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

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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