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Jasmine Barragan
Professor Koning
English 113B
8 May 2014
Education: Underlying roadblocks to academic success
Unlike today, segregation between class structures was a difficult obstacle to overcome in
the education system around the 1970s when bell hooks attended college. The book, where we
stand: CLASS MATTERS by bell hooks, explains the way race in social class plays a significant
role in the education system, and to some extent income as well. Hooks illustrates her unique
definition or idea of social classes. She views race as a separation of the social classes and to
some degree, income. For most, the idea of social classes is where an individual stands according
to wealth, income, and education; however to hooks, class is simply a division of the wealthy
(predominately white men) and women from all races along with African American men. While
this might be a controversial viewpoint that can certainly be argued, hooks makes the argument
that the privileged whites have more access to education and that although income provides
access to higher levels of education, the real obstacles of upward mobility in social class is bias
towards race and gender. There is truth in hooks argument because the higher social class has
more access towards school materials, colleges are less likely to accept African men and women
of all races because of the stereotypes, and the parents who intervene less in the education of
their children tend to have those kids bring home poor grade marks.
Bell hooks argues that white men and other high-class individuals, have more access to
materials needed for success in various academic classes. Hooks came from a low-income family
and she struggled to attend extracurricular classes because her parents could not afford supplies.
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Hooks states Then there were folks like me, full of passion and talent, but without material
resources to do art. Making art was for people with money (30). When bell hooks was in high
school, she was very limited with what she owned because her father was the one that supported
their family financially. Hooks father never found it necessary to pay for material for school or
supply his children with clothes. Growing up, I was raised by a single mom that struggled to pay
rent for our single bedroom apartment. It was difficult for my mom to buy me all the school
supplies I needed and for the majority of the school year I would only have two pencils with one
notebook. As I was entering high school, I did not find it necessary to do well in school because I
focused more on working and helping my mom make rent. Low class individuals, such as
myself, often do poorly in school because of the material their parents cannot provide. High-class
people in general have an abundance of one crucial source; parental finance. Hooks elaborates on
the widely known fact that high-class people, having a more secure and competent income, are
far more likely to be able to supply their children the things they need, in this case, materials for
school.
In the American society, not only the academic resources available to them but also by
the color of their skin or gender and by their annual income segregate people. Low-income
people have a lower chance of getting accepted to a good competitive college because of their
parents lack of educational experience. Furthermore, they are not readily capable to pay for
tuition, books, or transportation from their own pocket. Bell hooks explains, When I was
choosing a college to attend, the issue of money surfaced and had to be talked about (25). As
hooks was applying to college, her parents wanted her to attend a college near home because
although the college was going to pay for tuition, they needed to keep in mind the amount of
money spent on transportation, clothing, etc. When hooks was explaining to her mother that if
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she gets accepted into one of the top competitive colleges, she could receive financial assistance
but she did not put into consideration what her grants did not cover. According to
www.collegestats.org, less than fifteen percent of students that attend the top five Ivy League
schools use financial aid. According to the website, the amount of Brown University students
that use financial assistance for school are around 10.9 percent and students at Duke University
that use government assistance are around 8.3 percent. This suggests the inevitable association
with academic success and wealth. The top competitive schools do not even accept more than
fifteen percent of students that cannot afford college or need grants to attend a college. This
severely limits the ability of students who have the same amount of potential as those with no
financial burdens. This in turn cycles back and lowers their motivation.
Despite the disadvantages of coming from a low income family, as hooks was searching
for a college to attend that challenged her level of academic ability, she says Poor students
would be welcome at the best institutions of higher learning only if they were willing to
surrender memory, to forget the past and claim the assimilated present as the only worthwhile
and meaningful reality (37). Hooks means, in order for low-class students to be accepted into
the community that is their college, they must let go of all that basically makes them who they
are and blend in with those who have never known poverty. Low-class students need to forget
about their living conditions at home and move forward to be accepted into a more privileged
community. Society expects lower-class people to change the way they interact with their
colleagues and to conceal their poor background. When hooks attended college near her home,
students and staff looked at her differently because of the way she dressed and her appearance.
An English professor acknowledged her academic writing and recommended her to apply for a
more challenging college. Due to the fact that she comes from a poor community, her parents
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were not okay with her leaving because they were wary of their daughter being looked down
upon because of her financial status, gender, and skin color.
In their article "Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and the
Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital" by Robert K. Ream and Gregory J. Palardy, they
explain how the relationship between the parents and their children has different outcomes from
an educational standpoint. For example they highlight the idea that for students from lower class
families, there is a sense of on your own learning style which is reflected on the childs
academic success. The average child from a low class family has parents who either have more
than one job or extremely long shifts, which is reasonable if they are not making much money
but must still find a way to provide for not only themselves but also their children. When parents
are not as readily available to help their children overcome difficult schoolwork, those children
tend to fall behind and only worsen over the years because they develop a sense of acceptance
that they do not have someone there to help them along the way. The opposite is true of children
with parents of standard or significant wealth. When a parent might not have to work as long
shifts or physical jobs, they come home with the energy and hopefully the enthusiasm that their
child needs from them. With the support of readily available parents to stimulate greater interest
in learning, those children will progress throughout the years and instead of developing a solitary
acceptance mentality they will develop a sense of being able to overcome obstacles that they
may face through their early academic career and in the future. As bell hooks was growing up,
her parents found work more important than school. They had the mentality that working was
held higher than school work because all their lives they have had to work hard to get ahead or to
maintain their current existence. Bell hooks mother would feel sorry for her children on a daily
basis because she could not supply any of their academic materials since she did not have a job.
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Her mother did not complete school so she could not help her on her schoolwork and her father
was always working. She tried to push bell hooks to succeed in life because she would constantly
think about how her life would have been if she had taken a different path.
Bell hooks illustrates how social classes are the foundation of social inequalities which is
a major factor in the educational careers of students. Factors such as parent-child relationships,
access to school materials, and social structures of communities within respective colleges all
play a significant role in molding the limitations and boundaries that students from different
social classes face. Although many decades have long since come and gone from the time bell
hooks attended college, all of these factors continue to be in play. It is evident that there is still
gender inequality throughout the workforce, which does herd many women away from certain
educational goals throughout their years in school. As for race, despite advancements among the
country, there are still stereotypes that handicap African Americans from either obtaining their
goals themselves or overcoming the uphill battle that is racism. Even with these factors being
removed there is still the added disadvantage of having long ago instilled mentalities from within
the respective social classes such as, low-class adults having a mentality of accepting the rut they
are stuck in and high-class adults having a more progressive mentality which in turn reflects on
the way their children view education and all the obstacles that come with it.

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Works Cited
Hooks, Bell. Where We Stand: Class Matters. New York: Routledge, 2000. Print.
Ream, Robert K, and Gregory J Palardy. "Reexamining Social Class Differences
in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital." American
Educational Research Journal, 45.2 (2008): 238-273.
Where The 1% Send Their Kids to College." RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
<http://collegestats.org/articles/2012/07/where-the-1-send-their-kids-to-college/>.