Comments on: Middle Class Blindness http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2005/04/20/middle-class-blindness/ faults | sins | abuses Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:27:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 By: Chris http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2005/04/20/middle-class-blindness/#comment-14595 Chris Fri, 22 Apr 2005 02:30:37 +0000 http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/archives/2005/04/20/middle-class-blindness/#comment-14595 Makes me think, too, of work on sociolects in the US. Class becomes trappings, affectation: we buy our flannel and Chuck Taylors because, ya know, it's <i>authentic</i>. Or we buy a $300 blazer from J. Crew because gee, maybe it'll look like we went to Exeter, or that we're in Bloom's class at Yale. Fits right in there with the post after this one--we buy working class cred, the very act of which is a reinscription of our non-working-class-ness. Always reaching, occasionally grasping: this seems the real nature of the middle class. Makes me think, too, of work on sociolects in the US. Class becomes trappings, affectation: we buy our flannel and Chuck Taylors because, ya know, it’s authentic. Or we buy a $300 blazer from J. Crew because gee, maybe it’ll look like we went to Exeter, or that we’re in Bloom’s class at Yale. Fits right in there with the post after this one–we buy working class cred, the very act of which is a reinscription of our non-working-class-ness. Always reaching, occasionally grasping: this seems the real nature of the middle class.

]]> By: Donna http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/2005/04/20/middle-class-blindness/#comment-14568 Donna Thu, 21 Apr 2005 19:57:15 +0000 http://www.vitia.org/wordpress/archives/2005/04/20/middle-class-blindness/#comment-14568 I also remember being really put off by this essay when it first came out, and you articulate so well the many problems with it. Her emphasis on the acquisition of "values" as the entry-way into the middle class is, well, bizarre. And it's interesting, isn't it, how Freire's literacy work gets appropriated into middle-classness? Seems like a similar kind of thing happens in that article on Dewey as the North American Freire that came out in CE a few years back. I think you talk about the way American critical pedagogy tends to collapse class into culture (somewhere in you archives)? But I think the thing that really gets me about the Bloom essay is how it's a paean, really, to middle-classness. Not that I want her (or anyone) to denounce the middle class, which would seem rather disingenous, but it's curious to try to figure out *why* she felt the need to write this piece--why she felt the need to elevate middle class values and to, as you very deftly demonstrate, elide all discussion of the economics of class. I also remember being really put off by this essay when it first came out, and you articulate so well the many problems with it. Her emphasis on the acquisition of “values” as the entry-way into the middle class is, well, bizarre.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it, how Freire’s literacy work gets appropriated into middle-classness? Seems like a similar kind of thing happens in that article on Dewey as the North American Freire that came out in CE a few years back. I think you talk about the way American critical pedagogy tends to collapse class into culture (somewhere in you archives)?

But I think the thing that really gets me about the Bloom essay is how it’s a paean, really, to middle-classness. Not that I want her (or anyone) to denounce the middle class, which would seem rather disingenous, but it’s curious to try to figure out *why* she felt the need to write this piece–why she felt the need to elevate middle class values and to, as you very deftly demonstrate, elide all discussion of the economics of class.

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