Reading on Monday, June 13th

Education is important for class mobility. However, class inequality prevents everyone from attaining opportunities to move upward through education. Having advanced education in certain elite groups creates certain social ties with other rich and elite people; those social networks are supportive for their special and professional careers. The children in the upper class enjoy inherently advanced educational opportunities from their parents. According to Shamus Khan in chapter six of his book, "Getting in: How Elite Schools Play the College Game," most high school students in the elite boarding schools have exceptional advantages due to their parents’ wealth. Those students who attend top colleges are privileged by their elite environment. With their economical affluence, students develop their unique characters and have various experiences throughout special and expensive leisure and other social activities that are not provided to lower- and middle-class students because of their parents’ insufficient budgets. Throughout those special experiences, they received higher chances to be admitted to top colleges. Rich students "can draw upon the social, cultural, and symbolic resources they develop within one elite institution in order to gain access to another" (21). Because of those unequally-distributed educational opportunities for the upper class, the education sometimes creates larger gaps between the rich and the poor.

Upward mobility through higher education many times does not work for people from poor families because of the poor quality of their child-rearing. In the article "Up from the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither," the author Tamar Lewin talks about unequal life chances for the people in the lower socioeconomic groups. In the article, Della Mae Justice, who was born in a poor family, had difficult times during her childhood. Her life was miserable under poverty and lack of support from the adults in her life. However, she could move upward through advanced child-rearing from her cousin. The parent’s child-rearing, which includes providing proper education to the children, is essential for upward mobility. Education is the foundation of advanced life qualities. Education offers higher probabilities of obtaining superior social ties, professional occupations, and wealth. Because of social inequality, the unequal opportunities for education lead to more unevenly-distributed wealth in society.