In my classroom this year we had several interesting unplanned and spontaneous conversations. One of these talks started with a question while we discussed The Grapes of Wrath. In the midst of the discussion a student asked me, “Does the American Dream even exist anymore?” And we were off… what is the American Dream, does hard work really pay off? Isn’t it more of a myth? Who has access to this dream? Unfortunately, we had to cut our conversation a bit short, but the discussion has stuck with me into summer vacation. Has the American Dream died? Is it just a myth? How does the disintegration or transformation of the American Dream impact teaching and learning? And what about the large percentage of students who don’t have access to the dream?
The American Dream has evolved somewhat since the Joads talked about it on the journey to California during the Dust Bowl. Yet while the white picket fence may not be a critical element of the dream, the idea that an individual could work hard to make something of themselves in order to move up socially and economically and acquire a sense of long term security has featured in the American dream, as I understand it.
I have to admit that I’m skeptical that the dream still exists. Really though, it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is that students understand and believe in some semblance of the dream. Otherwise, school is even less meaningful than it already is for most students. If how well or how hard you work won’t matter, than schoolwork really doesn’t matter. There are times as a teacher where I found myself trying to convince students that the dream still exists, much like a parent working hard to convince their kid that Santa Claus still exists after the kid found presents in the closet. This seems like a silly analogy, but the ramifications of coming to terms with this knowledge and lost ideal are significant to an individual’s learning and development.
It does seem that this phenomena or realization that the dream is dying is news to some of our country’s youth. A large segment of our population already considers the dream more of a myth or fairy tale. Many of us have worked to provide youth with skills and knowledge to improve their access to the American Dream (even if at times it may have felt like we were just creating false hope). For centuries People of Color had little access to the American Dream. In class this is usually when someone says that poor White families had it bad too. And while this may be true on some levels, my answer was usually along the lines of - ‘Yes but poor White folks still usually have it better than poor Black families.’ Occasionally someone will bring up affirmative action - to which I point to research that shows that often the primary beneficiaries of affirmative action were suburban middle class White women. So for those on the margins, has anything gotten better? I want to say - in some cases it has, in other cases it hasn’t and perhaps, the margins have actually widened as the ranks of the disadvantaged have increased.
More recently my students have made me aware that this skepticism in the American Dream exists not just among the disadvantaged and marginalized, but has also seeped into the consciousness of the well-to-do independent school types. More and more, they say students in privileged school environments walk into class thinking that no matter how well they do, how hard they work, how many times they do the right thing - it probably won’t matter. Someone with better connections will land the good job or they’ll be stuck in a job with little economic benefit and little control over their well-being. No one wants to feel like all their hard work could still leave them watching the dream pass them by.
As our nation finds itself in turmoil due to a conflagration of social, cultural, economic, and political transformation, perhaps not only is the dream changing, but access to the dream is also shifting. This is a root cause of much of the turmoil in our country. Many people who had choice access to the American Dream now have to share access, and are upset that they aren’t the clear favorites in the dreamscape. Many people who had counted on the American Dream are upset that the economic landscape has shifted and left them behind. These folks are now looking to blame someone. I sympathize. Scapegoating, however, does more harm than good.
I saw a headline recently that stated that corporate America is killing the American Dream. This rang true for me to some extent. The ever increasing schism between those in the fancy offices with the amazing salaries and those downstairs in the cubicles certainly doesn’t do the dream much good. And like in The Grapes of Wrath, those with economic power can use power and competition to dehumanize their employees, just because people are desperate and they can. No one ever wants to feel ‘less than.’ If you are working 60+ hours a week to barely make ends meet, you don’t have much time to dream. If you have many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to make things work, you won’t dream much. All of this is bad enough for adults, but for youth the impact is exponentially greater. Changes to the dream, the American Fairy Tale, or the myth of making it are not lost on youth. Students pick up on more than adults give them credit for, and yet are less equipped to process and negotiate this information. As youth work to make sense of these ideas it impacts their schoolwork, their behavior, and their engagement with learning. Within schools - especially middle and high schools - motivation for students is already scarce. Here the existence or death of the American Dream takes on even greater significance.
Listen, I’m old and a bit jaded. As an old-school Gen X-er I have been skeptical of the system for some time. Yet as a teacher I want students to understand the power of hope, and hope they understand how powerful they can be in the future. I don’t know if teaching hope and power represents the greatest or most dangerous subject matter. I do know that every student deserves to have hope, power, and opportunity. Until hope, power, and opportunity are dead, the American Dream lives on. Hopefully, the old American Dream has evolved into a new, 21st century dream. I may never know what it looks like, but hey - a boy can dream.