Education And Identity Essay

From this point, the foundation is linked to each of the schools. This is not to say that each of the schools have the entire foundation beneath them but rather as one moves from left to right across the map the schools have a greater foundation at each level and thus are receiving a more “successful” education. At this point, we will start by investigating the working class and middle class school sections. According to Finn, in working class schools, “knowledge [is] presented as fragmented facts isolated from wider bodies of meaning and from the lives and experiences of the students” and in this environment the dominate theme is resistance (2009. pp. 10). In the middle class schools, knowledge was more conceptual but still not connected to the lives of the students and the dominate theme was possibility (Finn, pp. 13). These two schools are the bottom tier and when examined showed to be lacking the greatest amount of the foundation set up. Students who attend these schools more than likely are not familiar with the dominate discourse and thus must spend the majority of their time trying to learn the rules of that …show more content…
An identity kit “comes complete with the appropriate costume and instruction on how to act and talk as to take on a particular role that others will recognize” (Gee, 1992, 99. 21). A student may come into school with one identity biased on the discourse, literacy, and intelligence that they have learned and that identity may be altered or adapted when need to associate with one more directly related to the particular school. When a student does not learn the rules of a discourse and the subsequent foundational elements however then cannot acquire the overarching identity that a school may be attempting to teach. Therefore, identity and discourse work in such a way that if one of them are at odds the other neither may not fully