While social class impacts nearly every area of our lives, we do not often realize how deeply in impacts our education. Moreover, we do not realize the growing social gap is something that will not end, regardless of how often we are told that it is closing. Children born into low-income families are at a disadvantage, often from the moment they are born. The socialization experienced by low-income students in comparison to high-income students and the perception of their social classes often changes the impact of education on either individual.
The article, “Why Does the Gap Persist,” indicated many different risk factors within various social classes that could impact that average student’s ability to succeed. Moreover, Barton (2004) indicated why these risk factors interfere with each student based on their social class, and how it is linked to the continuous and ever-widening gap between social classes. While society tells us the gap is shrinking, and achievement equality for all students is nearing, this seems to be a lie . For example, from birth children from low-income families, and minority children are often handicapped academically because, as Barton points out, malnourished infants often do not achieve the same educationally as infants who are born healthy (2004). The Social Analysis of Class Structure indicates 85% of all infants born to low-income parents, single parents, or minorities, will be born below an appropriate birthweight or will be born prematurely, handicapping their social and motor development .
As their lives continue, the social gap persists in various ways that a child from a low-income, minority, or single-parent household has no control over. It damns them to a lower achievement rate than a child from a higher income, Caucasian, or two-parent household. Home-to-school connections, as Barton (2004) outlines, are a factor for children who hope to make high achievements academically. Children who have high rates of parental involvement at home typically achieve more in school and do better concerning their grades. Studies show Hispanic and African American children receive the least amount of help from family concerning their school work based on the amount of time parents work, the number of children in the home, whether the home is a single-parent household, etc. and the result is at the detriment of the child’s education . The social gap persists because the child is at the whim of their social class; they were born into this social class and, in a sense, are bound to it because it essentially decides how well they will do academically, which decides which social class they will end up in as they approach adulthood. As such, this also decided which social class their children will be positioned in as they enter school, and the cycle continues, unbroken forever.
How a parent and society may socialize a child to understand their social class may differ greatly from how the media socializes a child to understand their social class. A parent and society mat attempt to coerce the child into being realistic about their social class, assuming the child is from a low-income class, or a minority. Perhaps the parents will demand the child realize they will never run a Fortune 500 company or never get into Harvard because the family cannot afford to send them. Society, in turn, will also treat the child differently than they would a child who is from the upper-class. They may begin to understand their status based on this treatment and these words. Meanwhile, a child from the upper-class may be told the deserve all of the good things they are literally handed, and will never have to work for anything. Society will dote on them based on the class they were born into, and everybody around them will teach them those stuck in the lower class of society got their by their own means. Nobody will tell the children of the upper class that citizens of the lower class are often born into poverty and inadvertently stuck in a sociological cycle of under-achievement . As such, the child from the upper-class will grow up compassionless, believing the upper class is somehow better based only on their birth status.
The differences in how these social statuses are perceived will affect every area of the two young individuals’ life, including school. Not only will teachers begin to assume the student from a lower socioeconomic class is going to do poorly simply based on their status, but the student themselves may also begin to assume there is no point to attaining an education because they will get nowhere in life. Whatever achievement the student was seeing, or was capable of will plummet and their life will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. While the obligations of their social class are, in a way, forced upon them, they also may begin to force such obligations on themselves, believing they also are doomed to the same life as those around them. School will become another dead end. The student residing in the upper class will have none of these thoughts. They will have been told their entire lives they will achieve great things and, having had access to resources the likes of which students in the lower classes have never seen or heard, it is likely they will achieve many academic honors. They may achieve some without even trying because they have been socialized their entire life to know they can, while the student in the lower class has been socialized their entire life to know they cannot.
In sum, the greatest difference between the students, and why academics will be a dead end for one and a safe haven for the other. The student form the poorer social class will believe they cannot achieve as much as others, while the student from the upper-class will know they can achieve anything they want to. Socialization, among other key factors such as school-to home help, technological applications, reading when they are young, etc. will allow one student to excel while the other flounders. The social gap continues to widen, and students continue to suffer.
References
Barton, P. E. (2004). Why Does the Gap Persist. Closing Achievement Gaps, 8-13.
Healey, J. F., & O'Brien, E. (2014). Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Sacramento: SAGE Publications.
Parkin, F. (2013). The Social Analysis of Class Structure. New York: Routledge.
