Social Class Disparities In Education

The primary social institutions are education and family. These social institutions are determined by their society’s form of production. Social institutions tend to reinforce inequalities and uphold the power of dominant groups.
Education is a major component of social class since it has affect on both higher and lower social classes. Individuals from higher social classes are more likely to attend better schools and more likely to receive higher education. Educational inequality is one factor that perpetuates the class divide across generations. These social domains directly impacts on what and how much children learn. Children growing up in low-income neighborhoods, for example, are much more likely to experience constant stress which may have an effect on their minds, cognitive skills and abilities. “The disparities between rich and poor families and neighborhoods have increased, exacerbating the differences between schools and widening the gap in opportunities.” (Stephens and Marcus 5)
Hart and Risley found striking social class differences in children’s exposure to language in the home. “For example, in a single hour, children of professional parents were exposed to almost twice as many words (2,153 words) as children of working-class parents (1,251 words) and more than 3 times as many words as children of parents in poverty (616 words). They subsequently examined children’s language development: At age 3, professional-class children had cumulative vocabularies of approximately 1,000 words, compared to 750 words for working-class children and 500 words for children living in poverty.” (Stephens and Marcus