Question the American Dream

America is a place where hard work will move you ahead. Here, you can  go further than your parents did and provide your children with more than you had. Few people believe in this dream more ardently than my students. The American dream is what has sustained them through nine difficult years in Philadelphia’s public schools. They arrive at my school with some pride to have been admitted to small, safe, selective school in the heart of Philadelphia’s historical district. They take subways and ride buses (sometimes for more than an hour) out of their neighborhoods and into bustling center city. And they arrive with their grit, a fierce determination to get the grades, no matter the cost. They have their hearts set on college because in America, college is the gateway to the middle class. They have an enduring faith in America and in the transformative power of education. 

I, too, believe in education’s power to transform. My education helped me grow into a critical thinker, a passionate citizen, a person who hopes to change the world. And I became a teacher because I wanted to continue to be a part of that process, both for my students and for myself. 

But lately, I’ve been noticing the cracks in the American dream.

As The New York Times reported in “Harder for Americans to Rise From Lower Rungs [2]” there is less economic mobility in the United States than in Canada and some European countries. According to the article, only one-third of people born in the bottom fifth of America’s economic ladder (including my students) will rise into the middle and upper classes. Studies also show that a college degree is likely to be an elusive goal for my students.

A recent study [3] tracked a group of Philadelphia ninth-graders for a decade and found that only 10 percent of them had graduated from college. Other statistics, like America’s high rate of incarceration (disproportionately high among the poor and among African Americans) and high level of income disparity, contribute to the idea that poverty is not something that can be dusted off with education and hard work.  What these statistics suggest is that American poverty is a trap and that our system for leveling the playing field—education—is largely broken.

I know some of my colleagues would advise me to ignore the statistics and teach my students to keep believing in the dream. And I acknowledge that my students’ grit and tenacity should not be trifled with. Their perseverance is awesome, and further studies [4] have shown that it is the most important factor in college success for disadvantaged students. I am hesitant to do anything that might disturb it. 

On the other hand, I’m worried. How can I encourage my students to chase the American dream while I watch it crumble? This splintered country is the world that my students are inheriting. And my role as their teacher is not only to shepherd the precious few into the middle class but to teach them all to critically assess the world and find ways to improve it. But talking to students about class, about the cracks in the American dream, can be a difficult undertaking. As author and civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander [5] points out in her interview with Rethinking Schools, “We have to be willing to take some risks. In my experience, there is a lot of hesitancy to approach these issues in the classroom out of fear that students will become emotional or angry, or that the information will reinforce their sense of futility about their own lives and experience.” 

I am keenly aware of these fears. I also believe that these risks are worth taking. I want to find ways to engage my students in important conversations about poverty, inequality and the American dream. Like all teaching for social justice, it will require a careful balance between investigating the problem and envisioning possible solutions. Teaching Tolerance offers some good places to start with resources like Visualizing School Equity [6] and A Historical Primer on Economic (In)Equality [7].  

Melville is high school English, Spanish and drama teacher in Pennsylvania.