身份阶级与个人成就的关系(英文原创)

The Relationship between Class and Achievement in the UKBased on economic capital, social capital and cultural capital of British people, Office for National Statistics (ONS) released the new social class system in 2010, which can be concluded into three categories (Employers and business operators, private operators, employees) and seven levels (Elite 6%, Established middle class 25%, Technical middle class 6%, New affluent workers 15%, Traditional working class 14%, Emergent service sector 19%, Precariat, 15%) (Marshall et al, 2012). Data reflect the expansion of middle class, existence of new affluent class, and the increasing number of working women, especially the growth in middle and upper class. Social class links closely with education. There are around 2,500 independent schools in UK. In terms of the proportion of students attending private and state education, only around7% of all British children and 16% of all British students under 18 have the opportunity to receive the so-called elite education (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2011).In modern British society, it seems that there are a lot of open opportunities, in fact, many are hindered by economic and political barriers. Therefore, during a person’s growth, except for the influence of personal ability, talent, luck, effort etc., class is a significant variable. This paper explores the relationship between class and achievement in the UK through the acquisition of educational achievements and initial occupational achievement.In today’s post-industrial society, in order to gain relatively high income and social position, people must accumulate their educational achievements through education system (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2011). While the education system in the UK also adapts to the competitive characteristic of labor market, legally constructing primary, secondary and higher education levels, so as to let families with different ages and economic power to choose (Marshall et al, 2012). In this case, if parents want to improve their class status, or want their children to improve class status, they must participate in the competition of educational resources. As a result, limited educational resources more present as an important method for all classes to maintain or improve social status, consolidate or enhance power resources, and show socialprestige over generations (Parkin, 2013). Particularly, when diploma and certificate become a main human resource representation in the workplace, education opportunity with a higher level becomes an important factor for a person to get a better job and reach larger achievements. Obviously, this factor is given and protected by the government. Currently, in the UK, no matter enterprise or government recruitment, requirement for educational background is always clarified.Due to this, an important content of family economic expense decision-making is getting a higher level of education opportunity, or providing more economic support to help themselves or their children to stay at the advantaged position in competition. Therefore, parents’ class status, social networks and financial capacity are of great significance. Higher social classes usually means higher economic capacity, broader and more effective relational networks (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2011). On the one side, many parents seek for or purchase chances of receiving education for their children, and make their children to obtain legal and proper competitive power, such as hiring extracurricular tutors, spend a lot of money to transfer children to better schools. On the other side, through class relational networks, many parents try to create abundant social resources for their children, so as to make them gain maximized educational benefits (Luke, 2010). Of course, more commonly, advantaged class status also presents as the intergenerational transmission of culture. Parents who received better education can directly help children to study well, indirectly inspire their children, or motivate their ambitions, so as to make them realize their career goals successfully (Marsh, 1986). It can be seen that class background of a family, especially class status of the father or mother, has very prominent influence to children’s education, and will further influence children’s acquisition of initial social and economic status.Class origin affects the fairness of children’s educational opportunity. In any time, educational background of parents or education capital amount of parents can directly and strongly influence their children’s capital of receiving education. That is to say, the more educational capital parents have, the more educational capital their children will gain. In the past, although knowledge was not as important as today’s, educational capital of fathers still influenced children’s obtaining of educationalachievements (Royle, 2012). With the largely increasing social status of females since the 1960s and 1970s, power of mothers’ education capital becomes more evident (Archer et al, 2005). However, it should be noticed that in recent years, with the expanding enrollment of higher education in the UK, higher education gradually transforms from elite education to mass education, influence of parents’ educational capital becomes even enhanced (Archer et al, 2005). With the increasing importance of educational achiev ements, parents’ socioeconomic status presents direct and prominent influence, as the popularization of higher education actually provide more convenience