Ain’t No Making It: A Tale for Our Times
Daniela Torre
Ain’t No Making’ It: It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. By
Jay MacLeod. Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 2009. pp. vii-537. Paperback, $31.34/
ISBN: 0813343585
Jay MacLeod’s book Ain’t No Making’ It, a treatise on the ways that social class is
reproduced across generations, remains as relevant and informative to
understanding the cycle of poverty as it was when it was first published in 1987.
The explanations of the life trajectories of the men studied in this book are
especially important in light of the inflamed rhetoric and intense debate that
characterize the interactions between the two distinct ideologies that have
bifurcated the educational reform community. There are those in this community
who believe that school systems alone have the capacity to overcome the
achievement gap between rich and poor students. Such “no- excuses reformers”
typically support charter schools, standardized test based accountability systems for
students and teachers, and other market based reforms. The sentiment of this camp
can be summarized in a statement made by Michelle Rhee in 2007, ““We will no
longer describe failure [in our schools] as the result of vast impersonal forces like
poverty or a broken bureaucracy" (Confirmation Hearing, 2007).
The other ideological camp believe that in order to create better schools, it is
imperative to also meet the needs of the community in which that school is situated.
These views, perhaps best summarized by the tenets of the Broader Bolder Approach
claim to consider “the impact of social and economic disadvantage on schools and
students” (Broader, Bolder, Approach, n.d.) when advocating for specific reform
initiatives. We will see that neither perspective can be said to be entirely endorsed
by the conclusions found in Ain’t No Makin’ It.
Building off previous scholarship of Bowles and Gintis, Bourdieu, and Willis,
McLeod seeks to investigate the tension between personal agency and structural
barriers to social mobility, or in his words, how “class based institutional
mechanisms set limits on mobility, thereby ensuring social reproduction, while
cultural innovations can be at once both functional of dysfunctional for social
reproduction” (pp.152). What he uncovers is that society is structured in such a way
that despite personal ambitions and aspirations, on the aggregate, “no matter how
diligently they devote themselves to schools, they cannot escape the constraints of
social class” (pp. 150). Indeed, schools are a primary mechanism in legitimizing
class structures and reproducing class positions.
MacLeod reaches these conclusions after conducting a longitudinal
ethnography of two groups of boys who come of age in the same housing project.
This book, now in its third edition, is divided into three sections that chronicle the
boys’ life stages. The first section introduces us to the two groups of boys, all about
17 years old, as they negotiate school and the first forays into the working world.
The Hallway Hangers are a predominantly white group of teenagers who have
rejected what McLeod refers to as the “achievement ideology”, or the notion that if a
person works hard they can be successful, that is the lynchpin of the American
dream. In contrast, the Brothers are predominantly black and have fully bought into
the achievement ideology.
While all of the boys attend or attended the same neighborhood high school,
their experiences diverge considerably. MacLeod describes how the school is
comprised of myriad tracks, presumably created to empower students to choose the
course of study that will best prepare them for their future. However, we see how
without sufficient guidance from school counselors, concerned teachers, or active
and knowledgeable parents, the majority of the Hallway Hangers elect to enroll in
the least academic track, and many subsequently either are shifted into a special
program for students with behavior problems or drop out of school.
On the other hand, the Brothers are typically in more rigorous tracks, more
involved in sports, and most importantly, committed to following the rules and
obtaining their degrees. Unlike the Hallway Hangers, the Brothers have higher
aspirations for their future, aspirations that include finding stable employment and
sustaining a middle class life style.
In the subsequent sections the boys become young men in their mid 20’s
struggling to find stable employment and then older men still, at best, only grasping
tenuously to working class stability. While the second and third sections tell the
stories of men no longer directly involved with the formal education system, the
ways that schooling shaped these men’s lives is never far from the fore. MacLeod
does an excellent job showing the how social welfare policies, incarceration and its
aftermath, racism, drug and alcohol abuse, and insufficient educational credentials
explain why all of the men struggle to find stable employment in the primary labor
market for most of their adult lives.
MacLeod writes that “if the Hallway Hangers show that opting out of the
contest is not a viable option, the Brothers show that dutifully playing by the rules
hardly guarantees success either… they show how rigid and durable the class
structure is. Aspiration, application, and intelligence often fail to cut through the
firm figurations of structural inequality” (pp.242). Within the confines of the class
structure then, school proved not be the catalyst for upward mobility that the
Brothers, as adherents to the achievement ideology, believed it to be. In the end it is
through social networks and the personal relationships the men cultivate, either
with supportive partners, with their children, or with God, that they are able to
attain some semblance of peace and dignity.
Arguably then, attempts at reforming schools in order to increase equity
propagated by either of the camps discussed above are problematic. “No Excuses
reformers” place too much emphasis on the school to alter inequalities that
MacLeod shows are mostly structural in nature. Indeed, schools, as part of the
structure that reproduces class, seem poorly equipped to alter structural
inequalities. We could think of a case of individual schools that empower students to
have high aspirations; however, the example of the Brothers teaches us that a belief
in the achievement ideology does not guarantee future economic success. While the
more holistic approach propagated by reformers aligned with the Broader, Bolder
Approach seems more appropriate in confronting the many obstacles enumerated in
Ain’t No Making It that are a reality for low income children and adults, MacLeod
would argue that, “while a step in the right direction, they leave the basic emotional
encumbrance of lower class life untouched” (pp. 262) and thus are insufficient.
Simply expanding the social welfare system, by improving health and human
services in addition to supporting schools, does not fundamentally alter the class
hierarchy and so will invariably not provide a path to social mobility for the lower
class.
What, then, can educational reformers learn from Aint No Makin It? MacLeod
offers few concrete suggestions, short of the transformation of the US into a
“decentralized socialist economy” (pp. 262), about what can be done to alter the
class structure that he so deftly describes as constraining the outcomes for the men
in his study. Despite the lack of concrete policy implications, there are several
important lessons to those on either side of the ideological divide within education
reform. First, reformers of the “no excuses” ilk should be aware of the structural
impediments to social mobility and how schools reinforce those structures. To
ignore how poverty and class are related to how schools function is to discount the
lived experiences of lower class students. Reformers advocating for a multi pronged
approach to transforming communities as well as schools should be reminded to
take a critical eye to the structures they are expanding. As MacLeod explains,
without fundamentally changing the way society is arranged, tinkering on the
margins of social programming will be insufficient to alter the lives of lower class
students. Finally, reformers of all stripes should remember the power of individual
agency. However constrained by class an individual may be, they have a certain
degree of choice in how their life may proceed. Thus, reform should be aimed at
increasing the power of personal agency and empowering lower class students to
exercise that agency.
Works Cited:
Broader, Bolder, Approach. (n.d.) A Broader, bolder approach to education: Mission
statement. Retrieved from
http://www.epi.org/files/2011/bold_approach_full_statement-3.pdf
Hearing on the Nomination of Michelle Rhee as Chancellor of the District of Columbia
Public Schools. Hearing before the Council of the District of Columbia
Committee of the Whole. (2007). Retrieved from <
http://dc.gov/downloads/ABOUT%20DCPS/Testimonies/Downloadables/T
estimonies%202007/DCPS-TESTIMONY-2007-07-02-RHEE-CONFIRMHEARING.pdf>