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TEACHING STRATIFICATION
in Living Color
by
Dedicated to the Stratification Students
at Southwestern University
in Georgetown, Texas
Stratification theory is of central interest to most students. They want to know their place in the world, their chances for social mobility, the impersonal sources of their own failures and sometimes, successes.
Yet things can go badly in a classroom; outside distractions, personal problems, more demanding courses, less troubling lessons. And too, things can go very, very well in a class; especially in a stratification class.
I would like to share with you some of the teaching devices I have used to teach stratification theory over the years at Colorado State University and elsewhere.
These teaching 'gimmicks' are fun for the student and fun for the student. One is encouraged to invent/create one's own teaching tricks...and one should think of how it might affect, offend, distress the student before using them...otherwise, enjoy and have fun all the days of your teaching and learning.
A. Stratifying the Class. Sometimes I stratify the class...putting seniors in the first row; juniors in the second row; sophomores in the third row and freshman in the last rows. Freshman don't always like that and you can be sure that, as the days and weeks go by, the class system will become blurred...sometimes, after the third week, I open up seating...but habit is powerful; most stay where I put them. And there is a stratification lesson there...not unlike the experiments in conformity and power which are taught in every strat class.
B. Rewarding the class. One must, of course, distribute grades on the basis of merit and merit only. But there are other rewards which one can use to teach the immiseration thesis. On one occasion, I brought a box of home-made cookies to class; gave the upper class one whole one, the upper lower class one-half; the lower classes 1/4 cookie and, after a pause, looking down at the crumbs left in the tray, I threw them at the underclass in the back row.
Those in the first three rows found it amusing; those in the back row, less so. Later, I handed out Hershey Kisses to those in the back row and told them it was welfare to make up for the fact that they didn't have cakes to eat.
C. Alienation. In one class, to teach Marginalization, alienation and Non-personage, I brought water color magic markers to class and spent most of the hour painting a big brown eye on the foreheads of the students...then a gave them a field assignment worth 5% of the total grade asking them to report on discrimination, exclusion, strangeness, difference and divorce or separation, "Spaltung" (division or cleavage), "Absonderung" (separation or withdrawal), "Verderben" (spoiled, corrupt), "sich selbst verlieren" (lost to oneself), "auf sich zuruckziehen" (withdrawn into oneself), "ausserlich machen" (externalized), "alle Gattungsbande zerreissen" (ties with others disintegrated), "die Menschenwelt in eine Welt atomisticher Individuen auflosen" (humanity dissolved into fragmented individuals). Taken together these constructs constitute and create the meaning of the term "alienation" as used in marxist theory of the social psychology of stratification.
D. The Student as 'Nigger,'. One of the papers circulated on the Left in the 60's was a paper in which university life was compared to plantation life; and students compared to the slaves who worked the plantation....by Jerry Farber if I recall correctly. The Dean of the College was, of course, Massa; the slave-drivers were the faculty and the fruits of the labor of the slaves went to the slave-owners...much as credit for teaching students goes to the Faculty and Dean as much as the student.
I gave that lecture in the Faculty Lounge...at the time off-limits to students. Our class was at 9am...so seated in a large circle as faculty came in for free coffee, rolls, and escape from students, they had to pass through the class and listen to me lecture on the faculty as little more than over-seers for the capitalist class.
There was a long sequel to that lecture; I was denied a merit raise that year by the Governing Board of CSU...made up mostly of failed political hacks from the Republican Party and Generous Donors from the Democratic Party...they accused me of leading students in a take-over of university property and demanded my removal from the faculty. I figure the lecture cost me several thousands over my time at CSU and thousands more in lost pension funds.
E. ATSIV. In the same year VISTA was created, I created ATSIV. VISTA took nice middle class white kids and put them in the ghetto to help black folk overcome the triune stratifications of race, class and gender. ATSIV took nice young white students, put them on a bus for six hours; made them fill out forms for food, restroom, and water. Those in VISTA had two guards to take them to the bathroom. They were given a dry sandwich of bologna on white bread, an apple and a diet soda if they filled out the forms without making error. Some had to have help.
Students got 5% of their final grade by answering a ten-item form...they had to complete it before they were released at 4pm.
I had told them that they were going on a 'field-trip;' that we would leave at 10am and not get back 'til 4pm...they believed me...another lesson there about faith, hope, trust and the stratification of authority.
F. A Night on Skid-row. This field project was voluntary; they could earn 5% of their final grade by spending a night sleeping rough in Denver; begging for money to eat and eating breakfast at the Salvation Army in Denver. No money; warm clothes. I had arranged with the Major in Charge of the Salvation Army to feed us...the same fare as others got...and paid for it. Two girls begged enough to buy supper for six of us. Others less. All did have supper at a local fast food place.
22 students signed up. 15 actually came. They were very excited...but as the hours went by and the crowds thinned out, the excitement drained away. As we were left with only drunks, bums, mentally ill and down-and-outers, students became anxious. I told them that they must not be more than 15 seconds away from me and that they must travel in pairs at least. And I had previously found an areas in which we could sleep yet most had trouble sleeping...I was awakened time and time again by students who just wanted comforting...Breakfast was a thin sandwich and weak coffee...not unlike the ATSIV bus of the year previous.
Again, students could earn up to 5% of total grade by filling out a form about their experience. Each student was to talk to five people on skid-row and give five pieces of demographic information from them; age, education, last job, plans and family in the area.
F. Housing. In one class, I sent students around to measure the square footage of upper, middle and lower class housing...to find out the monthly rent/mortgage payments of each house and to calculate the cost per foot of housing among the classes in Fort Collins, Colorado. Each student had to visit two houses in each of three residential areas I mapped out for them. They could earn up to 5% of their final grade by a combined report to the rest of the class.
Students found that the lowest cost per square foot of housing was among the middle class, the highest among the lower class while the upper class paid some where in between.
G. Public Services. Three teams of two persons each could take a field assignment in which they investigated the public services available in each of three class-based residential areas in Ft. Collins, Colorado.
They were ask to look at:
paving
garbage collection
street cleaning
sewage
Police Protection
They found that most of the roads were not paved in the area where Chicanos lived; all streets were paved where middle classes lived. Streets were cleaned weekly in middle-class areas; not at all in Chicano/poor white areas; garbage was collected weekly free in middle class areas...Chicanos lived outside the city limits and did not get garbage collection.
There were no sewage lines to the Chicano community; sewage was freely available to all who live inside the city limits.
Police were polite and helpful to middle class white residents; much less so toward Chicano residents.
The city boundaries had been gerry-mandered to exclude the Chicano area from city services; many more distant Anglo residential developments were incorporated into city services upon petition of the developer.
I reported these findings to a local service group and, over the years,
city services were extended, streets were paved and parks built in the Chicano area.