Education

The education system guides us to believe in the achievement ideology. Teachers butter us up to believe that hard work and dedication will guide us to a good jobs and a great life. Is that necessarily true? I don't believe so. Jay MacLeod says that kids who are in lower socio-economical status' do not have an equal opportunity, and in fact are shunned from striving to move up in social classes and status. I feel like there is a stigma against these people. In turn, teachers perceive these children to be highly unmotivated. MacLeod proposes a plan to eliminate this and perhaps gives children of lower status a chance to achieve greatness. He says that teachers should teach their children about social classes, and the inequalities that surround them. Teachers should also teach them about people who have had to struggle in order to get to a good point in their life.

In class, someone brought up the point of cultural capital and social reproduction. MacLeod wants to break these ideologies because he feels that they are prevalent, and hold people back from their fullest potential. However, I feel that his new system that he wants to institute also reproduces cultural capital. However, I feel that social reproduction is broken. Kids are able to see how people who are from their socio-economic status have over come difficulty and reached success. Although this is a good thing, the achievement ideology is still in place. I’m not totally sure how this can be broken, but if we can somehow break all three, I feel that we will be able to see more equality between classes and see more social mobility.

Social mobility is good, but that also means that competition would become more intense and scarcity of jobs would become a complete reality.