Aspirations and Expectations of West Malaysian Youth: Two Models of Social Class Values

Abstract

A LARGE BODY Of literature on social stratification has stressed the negative influence of low social class background on shaping the educational and occupational expectations of high school students in the United States. Many empirical studies have indicated that categorizing students by social background variables reveals significantly different patterns of expectations regarding future status even when academic achievement and intelligence scores are controlled.2 In these studies, social class origin is often assumed to represent a cluster of social-cultural factors which affects the formation of different levels of educational and occupational expectations of high school students along the lines of social class stratification in this society. These differing levels of expectations are assumed to lead to a differentiation of the educational (and thus, future occupational) careers of students of low social class background from others of comparable levels of ability and academic achievement-but of higher social class origin. As was pointed out recently by Wan Sang Han,3 many of those who have reported on social-class variations in expectations for the future are often assuming the existence of class-based differences in the valuation of success. Such authors seem to assume that individuals of low social class background are socially non-mobile due to their low valuation of achievement and this is reflected in their relatively modest expectations for upward social mobility. Han perceived that this assumption is incongruent with the alternative assumption, made by Robert K. Merton, Talcott Parsons, and others, that Americans in general value success-irrespective of social class status. In fact, Merton's famous theory of deviance makes this fundamental assumption. According to Merton's model, deviance in American society is basically attributable to the discrepancy between the