Cultural Capital, Social Capital, And Educational Inequality (Issues in Education) (Report‪)‬

"The standards of the school are not neutral; their requests for parental involvement may be laden with the social and cultural experiences of intellectual and economic elites." (Lareau, 2000, p. 8) In 2000, sociologist Annette Lareau published Home Advantage, a book that changed the conversation about parental involvement in elementary education. Lareau conducted fieldwork at two elementary schools, one middle class and one working class, to explore how social and cultural capital, or their absence, shape the inter-relationships between families and schools. She finds that middle-class parents have cultural knowledge and social networks that they can leverage to improve their child's educational experiences. The working-class parents do not. This differential access to cultural and social capital creates inequalities in children's educational experiences and, ultimately, educational success. Thus, achieving social justice in education requires analysis of inequalities in not only financial and human capital across schools, but also social and cultural capital. This may require educators and researchers to question some of the basic assumptions on which the discourse about school-family partnerships is based.