The Inequality Within Education And Education Essay

The United States is a country based on equal opportunity; every citizen is to be given the same chance as another to succeed. This includes the government providing the opportunity of equal education to all children. All children are provided schools to attend. However, the quality of one school compared to another is undoubtedly unfair. Former teacher John Kozol, when being transferred to a new school, said, "The shock from going from one of the poorest schools to one of the wealthiest cannot be overstated (Kozol 2)." The education gap between higher and lower-income schools is obvious: therefore, the United States is making the effort to provide an equal education with questionable results.

     Will Durant, a businessman and the founder of General Motors, once said, “Education is the transmission of civilization.” Unfortunately, education is still one of the most deliberated and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation; poor districts obtain less educational funding while rich districts obtain more, creating an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas.

Inequalities in Australian Schooling: Sociocultural Factors in terms of Cultural Capital, Habitus and Social Reproduction

A good education is vital in succeeding within many industries in the UK, from Business to Medicine, Politics to Art. It unfortunately does not come as a surprise that only 58.6% of students attained 5 or more GCSE’s at grades A* to C (Department for Education 2012). In comparison, albeit falling this year on previous years, 94.4% of students in private schools attained the same results (The Independent 2012a). Following the recent recession, Social mobility has begun to decline and is lower today than it was thirty years ago. It is now less likely that a child of parents in a low-income bracket will rise to the top-income bracket than it was in

In the article, “The Education Inequality Struggle” published by The Huffington Post, Marian Wright Edlemen discusses a new act by Congress, The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that serves to replace the No Child Left Behind Act. The purpose of the No Child Left Behind Act was to add need federal accountability in regards to the desegregation and equalization of education along with fiscal accountability. However, the No Child Left Behind Act failed to address the scholarly performance of children. ESSA is designed to track student performance by traits known to affect education; race, gender, ethnicity, disability, and language. At the same time, individual states create plans for education that have to be approved federally. Based on these

The United States had gone through so many changes over the years and with each change we could say that we have become a better nation. Along the way to becoming a better nation, we have gone through highs and lows; however there seems to be a constant low that is now taking a toll on our children. The low may also end up having an effect on our future and that low is inequality in education among minority races and low income students. Low income students should be concerned with inequality in education in the United States because this means that their chances of continuing their education to obtain a better paying job in the future is significantly harder to do then students in higher income brackets.

Equity is a complex and contested concept. This paper will outline the meanings and discussion involved in aiming for equitable education, nationally and globally. Focusing on Australia, the privatisation of education will be explored and the arguments for and against the public government financing private schools. Equality is becoming an increasingly aspired ideal, especially as globalisation increases competition and number of disadvantaged children. The idea that education reproduces inequalities is society will be explained and critiqued in light of school becoming a middle class institution.

This article examines several key components and issues within sociology of education past and present, with the eventual intention to achieve interruption of the replication of social and educational inequality in Australia.

Efforts to reach this are the provision of schools, with entry on a meritocratic basis. Following the 1944 Education Act in Britain, the removal of fees from secondary schools and the provision of student grants, certain financial barriers to educational attainment were minimised. Whether we measure equality of access fairly is a debateable topic, however there is overwhelming evidence which confirms that social class origins are strongly and clearly implicated in educational success or failure. Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1981), in a study of 8529 males educated in England and Wales, found that a boy who was considered middle class, compared to a boy in working class had fourth more times of attending a public school, eighteen times more chance of attending a minor independent school and twelve times more chance of attending a direct grant school and three times more chance of attending a grammar school (Journal of Social Policy, 1981). So this study heavily implies that the pattern of unequal access to the more prestigious secondary schools remained, despite the post war education reforms ‘the probability of a working-class boy receiving a fair education in the mid-fifties and sixties were very little different from that of his parents’ generation thirty years earlier’ (Halsey,

Moreover, young people from poorer families are less likely to go to universities than others (!). 55% of the 1600 respondents in the survey conducted by YouGov claimed that poorer people in the UK have lower chances to attend university, compared to 29% thinking that the chances are equal (!). These examples demonstrate that children and young people from poorer families are disadvantaged in terms of education opportunities. Therefore, many people in the UK do not have the possibility to move up the social ladder. Educational inequalities indicate that social mobility is low in British society.

Bowles and Gintis felt it was important to write this article, because they believe that the politics of education are better understood in terms of the need for social control in an unequal and rapidly changing economic order. This point is illustrated on page 396 when the authors say, “The unequal

America is often enamored of itself as the champion of equality in every aspect of its society; however, this is often not the case. This is true in every aspect of life, but is very evident specifically in the American education system. Although America claims to give an equal education to all, regardless of any external factors, economic class often plays a role in what type and how good of an education a student may receive. Since education is the basis for future success, this inequity resulting from socioeconomic status implies that this is where inequality in everyday life starts, and that the system generates this inequality. If this is true, then one might ask, what then is the purpose of education? If economic class predetermines

Many believe that the greatest source for a nations strength is to provide equal education for all of its students. However, are we as educators short-changing our female students? I believe the answer to this question is an undeniable, Yes! There are different ways and methods to change this problem in our society; hence we must first examine the source of the corruption.

Although education should be the way out of poverty and inequality, there is the evidence that still, ‘graduates who went to private schools earn substantially more than those who went to state schools’ (The Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2014). The gap was quite substantial as it amounted up to 17 per cent, depending on the university and subject they studied. Nonetheless, even for those who came from a similar background, graduated from the same university, studied the same subjects, achieved the same grade, and chose a similar career, those, who attended state schools, still earned 7 per cent less than graduates from private schools. Such evidence suggests the question, why the higher education, which is perceived as the route out of poverty into equality and prosperity, does not level the opportunities and does not prevent the discrimination. Would implement a social justice approach be able to close such gaps? Social justice with equal distribution of opportunity, income and wealth achieved through respective policies in the politics, economy and social welfare (Craig, 2002).

Regardless of the financial costs of education, statistics show in the years from 1983 to 1996 numbers of students in tertiary education doubled and retention rates within secondary schooling reached new heights, rising from 40.6% in 1983 to 71.3% in 1996 (Jamrozik, 2009), clearly placing education as a high value within the Australian society and becoming a lifetime pursuit for many people. However historically, the changes that have occurred over the years, have reinforced Australia’s problem with social inequalities within the education system.