Education is perhaps the most important institution in modern American society. It is a useful tool in different ways that encompass the preparation and provision of opportunities for children to enable them to eventually lead wholesome lives. Through the process of education, children are socialized and taught societal principles and conventions beyond those that are imparted on the family level. In addition, children acquire the skills necessary to do work and contribute meaningfully to society. Consequently, education provides the opportunity to indoctrinate the moral and cultural values of a community into its children, which serves to enlighten them on the importance of aspiration and prosperity thereby teaching them to seize the opportunities that arise in society (Fulcher and Scott 114). However, social class inequalities remain a determining factor on the quality of education an individual receives, consequentially, there is persistent research into the relationship between inequality and education in the field of sociology and this plays a crucial role in molding the educational strategies that are developed by educationalists. I, therefore, argue that while educational attainment is a prime marker of social class in the United States, the enduring socio-economic stratification is also conversely the main obstacle to an individual’s fulfillment of the same.
It is arguable that the prominence of an individual in the conventional American social order can play an important role in determining the levels of achievements one has. This paper will discuss how the stratification that arises out of the social order influences the quality and overall direction of children’s education through material and cultural deprivation. Sociologists posit that our society is vertically stratified along specific factors create privilege and inequality in unequal measures. Social inequality is denoted by the existence of imbalanced opportunities and advantages for different social brackets.
Social Class
In the United States, social class continues to be a contentious issue, with numerous contesting meanings, representations, and even controversy over its validity as a concept (Eichar 27). Most Americans are cognizant of the three popularized classes of the rich, middle, and poor. However, as an issue arousing academic debate, some scholars have posited the existence of up to six different social classes (Gilbert 56), while others refute the very notion of social alignment in American society as it used to be in Europe (Warner, Meeker, and Eells 71). The existing definitions of social class align people in line with their residual wealth, income, educational attainment, and association with a particular social network.
Sociologist Dennis Gilbert’s model of class structures features six definite social classes. These classes are delineated vertically from the topmost upper or capitalist class, which is usually composed of the wealthy and influential people within society. This is followed by the upper middle class, which features professionals who have higher education and high income, then, the middle class people who received college education and have office jobs, and the lower middle class with people with little college education. The lower cadre groups include the working class, which is comprised of clerical and “blue collar” workers with extremely regimented jobs, and the final lower class that is inclusive of the “working poor” and the unemployed underclass.
Sometimes the markers of social class can incorporate numerical factors like wealth and income, while other times it involves qualitative elements like education, traditions, and societal status. It is arguable then that the idea of social class describes the mechanisms through which people have categorized themselves along lines of shifting prominence such as; authority, reputation, and remuneration. Consequently, in these societal configurations, there are particular jobs that are considered to be attractive and authoritative, while some are seen as mundane, unimportant, and monotonous. Essentially then, the more prominence an individual has on the social scale, the higher the degree of education and skill required to discharge their work and sustain the social level.
Educational Attainment
Receiving education in the United States is similar to the situation in other developed nations where the bulk of citizens have a high school diploma and the amount of people with college education outweighs that of high school dropouts. To back this notion, the United States Census Bureau asserts that 9% of individuals above 25 years of age hold a graduate degree, while 27.9% have a bachelor’s degree and 53% make due with just having attended college (US Census Bureau). Therefore, the American population spends a significant percentage of its time in conventional educational initiatives, which in turn, coupled with other factors like race, age, household organization, and geography, determines the income levels of individuals. Moreover, as evidenced by statistics from the US Census Bureau, income and educational attainment have remained co-dependent (US Census Bureau). Hence, the families and demographics with the loftiest levels educational attainment correspondingly have the best household income and overall affluence.
A prerequisite college education is a requirement for most middle-class professions, which is usually an expensive affair to concede. Accordingly then, the tuition costs at prestigious private colleges are often prohibitive, even when the buffer of financial aid is considered. Arguably, the attainment of high school diplomas and graduate degrees remains a key aspirational facet of the middle and upper middle-class individual. Consequently, the University is still the social group’s most revered institution and is considered the most important gatekeeper of the professional middle class (Ehrenreich 81).
Furthermore, most of the US citizens with a doctorate and professional degree are ranked amongst the country’s best income earners (US Census Bureau, 2006). Meanwhile, individuals with bachelor’s degrees had incomes that were substantially higher than the national average, while those with minimal college education stayed at par with the country average. Considering the vast population of the country consists of high school graduates, it suits then that most average Americans get a little college education even though it does not always culminate with obtaining a degree. Overall, for most Americans, educational attainment is associated with income and occupation thereby fulfilling its purpose as a vital hallmark that denotes social class.
Social Class and Education
Whereas the American social class structure is still a loosely outlined abstraction with conflicting propositions, education remains one of the chief measures of social class in the United States. Moreover, mere educational attainment itself is viewed as a status symbol, perhaps because it is closely linked to the two prime markers of social class, that is, occupation and income. The cultural presumption is that a well-educated individual should be properly recompensed as a reflection of their achievement in society. As Ehrenreich opines in her book Fear of Falling, a graduate degree and the many pre-requisite years of higher education serve as the essentials necessary a person join the “professions” and become a member of the professional middle class (p.49).
