This assertion critiques the myth of meritocracy. Putnam argues that schools no longer serve as equalizers, but as engines of reproduction. Educational institutions mirror the inequalities of the broader economy, providing symbolic opportunity but little structural mobility. When I was younger, I believed in the American Dream: study hard, get good grades, go to college, and a successful career. However, I didn’t realize how many hidden rules there were; college didn’t erase the inequality, it somehow made it more visible. The myth of education-as-equalizer is comforting, but still requires realization.

This is connected to opportunity hoarding, where affluent families secure exclusive advantages like AP courses, test prep, legacy admissions, and extracurricular stacking, that limit mobility for others. Low-income high achievers are disproportionately underrepresented at selective institutions, due not to ability, but to a lack of information and institutional support. I applied to college on my own. No guidance counselor explained FAFSA, CA Dreamer, or TAG to me because there were none. I missed some early deadlines because I didn’t know they existed. The most ironic thing was that my friends and posts from Reddit helped me to submit my college application.

This speaks to the exercise of social capital, when affluent parents know how to “work” the school system: requesting specific teachers, contesting grades, securing accommodations. My parents never called the school, not because they didn’t care, but because they didn’t speak fluent English, feared authority, and thought teachers “knew best.” When I got a bad grade or faced discrimination, we didn’t know we could contest it. Parents in wealthier schools lobbied for retests or grade bumps; that kind of advocacy was a foreign language to us.

This reflects the idea of cumulative disadvantage, as early disadvantages in access, literacy, and enrichment amplify over time. By adolescence, students from low-income households have not only fewer skills but also less institutional guidance. This is supported by Sean Reardon’s findings that the income-achievement gap has grown substantially in recent decades, especially during adolescence, when mentoring and academic tracking diverge. I remember being tracked into the standard classes, even though I’d scored high on tests. My parents couldn’t advocate for me, they didn’t know tracking existed.

Putnam concisely captures the heart of educational inequality, with funding disparities between districts meaning affluent schools have more qualified teachers, smaller class sizes, and modern facilities. These gaps, often justified through local property taxes, result in an inequity not caused by individual prejudice but by policy. My high school near Bellaire Blvd in Houston, Texas had broken ACs and outdated textbooks. When I visited my friends from Sugar Land (a middle-class region in suburban Houston), they had free iPads from school.

Again, this mirrors what I learned from Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital, where dominant norms are rewarded and others are pathologized. The school becomes a site of misrecognition, where working-class behaviors are seen as deficits. When I first came to the US, I didn’t speak “academic English” (perhaps I still don’t), and some of my teachers said my essays were “unclear,” but they never explained why.

This quote directly aligns with correspondence theory, that education systems mirror labor market hierarchies and prepare students for stratified roles within capitalism. Looking back, my middle school didn’t teach me to think critically, it taught me to follow instructions. Only in college did I realize education could be a tool for liberation, not just survival, and the constraints on thoughts can only be lifted after one learns to think critically.

This difference in curriculum reinforces social reproduction theory, where schooling sustains economic hierarchy by giving affluent students the skills to lead and working-class students the skills to obey. In college, group projects were overwhelming. My classmates naturally took charge. I wasn’t used to being asked what I thought or how I’d solve a problem. Using my mom’s words, I am like a “log of wood”, not knowing how to act, and only moves when someone kicks me.

Smith reveals how curriculum stratifies by class: working-class schools stress order and repetition, middle-class schools stress process, and elite schools emphasize creativity and control. Back in middle school in China, my assignments were always fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice. When I tried to write creatively, I was told to stick to the prompt. I learned to give the right answer, not the real one.

This is the crux of hidden curriculum theory, where schooling subtly reproduces class-based expectations. Students in elite schools are taught to lead, question, and innovate; working-class students are taught to follow rules and perform tasks. Instead of a more humanist centric schedule, vocational trainings are more broadly provided.

