Social Class Factors

Social class factors on educational attainment.

Intro

You will need to identify exactly what the question is asking for.

The Marxist Bowles and Gintis identify that a person’s social class is the most important factors for educational attainment, however there are other elements to this argument such as innate ability (I Q) and also according to Drew gender and ethnicity.

In this essay I will look at the work of Bowles and Gintis, Barnard and Burgess, Douglas, Hyman, Bernstein to name but a few and concepts such as cultural capital theory, material deprivation, labelling and self fulfilling prophecy.

Because this question is on class I must first define social class. The sociologist Ken Browne states that it is “an open system of stratification which divides society into groups (classes) according to their occupation, income and ownership of wealth”.

Q. How does social class impact on attainment – Illustrate with some studies and Stats!!

Stats here____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Recent Studies______________________________________________________________________MaryKellett________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________G.Horgan2007______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Marxist perspective would fully implement the idea that social class is the main factor that influences educational attainment. This perspective looks at the role of education in capitalist societies as exploitative and promotes inequalities between the two classes because society is based on an unequal balance of power, that power is exerted by the...