“Education is a major source of social mobility in contemporary society.” Explain. (UPSC CSE Mains 2016 - Sociology, Paper 1)
Social mobility is defined as the movement of an individual or group from one social class or social stratum to another in the framework of the system of stratification. Education as a factor of social mobility is discussed by the various schools of thought.
- Functionalists like Durkheim and Talcott Parsons established the positive relationship between education and mobility.
- While Durkheim argued that education prepared students for taking up the future role in capitalist society, Parsons advocated that schools in capitalist America offer adequate training to the children to get into the job market.
- Davis and Moore in their theory of stratification advocated that highly specialized persons get high degrees of specialization and are endowed with exclusive qualities to fit into the highly challenging and most productive occupations. They are instrumental in the economic progress and social development of the nation. As a result, the values like self-orientation, individualism, achievement, competition, universalism, innovation, conformity to legal provisions of society and equality has predominated the thought of every generation
- The bearings of modern education on social mobility are studied in great detail by Goldthorpe. Collecting data from industrially developed societies, he finds out how education has contributed to the 60% of working-class children getting into supervisory and semi-skilled occupational positions. Thus, education has been considered as a prime source of mobility.
- Pierre Bourdieu contradicted this argument. In his theory of social and cultural reproduction, he asserts that education preaches equality but practices the reinforcement of hierarchy and inequality.
- The children belonging to an upper class having control over economic, cultural and social capital enter into high profitable occupations and this success is legitimized by the school.
- Education offers no scope for mobility and mass education is given to masses but exclusive education important for the job market is monopolized by the upper class.
- The argument of Bourdieu is supported by Bowels and Gintis who advocated that schools in capitalist America are class-based rather than egalitarian. It provides the least opportunity for mobility. The children belonging to the lower class get into lower privileged schools and subsequently get into low paid jobs.
- Andre Beteille in his article advocates that it is not the principle of equality or economic interest or search for mobility that put people into schools rather entry into school and success into school is greatly defined by family, kinship, religion or other cultural variables.
The role of education in encompassing mobility cannot be universally similar. In every society, various forms of compulsions, institutional conditions, and value systems will be determining to what extent, in what forms education has successfully contributed to mobility.
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