Dividing Classes

In this study of the school system of an Indiana town, Ellen Brantlinger studies educational expectations within segments of the middle class that have fairly high levels of attainment. Building on her findings, she examines the relationship between class structure and educational success. This book asserts the need to look beyond poor peoples' values and aspirations—and rather to consider the values of dominant groups—to explain class stratification and educational outcomes.

Dividing Classes offers a first-hand, ethnographic account to examine the relationship between social class structures and educational success. Instead of studying the historically marginalized lower classes, this book asserts the need to look beyond poor peoples' values and aspirations and consider the values of dominant groups to explain the reproduction of social class. Drawing on interviews with 31 administrators, principals, and teachers and 20 middle class mothers in a small Indiana town in which the author lives, Ellen Brantlinger discovers the considerable power the middle class wields in determining school policy and practice to secure educational advantages for their children. With the insight gained from this perspective, the roots of increasingly conservative educational policy and the idea of class as an organizing category in education are critically examined.

Ellen Brantlinger is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Indiana University, Bloomington.