Social Class Educational Structure in Brave New World

The United States of America has a long and complicated history of segregation and inequality. Though the country has fought fiercely to redeem itself by eradicating the practice of inequality in many areas, there are still some concerns that remain. These concerns are present in the public education system, and relate to the time-honored practice of educators to group and educate students by their ability level. This paper will discuss how students historically have been classified based on ability tracking and grouping, the legal issues created by this classification, and what the Constitution requires in order to maintain equal protection rights for all citizens.

Social Class and Education”. It opens by discussing research conducted in the 1960’s in an effort to identify factors contributing to differences in the academic achievement of Whites and Blacks (Banks & Banks, 2013). Researchers hypothesized that the achievement gaps were mainly the result of disparities in school resources and characteristics, but found that there is a high correlation between achievement and socioeconomic status (SES) (Banks & Banks, 2013). Furthermore, attention is drawn to the class stratification which exists in our educational system and works to maintain inequality through exclusion strategies such as ability grouping and tracking (Banks & Banks, 2013). Evidence of the correlation between social class and

In Chapter 10 of Newman and the article “Making Class Invisible” by Gregory Mantsios both work to explain class structures and the effects of stratification. Newman defines stratification as the ranking of entire groups of people that perpetuates unequal rewards and life chances in society (p. 281). While Newman expresses how social forces and institutions influence social class, Mantsios explains in his article how mass media perpetuates class stratification.

Social class describes the different "layers" that exist in society. These "layers," or classes in society, are a division that civilization has been running on ever since the beginning of mankind. In most modern societies, our system of social class division is one of opportunity. We experience a good deal of social mobility, where people through generations or in their own lifetime can move up or down the social scale. By examining the many different perceptions of social class along with S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders, it is illustrated that social class has an impact on people while they are growing up, and will usually deny them from rising above adversity.

The Huxley introduces Best New World it might throw people off but if you continue reading you might come to find that it is an interesting novel. The Best New World is quite freaky in my opinion because wanting to have everyone exactly the same kind of eliminates the curiosity of a person and how unique someone is. In the Best New World people are categorized as Alphas, Deltas, Betas, Gammas and Epsilons now the way they compare to our world is that we are individually one of these but we weren't born into it we just sort of become who ever we become, although some of us are greater at things than others we don't let that stop us we continue to grow and develop our skills unlike the people in the novel. Another juxtaposition is when they

Aldous Huxley once wrote, “Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid.” (6). Huxley wrote this to convey the audience to dislike and mistrust the social hierarchy in Brave New World because Huxley desired to show the importance of individuality even in an almost complete socialist society. Accordingly, every person’s identity, within Brave New World, is tied within their own social class. People are born into their class with duplicates of themselves which makes them lose any individuality if they ever had any at all. Each class has its own criteria for workers and the workers are mass produced in factories with their own special kind of conditions for each class.

Class-divisions can be seen as good or bad, they help and harm our society. One of the benefits of social stratification is the ability to have a unique job, without class-divisions we would not be able to have different jobs. Not only that but class-divisions help keep a steady economy. Although there are benefits of social stratification, there are also negative impacts. Class-divisions give the idea of being unequal in every aspect of one’s

Paul Gilmore III Mrs. Addington/ Ms.Pekatos 10LA Honors 1 15 May 2013 Social Stratification in Brave New World In the novel Brave New World written by Aldous Huxley the civilized world lives in a world where people are grouped in social classes from birth. The idea of social stratification has been prevalent in many societies to date in the real world. Social stratification is the grouping of people in a community by race, job, or wealth and in many of these societies one cannot change the class they are born in to.

The association between social class and education can only be denied by those willing to contest that civilization leaves its remnants to disparate communities. We as a society place standards and expectations to education that result in potential power, wealth, and intelligence. Due to this relationship, we pertain to a society who runs on tainted mechanisms and values today. No longer are institutions preoccupied with education, but with their own success and wealth. Money is highly regarded, those of the lower class are rejected, and children are left to deal with their grievances alone.

In Huxley’s Brave New World, the education system is used to control the population and make people do what they are supposed to do from the beginning. “People believe in God because they are conditioned to believe in God.” (Huxley) They know this, so they condition people in to believe their caste system is great. They create caste systems from when they are born and treat everyone from the same caste the same, education wise and in conditioning. Each caste has a completely different educational system because they are completely different. This makes it so you learn what you need to know and nothing else. You won’t want to learn anymore, and you wouldn’t explore options since they put you where you need to be from the start.

In the society of Brave New World, there are only five different classes into which each person fits. If one does not fit into the society’s pre determined structure, they are rejected by their peers and sent to live elsewhere with the rest of the outcasts, where they cannot harm the fragile society and class system that has been created. Each class of people has a specific title, job, and lifestyle. Adolf Huxley, while placing and characterizing each character into their pre determined social class, also finds way to differentiate between the character’s thoughts and personalities, developing them into more dynamic characters than the static faces and bodies that the rest of the population is made up of. While people like Lenina Crowne

In social stratification, class is the only system that approves social mobility. It is also a system that is based on the physical possessions such as money and materials. Moreover, slass system is the system that allowed me to think I can achieve upward social mobility. Therefore, I aim to be part of a higher social class as I am currently a member of a working class, which is compsed of "relatively unskilled blue-collar... [less secure jobs,] more routine, and more closely supervised [jobs],(Henslin 268).” I intend to achieve this goal by getting educated.

Social class is one of many stratification systems found in modern industrialised societies. Social class is a concept in which people are grouped into a set of hierarchical social categories who share similar economic positions in society determined by occupation and wealth. They are also likely to have similar levels of education and status and these can be known as the upper, middle and lower classes. Functionalists trust that the social class system makes a positive contribution to the whole of society; it ensures that the most important positions within society are filled by the individuals with the attributes most suited for that position. Davis and Moore (1945) support this idea that each individual’s class position is a true reflection of their talents and that the meritocratic principles on which society are based succeed in finding the right people for the right jobs. They believe that social class stratification encourages all members of society to work to the best of their ability in order to receive high rewards of wealth and status within society. Melvin Tumin (1967) argues with this theory, that the social stratification system can demotivate those in the lower strata, and does not provide equality of opportunity for everyone.

When thinking about society we are able to see a clear distinction between groups that are clearly more advantaged or disadvantaged than other groups. In modern society, these advantages and disadvantages are not always by design, but they fall back into a deeper more stratified system in which everyone has become part of today. There are some things that happen subconsciously that make someone seem better than another person or ways of thinking that because of the past have forced us to think the way that we do currently. Stratification is everywhere, from our personal life, jobs, networks and even schools. There are a magnitude of factors that play into our life that help us decide what we want to do and factors that decide what we might or might not be able to do. In this paper, I want to focus on how the idea of stratification is alive and well in modern education and futures of those attending secondary education.

“Who fails and who succeeds in America 's schools? For sociologists of education, the significance of this question rests with the fact that academic performance is socially stratified” (O’Connor, 2001, p. 159). Unfortunately, this paper will reveal facts that confirm this claim. Throughout this paper, I will discuss the idea of class and how it perpetuates itself within the classroom. As well, I will investigate recent studies into class in the classroom and how the students are affected in the relative short term and long term. These class-based studies, however, do not account for differences within each class. “Class-based models cannot, however, make sense of such findings