The influence of family capital on equal educational opportunity in China
The influence of family capital
Introduction
Education is an essential cornerstone of a country's progress, and educational equity is related to the country's economic prosperity and social progress. Equality of educational opportunity is the necessary condition and social foundation to realize social equality. In recent years, problems such as the solidification of social strata and the large gap between the rich and the poor have seriously troubled society. China has completed the popularization of nine-year compulsory education. However, with the expansion of educational opportunities, the problem of educational equity is still severe. Education plays a role in alleviating and regulating social contradictions and realizing social equity by providing fair educational opportunities. It is a vital way for social strata, but also an effective means for social resources redistribution. The ultimate goal of education is to realize social equality and make every individual develop freely and harmoniously. Education equity mainly includes equality of educational rights and opportunities. Among the many external social environment factors that affect the equality of educational opportunities, family capital is the first capital that everyone comes into contact with, which has a significant impact on individual ability differentiation and development. From the perspective of family capital, this paper will discuss the impact of family economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital on the equality of educational chances, and put forward some effective measures to promote the equality of educational opportunity in China based on the existing policies.
Family capital
Family capital has a far-reaching influence on children's educational level, academic achievement, marriage choice, personality, quality, and interest. Therefore, a family is the epitome of personal growth, social change, and social structure. Marx put forward that capital is a kind of value that can increase the value. Many sociologists have deeply studied and discussed the concept and connotation of family capital. According to Coleman, an American sociologist, family capital includes at least three forms: material capital, human capital, and social capital. However, Bourdieu, a French sociologist, divides the capital into three types: economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital, and believes that these three kinds of capital can be transformed into each other under certain conditions.
In the framework of class or stratum analysis, family resource conditions often summed up as a kind of overall class status and class situation. However, the influence of family on children's educational attainment is not entirely comprehensive, and the family's cultural, economic, and social resources are also different in the mechanism of action. Therefore, the overall class analysis framework is not entirely suitable for the systematic analysis of educational inequality and its changes.
Family capital also has the features of capital itself, and it embodied in two aspects: Firstly, family capital is profitable. It is not an individual's, but a resource embedded in social relations and social structure. In other words, the investment of family capital is a form of capital that can get returns. As an important indicator to measure the number of family resources, family capital plays a vital role in improving individuals' status in society. In terms of education, children can utilize family capital to provide them with high-quality education resources. Secondly, family capital is inheritable. A complete family cultural capital inheritance process includes three steps: transmission, generation, transformation, and confirmation. Any interruption will lead to the failure of inheritance. (引用资本传承) At the present stage in China, the highest authority of transformation and confirmation is the examination system at all levels, especially the college entrance examination system. The cultural capital can realize its social value and transformed into economic capital, social capital. 传承研究
Equal Opportunity in Education
In the rapid development of science and technology, the competition of comprehensive strength among countries is the competition of educational quality and talents.
Since the reform and opening up, our government has issued relevant policies and invested much money in balancing educational resources, but the equality of educational opportunity has not realized completely. It is closely related to the differences in urban and rural areas, social strata, and gender at the present stage of society. The Outline of the National Medium and Long Term Education Reform and Development Plan (2010-2020), after referred to as Outline, points out that equity promotion should be regarded as the national basic education policy.
Family is the first place for children to receive education and the basic unit of their social life. Because of the uneven distribution of educational resources, the social stratum has the phenomenon of solidification; different social strata have a different total amount of capital, so their children's educational opportunities also show inequality. Simultaneously, the inequality of early education opportunities caused by family capital will continue to the follow-up education stage, and the difference of adult education achievements is difficult to change, or the cost of change is relatively high. The better the outcome of education(Barnett, 2011; Heckman, 2006). Therefore, it is crucial to explore the root causes of inequality of opportunity.
Cultural Capital
There are three forms of cultural capital: Embodied, Objectified and institutionalized.
Embodied cultural capital refers to the individual's inheritance through family cultural background, knowledge, temperament and skills, and the formation of internalized knowledge, ability, temperament, knowledge and cultivation through congenital and acquired cultivation;
Objectified cultural capital is not only a kind of cultural product but also a criticism of some theories and problems. It is the cultural capital objectified in material and information, such as literature, painting, monument, equipment, etc. The objectified cultural capital realized in the cultural industry, which is the economic operation activity of cultural capital, which produces cultural products with cultural value and economic value.
Institutionalized cultural capital depended on the confirmation of the cultural system and realized through academic qualifications and certificates. Cultural capital presents its social value and social function through institutionalization and can be transformed into economic and social capital to a certain extent. These three forms of cultural capital are related to each other. The accumulation of specific cultural capital needs not only the legitimacy confirmation of institutionalized cultural capital but also the expression of objective cultural capital.
Family Cultural Capital
Family cultural capital refers to the relative advantages of a family, such as temperament, interest, cultural atmosphere, attitude, and behaviour. It can be expressed not only by the education level of the parents and other related members (the education level mostly expressed by academic certificates, which belongs to the institutionalized cultural capital) and professional achievements but also through the Objectified cultural capital.
Family cultural capital is closely related to embodied cultural capital. Bourdieu (引用 Hua Kant) pointed out that excluding the influence of economic position and social background, children from more educated families not only have a higher academic success rate but also show different types of cultural consumption than children from other families in almost all fields." The process of individual obtaining cultural capital through the family is also the process of socialization, which is the process of internalization of one's temperament, interest, and ability. Compared with other types of family capital, family cultural capital is less interfered with by external social forces, and its inequality effect is generally more persistent and stable.
Also, children's cultural capital can continuously be accumulated through school education, which not only accumulates the thickness of family cultural capital but also enriches individual cultural capital. As family cultural capital mainly affects the ability changes of children, once the ability differences between children are formed, they will continue to strengthen along with the advantage accumulation mode in the process of subsequent academic performance and entrance examination. School education is the cultural way of the upper class, and children from these classes undoubtedly have an advantage in this respect, thus further strengthening the inequality of educational opportunities.
However, it is necessary to emphasize that the stability of the influence of cultural capital on children's education is not expressed in a fixed form. The family itself is also the product of social and cultural traditions. It can not resist the continuous intervention of national policies or historical movements with powerful nature. For example, the 10-year cultural revolution has strongly eroded the influence of family cultural capital on the education of their children.
Family Economic Capital
Among the many factors included in family capital, economic capital is usually regarded as the most basic and direct factor that affects the specific population to obtain equal educational opportunities. Family economic status is usually regarded as the primary index to ensure health conditions, learning environment, material life, and the like, which are necessary for the educated's growth and development. (111 quoted)
The family economy depends on parents' income or their guardians in the labour market (more broadly, it should be in all social fields). It is closely dependent on labour market conditions, institutional environment, and other social environments. Therefore, the inequality caused by family economic capital is rooted in the external institutional environment and social environment.
Although students' ability and ability determine the opportunity to enter and enter school, the economic background of family seriously affects the acquisition of students' ability (111 Yaping). The inequality of educational opportunity caused by the difference in family economic capital is prominent in education in China. The higher the family income means that parents can invest more money for their children's education, their children will also get high-quality education resources, and seize the opportunity to access educational opportunities at all levels. However, the reality of low-income families selectively limits the parents' investment in their children's education, resulting in their children's access to high-quality education resources will be significantly reduced. All these indicate that in the social transformation oriented by the market economy, exchanging high-quality education resources with family economic capital is not only a manifestation of economic resources exclusion but also makes the children of low-income families more and more disadvantaged in terms of fair access to educational opportunities (111 Yaping).
Family social capital
The social capital is mainly measured from two aspects: parents' occupation and family social network.
British scholar d.v.glass believes that occupation is the leading classification standard to construct social status level because each person's occupation is closely related to his economic status and educational background. Although China has carried out relevant education policies and economic supplies, the professional class group of parents still plays a vital role in children's access to education. Parents with the lower professional class have limited social relations and network resources, so they have a relatively narrow choice of educational opportunities for their children, and vice versa. This kind of social stratification represented by occupation leads to the vast difference of each family's social capital and finally leads to the imbalance of educational opportunities.
