Education not a great route to class mobility

[firecat]

via jae, who describes it as "A piece from the New York Times about the damning influence of social class on success at university in the U.S., even among those with intellectual and scholarship resources."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html

SAT coaches were once rare, even for families that could afford them. Now they are part of a vast college preparation industry.
Certainly as the payoff to education has grown — college graduates have greatly widened their earnings lead — affluent families have invested more in it. They have tripled the amount by which they outspend low-income families on enrichment activities like sports, music lessons and summer camps, according to Professor Duncan and Prof. Richard Murnane of Harvard.
...
The idea that education can be “selfish” — a belief largely alien among the upper-middle class — is one poor students often confront, even if it remains unspoken."

This seems kind of victim-blamey and armchair-psychologizing (discussing a woman who had problems with financial aid at her college and ended up being suspended):

Ms. Newton, Angelica’s former supervisor at the library, wondered if her conflict went beyond money, to a fear of the very success she sought. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say she was committing self-sabotage, but the thought crossed my mind,” she said. “For someone so connected to family and Grandma and the tamales, I wondered if she feared that graduating would alienate her.”

Comments

[0jack]

Wow. That last line you quote would have to work hard at being more racist.

[firecat]

Indeed it would.

[shehasathree]

This seems kind of victim-blamey and armchair-psychologizing.

Read the article a week or so ago. Totally agree about that comment; it really rubbed me up the wrong way. Sometimes a pipe is a fricking pipe!

[lilacsigil]

Living in a rural town, there can be some hostility to people who go to university, especially boys. But Ms Newton is being an asshole.

[staranise]

That final line could more accurately talk about the strain of having to fight prejudice both within her home community in addition to at school, so on either side she's fighting negative stereotypes and social alienation.

Oh wait. That would require admitting the existence of prejudice in modern America.

News that isn't new.

[outlier_lynn]

Spin, though, seems to be the new "knowledge."

It has been observed for years that only a tiny number of people can "work hard and get ahead" in America (or any place else). Class is alive and well in the US, but is hidden behind our "Land of Opportunity" rhetoric and class stereotypes.

A study that started out being about the status of divorced women that I read many, many years ago in college reached these conclusions:

1. A tiny fraction of the population might start poor and achieve wealth in America but their sociological class will not have improved more than a step or two above those people who most resemble them in culture. Wealth is not the same as class.

2. It is exceedingly difficult to move up in class and very easy to move down. The barriers to upward mobility is based on culture, race, gender, religion, etc., while the path to lower class is greased by any "fall from grace." Hence in 1975(ish) a newly divorced woman would dramatically lose both wealth and class standing while her newly divorced husband would lose neither. Regardless of who asked for the divorce and under what circumstances, public opinion was much harder on divorced women. (I don't see a lot of change in this.)

3. If one is stereotyped as lazy or intellectually challenged and still achieves wealth and academic honors, it will be seen as a fluke, as illicit, or undeserved (affirmative action). No class advancement.

Education certainly isn't a ticket to upward mobility. To move up, one must exhibit those traits and have the appearance that is the cultural norm for the high class.

People who are not "expected" to move up the ladder will find university a stressful place to be. One of the best examples of this is one almost never talked about and is nearly universal: The dumb jock. A world class athlete who is also at the top of his class in academic standing will still be seen as a dumb jock by many. Especially if the sport is football. This seems less true for female athletes -- maybe because they don't play football.