期刊名称:Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology
印刷版ISSN:1927-9825
出版年度:2013
卷号:2
期号:1
页码:5-19
DOI:10.15353/cgjsc-rcessc.v2i1.15
出版社:University of Waterloo
摘要:Research demonstrates that despite post-secondary expansion, there are still vast socioeconomic differences in educational attainment. Educational attainment can have a tremendous impact on the life course in terms of income, employment, and perhaps most significantly, health. Recognizing these issues, the Niagara region opened the DSBN Academy in September 2011. The DSBN Academy, the first school of its kind in Canada, offers social and academic programming designed to encourage its students to not only graduate from high school, but also, to become the first in their family to pursue post-secondary education. From a life course perspective, this paper assesses the relationship between education and health followed by an examination of the primary processes of cumulative advantage and disadvantage involved in producing variation in educational trajectories, which in turn impact health outcomes. I then evaluate the role of the DSBN Academy as a potential strategy to facilitate the completion of higher education by working-class students, and accordingly, to improve their health outcomes. Through analyzing the Academy, I argue that while the school has the potential to be a turning point in the lives of its students, it also risks committing a form of Bourdieu’s symbolic violence. That is, it enforces middle-class ideals of education and good health as both desirable and indicators of success. Consequently, this paper raises a fundamental question in the study of social inequality, namely, how sociologists can work toward ameliorating inequality without perpetuating the symbolic violence we continually fight against.
关键词:sociology; sociology of education; life course; DSBN academy