1. How does the educational system serve to make inequality legitimate?

2. Describing the young, white men whom he calls “The Hallway Hangers,” Jay MacLeod argues that their depressed aspirations are not “incomprehensible self-defeatism,” but instead are a “perceptive response” to their plight.    Explain this argument.  What evidence does he offer for this claim?

3. Among the Hallway Hangers, boys gain respect from being tough and bad; how does this subculture help the boys deal with the negative judgments of teachers and classmates?   How effective is it in protecting them?

4. The Hallway Hangers’ subculture is not only a defensive reaction to the achievement ideology which defines them as failures; it also expresses values that are quite different from the values basic to the achievement ideology.  What are the values that underlie their subculture?  According to MacLeod, where do these values come from?

5. In talking about their own low social position, the Hallway Hangers neither fully accept nor fully reject the achievement ideology.  How so?

6. Both MacLeod and Valenzuela argue that the practice of sorting students into different academic tracks tends to reproduce the class system.  What social processes are in play here?

7. What is meant by the concept “subtractive schooling”?

8. Immigrant and often second generation students from Mexico outperform third and later generation U.S. born students of Mexican descent.  What social and cultural resources support their academic achievement?  

9. Valenzuela argues that cultural tracking negatively affects both immigrant and U.S. born students.  How so?

10. How do school policies and practices create hostility between immigrant students and U.S. born students? 

11. Horvat et al argue that the parents’ social networks differ depending on whether parents are middle-class or working class.  What are these differences?  And how do these differences affect the ways that parents interact with their children’s schools?

12. How do middle class parents utilize their social networks to reproduce their class advantage with regard to their children’s schooling?

13. Renny Christopher argues that the higher education system in the U.S. reproduces the social class system.  He demonstrates that the social origins of students at “elite” schools are quite different from those at other institutions.  Do you think this data is sufficient to make his case?  

14. Christopher claims that there is a sort of “hidden curriculum” in higher education institutions (although he doesn’t specifically use the term “hidden curriculum”).  This curriculum is different in elite and non-elite schools and prepares students for the different types of jobs they will each eventually do. What is the nature of this “hidden curriculum”?  Do you find this claim convincing?