Tammy, Appalachia and poverty

Preschool Privilege

One of the final points that the People Like Us movie made was that we are separated by class from a young age.  For example, when the wealthy take steps to ensure their child be accepted into the upper-upper class, they begin early. A few recent articles and a documentary highlight this subculture. Wealthy parents in New York City hire consultants and special tutors to get their child into a handful of elite preschools and then they pay costly tuition ($15,000+) to send the child there. This article from Bloomberg News highlights the competition to get in,

...An average of 15 applicants vie for every spot in about 200 preschools, Uhry said. According to its Web site, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, received 22,754 applications for the freshman class entering in last fall and admitted 2,124 -- 11 applications per admission.

From the New York Daily News,

Consultants charge $10,000 a pop to share their secrets of success. A nose-picking habit is considered special needs.
As the mother of an 11-month-old already bemused by Manhattan's hypercompetitive baby-rearing culture, I watched the film with amusement and dread.
If, like Moon, I want my child to attend one of these nurseries - popularly perceived as "Ivy League feeder schools" - finding the annual $20,000 tuition would apparently be the least of my worries.

 

Tammy, Appalachia and poverty

The movie People Like Us introduces us to Tammy and her sons from Pike County, Ohio. (Watch the videoon youtube here or watch it on mediacast here.) They live in poverty. Tammy was from a family of 22 kids and she grew up in poverty. She wants to be a teacher. Her son wants to be an architect or a lawyer. Will they be able to achieve these goals? What are the factors that will hold them back? What will their life chances be? One of the ways that Tammy’s son copes with his situation is by trying to dress preppy and act preppy. He cleans the house so it looks better and he tries in school, winning awards and succeeding in sports. Can these actions move him up to a higher class or is he kidding himself? What are the chances he succeeds in the "American Dream"?

Update:  So we watched the update to Tammy's story.  So you can still answer the questions above-you will just have to base your answers off of your initial thoughts before we watched the updated parts.


 

High School and Social Class

"Well, your CD collection looks shiny and costly.
How much did you pay for your bad Moto Guzi?
And how much did you spend on your black leather jacket?
Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket?"
- Cake

How does class play itself out at our high school, or in high school in general? Does high school reinforce or prepare you for fitting into a social class? If so, how? Give some examples from our high school. Additionally, how do you think moving up or down would affect you? Which would be tougher? What if you married/dated someone who was very low income or someone rich? What difficulty would this cause in your family and friends? One last question I have is what group do you think you would have ended up in based in the high school "People Like Us"-Anderson High in Austin Texas?

 

Social class and your possessions

In the movie People Like Us, they show many different things that people buy that represent their social class such as a Tuscan style kitchen, a 4 foot Mitsubishi TV, a Volvo. What possessions do you or your family own that represent your social class? Do you think that class is related to the things we own? Think about a possession that you own that could be much cheaper or much more expensive - why do you have the one that you have and not a cheaper/ more expensive one? You can go to the following website and take a quiz about how the things you prefer represent your class:
Chintz or shag

Then We see Karen Hess (bread expert) who says the bread we eat reflects our class. We develop tastes that reflect our class. What stores do you shop at and what types of bread do you eat? How do your possessions reflect your own social class? You can visit the following website and take the quiz "Identify this" or "Name that class" and see if your values represent a class:
Identify this

 

Also, This graph displays the inequality by occupation.

If you are interested in how your community's income looks, click on the American Factfinder and search by zipcode. Then scroll down to "Economic Characteristics" and look next to median family income. It is in 1999 dollars in most cases, but that is still an accurate portrayal for comparison's sake.

Wealth: Wealth in tricky to understand.  It is everything that a household owns, such as the home, vacation home, cars, 401K, savings, stocks, jewelry, etc...But, you must subtract what the household owes.  So, if my house is $200,000 but I owe $160,000 then my wealth is only $40,000 on the house.







Education:
In the US, here are the percentages of adults over the age of 23 who have attained each degree in 2012:

High school graduate	87.65%
Some college	57.28%
Associate's and/or Bachelor's degree	40.58%
Bachelor's degree	30.94%
Master's degree	8.05%
Doctorate or professional degree	3.07%

  This link shows that on average, the higher a family's income, the higher the ACT score. 

And this link shows the higher one's educational level, the more he or she earns.

This graph shows that the less education that parents have, the less education their children obtain.





Prestige: People view different occupations with different levels of prestige.  This prestige can translate to real power such as being appointed to boards or committees.  It can also simply give you credibility or respect in social situations.  Here is a chart of prestige ratings.

All of these combine to form a rough picture of social class. Here is one representation of how all of those components might work together: