Joining the Conversation: Step 2

Kiara Shuford

Megan Keaton

English 1102

10 April 2013

           

Joining the Conversation: Step 2

            When we read the “”in class it focused on the negative impact that low social class has on a student’s education. So for this paper I wanted to focus on how a student’s social class contributes to their education and how they can use education for social mobility.     

To begin you have to define social mobility and how it’s actually related to education. Zefang the author of the article, “” defines social mobility as,  “a phenomena in which enables, in the structure of social stratification an individual or group’s social status to move up or down their occupations to be transformed.” (Zefang610) Social mobility can be divided up into categories horizontal, vertical, intergenerational, and intra-generational, but for this question I only focused on intergenerational, which means in the same generation. So now how is social mobility related to education? The article “Social Mobility and Educational Selection” says that social class impacts the choices people make including education selection and what career people choose as well. This means that social class impacts choices such as classes and tests the student takes. But students that have a low socioeconomic status don’t have the resources than those students that belong to a higher class, so they tend to fall behind because of their lack of resources. “Education is a bridge to social mobility and can give underprivileged people the way to a more privileged life” (Zefang 611) and could be the only option for some students.

Three specific factors can contribute to the social mobility and education selections these students make according to the article. The first factor is your family's income; students are born into their social class and the income of their family’s impact them tremendously. So if other generations in your family have low incomes they most likely received a low education and this will ultimately be your fate as well. Another factor that contributes is your parents IQ; there is a direct relationship between your parents IQ and yours. The higher an IQ a student has the further they will go with their education. The last factor that contributes to social mobility and education you choose is what the author, Paul Attewell, calls high-mastery. The book describes high-mastery as “a sense that controls one’s own fate” (Attewell). These three things combine to predict how a student’s educational career will possibly turn out compared to their relationship. According to this research being in a low class will not keep you from going to college or higher education opportunities.

Not everyone thinks that being raised in a lower class actually hinders students educationally, the authors of the book Mobility and Inequality, they believe that underprivileged students have more drive to finish high school and to pursue higher education. Saying that “Wealth differences across families are interpreted more broadly, either as indicators of differential behavioral orientations correlated with savings behavior and lifetime success or reasons families to pursue alternative strategies for human capital investment in their offspring”.(Stanford University Press) And in the article, “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” they actually say that students from lower social classes are also targeted for things like graduate school and higher degree programs. They also believe that these students will be more inclined to work with students with low socioeconomic statuses’ in their career choices.

So, what can happen to give lower class students better resources and a better understanding of their curriculum? In the book A Notion at Risk, the authors give a few suggestions on how we as a country could do just that. The first thing they think would help is summer school or an extended year for these students. As you can imagine all students loose most of what they learn during the school year when they have summer break, so if summer school or an extended year was enforced this wouldn’t happen as much and these students can advance. They say “summer programs should provide poor children with the types of enriching experiences that middle-class children receive during the summer, as opposed to the traditional approach of reviewing curriculum taught during the year.”(Century Foundation), so not teaching the same subjects twice, but going more in depth with these subjects. The other thing they believe will give lower class students more of a chance for social mobility is increased funding in their schools. These funds wouldn’t be to just increase the resources students have at school, but to also help their families at home, so they have a better environment there as well. Money for things like food and housing would be given because they are conducive to a good learning environment and because the student would only have to worry about their studies.

After doing all this research and what I‘ve witnessed I’ve acquired an opinion on education and social mobility. For me I would say that I didn’t grow up as bad as the students that I’m writing about, but I know some people that did and have made, something out of their life with education. Having more resources than others can help, but it shouldn’t hold anyone back. People that work hard to overcome their shortcomings I believe deserve what they strive for and as a country if we can help give students more of a chance to overcome these short comings we should.

 

Works Cited

A Century Foundation Book. A Notion at Risk. New York: Richard D. Kahlenberg, 2000, Print.

Attewell, Paul and David E. Lavin. Passing the Torch. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007. Print.

Dong Zefang, Wang Yanbin, Chen Wenijiao. “Social Mobility and Educational Selection.” Educational Research and Experiment vol. 1 (2009): 13-18. Electronic.

Stanford University Press. Mobility and Inequality. Stanford, California: Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford, 2006. Print.

Teresa McDowell, Andrae’ L. Brown, Nicole Cullen, and April Duyn. “Social Class in Family Therapy Education: Experiences of Low SES Students” Journal of Marital and Family Therapy Vol. 39 (2013): 72-__. Electronic.