ABSTRACT
Students in the U.S., like most Americans, are not well versed in talking about class. Although there are many reasons for this (e.g., the myth of classlessness, the promotion of social mobility as part of the American Dream, taboos against talking about money), the resulting silence is detrimental to our students’ intellectual and social development. This chapter describes particular strategies and classroom activities for breaking the silence about class, beginning with a non-personal and general exercise in which students are asked to draw/map the class structure in the U.S. today and moving towards interpersonal discussion groups that allow students to interrogate and investigate their own class as identity and culture, and how class intersects with other identities and cultures held by the student. Particular emphasis will be placed on the ways class is talked about obliquely, through categories such as “rural vs. urban” or when it is confused with race. Throughout these exercises, the relational aspects of class will be emphasized (to others, to power, etc.). The chapter will include a discussion of my own identity as a working-class academic (a person who began life in the working class and whose position was changed, at least economically, through higher education) to highlight the ways that class of origin continues to affect us long after formative experiences have been transcended and how this can be a very good thing for bridging class antagonisms. The chapter will conclude with a summary argument of the importance of talking about class so that class systems of oppression and evaluation can be effectively dismantled.
