EBOOK: EDUCATION AND THE MIDDLE CLASS

EBOOK: EDUCATION AND THE MIDDLE CLASS
Author: Sally Power
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2003-01-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0335227511

It is often assumed that for middle class and academically able children, schooling is a straightforward process that leads to academic success, higher education and entry into middle class occupations. However this fascinating book shows these relationships to be complex and often uncertain. Based on the biographies of 350 young men and women who might have been considered 'destined for success' at the start of their secondary schooling, the book maps out the educational pathways they took. It analyses their subsequent achievements and entry into employment and compares them with their parents, with one another, and with their generation. Identifying patterns in the data, it also explores examples of extraordinary success and failure, and various forms of interrupted and disrupted careers. As well as documenting a compelling human story, the findings have important implications for current policy debates about academic selection, access to elite universities, and the limits of meritocracy.

When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools

When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools
Author: Linn Posey-Maddox
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022612035X

In recent decades a growing number of middle-class parents have considered sending their children to—and often end up becoming active in—urban public schools. Their presence can bring long-needed material resources to such schools, but, as Linn Posey-Maddox shows in this study, it can also introduce new class and race tensions, and even exacerbate inequalities. Sensitively navigating the pros and cons of middle-class transformation, When Middle-Class Parents Choose Urban Schools asks whether it is possible for our urban public schools to have both financial security and equitable diversity. Drawing on in-depth research at an urban elementary school, Posey-Maddox examines parents’ efforts to support the school through their outreach, marketing, and volunteerism. She shows that when middle-class parents engage in urban school communities, they can bring a host of positive benefits, including new educational opportunities and greater diversity. But their involvement can also unintentionally marginalize less-affluent parents and diminish low-income students’ access to the improving schools. In response, Posey-Maddox argues that school reform efforts, which usually equate improvement with rising test scores and increased enrollment, need to have more equity-focused policies in place to ensure that low-income families also benefit from—and participate in—school change.

Class Strategies and the Education Market

Class Strategies and the Education Market
Author: Stephen J. Ball
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2003-08-29
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113448352X

Class Strategies and the Education Market examines the ways in which the middle classes maintain and improve their social advantages in and through education. Drawing on an extensive series of interviews with parents and children, this book identifies key moments of decision making in the construction of the educational trajectories of middle class children. Stephen J. Ball organises his analysis around the key concepts of social closure, social capital, values and principles and risk, while bringing a broad range of up-to-date sociological theory to bear upon his subject. From this thorough analysis, valuable and thought-provoking insights emerge into the assiduous care and considerable effort and expenditure which goes into ensuring the educational success of the middle class child The middle classes are a sociological enigma, presenting the social researcher with considerable analytic and theoretical difficulties. Class Strategies and the Education Market provides a set of working tools for class analysis and the examination of class practices. Above all, it offers new ways of thinking about class theory and the relationships between classes in late modern society.

We Have Never Been Middle Class

We Have Never Been Middle Class
Author: Hadas Weiss
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1788733940

Taking apart the ideology of the "middle class" Tidings of a shrinking middle class in one part of the world and its expansion in another absorb our attention, but seldom do we question the category itself. We Have Never Been Middle Class proposes that the middle class is an ideology. Tracing this ideology up to the age of financialization, it exposes the fallacy in the belief that we can all ascend or descend as a result of our aspirational and precautionary investments in property and education. Ethnographic accounts from Germany, Israel, the USA and elsewhere illustrate how this belief orients us, in our private lives as much as in our politics, toward accumulation-enhancing yet self-undermining goals. This original meshing of anthropology and critical theory elucidates capitalism by way of its archetypal actors.

Degrees of Choice

Degrees of Choice
Author: Diane Reay
Publisher: Trentham Books
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2005
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781858563305

An account of the overlapping effects of social class, ethnicity and gender in the process of choosing which university to attend. The shift from an elite to a mass system has been accompanied by much political rhetoric about widening access, achievement-for-all and meritocratic equalisation.