Besides, family social capital characterized by the social network has a significant impact on access to education opportunities. The size of a family social network and the amount of capital owned by family members determine the social capital capacity. Families with a strong social network can utilize more social relations to send their children into elementary schools, so they occupy an advantageous position in the access to education opportunities; families with a weak social network, due to the limitation of their social relations, reduce the opportunity to send their children into good schools, so they are often in a disadvantageous position in obtaining educational opportunities.
Political capital is regarded as a particular form of social capital by sociologists. The so-called political capital refers to the identity, status, power, and resources provided by the government and political parties and the deterrence and social influence from it.
In China, the family's political capital is one of the critical resources for children to obtain educational opportunities. The higher the political status of parents, the more power and social relations they have, the stronger the ability to use their resources to serve their children in the process of their children's schooling and employment. Among them, arranging children to attend high-quality schools is a typical manifestation of "choosing schools by rights" relying on political capital. Thus, it can be seen that "choosing schools by right" means occupying scarce educational resources under political power, which affects the fair distribution of current compulsory education resources. However, it is not easy to be identified because it is a recessive allocation mode of educational resources. Therefore, paying attention to the fair allocation of resources in the current compulsory education stage is conducive to promoting the fairness of the starting point of Chinese society. Also, parents with higher political capital generally have earlier educational expectations for their children, and their children will have obvious advantages in higher education achievements, employment opportunities, and Marriage Choices in the future. Studies by foreign scholars also show that children's aspirations are more likely to be influenced by their parents' expectations, and parents' educational expectations significantly promote their academic efforts in school (Dominia, T., Conley, A. & Farkas, G. 2011)
Internal Structure of Family
In addition to the above aspects, the family's internal structure also affects access to children's educational opportunities. When the family capital fixed, the amount of children's utilization of family capital is related to the number of siblings in the family. Most studies have shown that there is an apparent negative relationship between the number of siblings and children's cognitive ability and education accessibilities.
Like cultural capital, family structure can not resist the continuous intervention of effective national policies or historical movements. The family planning policy implemented by the Chinese government since the 1980s has also forcefully penetrated the family structure, changing the impact of family structure elements on educational opportunities. Besides, the absence of some core family members, such as single-parent families, has a more significant negative impact on children's access to education opportunities. (quoted in 1111)
The approaches to promoting the equality of educational opportunity
Access to equal educational opportunities affects social stability and the consolidation of the achievements of reform and opening up and is the key to correctly handle the relationship between reform, development, and stability. Therefore, taking positive and effective measures to realize the balanced and equal development of educational opportunities is a necessary standard to test the success of education reform, and also an important goal to achieve a well-off society in an all-round way.
Improve the overall level of family cultural capital
As an extension and embodiment of social equity in the field of education, the core of educational equity is to ensure citizens' equal right to receive an education.
Compared with western developed countries, the overall level of family cultural capital in China is not high. The reason is related to the low education level of Chinese citizens. Although China's higher education has entered the stage of popularization, the group that can accept higher education still accounts for a small number of the whole population. ① This requires that the government should pay attention to the improvement of the overall level of education, generally increase the ownership of national cultural capital, continually promote the equalization of educational opportunities, and narrow the educational gap.
First of all, the government should strengthen the training of continuing education for the rural population. The government can improve the cultural and technological quality of low-cultural groups by offering agricultural technology training courses and cultural literacy classes to make up for the lack of cultural capital of rural families.
Secondly, the government or the relevant departments should increase the "intellectual investment" in the backward rural areas and actively mobilize social forces to enter the rural communities. By giving books and conducting lectures, rural children can contact with more rich advanced culture and accumulate specific cultural capital foundation for them to enjoy equal education rights.
2.the principle of interest compensation
To solve unequal educational opportunities determined by family background, Coleman proposed the principle of interest compensation.
First of all, the government should adopt appropriate preferential policies, which can provide educational subsidies to families with less family capital and narrow the gap in academic performance between students with high family capital and high family capital. For example, in the Netherlands and the United States, the "education priority policy" and "federal student assistance program" have been implemented to compensate for the educational opportunities of children with less family capital and have achieved a good compensation effect.
