Class in the Classroom Lee Warren, Harvard University Class is an often invisible form of difference. Yet it is there all the time, affecting how and what students learn at every turn. It pervades the values and the purposes of colleges and universities. It contributes to determining the courses offered and the books read and discussed. Still, it is a diversity issue rarely acknowledged.
Class is also very difficult to define.
Ask a group to divide itself according to class, and chaos ensues. For the purposes of this essay, I am going to draw the roughest of cuts between working class, middle class, and upper class recognizing the inexactitude of the division and assuming that most people have a general sense of what is meant - even though this is discomfiting. The descriptions offered here represent what people have said in workshops on the subject, in which they have discussed their own experiences as students. The biggest factor affecting learning for lower class students is a lack of confidence based on real or perceived weaknesses in preparation. These students often come to college with a lower level of academic skills and sophistication than their middle and upper class peers.