Education Buzzword Explainer: What the Heck Is Social Capital?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/45643219@N05/5355610891/">Alyssa Becker</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Let’s face it: Jargon happens. And in education circles, it happens a lot. Curious what an education buzzword actually means? Or how a seemingly unrelated business concept migrated into discussions about kids and schools? Let MoJo‘s education team research it so you don’t have to. We welcome buzzword suggestions in comments for our next primer: Help us decide what lingo to look at next.

This week’s education buzzword: “SOCIAL CAPITAL.”

What is social capital? It’s not about money. At its core, social capital theory holds that “relationships matter” and that “social networks are a valuable asset.” If human capital is about individual resources (i.e. the importance of skilled people), social capital is about social resources (i.e. the importance of skilled social networks). Some research also shows that increasing social capital (and trust among individuals) requires face-to-face encounters. In other words, it’s not what you know…it’s who you know and what they know, and possibly how often you see each other in person.

How does social capital relate to education? Simply put, schools with a lot of social capital often have an easier time getting what they need to educate students effectively, so even super teachers can’t sustainably improve a school’s academic outcomes without family, community, and state involvement. University of Pittsburgh professor, Carrie Leana explains:

“Why are some schools better than others?” A human capital answer would say that some schools are better because they have the best-trained teachers. A social capital answer would say there is something about the way those teachers are interacting that influences the school as a whole and results in a level of shared performance that you can’t get from individuals alone.

Outside of school, social capital in the community can compensate for its absence in the family. In one case, researchers compared the drop out rates of high school sophomores. They found that kids who had one sibling, two parents, and a mother who expected them to attend college were much less likely to drop out than sophomores with four siblings, one parent, and a mother who didn’t expect them to attend a university. (PDF) However, while studying social capital’s relation to school drop out rates, sociologist James Coleman also found that a strong adult community could keep teens in school regardless of family situation. And even The World Bank recognizes that social capital alone can’t substitute for financing education.

Where did the term “social capital” come from? The first known reference appeared in Lyda Judson Hanifan’s 1916 article “The Rural School Community Center,” in which he wrote that “the individual is helpless socially, if left entirely to himself.” In 1988, James Coleman contributed the first solid evidence of a relationship between a school’s social capital and academic drop out rates.

How can a school increase its social capital? More face-to-face interaction with parents and local community members is probably a good start. “The schools can’t do it by themselves,” as a South Carolina neighborhood outreach leader told The Beaufort Gazette. “That’s the reality.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate