RR#3 – Bourdieu

The article interested me as early as page 3, where the author first started to discuss education accessibility in relationship to social class. This field of study has interested me in the past, dealing with whether the social class a person is born into will determine how educated they become. There definitely seems to be a correlation between wealth and education; those with more money to pay for education end up going to more expensive schools, which generally have higher standards for education than less economically stable schooling environments. This raises the question of how successful a person can be in secondary education. To take the example of Ivy League schools, the majority of children going to these schools are stereotyped as being spoiled, as most students come from money. College is not the ultimate determiner of success; to use Steve Jobs as an example, he as a college dropout became one of the most successful people in history. However, it is a well-known fact that those with more education make more money and are more financially successful in everyday life. So, the question is broached, that taking out the obvious factor of hard work, are kids coming from a privileged background more likely to be successful economically? Unfortunately, this usually proves true. The article continued in this vein. On page 9, the author pointed out that a college degree can be looked at as a form of capital. I found this point to be spot on because when hiring an unknown person to work at a company, the employer will most likely higher whoever is college educated over whoever has just a high school diploma. The final pages of the article analyzed social capital, which to me connected back, because job interviews are conducted socially.