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Jordan

The Social Class Bubble

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At Olive Grove academy, social class plays an interesting role in the students’ lives. In the variety of interviews from students and alumni, many of the students noted that they were not able to recognize other students’ social class. Although the school is considered elite and has a demographic of many elite students, that is not the sole demographic of the student body. There are students from lower income families and students from some of the wealthiest families, so what is it about Olive Grove that makes students unable to recognize other students’ social class?


In an article, Elite international schools in the Global South: transnational space, class relationalities and the ‘middling’ international schoolteacher, by Tarc and Tarc, they wrote about how many students used to form friend groups based on social class, as this was a large identifying factor. Although not the case at Olive Grove, how were they able to break down this barrier of social class? In many other educational settings, especially those of public institutions that may not be considered elite, social class is a large identifying factor between students, and therefore something that is influential in the formation of friends. Similarly, in an article done about a study in Germany, the authors found that social class does have an effect on interpersonal relationships, in which they also spoke about Bourdieu said “the environment in which people grow up inscribes itself deeply into their identity” (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main). As Bourdieu explains and as this study has found, social groups are extremely influenced by class status, which is then interesting how at Olive Grove, students in this environment do not seem to be influenced by class, and are in a type of bubble where social class is not noticed.

As Olive Grove can be seen as a social class bubble, how does Colby compare? After talking to a few of my peers about Colby and social class, they had a few different opinions. One of them believed Colby is a bubble – she feels as though social class is not noticeable in her opinion because so many of the people she surrounds herself with are of the same level social class, which therefore exhibits what was written in Tarc’s article in how social class is influential in friendships. All of her friends were of the same level social class as her, which is why she felt she didn’t ‘notice it’ because they all shared similar backgrounds and experiences. On the other hand, another student felt as though at Colby she was hyper aware of social class and in a different type of bubble – a bubble where the drastic difference in socioeconomic status was very present and exacerbated by the Colby environment. In a New York Times article from 2017 entitled “Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours”, Colby ranked number 4 for having more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent, which equated to 20.4% of students coming from the top 1 percent ($630K+ annual household income) and 11.1% of students coming from the bottom 60 percent (<$65K annual household income). This stark difference of wealth on campus alludes to what this Colby student was saying – that because there is such a large presence of socioeconomic differences on campus, she feels extra aware of social class at Colby, and thinks we as students are in a different type of bubble unlike the real world. Despite how Colby students see social class, there still may be some kind of ‘bubble’ element to it, whether similar to Olive Grove or not. So, as both are elite private schools, does every elite private school have some kind of social class bubble? With variations of how they can exist, does the environment of a school like these greatly affect how social class is perceived by the student body, and how is it comparable to a public, non-elite school?

 

After hearing from both of these Colby students, I am conflicted on how I see the Colby bubble myself. At times I feel like I see both of these bubbles- both the stark difference in status and then a bubble where all my peers come from similar backgrounds. And maybe that is a factor that is very present in elite schools, and what perpetuates elite institutions to maintain their status in society.

Does Mandatory Equate to Meaningful?

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As we are continuing to go further into the research project on Olive Grove Academy in Jordan, it is clear that the school emphasizes the importance of community service. After reading the interviews with the students and alumni, many took part in a few different community service projects that the school emphasizes, such as Habitat for Humanity or other local volunteer organizations that helped refugees in Jordan. Community service is a big part of the student life at Olive Grove, and many students say that it is integrated into the social life of the student body. From an interview with a student, Sara, at Olive Grove, she said, “…And so if the school doesn’t emphasize how important it is to care about your own community, then a lot of those people might not come back to build their community”. This is one of the main ways that the school emphasizes community service, through teaching their students how important it is to give back to their community. In an interview with alumna, she spoke about how the community service she completed at Olive Grove shaped her experiences in college in terms of what she participated in on campus, and now has influenced what she wants to do post graduation by returning to Jordan and using her economic skills from college to improve the community of Jordan. 

In comparison to Olive Grove, many high schools (both public and private) in the United States require community service or volunteering for a graduation requirement. While my high school in particular did not, I knew students from other towns or other schools that had to complete multiple hours of community service per year in order to graduate. I remember one school in particular that a friend of mine attended required 80 hours of community service per year. While this shakes down to about two hours per week during a regular academic calendar, the 80 hour requirement may sound like a lot for students at the beginning of the year. I remember speaking to my friend at this school about the requirement, and how many of the other students complain about completing it and tend to look for the easiest ways to fulfill the community service requirement, without truly meaning what they were doing. 

