Education and social mobility Flashcards
what is social mobility
The ability to move up or down the social class structure.
Social mobility can either be upwards or downwards. What are the two main ways of measuring relative social mobility
Intergenerational mobility: Movement between generations.
It’s the difference between a parent and their adult child’s occupational position.
Intragenerational mobility: An individual’s mobility throughout their life.
For example, comparing an individual’s starting occupation and their occupation at their time of retirement.
What are the functionalists arguments about the relationship between social mobility and education
-it focuses on how the education system represents a bridge between the family and the economy.
-Social mobility is functionally necessary , people must be allowed to move up or down the occupational or social structure.This ensures that important social positions are filled by those who are most qualified.
- Upward mobility is earned through demonstrating/exhibiting individual merit.
-For education systems to perform their role effectively they must be meritocratic, rewards like well paid high status occupations are earned and allocated through individual abilities and differences
Evaluation of functionalists view on social mobility
Inequalities of educational outcomes that affect social mobility are justified by meritocratic competition.
However, the education system is not always meritocratic. The working class and ethnic minorities force systematic disadvantage.
Neo-Marxists Bowles and Gintis argue that sponsored mobility takes place in the education system. The upper and middle classes enjoy privileges such as private tuition which their working-class peers cannot afford. Middle-class students’ parents ‘ backgrounds help them achieve a high paid and high-status employment.
The relationship between educational achievement and economic success is not significant.
What is meritocracy
System in which people are sifted and sorted into positions of success, and power based on their merit and abilities.
How is the education system not meritocratic
-Some groups such as the working class and ethnic minorities experience systematic disadvantages.
Bowles and Gintis arguments on sponsored mobility and meritocracy
They argue that modern education systems are characterised by sponsored mobility. This means that upper and middle class children enjoy cultural advantages over their working class peers e.g their ability to buy high status , high quality private education. Their progress from school to high paid employment is sponsored by their parents class background.
Marxists views on social mobility
-Education is not a source of social mobility but rather a means in which the higher classes are able to cement their privileged social position.
-Althusser argues that the reproduction of capitalism involves each new generation being taught the skills and knowledge and ideas required in the workplace. The schools rule is to help the children of the ruling class to follow in their parents footsteps.
-For Marxists therefore the role of the education system is to educate most people just enough to be useful employees and a small number just enough to take up high powered elite working roles.
In relation to social mobility, Marxists argue that education is not a strong means to social mobility because as more students start performing highly well, the powerful groups and ruling class simply raise the entry requirements for elite/high-status occupations. This lowers the level of occupational mobility.
Aldridge (2004) views on social mobility
-He argues that social closure not only limits upward intra-generational social mobility (e.g from manual jobs to higher status professionals) but it causes it to decline. Entry requirements for higher status occupations are now tightened ,this means that it is impossible to enter these occupations without having been through a particular educational process. Children may gain more educational qualifications than their grandparents but the economic value of these qualifications decline , For example occupations like nursing once required only GCSE’s but now they require higher levels e.g an undergraduate degree.
Evaluation of Marxists views on social mobility
Neo-marxists views on education and social mobility
Neo-Marxists view education as a tool used by the ruling class to maintain dominance and control. They say that the ruling class uses the media to show that the education system is meritocratic when it’s actually not. Hence, the individual is blamed, and not the education system.
Bowles and Gintis claim that cultural reproduction is secured through the correspondence (similarity) between workplace and educational institutes (schools).
Hegemony: Dominance of a social class. It’s often the ruling class that has the hegemonic control.
Evaluation of Neo-marxists views
Willis study of the working class ‘lads’ suggests that some students are aware of the limitations of education and work. They see through the system , for example and consciously rebel against it.
The correspondence between education and work is based on superficial similarities.
Many students see they are destined for low-status work and see little point in learning what the education system teaches.
New Rights views on social mobility
New Right s argue that if societies provide the same opportunities to their members through a meritocratic schooling system, then educational success or failure results from the different choices people make.
Saunders (1996), argued that social mobility is related to education in the sense that it reflects the life choices made by different individuals and groups. In any competitive system, there must be ‘winners and losers’. Some people will have more of the ‘good things in life’ than others. Who these winners and losers turn out to be in meritocratic societies is decided (determined) by the choices they make, not by factors such as class, gender or ethnicity.
Saunders argued that middle-class parents invest heavily in their children’s education and this investment choice’ combined with hard work by the children themselves, is rewarded by higher educational qualifications. This does not guarantee that such children will be upwardly mobile, but it usually guards against downward mobility.
Differences in achievement are seen by the New Right as the result of unsuccessful students choosing not to participate. Where individuals end up in the class structure is also the outcome of their life choices - for example, the difference between choosing to work consistently in school to gain qualifications or leaving school as soon as possible.
Neo-functionalists encourage marketisation and argue that schools should be privately owned rather than state-controlled.
Parentocracy meaning
parents with wealth and resources are able to influence their child’s education, so that achievement is the result of this influence rather than of the child’s ability and efforts
New Right evaluation
Shepherd and Rogers found that Christian faith schools took a lower proportion of working-class children than their catchment area suggests they should.
Hence, consumer choice is only really available to those who have the money and resources to make such choices. In schools which conduct entrance exams, middle-class students succeed, because their parents provide them with cultural capital.
Feminist approach to social mobility
feminist approach to social mobility
-Feminists are critical of the male bias involved in the practice of categorising women in social mobility studies according to the class of their male partners (Acker, 1973). Many prefer an approach in which individuals are allocated to a class according to their own job.
-Quantitative studies of social mobility have tended to focus on social class rather than on gender (Abrantes and Abrantes, 2014). However, evidence suggests that women’s chances of upward social mobility are more constrained than those of men.
-One reason for this relates to gendered subject choices at school and beyond. Qualifications in Science, Technology,
Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects are highly valued in labour markets and can lead to well-paid careers.
