Education and Social Mobility: An Insight into Nelson Mandela's Statement

This essay provides an insight into Nelson Mandela's statement on education as the engine of personal development and its role in social mobility. It explores the relationship between education and social status, highlighting the importance of goals and the execution of knowledge. The essay also discusses conflicting evidence on the role of education in social mobility and the conditions necessary for its attainment.

English for Academic
Purpose

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................3
References........................................................................................................................................4

Introduction
Education refers to process or act of acquisition or imparting knowledge for preparing
them for having matured life. Social mobility is defined as shift within social status of individual
from one to other status (Arday, 2020). This shift can be lower, higher, intra-generational or
inert-generational and it cannot be defined whether this alteration is good or bad. The essay will
provide an insight into the statement of Nelson Mandela.
Main Body
Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa wrote within the autobiography named ”Long
Walk to Freedom” that “Education is great engine of personal development” (Long Walk To
Freedom, 1995). The statement is true up to certain extent but cannot be regarded as completely
correct. Education forms the basis for development through which an individual can acquire
knowledge. But for being successful it is important that knowledge that is attained is executed in
right direction. The lines of Nelson Mandela “It is through education that the daughter of peasant
can become doctor...”, its true as this implies that it is not necessary that son of President will
become President and daughter of a farmer becomes farmer. It entirely depends on the way in
which education is being considered by them. Furthermore, it is also important that an individual
should have certain goals which will enable them to attain social mobility. The way in which
education is utilised by an individual definitely this leads to creation of either affirmative or
pessimistic influence on their social status. An instance can be taken into consideration if son of
a doctor is not serious about studies and is careless then there is a probability that there social
status might decline in future.
Education is regarded as strong driver for social mobility. On the other hand social
mobility denotes movement of one class or status to the other. In this case emphasis is laid on
intergenerational mobility that denotes alteration within the status from parents to their adults
and then children. An instance can be taken into consideration like when son of peasants become
engineer. In contrary note, when peasants child ends up as a peasant this is an instance of social
reproduction (Morris, 2020). The class that individual have within society attributes to
achievement and ascriptive processes which are normally seen like contradictory processes. The
positions which are usually valued via society are those which are crucial for societal
development or functioning and the demanding abilities as well as skills. Along with this, for
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encouraging individuals for individuals for investing their time along with efforts for attracting
as well as training it is necessary that positions render high economic and social rewards.
Education is a critical aspect which is viewed within development and reflection of abilities as
well as skills possessed by individuals and thus, it is utilised like a means for social selection
(Lin, 2020). Therefore, education amplifies social mobility by rendering social selection
depending on achievement instead of possessing ascribed characteristics.
By conducting empirical research, associated with role of education within process for
social mobility conflicting evidences have been attained. The argument related with mobility via
education as depicted by functional theories illustrates that it depend on two conditions they are:
educational attainment have to be utilised like a criteria for status position or eventual class and
levels of education cannot be influenced via the family’s class (Social mobility, 2020). The two
conditions that are critical for attaining social mobility are equality within educational
opportunities and meritocracy simultaneously. This is crucial to emphasise that social mobility
will only prevail in case if both the situation are addressed and individually they both are
necessary but definitely it is insufficient for attaining social mobility. Furthermore, role of
education is important but this is hardly made in between class as well as status. Education has
minimum role within reproduction or class mobility as meritocracy is not attained and thus this
factor cannot be regarded as a criteria for specification of class of an individual. Education will
play a critical role within class reproduction only in case it was major criteria for being a worker
or capitalist.
If education would have been the determinant of class then it might have been anticipated
that most of the PhD’s were capitalists and significantly children of bourgeois family would be
workers due to certain educational difficulties. But neither of the situations is true nor justify
themselves (Education and mobility, 2020). When class is treated as a relation of production then
this has no impact on attaining education in case when position is constant. At first instance, if
this is considered then it illustrates that emphasis is made on giving equal educational
opportunities to all in relationship to class. By taking into consideration absence of meritocracy
within the class identification, lack of impact of latter gives more indication that the role of
education is weak within mobility or class reproduction rather than equalisation of potential.
Furthermore, there are certain structural restrictions both on quantity as well as quality of
educational opportunities for children who belong to lower socioeconomic strata. Furthermore,
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depending upon the findings related with equality of educational opportunities as well as
meritocracy represents paradoxical pictures for social stratification and therefore, the issue
related with social mobility is not resolved via education. This is referred to as meritocratic
process that depends on achievement variables of an individual. The individual’s abilities and
capabilities lead them to attain socioeconomic status. Upward social needs taking edge from new
ideas, technologies and platforms for overcoming issues related with economic turmoil (The
expert in social mobility who says education cannot make it happen, 2020). This clearly
illustrates that it depends on an individual which direction they want to go and not on their social
status.
Conclusion
From above essay it is inferred that education forms of the base for individual that
further leads to succeed and formulate their own status or class within the society. Though there
might be certain hindrances but through efforts they can be handled in an affirmative manner. In
contrast to class, this has been identified that education has critical role within allocating status.
The meritocracy hypothesis are tested and found that there is relevant relationship among
educational as well as socioeconomic achievements.
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References
Books and Journals
Arday, J., 2020. Race, education and social mobility: We all need to dream the same dream and
want the same thing.
Morris, D., 2020. Too early to declare a general law of social mobility and heritability for
education. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(46), pp.28564-28565.
Lin, M.L., 2020. Educational Upward Mobility. Practices of Social Changes--Research on Social
Mobility and Educational Inequality. International Journal of Social Science
Studies, 8(3), pp.25-51.
Online
Long Walk To Freedom. 1995. [Online]. Available through:
<https://zelalemkibret.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/the-autobiography-of-nelson-
mandela.pdf>.
Social mobility. 2020. [Online]. Available through:
<https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/other/social-mobility/>.
Education and mobility. 2020. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-
maps/education-and-mobility>.
The expert in social mobility who says education cannot make it happen. 2020. [Online].
Available through: <https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/mar/17/the-expert-in-
social-mobility-who-says-education-cannot-make-it-happen>.
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