INTRO Growing up, almost every parent will tell you, “you can be anything you set your mind to!” or “the possibilities are endless”. But from an early childhood my parents were creating an opportunity structure for my life. Through my 20 years, how I was taught, the places I went to, the people I interacted with and the implications of society and societal norms followed me. As with many other families, my parents focused on “setting” me up for the best possible future. But little did they know, they were contributing to a society where some people are allotted more privileges and opportunities than others through things like social class and schooling choices but also by things like their gender, their range and the people their parents expose
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Bourdieu created the term cultural capital which he claims is a sort of cultural atmosphere that parents from middle and upper-class families seek to find in an education system. Cultural capital includes things like demeanors, or tastes and opinions. These are things parents from higher social standings seek to provide their children in hopes that these more socially accepted cultural capital norms will provide their children with better opportunities. Bourdieu also believed that lower class children who don’t possess these higher level characteristics of cultural capital are often group into more “disadvantaged” schools, “These dispositions are internalized unconsciously through social practices within one 's social group… and therefore are not likely to obtain the dispositions required for school success” Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum and Carr 2016:409). It was during my early education that my parents started seeking to create an opportunity structure for me and my life. The same pitfalls that Bourdieu saw within the educational system were the ones my parents tried to shield me from. They feared that keeping me in an educational system with a lower social class would mean dampening my chances to succeed in school, as Bourdieu had hypothesized with his take on cultural capital. My parent 's worries and Bourdieu 's theory proved right; …show more content…
Social capital refers to who you know, who know you and the social rankings of those you know. We now understand that statistically speaking, in America, a white household is more likely to exceed the income of a black household according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census for 2013. Not only was my social capital affected by the type of community I was raised in, but it was also impacted by my parent 's decision to move me to a school in a predominantly white, upper-class community. With social capital comes economic capital, because in America as we climb the social ladder, our bank account become bigger. Economic capital refers to the amount of money you hold and the opportunities that money allows you. While the social capital was unintentionally brought into my life by my parents, it was brought into my life because they wanted to be gain economic capital early in life; and going to a good school in a good community has statistical significance. According to our book, the better your job, the higher your social standing. Table 8.1 on page 174 ranks Physicians and Lawyers as the 2 highest jobs in America; which also happen to best some of the highest paying jobs. “In the United States and other
Bourdieu created the term cultural capital which he claims is a sort of cultural atmosphere that parents from middle and upper-class families seek to find in an education system. Cultural capital includes things like demeanors, or tastes and opinions. These are things parents from higher social standings seek to provide their children in hopes that these more socially accepted cultural capital norms will provide their children with better opportunities. Bourdieu also believed that lower class children who don’t possess these higher level characteristics of cultural capital are often group into more “disadvantaged” schools, “These dispositions are internalized unconsciously through social practices within one 's social group… and therefore are not likely to obtain the dispositions required for school success” Giddens, Duneier, Applebaum and Carr 2016:409). It was during my early education that my parents started seeking to create an opportunity structure for me and my life. The same pitfalls that Bourdieu saw within the educational system were the ones my parents tried to shield me from. They feared that keeping me in an educational system with a lower social class would mean dampening my chances to succeed in school, as Bourdieu had hypothesized with his take on cultural capital. My parent 's worries and Bourdieu 's theory proved right; …show more content…
Social capital refers to who you know, who know you and the social rankings of those you know. We now understand that statistically speaking, in America, a white household is more likely to exceed the income of a black household according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census for 2013. Not only was my social capital affected by the type of community I was raised in, but it was also impacted by my parent 's decision to move me to a school in a predominantly white, upper-class community. With social capital comes economic capital, because in America as we climb the social ladder, our bank account become bigger. Economic capital refers to the amount of money you hold and the opportunities that money allows you. While the social capital was unintentionally brought into my life by my parents, it was brought into my life because they wanted to be gain economic capital early in life; and going to a good school in a good community has statistical significance. According to our book, the better your job, the higher your social standing. Table 8.1 on page 174 ranks Physicians and Lawyers as the 2 highest jobs in America; which also happen to best some of the highest paying jobs. “In the United States and other