and decisions about school safety. It took me a long time to realize that my parents were taking a stance against what they perceived as management (Cook, 1978). Both were laborers and they viewed my teachers as peers, but everyone else was management. I was in high school before I figured out why my parents were so supportive of the education system on the one hand, and so against it on the other. This was the beginning of my own conflicted feelings about schooling and education. By high school, I could see that my parents wanted me to get a college education so that I would be a part of a class of people that they mistrusted. I know that this sounds conflicted, but that’s my parents. They wanted me to be more secure than they were themselves, but their view was that the only way this could happen was to be something other than I was. Not quite fitting into a defined social position is not something new for me. From elementary, through middle and high school, I always felt that all of the students were strongly encouraged to fill a slot in a specified, existing group. Some students are academically inclined, others are athletes. Some students are compliant while others are rowdy troublemakers. There seemed to be a lot of either/or decisions that were expected of me in school that caused me to question what I was and what I really wanted out of life. Two of these incidences that were very powerful occurred when I was in elementary and high school. They both involved a conflict in scheduling that could have been resolved had the school not been trying to force me into a specified social construct. In elementary school, there were many activities that were commonly called pullouts by the teachers. Looking back, I realize that some of these pullouts were for students that struggled to learn, but others were and effort to differentiate instruction for small groups of students (Tomlinson, 2005). I was identified as Gifted students, so one of my pullouts was a required class called Reach. I met with other Gifted students at this time. At the beginning of the year, I had expressed interest in something called Construction pullout. This was a special class where students made toys and everyday items like pencil holders out of wood and metal. I loved this sort of thing, but was told that I could not go to this pullout because it conflicted with my Gifted schedule. My parents agreed because my teacher informed them that both pullouts occurred at the same time. A few weeks into the school year, this was obviously not the truth. My teacher explained that there was a scheduling change, but that she wouldn’t send me to the Construction pullout because, “That pull-out isn’t for smart kids like you. You don’t want to hang around with those kids.” This same social message was delivered in high school when I scheduled a welding/metal shop class for my senior year. I had plenty of elective to burn and I always wanted to learn about metalworking. My guidance counselor said that she would not schedule me because I was on a college-prep track and that welding wouldn’t help me in the future. I was older so I stood up for myself. I asked if it was possible to schedule welding, and she said there were no conflicts. She said “technically” I could schedule it. I asked if there was some reason that she didn’t want me to take the course. Her response sounded like the same reason my elementary teacher used. She said, “You are headed to college, do you really want to spend that much time with a bunch of guys that are going to end up living in factories?” These two incidences showed me how schools and education can shape how you view other individuals or groups of people. I was being taught lots of subtle social lessons (Friedkin, 1998). One lesson that seemed to be taught was that people who work with their hands are somehow inferior to people that work with their brains. I was taught that these two types of work were mutually exclusive. People that work with their hands never need to think and people that think never need to get their hands dirty. This was a lesion I knew was false because my parents were very intellectual, even though they worked hard with their hands. A second social lesson I was taught by these experiences seemed to be the belief that these two groups, smart people and working people, should not associate with one another. As I grow older, I can see that this type of thinking is found all across America. The big divisions between us are less about race and religion, as they were in the past. The big divisions are between people of different economic classes or career classes. For example, if a white couple has an African-American couple over for dinner, chances are they are of the same social class, even though they are different races. If the white couple are professionals, chances are the black couple will not be laborers. My experiences in school have helped me to realize that many of the things that divide our society are perpetuated by subtle lessons we are taught about our proper social place while attending public schools. Works Cited Cook, Frederick P. The American Struggle: The Story of the Continuing Conflict between Labor and Management. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974. Print. Friedkin, Noah E. A Structural Theory of Social Influence. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Print. Tomlinson, Carol A. Differentiated Instruction. Mahwah. N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Print. Read More