The intersection between social stratification and education is a convoluted one that raises inequalities in education through material and cultural dispossession.
Material Deprivation
This theory propounds the significance of vital resources necessary for educational attainment by Americans. Material deprivation, therefore, denotes the apparent factors that are associated with poverty in the working class which make it difficult for children to acquire a proper education. Such factors associated with low-income earning groups may include; ill accommodation, health care deficiencies, child neglect, and a struggle for basic amenities.
It has been put forward that children of working-class families are sometimes doomed from the start due to the lack of resources putting them out of school and into work early (Heaton and Lawson 66). While it is a credit to an individual’s endurance, the effort to relieve the financial burden of the household usually puts a strain on educational achievements. Furthermore, it is argued that due to the discrepancy in household incomes, children from middle-class backgrounds are more likely to attend school consistently including getting a college education, compared to those from working-class homes (Halsey, Heath, and Ridge 79). However, it is also evident that children from poor and working-class homes can succeed; hence, it is prudent to note that cultural elements such as parental involvement also play a role in educational attainment.
Cultural Deprivation
Annette Lareau’s theory of “concerted cultivation” propounds the cultural reasons for social stratification in educational attainment. Her hypothesis advances the idea of intentional parental involvement in a child’s growth and development through curating tasks and experiences for the children. The scholar notes that schools promote the use of concerted cultivation as a child-rearing strategy, and even though middle-class parents usually enforce the measure, most working-class parents do not meet the requirement (Lareau 97).
Consequently, it is argued that due to the inadequate “child-rearing” norms of the working class parents, their children, in turn; end up feeling alienated from the standards and methodologies of educational institutions. Conversely, the students from middle-class start to have a sense of self and privilege.
In a similar mold to Lareau’s argument, Randall Collins puts forward the idea that public schools are essentially interactive facilities that instruct and honor the middle-class culture of rivalry and success (48). In essence then, the privileged are distinguished from the rest by enrolling to expensive, private, and eminent institutions of learning, where they are indoctrinated to take up authoritative positions (Collins 50). Therefore, by inculcating the culture of middle-class through public education, the upper class safeguards its control over influential position, while the rest seek the pre-requisites to participate in an inferior labor market and economy.
Finally, the scholar Pierre Bourdieu proposed in 1977 that the current education system itself is intentionally geared to result in the reproduction and stratification of society (487). He argues that this is achieved by edifying the “cultural capital” of the elite classes of society. For instance, students who display the desired cultural capital are recompensed with lofty academic achievements (Bourdieu 488). In addition, according to Bourdieu, people from the elite class who join the workforce usually have high paying jobs in authoritative roles within the community (489). In a never-ending cycle of reinforcing the social order, members of the upper class are honored with plum academic achievements for attaining the desired cultural capital, thereby enabling those members to attain even higher levels of education. Conversely, persons from the working class who regularly fail to meet the required cultural capital are prepared for menial working class jobs.
Conclusion
In conclusion, some scholars such as Eichar advance the idea that the American society is economically and sociologically portioned in a unique way that leaves no room for definitive inequalities. However, others like Gilbert refute this notion and assert that distinct social configurations are easily identifiable, while Lloyd Warner also acknowledges the presence of class indicators.
It is therefore arguable that social stratifications have always been present in civilized societies and the persistent situation is just the modern reincarnation of the same phenomenon. As Warner suggests, perhaps a civilization as advanced as the American society inevitably requires a complex social hierarchy.
Works Cited
Bourdieu, P. “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction.” Power and Ideology in Education. Oxford UP, 1977.
Collins, Randall. The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. Academic Press, 1979.
Eichar, Douglas M. Occupation and Class Consciousness in America. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1989.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. Harper Collins, 1989.
Fulcher, James, and Scott, John. Sociology. Oxford University Press, 1999.
Gilbert, Dennis L. The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality. Sage Publications, 2017.
Heaton, Tim, and Tony Lawson. “Explaining Class Differences in Educational Achievement.” Education and Training, 1996, pp.65-95.
Halsey, Albert Henry, Anthony Francis Heath, and John Michael Ridge. Origins and Destinations: Family, Class, and Education in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford UP (Clarendon), 1980.
Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhood: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: California UP, 2003.
United States Census Bureau. “Report on Educational Attainment in the United States, 2003.” U.S. Census Bureau, Washington DC, 2004, https://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/p20-550.pdf. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.
United States Census Bureau. “Income Distribution of Individuals, Employed Full-Time, Year Round, Age 25-64, 2006.” US Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20060929073900/http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new03_028.htm. Accessed 31 Oct. 2018.
Warner, W. Lloyd, Marchia Meeker, and Kenneth Eells. What Social Class is in America.
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