EDUCATION, CHANGE AND SOCIETY
ASSIGNMENT 2 – ESSAY
Success, achievement and participation at school are not simply a matter of intelligence or ability. Discuss this statement with reference to the concepts of cultural capital, hidden curriculum, class and socioeconomic status.
Since the beginning of education there have been many forms, which have been passed on from one generation to the next. Over the years education has evolved and is now seen as the education system all over the world. Today the education system is seen to be much more complex, but it still involves notions that have been around since the beginning of success, achievement and participation. Not only do these three aspects continue to contribute to the success of educating young people who are involved in the ever changing society that we live in. Intelligence and ability does have an impact on the success of individual students and there are also other impacts that can affect the outcome on individual schools and the education system. This essay will provide a brief overview of cultural capital, hidden curriculum, class and socio economic status and discuss the affect the success, achievement and participation has on a student’s education.
Holmes, Hughes and Julia (2007) defined cultural capital as an understanding and knowledge about culture, power and communication within a society a child lives in. All students will bring a backpack to school which will contain items such as a lunchbox, books, homework and personal belongings. Often education and university experts talk about a different type of backpack that students might bring to school. This backpack is often referred as a “virtual backpack” (Thomson 2002). Throughout Thomson’s (2007) book...
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The first scholarly essay I am going to discuss is Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work by Jean Anyon. Anyon believed that students of different economical statuses and the schools in their communities taught differently. She used schools in four different types of communities. The four types of communities are working class, middle-class, affluent professional and executive elite. She studied the students, teachers, principals, and staff as well as
Furthermore, Chapter 15 begins to explain educational inequality. In the United States, education is available but not to every child in the same way. Different social-classes means different schools, instructions, criteria, rates, and times. In addition to class differences, races and ethnics unfortunately play a role in educational achievement. For example, in general, African Americans, Latino/a’s, and Native Americans usually do worse in school than white or Asian American students
In their minds, if they do well in school, they can get a career that can help them become successful. Although the students do not put limits on the relationship between social class and education, the school system does. The view that the school system has for the classifications of intellectualism leaves out the interests of most of the students. The writer Graff address this in his article within the lines, “ Only much later did it dawn on me that the sports world was more compelling than school because it was more intellectual than school, not less. Sports after all was full of challenging arguments, debates, problems for analysis, and intricate statistics that you could care about, as school conspicuously was not.” (Graff 790) In those lines, he speaks about sports, which is a topic that is not considered to hold intellectual value by the school system. He shows that other interests besides the things we learn in school can have intellectual value. He makes it apparent that it does not matter the individual’s economic status because they can still be smart. This article shows that everyone can connect and contribute to learning with their different interests, and their interest can bridge the gap that society creates between the social classes if they decide that they want to be successful and take their education
Anoyn, J. (n.d.). From social class and the hidden curriculum of work In EDUC 160 Urban Education (Spring 2014, pp. 127-136).
Capital culture as said above include cultural deprivation which means the basic values, attitudes and skills that are needed for education success through primary socialization in the family. Some cultural deprivation theorists believe that the working class fail to socialize their children sufficiently as they are ‘culturally deprived’. This is when the children don’t have the right equipment for school so they can achieve the best grade and the reason to why they are under- achieving in item A it that critics believe that ‘material factors’ affect the gap in social class the most.
The novel “Women Without class” by Julie Bettie, is a society in which the cultural you come from and the identity that was chosen for you defines who you are. How does cultural and identity illustrate who we are or will become? Julie Bettie demonstrates how class is based on color, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. The author describes this by researching her work on high school girls at a Central Valley high school. In Bettie’s novel she reveals different cliques that are associated within the group which are Las Chicas, Skaters, Hicks, Preps, and lastly Cholas and Cholos. The author also explains how race and ethnicity correspondence on how academically well these students do. I will be arguing how Julie Bettie connects her theories of inequality and culture capital to Pierre Bourdieu, Kimberle Crenshaw, Karl Marx and Engels but also how her research explains inequality among students based on cultural capital and identity.
Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” claims that students from different social classes are treated differently in schools. Anyon’s article is about a study she conducted to show how fifth graders from the working, middle, and upper class are taught differently. In Anyon’s article, she provides information to support the claim that children from different social classes are not given the same opportunities in education. It is clear that students with different socio-economic statuses are treated differently in academic settings. The curriculum in most schools is based on the social class that the students belong to. The work is laid out based on academic professionals’ assumptions of students’ knowledge. Teachers and educational professionals assume a student’s knowledge based on their socio-economic status.
Some people may believe that education all over the United States is equal. These people also believe that all students no matter their location, socioeconomic status, and race have the same access and quality of education, but ultimately they are wrong. Throughout history, there has been a huge educational disparity between the wealthy and marginalized communities. The academic essay “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, an American critical thinker and researcher in education, conveys that depending on the different economic backgrounds students have, they will be taught in a specific way. He reveals that the lower economic background a child has then the lower quality their education will be and the higher their economic background is the higher quality their education is. Anyon’s theory of a social ladder is extremely useful because it sheds light on the
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We are told the children of today are the future, and we should put more value on education, but some children are demotivated and some are motivated in our education system. Some popular assumptions on why some students succeed are they are intelligent hard-working students. The popular assumptions why some students do not succeed are they are at risk by a culture of inherent violent. All students should have the same resources, and the same treatments.
Education is a vital part of society. It serves the beneficial purpose of educating our children and getting them ready to be productive adults in today's society. But, the social institution of education is not without its problems. Continual efforts to modify and improve the system need to be made, if we are to reap the highest benefits that education has to offer to our children and our society as a whole.
This capital reproduction can be transmitted through the hidden curriculum, where schools can influence values and attitudes. (Giddens, 1989) When significance is put on reproducing the dominant class, the working class cultural is not valued within the educational system. This results in the working class students’ feeling alienated and out of their depth. (Drudy, 2009). According to Drudy and Lynch (1993) the cultural capital is the hidden links between achievement in school and cultural background, there is strong evidence to suggest that there are strategies in place allow social inequalities to continue generation after generation. When it comes to cultural capital the higher classes have the advantage over the lower class studies through assess more resources such as trips to museums, grinds and IT. While social capital allows the higher classes to benefit from the ‘jobs for the boys’ mentality which still exists in Ireland. This network of clubs and membership of groups help the higher class succeed. (Drudy and Lynch, 1993). Bourdieu (1973) theories prove that it is not just a matter of economic or financial capital which is holding back the working classes but a wide range of factors. (Brown, 1973) According to Bourdieu the habitus refers to the division in social class, the lifestyles and values of these particularly social