Education Vs Social Class Essay

Superior Essays
The upper middle class world I grew up in was vastly different than the working class world that Lynda Barry and Mike Rose’s mother, Rosie grew up in. I had two parents working white collar jobs; my mom a dental hygienist and my dad a mechanical engineer for Verizon Wireless. I went to a public, regional high school with enough funding to not only offer art and music class, but to offer sub categories of art and music, such as mechanical drawing and various different band classes. It is safe to say the teachers working there didn’t have “poor salaries” and the students who attended, including me, graduated with white collar brilliance. But while I was privileged enough to grow up in this upper middle class world, it wasn’t really me in the upper middle class. It was my parents. I wasn’t paying to attend this school, my parents were. While I …show more content…
Just because people expect social class and education to have a direct relationship, that is not always the case. As I have learned through my experiences, and Rosie and Lynda Barry have learned through theirs, education comes in many different forms, and social class is not always an indicator of it. One of the problems associated with the relationship between education and social class is the fact that people living in a lower socioeconomic area are being deprived of learning the creative side of education. This is a major reason that people think lower class people are receiving education that is less valuable. Value in education is defined by how well rounded your education is and by what means you receive your education. Unfortunately, because there is not enough funding in lower socioeconomic areas, art and music programs are often cut out of the education program and by default these children’s educations are now considered to be “less valuable”. Although the idea that their education is less valuable because of this is not really true, the fact that they are being underestimated because they don’t have creative

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