The Colour of Class

The Colour of Class
Author: Nicola Rollock
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2014-11-13
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1317583892

How do race and class intersect to shape the identities and experiences of Black middle-class parents and their children? What are Black middle-class parents’ strategies for supporting their children through school? What role do the educational histories of Black middle-class parents play in their decision-making about their children’s education? There is now an extensive body of research on the educational strategies of the white middle classes but a silence exists around the emergence of the Black middle classes and their experiences, priorities, and actions in relation to education. This book focuses on middle-class families of Black Caribbean heritage. Drawing on rich qualitative data from nearly 80 in-depth interviews with Black Caribbean middle-class parents, the internationally renowned contributors reveal how these parents attempt to navigate their children successfully through the school system, and defend them against low expectations and other manifestations of discrimination. Chapters identify when, how and to what extent parents deploy the financial, cultural and social resources available to them as professional, middle class individuals in support of their children’s academic success and emotional well-being. The book sheds light on the complex, and relatively neglected relations, between race, social class and education, and in addition, poses wider questions about the experiences of social mobility, and the intersection of race and class in forming the identity of the parents and their children. The Colour of Class: The educational strategies of the Black middle classes will appeal to undergraduates and postgraduates on education, sociology and social policy courses, as well as academics with an interest in Critical Race Theory and Bourdieu. The Colour of Class was awarded 2nd prize by the Society for Educational Studies: Book Prize 2016.

Negotiating Opportunities

Negotiating Opportunities
Author: Jessica McCrory Calarco
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2018
Genre: Education
ISBN: 019063443X

In Negotiating Opportunities, Jessica McCrory Calarco argues that the middle class has a negotiated advantage in school. Drawing on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, Calarco traces that negotiated advantage from its origins at home to its consequences at school. Through their parents' coaching, working-class students learn to follow rules and work through problems independently. Middle-class students learn to challenge rules and request assistance, accommodations, and attention in excess of what is fair or required. Teachers typically grant those requests, creating advantages for middle-class students. Calarco concludes with recommendations, advocating against deficit-oriented programs that teach middle-class behaviors to working-class students. Those programs ignore the value of working-class students' resourcefulness, respect, and responsibility, and they do little to prevent middle-class families from finding new opportunities to negotiate advantages in school.

The Autocratic Middle Class

The Autocratic Middle Class
Author: Bryn Rosenfeld
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691192197

"The conventional wisdom is that a growing middle class will give rise to democracy. Yet the middle classes of the developing world have grown at a remarkable pace over the past two decades, and much of this growth has taken place in countries that remain nondemocratic. Rosenfeld explains this phenomenon by showing how modern autocracies secure support from key middle-class constituencies. Drawing on original surveys, interviews, archival documents, and secondary sources collected from nine months in the field, she compares the experiences of recent post-communist countries, including Russia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, to show that under autocracy, state efforts weaken support for democracy, especially among the middle class. When autocratic states engage extensively in their economies - by offering state employment, offering perks to those to those who are loyal, and threatening dismissal to those who are disloyal - the middle classes become dependent on the state for economic opportunities and career advancement, and, ultimately, do not support a shift toward democratization. Her argument explains why popular support for Ukraine's Orange Revolution unraveled or why Russians did not protest evidence of massive electoral fraud. The author's research questions the assumption that a rising share of educated, white-collar workers always makes the conditions for democracy more favorable, and why dependence on the state has such pernicious consequences for democratization"--

White Middle-Class Identities and Urban Schooling

White Middle-Class Identities and Urban Schooling
Author: D. Reay
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2011-03-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0230302505

This book examines experiences and implications of 'against-the-grain' school choices, where white middle class families choose ordinary and 'low performing' secondary schools for their children. It offers a unique view of identity formation, taking in matters like family history, locality and whiteness.

Masculinity, Class and Music Education

Masculinity, Class and Music Education
Author: Clare Hall
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2018-07-08
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113750255X

This book offers a provocative sociological examination of masculinity, class and music education within the context of a unique and fascinating culture: the classical musical world of choirboys. The myriad cultural meanings embodied in the ‘boy voice’ are unravelled through compelling musical narratives of young choirboys, their mothers, and their teachers. The book investigates how boys negotiate dominant gender-class discourses and the various pedagogies involved in producing middle-class masculinities during primary school and early years contexts. Drawing on the theoretical resources of Bourdieu to develop the concept of ‘musical habitus’, the continued symbolic distinction of the choirboy is analysed in order to better understand how culture is simultaneously reproduced and evolving through music. This interdisciplinary work at the juncture of pedagogy and culture will appeal to social science researchers, educators and arts practitioners interested in the sociocultural dynamics of music.