Rather than acting as “social mobility escalators” for the “more talented” members of ethnic/racial minorities and the white working and middle classes, the educational system has a strong tendency to reproduce the existing social order by devaluing the cultural capital of dominated groups. By judging, classifying, and tracking students from dominated class fractions on the basis of the alien standards of the dominant, schools perpetuate the extant status hierarchy. Moreover, the educational system insures that its reproductive practices will be misrecognized because it makes its judgments on what appear to be “objective” and “meritocratic” criteria. It is only rarely recognized that said criteria reflect the (arbitrary) cultural capital of the dominant. Â –Douglas E. Allen, and Paul F. Anderson
Consumption 