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Education inequality in america
An essay on education and inequality
Education inequality theory
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In this essay I am going to evaluate the different sources to find the causes of inequalities. There are many resources available including academic research papers, government statistics and autobiographies. Media sources can also be a valuable source showing how issues of inequalities are represented and how these shape how the wider society thinks. Within each source, I will be discussing how information regarding educational inequalities can be extracted with a few examples.
However, I will be looking at the causes of inequalities, such as gender, school, ethnicity, race, wealth and income, social class and place of residence. Other aspects of this subject that have recently been front-page news have been that of women’s pay and education, gross inequalities in income distribution and the multiple discriminations created by the divided structures of the education system. I am interested in this specific area because of personal involvement as a pupil in a challenging secondary school in West London and as a young woman coming from a particular cultural and ethnic background and community. I am therefore interested in how inequalities are either challenged or re-inforced through the education system.
Inequality is the unequal distribution of opportunities, rewards, and power among and between individuals, households, and groups is a defining feature of all unknown societies. Social inequality is characterized by the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society. It contains structured and recurrent patterns of unequal distributions of goods, wealth, opportunities, rewards, and punishments Things that happen within the education system can bring about inequa...
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...for them to be taught and learn effectively. This causes a lot of problems in the education system .
As Steve Bartlett “Introduction to Education Studies” said “As time goes on the difference between groups of pupils may be seen to widen and this is due to the increasing effects of being taught differently” (2012, Chapter 10 page 259)
For example, different teachers, with different expectations and being given different opportunities through the education system.
When the students are put into different groups, they are being given a different value, depending on whether they are in a top, middle or bottom group.
Diana Burton said “Being placed in high or low set is likely to be a very different experience for the individual pupil in terms of the enthusiasm and behaviour of their peers in the group”
(Introduction to Education studies 2012, chapter 10, page 260)
Economic inequality and injustice come in the same hand. Poor people are more likely to experience inequality and injustice. The negative assumptions of poor people are created by the media and politicians. Promoting economic justice by offering people living in poverty some form of social support. Barbara Ehrenreich found in her experiment the workforce for low-wage was difficult. Conley talks about the different types of social inequalities and how they have been unsuccessful.
Kozol, J. (1999). “Savage Inequalities.” In J. Henslin (Ed.) Down to Earth Sociology Introductory Readings. (10th ed., Pp. 343-351). New York: Free Press.
of their economic troubles. Inequality in schools starts with inequality in society. Someone who is
If I had to describe a moment from INEQUALITY FOR ALL that is really sticking with you – maybe you found it particularly inspiring or particularly troubling it would be the statement made by Robert Reich, “Of all developed nations the U.S. has the most unequal distribution of income.” What was it about that moment that is so memorable? He also states, “the richest 400 people in America have more wealth then the bottom 50 million of us put together.”
Furthermore, Chapter 15 begins to explain educational inequality. In the United States, education is available but not to every child in the same way. Different social-classes means different schools, instructions, criteria, rates, and times. In addition to class differences, races and ethnics unfortunately play a role in educational achievement. For example, in general, African Americans, Latino/a’s, and Native Americans usually do worse in school than white or Asian American students
This essay asks to discuss some of the ways in which differences and inequalities persist over time, suggesting that they are not static, continuing to be made and remade by the actions of people and society. With Inequality being defined as ‘‘The unequal distribution of valued social resources within society or between societies including money, housing, power, health and education”. whilst Differences is defined as “contrasts between groupings of people such as those based on gender, class, age, sexuality and race, including things people value and the variations between them including their physical, behavioural, attitudes and preferences”. (Blakeley and Staples, 2014 p 25). However, it is noted not all differences will lead to inequalities,
In the treatise named “Leviathan” published in 1651, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) proposed an early variant of equality among men that inequality did not exist in natural condition, meaning everyone is born equal; however, inequality's existence was the result of civil laws (Hobbes & Gaskin, 1998). In this sense, inequality is generally referred to social inequality which is characterized by the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group or society; plus, this negative social phenomenon contains structured and recurrent patterns of unequal distributions of goods, wealth, opportunities, rewards, and punishments (Crossman, 2012).
When the majority of teachers in America are White, middle class women who only speak English in a country were students are starting to come from a multitude of backgrounds it is no wonder problems are arising. As more people from different cultures and religions immigrate to the United States the average classroom is losing the cultural uniformity it had in the past. Though the faces in classrooms are steadily changing many teachers have not been able to adjust as quickly to the ever growing diversity taking place. One would expect for teachers to still be able to teach students effectively whether they share a similar background or not, but in actuality cultural conflicts between teachers and students are only getting worse. Especially when
differences can effect education because they are essentially the mode of delivery to what is
4 Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, “Inequality in Postsecondary Attainment,” 2011. In Greg Duncan and Richard Murnane, eds., Whither Opportunity: Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances, pp. 117-132. New York: Russell Sage
What is wealth inequality? “It is the difference between individuals or populations in the distribution of assets, wealth or income.” [1] In sociology, the term is social stratification and refers to “a system of structured social inequality” [2] where the inequality might be in power, resources, social standing/class or perceived worth. In the US, where a class system exists (as opposed to a caste or estate system), your place in the class system can be determined by your personal achievements. However, the economic and social class that an individual is born into is a big indicator of the class they will end up in as an adult.
Inequality as previously mentioned is a subject that gets debated when brought up and in any debate there is two sides. In class we have discussed both side of the story of inequality, and it has give me a better perspectives of income inequality. When discussion income inequality, we brought up the concept of the economic pie in which states that the economic pie is a reference to the way income gets distributed among the lower, middle, and higher class of America. So the concept of the economic pie states that the rich is getting richer, so they are
Our education system allegedly provides an equal opportunity to all members of society to reach their potential. The research by Richer, particularly in elementary school, leads us to believe that this is not essentially the case. Our school system has a “hidden curriculum” that produces an inequality between the middle and lower class as well as men and woman. When a child enters a school environment they are required to adhere to a set of values proposed by the teacher and classroom environment. This school environment is competitive, teachers r...
...the pressure of keeping up with other students. Here, they can work at their own pace and figure out a solution that best works for them to understand or solve a problem. One last idea school reform should address in creating an equality of opportunity in public schools would be to set standards and spend more time in the classroom on these important tasks. These standards are put into place to help evaluate one’s progress. It’s important to have some standards in place, but they need to be feasible. To make such standards feasible, the teacher will be able to tailor it so that the standard can be met by the student. Spending a decent amount of time to get students to reach these standards is imperative. Without a sufficient amount of time, students may not be able to grasp and fully understand what is being taught to them resulting in standards not being met.