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Socialization and its impact
Socialization and its impact
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Socialization and its impact
Socialization and its impact
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Brothers faced this challenge in their, largely, futile attempts to achieve middle class status through achieving a proper education. Macleod highlights that, historically, the “overall structure of class relations from one generation to the next” is extremely reluctant to change(4). The Brothers evince this in their inability to earn work with greater wages than their parents, forcing them to live in working class neighborhoods like they did. Although some of the Brothers did manage to obtain middle class work, they struggled to keep those jobs as they either got laid off or were pressured out believing that they just didn’t fit in the workplace environment- though this is largely in fact due to differences in cultural capital, knowledge, disposition, and skills passed on generationally, that arise from the different upbringings of the supervisors and the Brothers.
The American dream is a dream of a land in which one can prosper with ambition and hard work. This idea has created many illusions for some because in reality the American dream is proven to be something that is rarely achieved. No individual is guaranteed success or destined for failure, but it is apparent that women, people of color, and those born into poverty will face greater obstacles than others, despite being a greater part of the American population. An author that tackles the issue of class in the United States is Gregory Mantsios. In his essay, “Class in America-2009”, Mantsios aims to prove that class affects people’s lives in drastic ways.
In the article, “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor”, Bell Hooks, Gloria Watkins penname, conveys three important things about the lower class: The ways people of lower class are treated in our society, how the mass media portrays them, and how people of lower-class see themselves. People who are poor or near the poverty line are often not represented properly in our current society. Furthermore, when hooks attended Stanford University, she noticed that many of her peers and even professors would make judgements about the poor. In addition, while many of her peers could go home during the breaks, Hooks couldn’t because she could not afford to visit family.
In James W. Loewen’s “The Land of Opportunity,” he states that social class affects the way children are raised. He discusses the inequality in today’s society and how the textbooks in high school do not give any social class information. The students in today’s time are not taught everything they should be taught. He states that your family’s wealth is what makes up your future. Loewen discusses that people with more money can study for the SATs more productively and get a better score than someone who has less money.
Have you ever wanted to chase the American dream? It might be more impossible than people realize. Gregory Mantsios writes “Class in America-2012” about the growing and obvious class divide in America, yet no one wants to talk about the situation and the effects on the people. I will be analyzing the text and explaining the effects it has on the reader. Throughout the article Mantsios stays consistent with his opinion by providing multiple charts and graphs to back his point.
Herman Koch delivers a riveting commentary on affluenza in his novel “The Dinner”, in which the deleterious effects of affluence play a crucial role in the unfolding events. The term ‘affluenza’ was recently popularized in the 2013 Ethan Couch trial; prior to the twentieth-century, it was heretofore unheard-of. Symptoms include extreme materialism and materialism in the pursuit of status to the detriment of one’s relationships, mental and/or emotional health, and more. When found in youth raised in privilege, such as Ethan Couch, and Koch’s Michael and Rick Lohman, affluenza manifests as an extreme disregard for others’ well-being. Today, the average level of wealth per household, and thus per child, has multiplied since the past decades, evidenced by anecdotes from elders, while affluenza has become a relevant social issue.
Mike Rose wrote an essay in a newsletter for a college honor society. This essay dives into the working class and different perspectives of it. Rose writes about experiences he had growing up seeing people who in his family work blue-collar jobs. He talks about the skills used in their jobs and the skills that were learned during working in the jobs. Rose discusses his experiences with getting a college education and working as a professor.
Myrtle Wilson shows that the American dream of changing social class cannot be achieved by cheating the social ladder through the use of associating oneself with a higher up person. First is that Myrtle, unlike Tom and daisy, was never born into great wealth or fortune. Instead she was born into the middle class world of blue collar workers and visions of getting ahead in life. In the story, it is shown that Myrtle lives in the valley of ashes which Nick describes as “a desolate area of land” (p.21) as well as a “solem dumping ground” (p. 21). Because Myrtle has never achieved a high social status, she does not know quite how to reach it.
Being born into a particular family determines how well off you are. Class in America determines the people that influence you, and the better opportunities you are exposed to. In Gregory Mantsios writing of “Class in America” you can understand the many differences between class and how one might have better success. Mantsios shows three profiles of three different people born into different classes. One of the profiles shows how the lifestyle might be born into a wealthy family.
In his story, “A&P”, John Updike shows that sometimes people unhappy with their opportunities judge people based upon their social class causing bad decisions and later disappointment. Updike utilizes symbolism, irony, and characterization to display the impact of a person’s social class on society. The different social classes of people create a barrier between them leading to the desperation of trying to fit on a different level. Social status is the way a person lives their life and the lifestyle they
However, the outcome of Vance’s life was different as he was graduated from Yale Law School, able to get a well-paying job and currently living the American Dream with his wife Usha. The purpose of the author in this memoir was to understand the reader of how social mobility feels and more importantly, what happens to the lives of the white working-class Americans, in particular the psychological impact that spiritual and material poverty has on their children. J.D Vance provides an explanation for the loss of the American dream to poor white Americans living in a toxic culture in this Ohio steel town.
There is lower, middle, and upper class, but there are also subcategories that fill the gaps in between, like the impoverished and the top one percenters. “Class in America”, written by Gregory Mantsios, addresses the myths and realities about socioeconomic class in America and how they affect American lives. His article highlights the unequal divide that has persisted over the course of history and will continue to manifest in the future. To introduce the existence of this issue, Mantsios states that this country’s citizens “don’t like to talk about class...or class privileges, or class oppression, or the class nature of society” (Mantsios 378). This is the case in America today because people are neglecting to acknowledge the existence of these elusive
Although there a few modern examples of people with a ‘rags to riches’ story, namely Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs, the masses of people born into lower income households don’t commonly rise to the middle class. A recent study by Pew Charitable Trust signifies how important family wealth is, as the “median family wealth of those who made it to middle class was $94,586, while the median wealth of those stuck at the bottom was just $8,892” (Hargreaves 1). The higher a family’s financial capital is, the easier it is to invest in opportunities such as education, which increases income. Winston in 1984 observes how the proles are intelligent in their daily tasks, stating how "even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory” (Orwell 72).
When taking a look into Jean Anyon’s “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”, readers are apprised of the hidden agendas many schools have. In this article, Anyon focuses on the curriculum and student-teacher interaction from five New Jersey elementary schools located in different communities with different levels of socioeconomic status. Anyon attempts to find evidence of the differences in student work in schools in wealthy communities versus those in poor communities, in an effort to bolster the argument that public schools in society provide different forms of knowledge. Through her researcher, she was able to determine that working class schools limited students; the students were given steps to follow and they were graded based on how well they followed directions—this level of education was preparing students for the labor force as blue collar workers. In addition, the affluent professional school and the middle-class school focused on attaining the correct answer, but allowed individuals to have a choice of appropriate method and material.
Education is affected by social class; directly and indirectly. Looking at directly first we can see that individuals from higher social classes are more likely to have the resources to attend the elicit schools, and as a result have a better chance of receiving high exam results and continuing to third level. While indirectly, people who benefit from these higher educational opportunities are more likely to acquire the top jobs which in turn will result in the highest salaries. Thus education and social class closely connected and one impacts the other. This paper will explore how ones’ social class affects their educational experience and outcome particularly focusing on working-class students.