ABSTRACT
The two women just quoted above come from distinctly different cultural backgrounds. Doreen, a student in a community-based adult education program, was born and raised in a white, ethnic working-class community in a northeastern city; she characterized her early school experiences as ‘uncomfortable’ and explained that she could not wait until the day she could quit and go to work in the local box factory. Beatrice, a student in a workplacebased adult education program, was born and raised on a farm in the southeast; she described going to school as a luxury-something she could only do on rainy days, along with all the other black children she knew who worked for white farmers. Despite their differences, these women share some similar ideas about knowledge and a common framework for evaluating their claims to knowledge. They both distinguish between knowledge produced in school or in textbooks by authorities and knowledge produced through experience. They also have some similar ideas about their ‘commonsense’ capabilities to take care of others. Their ways of knowing are embedded in community, family, and work relationships and cannot be judged by dominant academic standards. Most important, their commonsense knowledge cannot be dismissed, minimized, or ‘taken away’. This article describes and analyzes how black and white working-class women define and claim knowledge. It is based on participant observation in classrooms and in-depth interviews outside school with 30 women who enrolled in adult basic education programs.
