Education and the Class System

America has so many social problems it’s hard to know where to begin. The Katrina disaster showed us the third world nature of our attitude toward poverty. And now there’s this news about education:Financial Aid and the Poor

All the evidence points to the fact that America is developing a class system based around education: each generation sees more and more of the nation’s higher education dollars spent on children whose parents were themselves college graduates. this leaves ever decreasing amounts for children of poor families where the parents had no such education.

The result is that the chances of moving up the economic ladder are being reduced: studies have recently shown that America has less upward mobility than most other western countries despite the legendary American Dream. This is damaging the aspirations of the poor and causing a permanent underclass to develop.

That will have serious political and social consequences down the line.

Meanwhile we need to shed the idea that discussions of class are somehow “un-American”. They are not. At least not if you’re poor.