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Karen Orellana
Professor Koning
English 113B
March 21, 2014
Education
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world- Nelson Mandela

Education too many is known to give you the opportunity to reach any goal which you
have set. Making us believe that our society status, our economic background, or our racial
background does not matter. Your knowledge eliminates all discrimination and concentrates on
only your pure knowledge; that is how we all wish the world of education truly was, but it is not.
While many may say that in the United States opportunity of higher education and the ability to
change class is usual and ordinary, upon empirical knowledge and ideas provided by bell hooks
we see otherwise.

First of all, when reaching post-secondary education for lower income students money
becomes a big issue which in many cases interferes with their decision. In bell hooks Where We
Stand: Class Matters, she mentions her college decision making, When I was choosing a
college to attend, the issue of money surfaced and had to be talked about (25). While the upper
class students do not need to worry about the money, they take their education for granted since
their lifestyle is already pretty perfect. On the other hand, lower class students take their
education a lot differently since it is seen as the only opportunity to give them open doors to be
able to move upward in the class system to better their lives and their families. When discussing
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the issue of money, financial aid needs to be discussed as well because for many it holds the only
hope for attending college. Mama urged me to attend a college nearby which offered financial
aid (25). According to Exploring the Effects of Financial Aid on the Gap in Student Dropout
Risks by Income Level by Rong Chen, We have witnessed a dramatic shift in college student
funding from grants to loans, and a widening gap in educational attainment between students
from affluent and poor families (2).

Students with low class family background lack the encouragement to attend college
from parents and family overall. In many cases this situation does not exist for a student coming
from an upper class background. Wealthy parents expect their children to attend a well-known
prestigious school while poor parents would like their children to get their education but in the
least expensive way possible. According to the article, Two Paths to Inequality in Educational
Outcomes: Family Background and Educational Selection in the United States and Norway by
Liza Reisel, Education features quite centrally in the definition of social status, which makes it
an effective site for potential mobility (263). Parents who have attended college already and
have received a degree know how the college life is and how college works. However, for a
parent who never attended college or hardly had any education they do not know what to expect
and do not know the rules and regulations of a college or university. According to the article
The Reproduction of Privilege by Thomas Edsall, A huge majority of the 24 percent of
Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelors degree coming from families with
earnings above the median income. Students from high income families are known to be
privileged because they have access to sources which money can buy, in which families with
wealth find it not difficult to obtain the sources.
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The educational background of a low class student and an upper class student differ in
many ways. Depending on the high school in which they attended before college the students
readiness for the college life will depend if they were taught the proper ways. In many cases a
low income family will depend on public schools for the education of their child in which it
lacks to provide resources needed to achieve better in their academics. Wealthy families will
choose a private school in which they receive the support and the resources needed to succeed in
their post-secondary education. For example, as a freshmen entering Cal State Northridge I was
blown away at the stuff that other freshmen knew and I did not. MLA format/citing was first
introduced to me in college, when I noticed others had experience with it I realized I was behind
and needed to do extra to catch up to the knowledge in which others already had because they
were properly taught. As seen in the chart below released by College Board, it demonstrates the
impact your families household income can have on your education. Why might you think that
the lower the income the less students scores are?

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In many cases, due to the lack of money at home, students from low income families are
required to go to school near home to help pay the bills of the household and take care of the
siblings while the parents are at work. Some parents might want them to stay near home because
their pay check alone is not enough to feed the family. In Where We Stand: Class Matters, bell
hooks mentions Getting my parents to agree to my leaving Kentucky was hard enough. They
had accepted a college they could reach by car, but a college thousands of miles away was
beyond their imagination (28). Sometimes they need to provide for children of their own which
prevents them from dedicating their time to their own education. For example, I began working
at the age of 16 because I saw both my parents struggle every pay check, sometimes having only
10 dollars left after paying bills. I wanted to lift a burden from my mom and dad and decided I
was old enough to begin to work and help them out. Until this day I continue working and
helping my parents. Many first generation students as myself want to accomplish great things for
themselves and their families. As bell hooks mentions in her video, Cultural Criticism and
Transformation, she talks about the sense of entitlement which students at top universities have
which differ from students in urban schools which do not have the sense of entitlement
because they do not think of their future only but think of surviving each day from their struggles
and obstacles.

Many students around the world are discriminated because of their race and social class.
According to bell hooks, Poverty in the white mind is always primarily black (4). Many people
might say that predominantly white neighborhoods contain the majority of good schools which
provide the best education. Those who do not live around the neighborhood are not allowed to
attend the schools unless granted permission. For example, the chart below shows the
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discrimination towards low income students. Why must a low income high scoring student have
the same possibility of completing college as a low scoring high income student? Education must
be based on the knowledge you have learned along the years and should not be based on a
number identifying your wealth. To a certain extent when dealing with education the major
discrimination shown is discrimination of wealth which leads to the characterization of the social
class system. Due to discrimination, an outcome of students deciding to drop out from school is
usual. Many students might feel uncomfortable for the way they are treated or even become
cultural shock and their decision they believe is the best for them at the moment is dropping out
of school. Even though, Title VII of the Civil Rights Bill exists to this present day people are
continuously getting discriminated against.

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While many students strive to do their very best during the years of their education to
achieve their post-secondary education, which they believe they are equally entitled to obtain has
been jeopardized by the ideas of bell hooks. Bell hooks has studied and has lived through her
own experience of privileged and unprivileged students, she was able to easily relate to the
unprivileged students because in fact she was unprivileged herself. In the United States they
make us believe that everyone is entitled to achieve anything with education and have the
opportunity to move upward in the class system when in reality we are faced with issues that
privileged students do not need to face, that issue is money.















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Works Cited Page

"CHART: How Income Inequality Contributes To a Growing Education Gap That Is
Jeopardizing Our Middle Class." Think Progress RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.
<http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/17/486244/chart-income-inequality-
education/>.

Chen, Rong and Stephen L. Des Jardins. Exploring the Effects of Financial Aid on the Gap in
Student Dropout Risks by Income Level., Research in Higher Education, Vol. 49, No. 1
(February 2008), pp. 1-18. Web. March 18, 2014.

Reisel, Liza., Two Paths to Inequality in Educational Outcomes: Family Background and
Educational Selection in the United States and Norway. Sociology of Education, Vol. 84,
No. 4 (OCTOBER 2011) , pp. 261-280. Web. March 18, 2014.

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"The Reproduction of Privilege." Campaign Stops The Reproduction of Privilege Comments.
N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2014. <http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/the-
reproduction-of-privilege/?scp=5&sq=college&st=cse>.