Socio-economic status (SES) is a combination of one’s occupation, income, and education. In America, there is a correlation between Socio-economic status (SES) and quality of life. In places (or communities) where there is higher Socio-economic status (SES), majority of people in those places have better opportunities such as jobs.
As evident in US Census report for 2008, high school dropout is four times higher among unemployed than those with professional or college or doctorial degrees. And people with college’s or bachelor’s degrees earn 387 dollars more per week than those people who have graduated from high school; that’s 1,548 dollars/months or 18,576/year more.
Galston (2005) has stated that there are relationship between higher education in an individual with better medical insurance, health, and contribution to society. Baum and Ma (2007) further states that education in a person is important because people live in a credentialed community or society.
An individual with higher education (such as degree or advance degree), may not have necessary skills and knowledge to do a specific work, but if that person has necessary credentials he/she would be able to be employed and learn the specific that come with the job opportunity (Galston 23).
According to Max Weber’s theory of life chances, an individual that has been born in a wealth family will have enormous life chances as compared to that individual from a poor background. For example, a citizen from poor background will not be able to succeed in politics if he/she doesn’t have proper social connections with power elite.
A person cannot be able to change his/her ascribed status in the society, but only through education a person is able to change his/her Socio-economic status (SES) and to some extent that of his/her family once he/she decides to attend and graduate from college or university.
Approximately 10-25 per cent of children that are born in families that are well off have better social networking, educational level, marriage market, and opportunities that only riches can buy, including good schools, and Ivy degrees (Galston 28).
Education accomplishment can be measured into two distinct ways; education achievement and education attainment. Educational achievement can be defined as how much an individual has learned in terms of writing, reading and arithmetic and Educational attainment is the number of years an individual has completed school. In the U.S, millions of high school students drop out every year.
African, Native Americans, and Hispanics Americans dropout rate is approximately 40 per cent, followed by whites at 22.4 per cent and Asians Americans at only 18.7 per cent. It has been stated that students who drop out of high school will be at disadvantage when it comes to finding employment (good-paying jobs).
Additionally, these students later in life are more likely to become young parents, at risk of associating with criminal activities, dependant on social welfare assistance, less healthy and die earlier. Currently, U.S. has the best tertiary institutions and universities for students coming from different background, but the government lack cultural motivations that will encourage average children from learning.
According to Weber’s context of life chances, many life chances are easily available among average children in the U.S. yet these chances are ignored or refused by millions in the country’s educational system (Shields and Robert 35).
In the past, trend of underachievement has continued among black and Hispanic American students. Equity in schools has not been addressed effectively, although the number of successful indigenous, Hispanic and black American students has increased, disparity in education still exists in term of attendance rates and outcome between white students and Hispanic and black American students at both primary levels and secondary levels.
A large proportion of black American and Hispanic students are dropping out of school before they reach year 10 and fewer of these Black American and Hispanic students will reach year 12 when you compare them with white students and this is as results of fewer learning resources allocated to them.
As evident in the benchmark testing (SAT), students who fail in these tests will find it difficult to progress satisfactory at school, most of white students achieve at least benchmark in writing, numeracy and reading, yet a large number of Black American and Hispanic students do not pass the tests (Shields and Robert 45).
Condition for learning in schools has created a mismatch between school and home language, and this has directly contributed to underperformance among Black American and Hispanic students in numeracy and literacy. In his article Joel, Windle mainly talk about the issue of whiteness and how it has affected non-white groups in the U.S.
According to Galston (2005), whiteness involves discrimination, oppression and marginalization of non-white individuals and groups, and the privileging of white individuals and groups (p.34).
As illustrated in his article, all white individuals in the U.S. benefits from racial privilege, In schools, as in all other institutions in the U.S. systemic people and the practice of whiteness are rampant and impact significantly upon non-white people, whether a student or community members.
Works Cited
Galston, William. “Political knowledge, political engagement and civic education”. Annual Review of Political Science 4 (2005): 217–234. Print.
Shields, Todd and Robert, Goidel. “Participation rates, socioeconomic class biases, and congressional elections: A cross-validation, 1958–1994”. American Journal of Political Science 41 (2004): 683–691.