Cultural Capital Increasing Education Inequality
Do you have frequent conversations with your child that allows them to express their opinion? Or do you take your child’s opinion into consideration when you are deciding the next location for your family vacation or what will be tomorrow’s dinner? These conversations or even similar conversations help children develop cultural capital. Cultural capital skills allow a child to excel in school.
Annette Lareau referrers to the skills that allow a child to feel comfortable when they address and adult as concerted cultivation. Concerted cultivation is mostly seen in middle class children. In the school system, concerted cultivation can be seen when a middle class student feels comfortable asking the teacher for help while a working class child may not ask a teacher for help or the teacher may not assist the child since he or she is helping out the middle class student that keeps asking for help (http://asr.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/03/0003122411427177).
Students from higher classes are also at an advantage if they want to pursue a college education or are already attending college. In “Privilege,” Shamus Khan points out that the upper class students attending St. Paul now that they will be attending Elite schools because their parents have set the path for them (https://books.google.com/books?id=vU5aBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA507&ots=YRZpSB5FsI&dq=privilege%20in%20the%20structure%20of%20schooling&pg=PA127#v=onepage&q&f=false). Their parents’ cultural capital has also paved the road for their success because they know what to do to succeed in school and they have networks they can reach out to for help.
However, lower class students are at a disadvantage when they pursue a college education because they may not have the cultural capital to help them with their college experience. Instead, lower class students have to figure things on their if their parents have no knowledge about the college application process or college experience (http://www.jstor.org/stable/41658872?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents), which Annette Lareau referrers to as natural growth (https://books.google.com/books?id=3rmmj3lKATAC&lpg=PA1&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q&f=false).
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