Seven Red

I was coming home on the train today, re-reading Paul Willis’ classic study and analysis Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. I first read the book somewhat badly as an undergraduate, and then again maybe my second semester in graduate school. In the graduate school version, I remember reading Willis, Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress all together, probably all in the same week. Willis’ significantly gloomier version of things just resonated with me more than the others, probably because his ethnography bore significant resemblance to my own memories of high school, though Willis’ study takes place in early 1970′s industrial England. In any case, I’m re-reading the book for a project I’m working on, and it’s as good and funny and cogent as I remember, and maybe as gloomy. This time I actually bought a used copy.

So I get on the train, and I’m surrounded by a bunch of young CTA workers who are clowning around and generally trying to get through their day. They’re standing around cracking on each other, telling each other in exaggerated voices that they’re “blocking the patrons” with their equipment. They have canvas bags filled with florescent orange flags and various tools.

“Get out the way! Can’t you see that lady’s tryin’ to get off the train!”

“You need to move, young man! Those reserved for senior citizens. Patrons.” They’re punching each other, laughing.

Then two more get on at Southport station, and these guys are the real clowns.

“Hey,” says the guy sitting next to me, playing the boss, to one of the new arrivals, “I know you weren’t posted to Southport, so I don’t know how you gettin’ on there.”

“Oh,” says one of the new guys, “I was over at Wrigley.” They all laugh.

“Oh, OK,” says the Boss. “At Wrigley. Drinkin’, too, prolly.”

“Oh, no sir. I’m a dedicated employee. I would never be off drinking at Wrigley when the CTA needs me. But I shouldn’t uh had that sixth.” They all laugh.

“Mmmm hmmm,” says the Boss.

It goes on like this for some time, until I’m one of the few left on the train with these guys. They’re all loud and carrying on. Then, suddenly, the Boss says, very officially, “Will y’all quiet down? Can’t you see this gentleman here is reading?” That would be me. This gentleman.

“Oh, he’s studyin’ for a test! Stop messin’ him up!”

“You gonna quiz him?”

I look up and smile. Alright. You got me. I get it.

“He fail that quiz he gonna end up workin’ the CTA,” says one of the clowns. “You better let him read.”

They’re all laughing their asses off. I’m smiling. OK, guys. I get it.

Now, stuff that’s ironic. I was reading the following paragraph as all this was going on:

Some of the non-conformist group in the grammar school are, in fact, from working class families. Despite even their origins and anti-school attitude, the lack of a dominant working class ethos within their school culture profoundly separates their experience from ‘the lads.’ It can also lead to artificial attempts to demonstrate solidarity on the street and with street contacts. That the working class cultural forms of school opposition are creative, specific, borne and reproduced by particular individuals and groups from afresh and in particular contexts – though always within a class mode – is shown by the cultural awkwardness and separation of such lads. The lack of the collective school based and generated form of the class culture, even despite a working class background and an inclination to oppositional values, considerably weakens their working class identity (58).

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you get it.

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