Exploratory Essay

In this modern world, college seems like a necessary part to becoming successful in life. However, making it to college seems more difficult than college itself. If you have the right tools and preparation, then you can make it in this society. The authors in the following texts: Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, and Working Class Chicas all believe that if you decide to pursue post-secondary education that you should be well prepared for what is to come and if you are not prepared then it will be hard for you to succeed.

The curriculum for most high schools is to pass tests for graduation but some of them specialize in preparation for college, which is why some of them offer Advanced Placement courses. In these stories, the authors put emphasis on the college preparation and the lack thereof. In Working Class Chicas, Julie Bettie illustrates that the counselors have failed the minority females by assigning them the easy classes they need to pass to graduate but not enrolling them in classes that may challenge them past high school like the college prep courses. One of the girls responds to why she was not prepared for college, “The counselor told me to take all the non-required classes. Now I’m way behind in English and math, so that is why I can’t go to a state school.”(Bettie, 77) How can you expect to get into college and the people who are supposed to be helping you are not doing their job? Bettie shows that some minority students need assistance in preparing for college. Similar to, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, the woman in her 40s was not capable of comprehending the processes of modern society. She was enrolled in a college course but was not able to keep up with the requirements of the class, “She simply was not qualified for college…For I, … am the one who ultimately delivers the news to those unfit for college: they lack the most-basic skills and have no sense of the volume of work required; they are in some cases barely literate;…They are not ready for high school, some of them, much less for college.” (Professor X, 3-4) The professor tries to help her with her paper but she is incapable of understanding the concepts. Since she is an older student, she may not be up-to-date and current on the ways of modern society or she may have forgotten how to write a paper correctly. The author suggests that if you are going to go to college, you need to able to keep up with the classes or take classes as prerequisites to refresh your memory. In the article, Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, the author implies that based on what social class you are associated with, the education you receive and how you receive it plays a role in how prepared you are for college or post-secondary education. The author discusses the differences in the education by social class, “The foregoing analysis of differences in schoolwork in contrasting social class contexts suggests the following conclusion: the “hidden curriculum” of school work is tacit preparation for relating to the process of production in a particular way.”(Anyon, 10) Jean Anyon argues that the way the students are taught influences how well they are prepared for future college plans or careers. The students of the middle class are taught by the book, they engage in work by doing things step-by-step. They are not required to express a lot of creativity. With this teaching style in mind, they are being prepared for schools and/or  jobs that deal with problem solving which requires  a basic background in the core subjects. In a general sense, they all suggest that some type of education is needed before you enter college.   

The authors of these three texts all illustrate how you must be prepared for college in order to succeed and they also showed if you don’t have the background knowledge, then you are going to struggle. The woman who was in her 40s in, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower was struggling even when she didn’t think she was. She had a lack of preparation which caused her to be behind in her studies just like the girls in Working Class Chicas who were not prepared for school or careers beyond high school.