The Issue with Cultural Capital

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Recommended: Educational implications of social class

When thinking of our family, and our background, most would argue to say that what we get from them are positive things such as a sense of comfort and pride. In countries like the United States, having a family to lean on is never a bad thing. However, what most of us do not usually see is that, sometimes the very own people who brought us up, and had the utmost influence on our lives, are the very own people who have set barriers for us. Such is the case presented when Lee Bryant, a contributor to the History Learning Site, says, “people who are working class have themselves to blame for the failure of their children in education” (par.1). Cultural capital is an attribute handed down to us from those who have raised us, such as our parents; unfortunately, like most other things in the world, the people in the upper class are the one’s who most benefit from this idea, leaving the rest of society in a bind trying to figure out how to break the vicious cycle.
The issue with cultural capital is that we do not have any control over it. To a certain degree, it comes down to luck and destiny as we are each born into certain families who have too been passed down a certain cultural capital from the families to which they were born in. Being surrounded by a certain type of success, whether it’d be good or bad, makes it easy for one to end up in similar situations. It is for reasons like this that Vincent J. Roscigno and James W. Ainsworth-Darnell, authors and contributors of the book, Sociology of Education, claim that
“background matters for achievement” (par. 1). How far your achievements take you depends on the quality of cultural capital your guardian gives you growing up.
This can be a major problem for the less fortunate as in m...

... middle of paper ...

... my kids with an unimaginable amount of cultural capital in which they will use to excel and prosper.

Works Cited

Annette Lareau. “Social Class Differences in Family-School Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Capital” Sociology of Education Vol. 60, No. 2 Apr., 1987, pp. 73-85. JSTOR. Web. 17 November 2013.
Bryant, Lee. “Cultural Capital.” HistoryLearningSite.co.uk. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 November 2013.
Giddens, Anthony, et al. Introduction to Sociology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print.
Vincent J. Roscigno and James W. Ainsworth-Darnell. “Race, Cultural Capital, and Educational Resources: Persistent Inequalities and Achievement Returns.” Sociology of Education Vol. 72, No. 3 Jul.1999, pp. 158-178. JSTOR. Web. 17 November 2013.

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