This captures the paradox of a kind of institutional betrayal, when systems designed to help instead harm the marginalized. The concept is central to critical race theory, which challenges the neutrality of school institutions.

This quote underscores resource apartheid, where schools in low-income communities lack critical support services, despite facing greater needs. This gap in school-based wraparound services correlates with lower achievement and retention rates. In contrast, schools in affluent communities got way more resources, forming a cycle of surplus resources toward the not-so-needy.

Zero-tolerance policies reflect the school-to-prison pipeline, which disproportionately funnels marginalized students from ethnic minorities into carceral systems. These policies emphasize punishment over root-cause intervention. This all originated from the mindset that many educators are biased and believe students from certain groups are “meant to fail”, and the school system punishes pain instead of understanding it.

This reminds me of a polisci class I took 2 quarters back, in which Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus was introduced to me. Students from working-class or immigrant households carry cultural dispositions misaligned with institutional expectations, and this mismatch contributes to disengagement and internalized failure. At home, I was once taught to listen, never challenge elders (because they always have more wisdom), and keep my head down. At school, success meant speaking up, asserting opinions, and networking. It took me years to unlearn silence, at least now I am comfortable calling out what I disagree with my family elders.

This is consistent with the theory of discipline gap, showing that students from ethnic minority backgrounds, especially African Americans are disproportionately disciplined due to implicit bias and zero-tolerance policies. Many schools criminalize youth of color through surveillance and punishment rather than support. This issue is undoubtedly closely related to the long history of racism and implicit discrimination.

This highlights a clash between working-class definitions of parental involvement and school expectations. Immigrant parents, like my own, show substantive care like material and emotional support, rather than formal involvement that requires the parents’ connections (which most immigrant parents don't have), yet schools devalue this care due to dominant white middle-class norms. My mom never attended school meetings, not because she didn’t care, but because she was working 12/7. Although she was not academically caring (mostly because she was even more confused about the US school system than I was), she is an excellent supporter emotionally and financially, and I don’t think schools should overrule this kind of care, being less effective than the so-called formal involvements.

This refers to private tutoring, prep courses, and elite camps, all of which have become increasingly essential in competing for college and scholarship access, and widen the extracurricular divide, as affluent children accrue invisible advantages in resume-building activities.

This links to where high-achieving low-income students attend less competitive colleges than their scores warrant. This results in lower graduation rates, fewer opportunities, and a diminished return on academic effort. For me, I graduated top of my class in high school but was forced to go to community college before transferring to a four-year institution to ease my family’s financial burden.

This quote reflects the cumulative impact of toxic stress on students’ academic development, as chronic instability from financial precarity to family health issues impairs executive function and memory; without psychological safety and stability, academic focus is biologically harder. There were nights in high school when I couldn’t concentrate in class because my parents were fighting for a divorce, and I was deeply emotionally incapable of learning and focusing.

This disparity exemplifies the mindset of many middle-class families that strategically develop their children’s talents and skills. Alexander’s family’s relative abundance of financial capital translates into cultural and social capital, thus making him more accessible to elite resources, enrichment, and institutional familiarity, which shows that early childhood investments yield compounded long-term returns. Personally speaking, my parents didn’t even know enrichment existed beyond school, and so “extracurricular activities” are meant for rich kids with a lot of spare time. For me, my “extracurricular activity” was to work as a cashier in my parents’ store to accumulate “working experience.”

The intersection of race and class creates compounded barriers, as racism amplifies economic marginalization, this overlap makes equity efforts doubly fraught. What I personally think is even worse, is that a resurgence of small government is pushing the current system back to its old time, therefore even furtherly hindering the future of underprivileged students.

Policymakers prioritize political expediency over evidence, sacrificing equity to appease privileged constituents, children's futures are gambled for electoral gains. Also, because of their "inherent" advantages in finance and connections, residents of well-funded districts tend to spend their influence for those who defend only their rights, and it's most tragic when two already-incomparable school districts are concurrently sitting on one constituency, in that case, diffferentiation is inevitable.

