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.