🚀 go-pugleaf

Formal Education is a form of secondary socialization which is
only useful to the extent that one's primary socialization gives
one skills it is assumed that one already has at the beginning
of the process. Allowing everyone equal access to a formal
education which presupposes the prior presence of skills and
attentional focases that only persons from a certain background
will actually possess is a good way of passing class priviledges
down accross generational lines while at the same time miantaining
an appearance of meritocracy. It even has the advantage of convincin
many of those who "fail" in school that those who did well in the
same classes have some inate talent which especially qualifies them
to hold certain positions.
Getting back specifically to English, is it possible that an English
Prof is a guy(midwestern gender-neutral usage) who is'nt really that
rich or that priviledged but who has learned to write and speak the
language the way those who are like to think they do. Doesn't the
gatekepper role played by Freshman English have a lot to do with
discrimination against students from a certain social class preactic
ed by persons who in terms of familly background come from roughly
the same social class in more cases than not? In the case of an
English Prof who now speaks very differently than she did at age fif
fifteen, how much of her contemptous response to much freshman write
stems from a still powerfully felt need to reject a previous social
identity? Is not a capacity to speak and write the language the way
people with status are supposed to the main marketable skill a well
trained english major actually has? Is'nt one of the more abundant
though less lucrative options open to such a person the chance to ge
paid for discriminating against people on the basis of language?
Does not the chance that this option will, all things considered, be
seen as the most attractive available increase in inverse relationsh
to the social class origin of the english major? Is not an English
Prof a non-priviledged character who nonetheless has the strongest
vested interest in maintaining the current structures of priviledge
simply because, if anything changes much, his own particular talent
for mimicry will suddenly become about as valuable as an ability to
mimic the mating call of the DoDo bird?
                  just curious,
                           Michael Roberts