Secondly, students with less family capital should be given proper care when enrolling students. The government should regulate the enrollment behaviour of crucial senior high schools when enrolling students in senior high schools to ensure that the children of low-income families can get the same admission opportunities.
The Outline points out that the national subsidy policy and student loan mechanism need to be further improved. According to the popularization and development of pre-school education, all localities gradually subsidize the children of rural families with financial difficulties and urban low-income families to receive pre-school education and raise the living subsidy standard for boarding students from rural compulsory education families with financial difficulties.
3.Ensuring the fairness of the education system
A fair education system is characterized by standardization and orderliness. From the perspective of social stratification, the issue of educational opportunity equality in China is not a problem of social exclusion in the distribution of legal rights, but a system problem at the level of realization mechanism. (111 cited)
First of all, it is necessary to abolish the elementary schools and the scoring system for examinations. After a long-term evolution, elementary middle schools' bonus policy has enlarged and strengthened the class advantage in education competition, which has become a significant reason for educational opportunities inequality. The government should establish the development mechanism of urban-rural integration, compulsory education, and incline to rural areas in terms of financial allocation, school construction, and teacher allocation. On the premise of ensuring that school-age children and adolescents can enter public schools nearby, private education should be developed to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas.
Secondly, the enrollment system of higher education needs to be gradually reformed. From the college entrance examination's current enrollment situation, the proportion of rural students attending key universities is relatively low, while the children of high-income families are more distributed in elementary schools and useful disciplines. Therefore, the government should introduce favourable education policies, gradually abolish the regional difference system of higher education enrollment quota, and further improve the proportion of rural students and low-income students in critical universities.
The government should also establish and improve the guarantee mechanism for the balanced development of compulsory education, promote school standardization, and balance the allocation of teachers, equipment, books, school buildings, and other resources.
4.Expand Social Cooperation
The realization of equal educational opportunity depends on the broad participation of social forces. From the perspective of joint governance, although the current education system meets some class members' interests with high family capital, it damages the equity goal of education, which is a manifestation of the imbalance of the educational governance mechanism. To realize the equality of educational opportunity for the class with low family capital, firstly, we should actively mobilize social forces and build an educational governance system with the participation of the society. We should actively encourage non-profit social organizations and intermediary organizations to participate in and provide educational services. In the new educational governance structure, the main body of educational governance includes the government, enterprises, communities, families, schools, and other social sectors. The government will no longer be a single subject that integrates organizers, managers, and evaluators. Second, promote professional evaluation. Specialized institutions and intermediary social institutions are encouraged to evaluate the school's level and quality of disciplines, specialities, and courses. Establish a scientific and standardized evaluation system. We will explore cooperation with international high-level education evaluation institutions to form a school evaluation model with Chinese characteristics. Establish the annual quality report release system of schools at all levels.
The Outline also clearly proposes to entrust social organizations to carry out education evaluation and monitoring to provide diversified education services for the public. Therefore, we should give full play to the role of non-profit social organizations, intermediary organizations, and other third-party organizations, encourage non-profit social organizations and intermediary organizations to participate in activities, and provide education services through government purchase, administrative entrustment, project bidding, and other forms, to form a new pattern of public education services provided by the government and non-governmental public choice cooperation. On the other hand, social forces should be given the power to participate in educational decision-making and educational management. Non-profit social organizations, such as enterprises, news media, and non-governmental organizations, can establish the supervision and evaluation system, evaluate and report all kinds of educational behaviours at all levels, to avoid the absence of stakeholders in the process of educational decision-making and management, and form a situation in which all stakeholders jointly govern the equality of educational opportunities.
Conclusion
Therefore, family capital not only plays a vital role in the cultivation of children's quality by the advantages of cultural capital but also influences children's learning consciousness and ability differentiation through social and economic capital, thus further changing the distribution of educational opportunities,
It can also participate in children's educational choice employing power selection and exchange, which directly causes inequality of opportunity (in a strict closed social system, it may also be manifested as opportunity monopoly or exclusion based on class status). (111 citing opportunity inequality and change)