Answer to Question #301604 in Sociology for Pre

Question

"Access to schooling is largely depedent on race, class,gender".Briefly discuss the term "access".

Provide an argument to argue that access is dependent the race, class and gender of the learner.

Answer 1

a) Access is simply being able to get to what you need. In education, the term access typically refers to the ways in which educational institutions and policies ensure or at least strive to ensure that students have equal and equitable opportunities to take full advantage of their education. Increasing access generally requires schools to provide additional services or remove any actual or potential barriers that might prevent some students from equitable participation in certain courses or academic programs. Factors such as race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, perceived intellectual ability, past academic performance, special-education status, English-language ability, and family income or educational-attainment levels. In addition factors such as relative community affluence, geographical location, or school facilities may contribute to certain students having less “access” to educational opportunities than other students.

b) Race, social class, and gender tend to be treated as separate issues in education literature. Access is dependent the race, class and gender of the learner because National assessments for science, mathematics, and reading show that White students score higher on average than all other racial/ethnic groups, particularly when compared to Black and Hispanic students. Explanations for these gaps tend to focus on the influence of socioeconomic resources, neighborhood and school characteristics, and family composition in patterning socioeconomic inequalities, and on the racialized nature of socioeconomic inequalities as key drivers of racial/ethnic academic achievement gaps. In addition to inequalities in academic achievement, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities also exist across measures of socio-emotional development