Based on Personal Experience, Do I Believe Jean Anyon's Essay Still Holds Merit Today?

Moises Rodriguez

Professor Young

ENGL 1100_34

September 24, 2015

Is School Really Helping us Develop or Progress?

            In the essay “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” its author Jean Anyon discusses how schools instruct the pupils differently according to their parent’s social status. In the experiment that she conducted she compared how the teachers instructed according to the student social class such include: the working class schools, the middle class schools, the affluent professionals schools and the executive elite school. Each school prepares the kids differently in the way that they think and analyze information. Also to believe that all of what she discovered STILLS hold merit today and to think that it was written in 1980.

            As an individual that has lived in the Dominican Republic, and the United States, I have been exposed to different methods of teaching, which all concur with Jean’s research. While I use to reside in the Dominican Republic I use to attend a private school, and from what I read in Jean’s essay I was in the “Middle-Class School.” We were constantly told that the answers were always in the book. We could not come up with any answers we were supposed to follow the book. As Jean said the more right answers you get the better your grade is. After I migrated here to the United States, I resided in Newark, NJ. Here I attended “The Working Class Schools.” We had old textbooks, where treated as “kids.” It was sort of a dictatorship, we couldn’t question the teacher authority whatever they said was right was it. Then I moved to a little town in Bergen County, nevertheless it was the Dominican Republic all over again the same “Middle-Class School” all over again.

            To believe that what Jane found in 1980 still current today, not only in the United States but other countries as well and nothing is being done in other to change it is scary. Kids since a young age are raised to be a certain way; opportunities are limited for those with less money, which is unfair. Every kid should have the right to the same education all across the world, regardless of money.

"Should students have the right to use their own language in an academic setting?"

Moises Rodriguez

Professor Young

ENGL 1100_34

September 16, 2015

My Language or Your Language, Which is better?

When it comes to academic writing there are certain things that must be taken into consideration. I personally say that if one is a science related field or major in matter of fact, everything must be kept in English, no slang or anything else should be use. Even for me, as a native Spanish speaker, do not concur with the idea of writing a science lab paper or report in Spanish, or both languages combined. If so is done, it would more likely create confusion in whatever topic the individual wants to touch upon. For science writing the language that it should be written in depends on the dominant language of the country, if it Spanish write in Spanish, if is Swedish write in Swedish and so on. However this is only for science and is my solemnly opinion.

Then let’s speak about other topics such as a creative English class or something of that nature. In order for an author to be authentic and original he must definitely do something different on his paper to stand out, what better way than using a foreign language or slang. As the poem that is use as an example in the Conference on College Composition and Communication appeal, “I play it cool and dig all jive / That's the reason I stay alive / My motto as I live and learn / Is to dig and be dug in return.” The use of slang definitely makes a difference. Not only does it sound nice, it also gives us a voice of an authenticity and originality of the author. Bottom line is yes, as authors we can use other ways of expressing ourselves, either is another language or slang, however in order for it to be legitimate it must be done at proper occasions.