Influence of Cultural Capital on Educational Attainment and Social Class

Influence of Cultural Capital on Educational Attainment and Social Class

Cultural capital is a factor that enables people or students to learn to coexist in a group. It refers to the student’s level of knowledge of social and cultural factors that help them fit in a specific group of people. It plays a significant role in students’ educational attainment. It can either hinder or enhance a student’s level of educational attainment. I have learned that families with more income can provide more cultural capital to their children. According to the course materials, the level of parental education determines the degree of cultural capital passed to children. Children from low-income families do not acquire more cultural capital from their parents when compared to children from high-income families. Families with a high income tend to have a high affinity for economic capital. It is because of their ability to buy access to prestigious educational institutions that reward their children with valuable social capital. 

According to my understanding, social class refer to a group of people who share the same economic positions in society. It influences cultural capital. People coexist in an unequal society leading to different social categories. According to the video provided, children have varied health, level of income, and education attainment depending on the family one is raised in (Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, 2016). In terms of education, poor parents are hardly college graduates and therefore do not take time to supervise their children’s progress in different institutions. One should note that parents from low-class families rely on teachers more to know how their children perform in school. However, middle-class parents take active roles in their children’s education. They are very aggressive in convincing teachers to allow their children to engage in school programs. Working class parents give their children much autonomy making them undertake activities they deem fit. Mainly, parents do not intervene and involve their children in activities that may impart cultural knowledge to them. Middle-class children know how to interact and negotiate with people. On the educational scale, most children from middle-class families are more likely to attend college than children from poor and working-class families. Working class families lack cultural information and knowledge that enables them to fit in colleges. Children from poor backgrounds rarely attend colleges because few parents from these social classes aspire for their children to attend colleges. Parental education plays a significant role in cultural capital (CH 11 p.18). Evidence indicates that middle-class families have a higher degree of cultural capital because the students’ parents are more involved in their education life and other organized activities that enable them to understand the culture well. It is associated with institutionalized state where cultural capital is measured by factors like academic qualifications, job titles and political offices. Middle-class children are more likely to achieve a higher state of institutionalized cultural capital (Cole, 2019). 

I grew up in a middle-class family where my parents believed in attaining higher levels of education. Both my parents are college graduates, and they used to remind us that they needed us to achieve the same level of education as them. To achieve this, they did follow-ups with our teachers to know how we were doing in school. I remember my parents hiring a tutor for me during my last year in high school to ensure I attained a college entry grade. One thing that I acknowledge my parents for is the art of believing in us and ensuring that we had the right environment to interact with people from within our social class. It played a significant role in our decision-making skills and educational attainment. My parents also believed in being involved in other school programs such as music and dance because this was the only way of nurturing an all-around child. I am still a lover of football, music, and dancing up to date. 

References 

Cole, N. L. (2019, September 23). All about cultural capital. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-cultural-capital-do-i-have-it-3026374 Gatillon. (2011) Chapter 11: Schools and Education.  

Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. 2016. Unequal Childhoods: Annette Lareau [Streaming video file]. Retrieved May 29, 2022.