Life Chances

A Learners’ View (ALV) Is Of Choices On The Shortest And Fastest Path To Learning, The Oxygen Of Social Life.

Main Page: Terms that Describe Vocabulary of Learning and Its Uses 

Definition: 1. a. A term Max Weber used to analyze social class and status. b. Outcomes of the distribution of power in society, such as the ownership of property and the disposal of goods and services in the marketplace determine the ‘chance’ of an individual to realize his or her goals in life through social action. c. Refers by inference in general use to a closed society that increases or decreases opportunities (chances, statistical odds) for some people to advance in social classes, such as those respectively from favored or disfavored disabilities or with other stigmatized personal attributes, ethnic legacies, and social patterns.

2. A way to account for uneven distribution of social mobility and thus for the uneven distribution of educational attainment, health, and control of tangible property.

Comment: Bernard Farber (1968) and David Harvey each addressed relationships of schooling and instruction with life chances, including of people with varying levels of measured intelligence and with social class attributed them.

Practices by Heiny and others through Field Teaching, Neighborhood Learning Centers, and Child Advocacy grew out of attempts to apply analyses by Farber, Harvey, and others scientists in order to increase life chances of children and their families in the rural North Carolina and in Tennessee during the 1960s and 1970s.

Related Resources

1. Flood, J. (1964). Life-Chances (Lebenschancen). In J. Gould and W.L. Kolb (Eds.), A Dictionary of the Social Sciences. NY: The Free Press, pp. 390-391.
2. Marshall, G. “Life-Chances.” A Dictionary of Sociology. 1998. (Retrieved December 18, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-lifechances.html; see also http://books.google.com/books/about/Dic_Of_Sociology_Rev_Ed_Opr.html?id=NpkQPwAACAAJ )

Related Reading

1. Max Weber. (Captured January 12, 2015, 12:20PM MST.)
2. Max Weber; Peter R. Baehr; Gordon C. Wells (2002). The Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism and other writings. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-043921-2. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
3. Weber, M. (1905; tr. into English 1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (Captured January 12, 2015, 12:20 MST.)

Last Edited: 01-12-15