Looking back on this, doesn’t this almost defeat the purpose of completing community service? Community service does good for yourself and others, and teaches students how to be an active member and help those within their community. But if students at this school were just looking for the easiest ways to get their hours without caring about giving back to the community, I believe it may be setting the wrong mindset for the students –  that the only reason they are doing these good deeds is for the sake of graduation rather than encouraging students to make a difference within their community. In a New York Times article, this exact debate was brought up about how meaningful community service is if high schools require it. Some educators strongly believe that it should not be mandatory, and one educator from Port Washington specifically said, ‘’I want to emphasize to students that excellent citizenship and giving to others not only helps others but makes you feel better about yourself… ’” These schools that did not make it mandatory still had many students do volunteer work throughout their high school career, so is it necessary for it to be mandatory if students don’t value the work they are doing?

At Olive Grove, while there are no community service hour requirements necessary for students to complete, the school emphasizes the importance of giving back to one’s community so much that nearly all students partake. So if Olive Grove can get their students involved and truly care for the community around them even post graduation, do high schools need to make community service mandatory for students? Schools around the world can emphasize the importance of students making a difference within their communities, and do so in a way that allows students to recognize the importance of service on their own. 

https://images.app.goo.gl/cXXV2oWmg8PywRRBA

Reinforcer or Propeller?

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Many elite high schools and colleges pride themselves on preparing their students to be leaders in the economic and social world. For example, an elite school in Jordan has a mission “to develop and empower young leaders who will drive change within and beyond their communities.” Colby College claims to provide “students with unmatched experiences leading to postgraduate success.” But how does this success and empowerment measure for students that have historically been left behind? Both schools mentioned above offer merit and need-based scholarships to expand their diversity and create opportunities for underprivileged students, but how do their elite standings impact the social mobility of the students they attract?

BTS member, Jungkook, looking confused.
Run BTS. Jeon Jungkook, 2019.

Being a student from an underrepresented socioeconomic class at a technically elite school, in reviewing this research, I began to wonder what the social mobility escalator is like for people in a similar situation to mine. Are students propelled from their low rungs on the ladder or are their class standings reinforced and solidified? How do I make sure I am one of the ones propelled? Inquiring minds would like to know. And even more important than just the student’s individual social promotion, how does attending an elite school impact their community as a whole? Do students use what they learned to uplift their communities or do students leave them in the dust once they get their degree? 

Dalila (a pseudonym), a student at a prominent elite school in Jordan appears to stand as evidence that elite schooling does promote students to higher social classes. She attended her high school on scholarships and now attends an exclusive liberal arts college in New England. Already, she has been placed in an environment that many can claim she would not have reached without attending the high school that she did. Her high school provided many opportunities for students to get out and experience other parts of the world while making connections to others along the way. And now, because of the social justice and civic engagement initiatives offered to her in high school, Dalila actually plans to return to her community after college and aid in their advancement. Her plans and current standing both seem to point to the idea of an improved socioeconomic standing.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Stephen Colbert, 2016.

However, according to an international study published in 2019, gaining admission to an elite program only raises the social class of wealthy males with an almost obsolete effect on people from low-income backgrounds. (Zimmerman) This is disturbing information because if their elite education won’t uplift a student’s standing, what will? In class, we are learning that there are many different components to consider when discussing social mobility because of the different forms of capital that contribute to an individual’s social class. I believe that even if their economic and institutionalized cultural capital does not get someone to a higher social class, factors such as social and symbolic capital could be extremely useful in getting jobs and climbing the mobility ladder that way. While at elite schools and colleges, if students can create wide enough social networks and gain recognition for their efforts, hopefully, they can use these things to propel themselves higher than they ever believed possible.

Zimmerman, Seth D. 2019. “Elite Colleges and Upward Mobility to Top Jobs and Top Incomes.” American Economic Review, 109 (1): 1-47.

DOI: 10.1257/aer.20171019

Thinking Outside my Box: Cultural Relativism in the Research of Elite Schooling in Jordan

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I am not cosmopolitan.  I may not be considered well traveled. I, physically, have stepped on ground not within the jurisdiction of the United States of America for what amounts cumulatively to less than a week of my life.  I don’t have a passport. I do have a card that gets me into Canada the one time a year I cross country ski race for Colby College in Quebec. The last two Thanksgiving weeks, when these races occur, are the only time I’ve ever left the country I am a citizen in.  I know the land of coca-cola and baseball, the SAT test and Friday night football games. *For this project, I am studying elite schooling in Jordan, a country in the Middle East. There appears to be a discrepancy.

I don’t mean to write this post as someone appearing downtrodden and unfortunate.  I am writing this for a class at an elite college in the US which I have the privilege to attend.  This concept, social privilege, the advantages I have been granted by no other virtue than my identity within a society, is something I learned to identify in myself while attending that elite college.  My life experience may not have been cosmopolitan, but it was certainly put me in a place where I could imagine myself at an elite institution of higher learning. I have a caring mother and father. I grew up in a safe neighborhood in a small and safe community in Wisconsin.  That community was 95% white. I am white. I went to a public high school of three-hundred students that was not elite, but was also a safe environment to learn in. I benefited from a gifted and talented program at the school. I took AP classes. I need not look no further than the fact that the little international experience I have has come on behalf of the elite institution I attend to remind me that the project I’m working on is an interesting area of study–how elite schools from around the world form notions of global citizenship.  Here, cosmopolitanism and elite schooling aren’t discrepant forces, but instead are the opposite; correlated.

In embarking on this research project then, the tension between my relatively sheltered experience and the overwhelming international scope of the study my group is working on has created somewhat of a sublime experience.  It has meant having to see not only the object of study within the context of the forces of globalisation, but also myself as a researcher. I’ve had to expand my own global imaginations, or, at least, recognize how the psychic distance between places in the world has shrunk even when geographic distance has remained the same.  My own education in global interconnectivity has been accelerated in two dimensions via this research. In one dimension, my focus as a researcher on questions of the correlation of global citizenship to elite schooling is an analysis of global interconnectivity. In another, I myself as a researcher am affected by the forces I am studying and must recognize and reconcile this as my global imagination is broadened.

My group’s research efforts are focused on Olive Grove Academy in Jordan, which is an interesting school in that its educational philosophies are based on the founder of the school’s experience at a New England boarding school.  A Westernized educational experience in the Middle East. With the educational model of the school escaping the larger context of the country of Jordan it resides in, the school represents a site where cross cultural exchanges are part of the curriculum. Our research question focuses on how students navigate the milieu of cultural exchange in their own education outcomes and imagined futures.  

In the qualitative analysis of this question, I’ve found the theoretical concept of cultural relativism to become a praxis; a key to my cross cultural study.  The concept of relativism, associated with the work of the cultural anthropologist Franz Boas, asserts that cultural practice must be taken in the context of that culture.  It is important in that it avoids ethnocentrism–the practice of drawing parallel of one cultural practice in another culture to one’s own culture. Relativism has important to my approach as researcher in that it allows me to navigate the constant interaction of cultures seen in the application of Western principles of education to a school in Jordan.

It is also important in that my place as a researcher in this project is inherently cross-cultural. In analysis, I’ve had to navigate the seemingly normative nature of interviews that reveal an education that is familiar to me because it is inspired by a culture I have spent all but a week of my life in.  For example, in my initial reading of the data, I noticed that most of the student’s interviewed were involved in some sort of Advanced Placement (AP) classes. This is nothing remarkable in the United States. The AP system originated in the United States. I took AP classes in my secondary education. Relative to my own experiences in the context of my upbringing in the US, AP classes are not unusual to find in a school.  The AP system did not originate in Jordan though. Most students in the public school system of Jordan don’t take AP classes. Here, in the curriculum of a school situated far away geographically from the US there is a unique feature of US education that appears to be an essential part of the curriculum at Olive Grove. Relative to its cultural context in Jordan, this is a phenomena worth examining.

This example is representative of the constant meta-analysis of the data I’ve learned that this project requires.  At each turn I’m required to ask where, culturally, I am situated. In my examination of my own culture’s influence on the formation of imagined futures for students in Jordan, I am brought closer to the ways in which our cultures are engaged in a dynamic interconnectivity.  The imaginations of the students I am study include my culture and increasingly mine is engaged with theirs. I am able, in this dynamic imagining of global interconnectivity, to overcome the tension between my own sheltered life experience and the global nature of the research I am doing. The Western nature of the cultural interconnectivity I’ve been exploring I think will require some more analysis to determine to what extent these global imaginations are informed by lingerings of the hegemonic forces of colonialism.  That’s a blog for another day though. The acknowledgment of the importance of cultural relativism and my place as a researcher is an important first step. A step out of the comfort of my own life experiences into a place where I am brought by the broad sweep of globalisation to places geographically separated but connected in important, ideological ways.*