The Multifaceted Education - Essay Example

The Multifaceted Education Introduction The objective of this paper is to discuss the effectof race, ethnicity, gender and social class on education, and vice versa as well as the connections of these various issues to one another, as demonstrated primarily by James Atlas in his article entitled Making the Grade. The school, in the United States, is commonly believed to be the access to social mobility and success. While people of color, women, and working class individuals hoped to make use of education as a means to advance their economic, political and social position, reformers normally perceived it as an opportunity to integrate different groups into the American society (Giroux 2001). If American education keeps on it current progress, it seems probable that it will in the end be looked upon as a haven of accommodation. The educational system of the United States appears to be taking form in response to the employment demand for young people, as illustrated in the Atlas’s article, from the time they are capable in being absent from their home until it is believed appropriate for them to acquire employment (Reay et al. 2005). This argument indicates that racial affiliation, ethnicity, gender and social class become increasingly unimportant in the American educational system. But education remains to be an important instrument towards higher social mobility, hence racial, ethnic and gender equality. Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Social Class in American Education The issues of race, ethnicity, gender and social class in American education are typically manifested in the study between public and private schooling, which is embarked upon the Atlas in his article. Above all, there is a long-standing discussion about the comparative effect of racial affinity, ethnicity, gender and social class background on academic performance and school experiences of minorities. A key concern is whether the comparatively low school achievement of minorities is brought about by the students’ racial affinity or because they belong to a lower-class background. Even though race is acknowledged as a factor, the prevailing assumption is that the low academic achievement is caused by the lower-class background of the students (Wright, Weekes & McGlaughlin 2000). These arguments clearly attest to the linkages between the issues of race, ethnicity, gender and social class within the educational context. To put it concretely, let us consider selection number five and eight in Atlas’s article. In the former Atlas wrote that a Spence dad said, “It’s a full-time job being a parent these days. You’re always on” (Atlas, 2009, 101), whereas on the latter Atlas remarked about his parents’ attitudes toward his schooling, in which he stated, “I’m not saying that they weren’t good parents. It’s just that they were largely absent— the norm in those days…” (Atlas, 2009, 102). However, it is important to note that the Spence dad is talking about private education while Atlas’s parents were in the context of public schooling. The trend in private schooling today is toward significant parent involvement. Most certainly because parents of students in private schools are well-off compared to those in public schools they have time to participate extensively in the school activities of their children. On the other hand, parents of students in public schools are more concerned in making ends meet rather than contributing to their children’s school experiences through active involvement. Here, social class comes in. The concern on the extent of the influence of social class background on the school performance and experiences of minorities is becoming more and more important at present because of current progress in the investigation of the class structure within the minority population in the United States. These advancements in the analysis have resulted in the assertion, for instance, that the African American community is currently divided into two disparate, secluded, if not opposed classes: the despondent underclass and the thriving middle class (Wright et al. 2000). In relation to the article of James Atlas, these two classes are more manifested in public schools, where in there are public schools intended for the working class and those for the well-off middle class. The problems encountered by public-school families are also dissimilar, which then results from difference in social class backgrounds. Lower-class public-school families are an ‘ever-diminishing presence’ (Atlas 2009, 107) whereas affluent public-school families are getting more involved because of lack of government financial support, as claimed by Atlas. On the other hand, research on the role of education, particularly higher educational institutions, in perpetuating social inequalities by gender is uncommon. Quite little is documented about the treatment and experience of women in institutions of higher education and the response of women to this treatment. Fundamentally, it is concluded from current scholarship that students are prone to behave in school from a shared belief of the ‘opportunities’ granted to individuals like them by the larger society (Reay et al. 2005). However, impact of gender on education can be drawn out from selection number one in Atlas’s article. As Atlas recounted, “I stand on the corner of Madison and Ninety-sixth in an orange nylon vest, with a whistle hanging around my neck, clutching a walkie-talkie and scanning the streets for signs of trouble—gangs of teenage thugs, lurkers, in raincoats, any ripple of urban disorder that could menace the homebound journey of the boys of St. Bernard’s school” (Atlas, 2009, 100). The passage illustrates that gender still plays a role on how boys and girls are treated in schools. The boys are still seen as potential troublemakers whereas girls are perceived as docile, which is evident in the exclusive mentioning of boys in the passage. The collective response of students takes place through the mechanism of cultural construction, in which subgroups in a society innovatively employ “discourse, meanings, materials, practices, and group processes to explore, understand, and creatively occupy particular positions in sets of general material possibilities” (Giroux 2001, 166). Their reaction could be conflicting and could be successful in upsetting the social status quo, yet usually, for a variety of reasons and in spite of its conflicting nature, their response leads to perpetuating cultural standards and values that facilitate the reproduction of social inequalities and of long-established group and class relations (Giroux 2001). Students respond to their experiences and treatment to them in schools that normally contribute to their individual, less-recognized, status in society, hence contributing to the preservation of social inequalities. They construct their own practices and valued approaches within the school context, assessments which could or could not complement those of the school. Yet the issue extends further; there is a disagreement in current scholarship with regard to the analysis of the relationship of race, ethnicity, gender and social class to schooling that adds up to something of a disagreement between conventional and modern researchers (Reay et al. 2005). Atlas’s article conceived negative attitudes, principles and differential school performance as having the particular impact of restraining or hindering the occupational prospects of the youth at present because of differences in social class background and differences in the extent of parents’ involvement in the education of their children. Furthermore, Atlas attempted to relate the futures of sexually and racially inferior groups within the institutions of education to the structural demands and provisions of the economy. Gender and racial inequality have, thus, been interpreted in accounts such as that of Atlas as effects or accessories to the more forceful economic factors in the society. Conclusion If racial stratification is critically taken as a discrete form of stratification, it could be seen that it creates its own conflicting mechanism that intersects class boundaries due to the fact that it is attached to the sense of collectiveness of members of minority groups. In other words, the intersection of racial affiliation, ethnicity, gender and social class is manifested in the response of the students, their parents and the community to school experiences, as vividly recounted by James Atlas, in which these issues are conveyed through an account of his direct experience with the current private educational system as a parent and with the traditional form of public schooling as a student. References Atlas, James. "Making the Grade." Faigley, Lester. Backpack Writing with Readings. New York: Pearson Custom Publishing, 2009. 100-110. Giroux, Henry. Theory and Resistance in Education. J.F. Bergin & Garvey, 2001. Reay, Diane, Miriam David & Stephen Ball. Degrees of Choice: Social Class, Race and Gender in Higher Education. Trentham Books, 2005. Wright, Cecile, Debbie Weekes & Alex McGlaughlin. Race, Class and Gender in Exclusion from School. London: Falmer Press, 2000. Read More