for upper class children to receive education. In contemporary background of pursuing educational equality, class inheritance of education actually leads to educational gap.No matter the influence from parents or educational system, these all belong to ascriptive factors rather than afterward factors (Arber et al, 2014). The largest inequality of this era may be the differences of educational opportunity and educational capital accumulation are caused by ascriptive factors represented by social class. If this unequal system and resource allocation maintains, education inequality will be maintained permanently. Other inequalities in British society will not be thoroughly changed as well. After all, class directly influences people’s income, and further influences people’s capacity of gaining educational achievements.Class origin also performs evident imp acts on children’s attainment of initial socioeconomic status. During the in-depth urbanization of British society, occupational differentiation caused by class stratification makes educational capital have significant explanatory power to occupational achievement gaining (Bukodi & Goldthorpe, 2011). However, such influence is different in different times. Before the industrial revolution, restricted environment forced many children to inherit their parents’ occupation status, especially those from lower cl asses, and it was extremely difficult for them to increase their classes (Royle, 2012). With the increasing power of educational capital, people have more occupational choices. However, socioeconomic position of parents strengthens its impact on children’s acquisition of socioeconomic status. With the expanding enrollment of universities and colleges, such phenomenonbecomes even prominent.Considering parents’ educational capital and socioeconomic status have passed onto their children’s acquisition of educational capital, parents’ socioeconomic status presents rising influence to children’s initial socioeconomic status, which means the accentuation of the inequality of occupational attainment in the UK. In addition, factors which affect the acquisition of initial socioeconomic status also perform prominent and important effect to people’s acquisition of current even terminal socioeconomic status and achievements (Luke, 2010). As the acquisition of current occupational status has accumulative effect of family support. That is to say, acquisition of current occupational status and achievements accumulates long-term influence from parents’ class. Nowadays, explanatory power of current occupational status acquisition is almost as important as children’s initial socioeconomic status and their educational capital.Under such circumstances, no matter the obtaining of educational achievements or carrier achievements, effect of family’s class background has been further enhanced, thus ascriptive factors of social flow improve the social expectations function (Marsh, 1986). This will keep increasing social inequality and lead to intergenerational inheritance and replacement of class. This is beneficial for the development of inner strata consciousness, but will do great harm to social stability and solidarity of the UK.Deepening of post-industrialization may not bring the increase of social openness. Influenced by system, limited flow space and unfair educational opportunities, rapid economic progress and expansion of educational sector intensify competition of educational opportunities and occupational opportunities. Class background of family represented by parents severely influences people’s educational achievements as well as early career achievements. This implie s that the higher parents’ social class is, the more educational and occupational achievements their children will gain. On the contrary, the lower parents’ social class is, the less educational and occupational achievements their children will get. Class status filtering mechanism formed by job competition limits flowing channels of middle and lower classes within generations aswell as over generations. Through the selection of social flow mechanism, upper classes will gain more opportunities to make achievements. While due to the competitive selection of upper classes, employment opportunities brought by new economic sectors strongly exclude offspring of lower classes, therefore lower classes always create much less achievements than upper classes. This affects fairness of British society to some certain extent, which should be paid high attention by policy-makers.References:Arber, S., Fenn, K., & Meadows, R. 2014. Subjective financial well-being, income and health inequalities in mid and later life in Britain. Social Science & Medicine, 100, pp. 12-20.Archer, L., Hutchings, M., & Ross, A. 2005. Higher education and social class: issues of exclusion and inclusion. Routledge. pp. 3-87.Bukodi, E., & Goldthorpe, J. H. 2011. Class origins, education and occupational attainment in Britain: secular trends or cohort-specific effects?. European Societies, 13(3), pp. 347-375.Luke, A. 2010. Documenting reproduction and inequality: Revisiting Jean Anyon's “Social class and school knowledge”. Curriculum inquiry, 40(1), pp. 167-182.Marsh, C. 1986. Social class and occupation. Key variables in social investigation. London: Routledge. pp. 15-46.Marshall, G., Newby, H., Rose, D., & V ogler, C. 2012. Social class in modern Britain. Routledge. pp. 2-198.Parkin, F. (Ed.). 2013. The social analysis of class structure. Routledge. pp. 16-50.Royle, E. (2012). Modern Britain Third Edition: A Social History 1750-2010. A&C Black. pp. 456-496。