Education Today

Additionally, more attempts at acquiring additional funds for poor schools could help to give lower class students more equal opportunities at education. With additional funding and programs, such students may be able to acquire the cultural capital needed to become upwardly mobile within the class system of our society. More vocational programs, teaching students a skill that can be directly applied in the workforce, can also serve as beneficial to students who do not live in an area where educational achievement is necessary for obtaining a job. Where there are no jobs available for students with high education, those who did not seek college degrees can still support their family based on a skill they have learned which is valued in alternative work environments.

Conclusion

In this work I have argued that class status is the biggest problem facing educators today. Inequalities produced by class status are often reinforced by education, and are virtually inescapable by those who hold the status. Students of lower classes do not possess the cultural and social capital needed for them to excel in an environment that values the capital that only members of middle and upper classes can easily obtain. Student may experience alienation due to their inability to adjust to evolving standards of education, begin to devalue education when pay off for hard work is not culpable, and are often inaccurately judged or labeled by teachers and administrators based solely on their class status. Educators and administrators frequently do not offer the same high quality experience to their lower class peers than their upper and middle class students, and may experience burnout due to factors manifested by their students’ status. Educating teachers and students about class inequalities, and adjusting curriculum to make up for inequalities attributed to the lack of social and cultural capital of lower class student can help to alleviate this problem. Also, importantly, additional funding given to poor schools can greatly lessen the educational quality gap between lower and upper class students.