Despite progress like disability rights was made, one's social class remains a barrier to college access. The authors note widening racial gaps in the 1990s, underscoring systemic failure. Compare to the contemperary situation of disparity of college access among different social classes, I personally believe that not much BIG advancement was accomplished over the last 30 years.

Decentralized funding deepens inequity, as poor districts cannot match wealthy ones' resources, especially under the shadows of cycles of "pricey houses <-> fruitful school district" and "cheap houses <-> underfunded school district." Local control, while democratic, enables de facto segregation; equity requires redistribution, yet communities resist sacrificing privilege.

The authors highlight the possible hypocrisy of the American Dream, while schools vocally promote equity, yet privileged families hoard resources (moving to affluent districts, endorsing policies of differentiation). This tension between collective good and self-interest is morally exhausting, solidarity cannot thrive in a system rigged for individualism.

Even when students from low income families got admitted and successfully graduated from a decent institution, their student debt shackles them and negating mobility promises. Jackson underscores how education perpetuates class divides: the wealthy gain capital, the poor gain debt; a college degree that was once thought to be the way out of mud becomes a burden, not liberation.

Jackson exposes how elite colleges prioritize wealthy legacies, thus entrenching class hierarchies. This "rich to the front" mindset undermines meritocracy myths, as wealth overrides talent, becoming the main criteria for admission and secures access. I personally think this fuels cynicism, higher education claims to uplift and provide equitability, yet it’s the goalkeeper for the richest.

Romney's condescending advice reflects privilege ignorance and blindness toward those who are traped in the cycle of poverty and inadequate education, and his rhetoric pathologizes the poor while defending structures that deny lower income class capital. This arrogance epitomizes how elites weaponize individualism to justify inequality.

Jackson reveals how tracking tactics like gifted programs and PSAT prep in middle school predetermines college access, underfunded K-12 school districts lack these resources, therefore consolidating social immobility and stagnation. I think it's upsetting that children's futures are sealed before high school, yet society blames them for "failing."

Jackson links the causes of minority poverty to historical exploitation against them, such as slavery and redlining policies, all of which have hindered the accumulation of wealth in African American communities; "a poor person is not necessarily black, but a black person is most likely to be poor." This structural violence ensures the perpetuation of underfunded schools and fuels contemporary anger: how can equity exist children of different ethnicities when some of them are born with more advantages than the others, and the disadvanged kids' ancestors were treated underpriviledgedly generations ago?

Again, Hooks acknowledges the emotional toll of critical pedagogy, where students confront familial or internalized biases. This estrangement is necessary for growth but requires educators to hold space for discomfort (they just got to accept it). It's also ironic to note that transformation often begins with rupture, yet too few institutions prioritize this messy, yet vital work.

The writer advocates for communal learning where students actively cooperate and create knowledge through means like journals and dialogue. This disrupts the "banking system" of passive consumption, fostering agency, and inspires hope, classrooms have the potential to become spaces where marginalized voices are not just heard but centered, even valued.

This part criticizes the superficial inclusion, where marginalized texts are depoliticized to avoid discomfort. This tokenism erases the lived experiences of authors from minority backgrounds, reducing their work to aesthetic objects.

The author breaks down the myth of apolitical education by framing curricular choices as inherently political, as some educators implement their political stance to their students and break neutrality. The neglectance of marginalized groups' voices reinforces white supremacy, even when done passively. I think this challenges educators to interrogate their complicity in systemic erasure.

Hooks critiques educators' fear of relinquishing their authority in diverse classrooms, rooted in their training under a singular model. This fear of "losing control" reflects discomfort with decentralizing power and acknowledging the fact that knowledge is not universal but shaped by cultural and racial contexts. Personally speaking, this resonates with me as a reminder of how systemic biases are internalized; educators' resistance mirrors societal reluctance to dismantle hierarchies that privilege certain groups.