The Relationship Between Social Class and Educational Achievement

Social class refers to the system of stratification of the different groups of people in a society. Social class makes everyone’s lives extremely different. So does education. Not surprisingly, affluent students in well-off school districts have higher rates of high school graduation, college attendance and entry to the more selective colleges. This has little to do with intelligence or ability. Statistics provided by the College Board for 2013, suggest that having more money is the key to getting

Thus, globalization forces researchers to understand the influence of mobility, in addition to education, on social class (Banks & Banks, 2013). This articles I chose to investigate social class and its implications for educational outcomes are Social class and the hidden curriculum of work by Jean Anyon and Reappraising the importance of class in higher education entry and persistence by John Field and Natalie Morgan Klein.

Regardless of social class most parents wish for their children to be happy, healthy, and successful; however, parents disagree on the best way to raise their children to be all of those things, which is when social class determines the parents’ child rearing method. Whether a child comes from a working class or middle class family affects the child’s development and socialization; and consequently the child’s future.

Throughout time one of the most obvious class markers has been education and it still remains so. People who belong to the higher classes view education as a higher priority and have more access to the best school in the country. When stuck in lower classes people must attend schools where books, computers, and education are not found at the same level. An article in the Atantic Times mentions that “ Kids who belong to lower social classes fell behind children in the upper classes by about a year or so.” Today, that gap is close to four years.” For those in the upper class their kids are placed in an abundance of classes from an early age such as foreign language, art, and many sports. Children who are in lower classes have no way of getting a head start when compared to children in higher classes Sarah Garland also mentions how “ When children have plenty of time to build social skills and bigger vocabularies in short term reduce their chances of

Social class is a division of a society based on social and economic status which can include levels of wealth, success, power of authority, and influence. Status is can be defined or grouped having common economic, cultural, or political interests.

Over the board, middle class students generally do better than working class students in educational achievement. Some sociologists argue that this is due to three key factors. Labelling, subcultures and marketisation. This focuses on things that occur internally.

“If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Those words were the famous phrase spoke by Johnnie Cochran, one of the defense attorneys, in the case of “People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson.” This eminent motto marked a key turning point in what is known as the most publicized criminal trial in American history. This case brought about many social issues in the country and the American Criminal Justice system. Of the many social topics raised by the case, a few that are most imperative are social class, education, and race.

Socioeconomic status plays a key factor in the type of education a child receives today and ultimately functions to keep individuals in the class they are born into. Those who are part of the lower class receive the bare minimum in education with the end goal being blind obedience, while the upper class is educated in a way that encourages self-regulation, individual thought, and creativity. These vast differences in education are no mistake and are put in place for overall control.

Social Class is a position held by an individual composed of combinations of parental education, parental occupation status, family income and wealth. Students whose parents have higher levels of any of these traits of class, more often than not, have better opportunities. Essentially, education and opportunities stem from money. If a parent has a higher income, they’ll be able to provide more help to their children if they’re falling behind in school. Also, they have the ability to assist in paying for college and those with higher education feel the need to help their children with paying for college. The more money parents have, the better the schools, and the better the education. Another factor that plays in the role of education inequality

One of the realities that exist, is that the social class a family is in, has a huge impact on the education of achievement amongst their children. In the article, Gregory Mantsio cites the idea of Richard De Lone, by providing scores from the college board to examine the correlation between family income,

In Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum, Anyon takes a gander at course work and understudy instructor collaboration in grade schools situated in groups with shifting levels of financial status, and she endeavors to discover proof of the distinctions in student work in schools in poorer communities versus those in wealthier groups, with an end goal to bolster the contention made by different types of knowledge that government funded schools in our general public give diverse sorts of information and distinctive instructive encounters to offspring of diverse social classes.

The literature review addresses the following question: Does social class inequality affect higher education? The theoretical paradigm that is considered for this question is the Critical paradigm, in which is mainly qualitative and inductive. Critical paradigm is appropriate to answer this particular question because it involves inductive reasoning that begins from a specific observation to a more generalize. The paradigm also looks at how people are at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining a higher education and incorporates observations and interviews that cultivate a conversation and the interviewee’s reflection. By interviewing people in different social classes and asking how it affects their education, researchers are able to identify the affects social class has on higher education.

I absolutely think that social class interacts with school goals/functions and the conflicts they experience. Very often a school will have a focus like sports or art and it is what their funding is mostly used for. My own high school was focused on sports over everything. If you were a student athlete you received extra attention and constant help to make sure your grades were passing. To be involved in sports you needed to be able to afford to participate and buy equipment. You also needed access to transportation to make it to events and many athletes’ parents were very involved in helping and being at the school. There was almost an entire network to support athletes, but it was mostly exclusive to athletes. If you could not afford to be

Brown (1997) argues that middle class families impose values onto their children regarding education from a young age; they place high importance on educational qualifications as they are aware that the job market is becoming increasingly competitive (cited Ball and Vincent, 2001). This suggests that middle-class pupils value school and try to get as much as they can out of it, thus have higher levels of attainment than working-class pupils.

"We are shaped by society 's structures," is the primary concept of the idea developed by C. Wright Mills (Henslin). In this paper, I will demonstrate how my social class affected my family life and education.