Posada 1

Glenda Posada
Professor Koning
English 113B
06 April 2014
Education: Is Your Future

All history has been a history of class struggles between dominated classes at various stages of
social development -Friedrich Engels

Social class refers to a group of people with similar levels of wealth, influence, and
status (Types of Social Classes of People).There are four types of class: The lower class, the
working class, the middle class and the upper class. Education does not just come naturally.
Would you say that school is a right or a privilege? I would argue that school is a privilege
because some are not able to afford going to school. In other countries you need to pay to be in
school starting from kindergarten, and parents cannot afford their kids to go to school. While
some may disagree, bell hooks arguments about social inequality are relevant to the discussion
about education.
School should be a right to everyone all over the world not a privilege. Education is a
way in which people can move up from the social class they were born in. Some people have the
luck to be born into an upper class family, but that does not mean that they will stay there
forever. There are also some that are not lucky enough and are born into a lower class family and
with education there is a way to move up. bell hooks crossed class boundaries through
education, and many of us can relate to her story.
In bell hooks book, Where We Stand: Class Matters hooks has a chapter, Crossing
Class Boundaries, where she talks about her experience and he life in which she got out of the
poor and working class. I can relate to her story because my family is considered to by the
Posada 2

working class. My family also did not want me going to a fancy school as hooks says.
Although California State University Northridge is not as fancy as Stanford, my family would
say otherwise. I knew that going straight into a four year university was going to be hard
financially, and just like bell hooks parents, my parents wanted me to say close to home and go
to a cheaper school to save money, which would have been Antelope Valley Community
College. Again, just like one of hooks teachers encouraged her to go to Stanford, one of my
teachers, my AVID teacher to be exact, encouraged me to go to a four year university. It is a very
tough situation to be in, going to college that is, because you never know if you will have enough
money to pay for it, and you sure as well do not want to take out any loans because you do not
know if you will ever be able to pay it off. That is why some students do not go to college or do
not continue to attend school.
A recent Harvard study Pathways to Prosperity showed that the US has the highest
college dropout rate among industrialized nations. Among four year colleges, just 56% of
students graduate within six years. At top colleges like Ivy Leagues, graduation rates are
drastically higher at 90% or more. But for nearly half of college students, dropping out is a
statistical likelihood (Rowan). Just as the picture shown below, most students drop of because
of financial issues in college.

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This does not just happen in one part of the state but in various states as well. 2 out of 5
Wisconsin students are classified as economically disadvantage. Wisconsins academic data shows
observable achievement gaps between students from low-income backgrounds and their middle- and
high-income peers regardless of race (Economic Achievement Gap).

The picture above how the not low income have a higher percentage of graduating students, than
the low income; an about eighteen percent difference. There are always stereotypes on how the
white are the richest, and just like in this graph, whites have the highest graduation rate with
ninety one percent and blacks with a low sixty four percent. Hispanics in between with seventy
two percent. They are various types of races that struggle between class, and according to bell
hooks the number one would be blacks. She has said that in her neighborhood is was a
segregated black community that varied in class.
Therefore many being unable to move up social class. There are some parents that cannot
afford to put their children into kindergarten because in some countries you have to start paying
since then. Just like in El Salvador, education is not free. You have to pay a monthly fee to send
your kids to school, and if you do not, then they are not able to attend school. It gets even harder
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to pay for school after high school because its monthly fees become more expensive. Although
they are not as expensive as the United States, it is more expensive for them (the lower and
working class), because they barely get by from the money they get from working on the farms.
They get paid five dollars a day, maybe ten if they are lucky, to work on the farm all day in the
worst conditions possible. That is what the students that cannot keep going to school have to
look forward to too get some income to barely get by.
There is really no way to move up social class without a real education, that gets you a
career. In her book, hooks says, Crossing class boundaries, entering worlds of class privilege,
was one way that I learned different attitudes toward money than the ones I was raised with.
Among the privileged there was much more information available about how to manage money.
Taking this knowledge and sharing with folks without class privilege can be a gesture that
provides them with the means to assert more meaningful agency in their financial lives.
Meaning that it is possible to move up from the social class you are labeled. hooks argues that it
is possible, you just need to do the right thing.
Although education is the best way to have social mobility, some may say that working
as well helps, just as in the movie, City of God by Fernando Meirelles. In City of God was the
slums and where the poor lived. The only way that would get out of being poor would be either
stealing, killing, selling drugs or moving out to the city and working on a farm. But how many
actually made it to the city? None. Which is why the many thing done in the movie was killing,
stealing and selling drugs. That is why there are so many people out in the world selling drug.
They have no other way to make some kind of income so they look towards the bad and worst,
but the easiest way to make money. There would not be so much crime if everyone one had
Posada 5

equal opportunities to go to school and make a better life for themselves.

The graph above just goes to show how education makes a tremendous difference on the income
that one will have with education. With less than a high school diploma the most you can earn I
about four hundred and fifty four dollars a week. With a bachelors degree or higher you can
earn one thousand one hundred and thirty seven dollars within a week, a total that my father
makes in two weeks of work. Averaging out about six hundred and eighty three dollars
difference a week. Which is a huge amount of money, money that can be used for rent or as I
would, a college student, money for the bus to go to school. The extra six hundred and eighty
three dollars would take me to school for three months.
Education plays the biggest role in social class. It will determine our future social class
qualifications. With education on can determine the path way they want to take, instead of a path
way they do not want to take because it is not affordable. School should be an equal right to all
to have the same opportunities as others. Education is what defines social class. Social classism
directly effects under privilege inner city students by qualifying them as economically
disadvantage.

Posada 6

Works Cited
Economic Achievement Gap." EdTogether. Web. 02 Apr. 2014.
Hooks, Bell. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Rowan, Rachel. "High Cost of Dropping Out If You Dont Graduate, Student Loan Debt Hits
Even Harder." Tuitionio Blog. 11 Mar. 2013. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.
"Types of Social Classes of People." Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.