The Social Context of Ambition

Abstract

The Social Context of Ambition by Ralph H. Turner. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Co., 1964. Pp. xv+269. $6.00. Ralph H. Turner, professor of sociology at the University of California at Los Angeles, will probably be best known to readers in the field of education for his provocative comparison of English and American systems of education in terms of norms governing modes of upward mobility: contest mobility in America in which elite status is to be achieved in an open contest in which every effort is made to keep the contestants in the race until the climax, and sponsored mobility in England in which recruits are chosen early and carefully inducted into elite status.? The book under review is a report on a study which tests and extends some of the theoretical ideas implicit in the earlier writing by a detailed empirical examination of the mobility aspirations of American high school students. Turner begins with the assumption that in American society a good deal of ambition for upward social mobility will be generated. He further points out that social mobility may be achieved in many ways and through diverse channels, but that for American youth education is the major avenue to upward mobility. This is true because an increasingly large proportion of occupations are open only to those who have undergone a long period of specialized education. The educational system operates not only to provide the requisite training, but also attempts to select students for various educational experiences on the basis of capacities and achievements and in the process becomes a major force in stimulating and shaping the ambi-