Prestige

Abstract

Indications are that the prestige rankings of various occupations in industrial and urban countries tend to be similar. But this is no guide to the effective choices of occupation by young people. For many occupations include people of a great variety of styles and quality of work; not all of these styles are equally visible to all segments of the popula tion. We require an anatomy of prestige which will take dif ferential visibility and the many images and nuances of reality into account. There are studies of how goals and standards are set and of the probability that young people of given back grounds will enter various kinds of schools and occupations. But much remains to be done before we know just how goals are progressively set and revised in our schools, colleges, and professional institutions. Teachers and people in various occu pations may, in fact, give quite contradictory messages to young people about what kind of work is essential to success and what is most valuable. Students then form their own standards, on the basis of what they come to believe, on the basis of their own experience and their own interpretations of the demands made upon them.