What is Stratification?

What is stratification?

According to Dalton Connaly, a sociologist, stratification is structural social inequalities, or more specifically, systematic inequalities between groups of people that arise as intended or unintended consequences of social processes and relationships.

There are many forms of stratification that exist in our society but many sociologists categorize them into four ideal systems.

1.     Estate System: politically based system of stratification characterized by limited social mobility

2.     Caste System: religion-based system of stratification characterized by no social mobility

3.     Class System: economically based system of stratification characterized by relative categorization and somewhat loose social mobility

4.     Status Hierarchy System: a system of stratification based on social prestige.

           

 The United States has adopted a Capitalist economic system where property and goods are owned privately. Due to this economic system, U.S. citizens are familiar with the class system that separates its population into three main categories: lower class, middle class, and upper class. These categories can be further subdivided into smaller groups such as working-lower class and mid-lower class. While stratification due to economic inequality is self-evident in society, the stratification that exists in our educational system is less recognized.

We like to believe the U.S. is the land of equal opportunity and every student receives the same quality of education regardless of his or her socioeconomic class but is this really the case? The U.S. educational system is divided into two main sectors: private and public. Are students from public schools receiving the same quality of education as private school students? Is there an unbalance of resources available to each group of students?  We began to explore stratification in secondary educational institutions by conducting a total of six interviews with students from both public and private schooling background.