Dividing Classes

When Ellen Brantlinger interviewed administrators, principals, teachers, and middle-class mothers in her small Indiana town, she discovered the considerable power the middle class wields in determining policies that secure educational advantages for their children. With the insight gained from this perspective, Brantlinger examines the roots of increasingly conservative educational policy and the category of class in education. Uniquely grounded in a first-hand, ethnographic account, Dividing Classes examines the relationship between social class and educational success. Instead of studying the historically marginalized lower classes to explain the reproduction of social class, this book asserts the need to look beyond poor people's values and aspirations and to consider the values of dominant groups.