Intercultural Interview Research Paper

I grew up in a small dinky little city in central Minnesota. Throughout my educational career there, I experienced virtually no diversity, and that is why I chose to interview one of my friends who has had a vastly different schooling experience than me. I interviewed Kevin Joswiak. Kevin is a junior, and a sociology, business Econ double major. Kevin is a white cis-gendered male who comes from a middle-class family in Madison, Wisconsin. Kevin started his educational journey at a private catholic school, St. James. Due to the fact that St. James is a private school, they intertwined religious beliefs with the curriculum. That being said, in Kevin’s 8 years at St. James, he never once was taught about safe sex (they taught abstinence only), …show more content…
St. James school is a perfect example of an organization that spews social reproduction. St. James is situated in a wealthy, white neighborhood. When Kevin attended tuition for the school was exceedingly high, and the school offered no scholarship money, or financial help. So, right off the start, the school, alienated itself, and the students attending from students with a different socioeconomic background. By doing this, the school was able to completely dismiss any discussion about race, or class, because only wealthy white students were able to attend the school. This supports Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory: “By embodying class interest and ideologies, schools reward the cultural capital of the dominant classes and systematically devalue that of the lower classes” (Macleod, 1987). Kevin was taught how to think critically and to be a leader: “In short, argue Bowles and Gintis, schools train the wealthy to take up places at the top of the economy while conditioning the poor to accept their lowly status in the class structure” (Macleod, 1987). By not teaching important ideologies to these students, St. James manifested a hidden curriculum that wasn’t so