Cultural Capital In Education Essay

The future leaders and educators of America are in the school’s classrooms. Among these students are immigrants, primarily Syrian refugees seeking educational opportunities through our education system. The history of immigrants in America’s schooling has shown that students enrolled into courses are an attempt to gain opportunities in our country. The role of American schools is to educate its students, and immigrants are major participants to the student population. Despite the difficult ability to acquire an educational opportunity in the United States, the immigrant population continue to struggle in successfully assimilating into the American culture by facing a language barrier while having an inadequate access to resources of human capital and cultural capital. Immigrant students …show more content…
Professor Kurlaender (2015) defines cultural capital as one’s “knowledge of cultural dispositions that are valued in society” (lecture 4, slide 7). In the article on Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction, the author, Pierre Bourdieu (???) believes “Knowing, first, that academic success is directly dependent on cultural capital and on the inclination to invest in the academic market” (p. 65). Cultural capital is directly correlated to the beliefs of the family, which greatly influences the immigrant student’s perception on their performance in school. The family’s attitudes and beliefs toward their child’s academics correlates with the accomplishments made through academics. If the child’s parents do not have the motivation or determination for their child to excel in school, the child is less likely to perform at the standard rate, which puts the student’s future at risk for advancing to the next grade level. As a result, the access of cultural capital for both parents and students of immigrants are highly valuable to have as a