Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Material help with education and training
- 3 Financial choices and sacrifices for children
- 4 Expectations and hopes for educational success
- 5 Fulfilling potential and securing happiness
- 6 Contacts, luck and career success
- 7 Friends and networks in school and beyond
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix A The interviewees
- Appendix B Doing comparative research
- Notes
- List of references
- Author index
- Subject index
2 - Material help with education and training
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Material help with education and training
- 3 Financial choices and sacrifices for children
- 4 Expectations and hopes for educational success
- 5 Fulfilling potential and securing happiness
- 6 Contacts, luck and career success
- 7 Friends and networks in school and beyond
- 8 Conclusion
- Appendix A The interviewees
- Appendix B Doing comparative research
- Notes
- List of references
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
In the Introduction, I outlined Goldthorpe's theory about the mobilisation of different types of resources – economic, cultural and social – in the reproduction of advantage. I noted how Goldthorpe emphasised the crucial importance of economic resources – wealth, income and other forms of capital – in this process because they are exclusive goods (i.e. they are not owned by others) that can be easily transmitted from one generation to another. Thus, with respect to education, middle-class parents with high and stable incomes use their economic resources to buy the best education for their children, especially in the acquisition of educational credentials. Armed with good qualifications, their children are then in the position to apply for high-level jobs that demand the very educational credentials they have bought. Without such economic resources, working-class parents cannot buy the best education for their children so they cannot ensure that their children do well at school and achieve the educational qualifications required for entry into good jobs. Economic resources are the key, therefore, for middle-class and, for that matter, working-class reproduction. The theory, of course, makes the processes of class reproduction sound deceptively simple and straightforward. What about the different demands on income such as the number of children to be educated? What about different choices about how money is spent, including holidays, for example, over education? How can a lack of economic resources be circumvented? How might other sources of economic capital be mobilised?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Class PracticesHow Parents Help Their Children Get Good Jobs, pp. 18 - 43Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004