Summary Of Ain 'T No Makin' It By Jay Macleod

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Ain’t No Makin’ It : Aspirations and Attainments in a Low-Income Neighborhood by Jay MacLeod. Ain’t No Makin’ It is a critique on the ways that social class is reproduced from generation to generation. If we see this essay from a sociological point of view then it is a critical analysis of Aspirations and Attainments of people that varies from class to class, race to race etc. According to the essay and the author, there are distinct ideologies in this community who believe that school systems only have the capacity to overcome the achievement gap between class of students i.e. rich and poor. We must admit that this essay is really complex if we go deep through it. The author divided the book into three distinct parts, Part I The Hallway Hangers …show more content…

Hallway Hangers and Brothers had entirely different way of living life with different perspective. Hallway Hangers believed that to gain respects from others one’s must be bad and fearless. In the contrary, the Brothers give respects without any physical strength. Their way of living life displays their individual personalities what they have. Juan is only the one from Brothers who had completed school and he was not physically strong. All the boys from brothers were good at extracurricular activities. They were good at sports. The boys from Hallway Hangers could just roam around the society doing nothing at all and they don’t have any problem doing so. However, the Brothers couldn’t stay doing absolutely nothing. They believed to utilize their spare time doing anything that would be productive to them. The Brothers were not interested in stuffs like drinking, making troubles or engaging in criminal activities. Brothers were committed to following rules and gaining their degrees. All of the Hallway Hagners boys attended the same high school. Their experiences split in a huge amount. The author describes how the school is comprised of myriad tracks which are created to motivate students to choose the subject or course of study which will be productive and suit for their future. Nevertheless, we saw how without sufficient counseling …show more content…

Author McLeod finds to investigate the tightness between personal agency and structural barriers to social mobility. According to his own words, how “class based institutional mechanisms set limits on mobility, thereby ensuring social reproduction, while cultural innovations can be at once both functional of dysfunctional for social reproduction” (PN 152). He acknowledges that the society is structured in such a way that despite of personal ambitions and aspirations, “no matter how diligently they devote themselves to schools, they cannot escape the constraints of social class” (PN:

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