Resolving Class Divisions in International Schools

“There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor. The poor can think of nothing else. That is the misery of being poor.”^[1]  – Oscar Wilde

During a discussion on motivation, some students told me I should feel lucky whenever anyone engaged in classwork. Further questions revealed a truth rarely stated out loud. Certain students blithely began comparing the number of houses their parents owned in different parts of the world and conveyed the sense that, economically speaking, they would still have a “good life” if they never graduated, went to college, or even worked a day in their lives.

This interaction was eye-opening and reminded me of my place in the social order, where I have to work for a living. When I attended school in the 1970s and 80s, teaching was a profession that promised a degree of social mobility.^[2] The manner in which teachers negotiated their position in the class hierarchy and enforced the social order, often amounted to a protection of status. During the era of corporal punishment, working-class children were beaten regularly and children from the middle classes were often spared. While most teachers suffered through the same system as children, a line in the sand affirmed where they stood in terms of class division after entering the profession. Working-class children often had trouble negotiating a system that was designed to control them. The middle-class code - how to speak, how to dress, how to negotiate, how to get ahead - was second nature for some at home, at school, and eventually at the workplace.^[3]

As a postgraduate teaching assistant, I was a union delegate, which brought me into solidarity with other public service workers.^[4] In my mind, this cemented with whom I stood and underscored what I stood against. Working in secondary-level teaching, I mostly taught at fee-paying institutions. This included 13 years at a private school in Ohio, United States of America (USA), where students from wealthy backgrounds regarded the teachers as working class. Clearly, according to national statistics, I resided in the lower-middle-class bracket of the socio-economic scale, but in terms of perception, and a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle, I straddled the class divide.

Now, as an international teacher, I’m between the Scylla of lower middle class on campus and the Charybdis of upper middle class outside campus. Employees on foreign-hire contracts are thrust into the upper echelons of wealth and class privilege in developing countries, with an ability to live in a nice apartment, hire people to perform tasks (drivers, cleaners, cooks, dog-walkers), and travel to places they’d never see if they worked in the USA. It seems too good to be true. One may ask whether this is a result of meritocracy, or does it happen at someone’s expense?^[5]

Because it’s a nebulous concept, often relative and based on perception, class is difficult to anatomize.^[6] Fixed notions of how we identify tend to undersell the complexity of the human condition. However, it must be remembered that the interests of the most oppressed coincide with the interests of humanity as a whole. This provides a basis for solidarity among all who are not tremendously wealthy and lays the foundations for structural antagonism against a system designed to keep us divided and deluded regarding “upward mobility.”^[7] While discussions of social class may be regarded as unfashionable in modern Western politics, forms of identity-based conflict overlap with and obfuscate class issues. Rich elites tend to be more comfortable with identity-based debates, drained of any analysis of class relationships or examinations of economic oppression because they present no real threat to their bank balances. In this way, fundamental injustice is never meaningfully challenged.

At international schools, as with most businesses, there is solidarity within leadership and governance. Board policies usually ensure unity with some form of "code of silence." Leaders support each other. Teachers and staff, on the other hand, instead of acting in their collective interests, often act individually, or build relationships and coalitions with people in positions of power to attain promotions and better conditions. This is encouraged by some leaders because it maintains divisions among employees and strengthens their influence (especially in tiered labor contract systems).^[8] Thus, while bosses and managers adopt a solid front, an alliance of all workers is difficult, if not impossible. Vulnerable employees with no easy access to people in positions of power can be targeted and scapegoated. Frustrated workers are labeled as “disgruntled” and neutralized. Those at the very bottom of the hierarchy find it a herculean task to voice their concerns. The kaleidoscope of status-based identities gets tangled up with systems designed to prevent any sense of consciousness toward a common goal. Thus, workers are pitted against each other.

It is necessary to reject these conditions by recognizing that economic oppression, rather than discrimination, is the fundamental fault line from which other problems spring. Class is not another identity that needs to be protected against discrimination. Material inequality writ large was not caused by racism and sexism, although they are huge, corrosive components. Initiatives regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion rarely touch upon class, and activism in these areas will not dismantle economic inequality.^[9] However, realizing gains in economic justice brings improvements in the physical and emotional wellbeing of all workers. All humans require the ability to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves and should be able to stay healthy and be educated. Increasing wages, lowering hours, improving working conditions, providing pensions, and allowing access to healthcare and education are required to reduce economic deprivation. The transformation of this set of worker-employer relationships is the guiding principle to challenge oppression. This can be achieved when workers recognize their common interests.

While the important fight for equity and justice based on identities - race, gender, ability, and sexual orientation - requires pride in, respect for, and celebrations of those identities, a struggle for economic fairness and sustainability requires the elimination of class differences. A world where one percent of the population owns half the total wealth, while over half the population owns one percent of the wealth is grotesque and unsustainable.^[10] For this to be challenged at international schools espousing a commitment to social justice, the most privileged among us must strive for solidarity with the most oppressed and abandon our acquisitive dreams of glittering luxuries: houses and vehicles we won't use, domestic staff for which there is no real need, and exotic vacations we could live without.^[11]

I would like to thank Tyson Lazzaro for his constructive feedback on this article.