Dear Doug,
Post this to the list if you like.
My experience as a college teacher at a very pedestrians school is that teachers from the working class, especially that part of it made up of production and nonsupervisory workers, are not very common. Out of about 120 faculty at my school, I can't think of 10 whose parents were factory workers, miners, store clerks, secretaries, nannies, security guards, truck drivers, and the like. Much more common were parents who were teachers, other types of professionals, lower level business executives, small business owners, salespersons, etc. The second edition of the book by Sackrey and Ryan, Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class, was published in 1995, not that long ago. The teachers they interviewed were from working class backgrounds and they for the most part felt very uncomfortable in academe, as if they did not belong there. I expect that their experiences are common ones. I often felt that way. However, the teachers in this book not very often were themselves radicals, at least not the way I would define a radical. In the late sixties and early seventies when a lot of radicals managed to get academic, I doubt if many came from working class backgrounds. Sam Bowles wasn't the only one who came from a privileged background or at least one that was pretty comfortable. Most came from fairly elite schools too, and this definitely helped shape them no matter their class background. And it shaped them in ways not altogether desirable in terms of persons who might be leaders of an anti-capitalist movement. Then too, their academic careers did not always improve them either in this respect.
Given the tremendous rise in inequality in the US and the rampant corporatization of academe, it seems likely that there won't be all that many working class academics in the future either. Nor radical academics from any class background.
Michael Yates
As to radical teachers,