Social Inequality And Education example essay topic

Education: Equal Opportunity? The U.S. Educational system has historically divided into two objective groups. The first objective focuses on increasing opportunity. The second objective focuses on stabilizing an unequal society. The objective of increasing opportunity has mainly emphasized on more than discussions of schooling. Thomas Jefferson implemented a plan in 1779, it promised the laboring class more opportunity to attend higher education.

The point of the plan was to rake out the brilliant from the poor class, and add them to the prospering upper class. The goal of the plan was to divide the youth lives in laboring, and learned when they reached adulthood. This was a method of placing people in positions. The present schooling structure of society still follows Jefferson's plan.

Education is seen as a means of enhancing wealth and morals. The objective of stabilizing an unequal society, worked on the discussions of schooling. It pointed out the factors of an unequal contest of social authority, and social just of education in the U.S. The biggest point laying out education path for children was depended on the socioeconomic backgrounds. The poor had a lower probability of attending elite institution as of the wealthy class.

This conclusion was based on statistical evidence. The process of stabilizing an unequal society is much more difficult to achieve. Increasing opportunity is much more easier to attain, therefore opportunity has been practiced more. Bowles and Gintis article explains how schooling has supported the capitalist economic system. The authors came to this conclusion because education itself was created to help, and develop the cabalist order in society.

Education was used provided to train people with knowledge of information in a fast growing capitalist society. Making the people knowledgeable enough, to apply skills learned from school into the capitalist order. The second reason why education was mandated was because many different races and social background would provide fittings of the varied economic opportunity in society. Creating equal opportunity in education would then give many varied cultures an opportunity to choose roles in life.

Jefferson's two-track educational system also followed the same method of mapping out the lives of people in a capitalist society. The two-track system separated the lower social class as the proletarians, while the learned as the bourgeois. The separation between the laborers and the owners is a perfect example of the social conflict paradigm. There is a division between two different categories of social status.

The owners have more power therefore they command what goes on in the society. The laborers have little or any control in the capitalist society. Today's society still rests on a capitalist order; it will continue to do so because they have the economic power to do so. According to Bowles and Gintis, results have concluded that socioeconomic status determines greater education attainment regardless of IQ. Countless research on how far a student will go in education has been determined by socioeconomic background.

People with greater wealth tend to have more encouragement and greater educated parent then a student who is poor. Based on statistical evidence highly educated parents, tend to pass the educational background on their children. The lower social class tends to work full time at an early age to help support their families. They simply do not have the time to attend higher education. The issue on IQ does not dramatically affect how long an individual will stay in school. Based on the data by Samuel and Valerie Nelson, on the Educational attainments of people with childhood IQs and socioeconomic background.

The data concluded that family socioeconomic class does influence greater years of schooling. IQs did not show much of a wide margin in the number of years of schooling attained by an individual. With the social inequality in education, this prompts for the action of reform in education. Too many families who belong in the low end of economic poverty are not receiving much of any opportunity or motivation, to continue with higher education. Especially in a rich capitalist economy, we still have social inequality and education itself.

To solve this problem we must implement the idea of capitalist welfare. This process involves giving aid to people in a market-based economy. If this does not happen, poor families will still continue to suffer with insufficient educational background. As a result poverty and social inequality will still continue to plaque the U.S.