Comprehension

While I was in class at Columbia, struggling with the esoterica of jury, my father was on a bricklayer’s scaffold not far up the street, working on a campus building. Once we met up on the subway going home — he was with his tools, I with my books. My father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches. My dad has built lots of places in New York City he can’t get into: colleges, condos, coffee houses. He made his living on the outside. Once the walls were up, a place took on a different feel for him, as though he wasn’t welcome anymore. Related by blood, we’re separated by class, my father and I. Being the white-collar child of a blue-collar parent means being the hinge on the door between two ways of life. With one foot in the working class, the other in the middle class, people like me are Straddlers, at home in neither world, living a limbo life.
What drove me to leave what I knew? Born blue-collar, I still never felt completely at home among the tough guys and anti-intellectual crowd of my neighbourhood in deepest Brooklyn. I never did completely fit in among the preppies and suburban royalty of Columbia, either. It’s like that for Straddlers. It was not so smooth jumping from Italian old-world style to US professional in a single generation. Others who were the first in their families to go to college, will tell you the same thing: the academy can render you unrecognisable to the very people who launched you into the world. The ideas and values absorbed in college challenge the mom-and-pop orthodoxy that passed for truth for 18 years. Limbo kids may eschew polyester blends for sea-isle cotton, prefer Brice to Kraft slices. They may wear clothes the neighbourhood raises their eyebrows about. But they still live at home, speak the language of the house and climb back there at the moment of reward.
But for the white-collar kids of blue-collar parents, the office is not necessarily a sanctuary. In Corporate America, where the white-collar class is seen as foreign to working-class people, a Straddler can get lost. Social class counts as the office, even though nobody likes to admit it. Ultimately, corporate people learn as good middle-class adults, business types say, how to work with those kids. They follow the way of getting along: diplomacy, nuance, and politics to grab what they need. It’s also the reason they find following a set of rules laid out in a manual that blue-collar families never have the chance to do.
People from both the middle class and the college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. Growing up in an educated environment, they had access to Picasso and Mozart, sports and career behind. In a world where actual French intellectuals are networked: Someone always has an aunt or golfing buddy with the inside track for an internship or the right dinner-table talk would happen that day from and with the family, the doctor’s office, the engine executive. Middle-class kids can grow up with a sense of entitlement and can carry them through their lives. This belongingness is not just related to having material means, it also has to do with learning and possessing confidence in your place in the world. Such easy entitlement and direct exposure to culture in the home is the more original, ‘legitimate’ means of appropriately cultural capital, Bourdieu tells us. Those of us possessing ‘ill-gotten’ Culture’ can learn, but never as well. Something is always a little off about us, like an engine with imprecise timing. There’s a greater method between these class and the institutions in which the middle class works and operates — universities or corporations. Children find the middle and upper classes have been speaking about what life is for the culture.

Question: 1

According to the passage, which of the following statements about 'cultural capital' is NOT true?

Show Hint

Look for answers that focus on the nature and benefits of cultural capital, especially as it relates to class identity.
Updated On: Aug 1, 2025
  • It socializes children early into the norms of middle class institutions.
  • It helps them learn the language of universities and corporations.
  • It creates a sense of enlightenment in middle-class children.
  • It develops bright kids into Straddlers.
Hide Solution
collegedunia
Verified By Collegedunia

The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

The passage mentions that "Straddlers" are individuals caught between two worlds (working-class and middle-class), and that cultural capital is something that middle-class children inherit naturally. It doesn't suggest that cultural capital creates Straddlers. Therefore, the Correct Answer is: \[ \boxed{(4) \ \text{It develops bright kids into Straddlers.}} \]
Was this answer helpful?
0
0
Question: 2

According to the passage, the patterns of socialization of working-class children make them most suited for jobs that require

Show Hint

Focus on the types of jobs mentioned in the passage and how socialization patterns influence suitability for those roles.
Updated On: Aug 1, 2025
  • diplomacy.
  • compliance with orders.
  • enterprise and initiative.
  • high risk-taking.
Hide Solution
collegedunia
Verified By Collegedunia

The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

The passage mentions that working-class children are socialized into a world where they learn to follow rules, which makes them suited for jobs requiring compliance with orders. Therefore, the Correct Answer is: \[ \boxed{(2) \ \text{compliance with orders.}} \]
Was this answer helpful?
0
0
Question: 3

When Straddlers enter white collar jobs, they get lost because

Show Hint

Focus on how Straddlers’ backgrounds create a disconnect in corporate environments.
Updated On: Aug 1, 2025
  • they are thrown into an alien value system.
  • their families have not read the rules in corporate manuals.
  • they have no one to guide them through the corporate maze.
  • they miss the ‘mom and pop orthodoxy.’
Hide Solution
collegedunia
Verified By Collegedunia

The Correct Option is A

Solution and Explanation

The passage indicates that Straddlers often struggle in white-collar jobs because they are introduced to an alien value system that contrasts with the working-class norms they grew up with. Therefore, the Correct Answer is: \[ \boxed{(1) \ \text{they are thrown into an alien value system.}} \]
Was this answer helpful?
0
0
Question: 4

What does the author’s statement, "my father wasn’t interested in Thucydides, and I wasn’t up on arches," illustrate?

Show Hint

Look for how differences in culture and upbringing are highlighted in the passage as a way to show social mobility.
Updated On: Aug 1, 2025
  • Original cultural capital.
  • Professional arrogance and social distance.
  • Evolving social transformation.
  • Breakdown of family relationships.
Hide Solution
collegedunia
Verified By Collegedunia

The Correct Option is A

Solution and Explanation

The author’s statement reflects the different cultural backgrounds of his family and himself, symbolizing the gap between the original (working-class) cultural capital and the new (middle-class) cultural capital he gained. Therefore, the Correct Answer is: \[ \boxed{(1) \ \text{Original cultural capital.}} \]
Was this answer helpful?
0
0
Question: 5

Which of the following statements about Straddlers does the passage NOT support explicitly?

Show Hint

Pay attention to the passage's portrayal of Straddlers as occupying a limbo between two worlds.
Updated On: Aug 1, 2025
  • Their food preferences may not match those of their parents.
  • They may not keep up some central religious practices of their parents.
  • They have a more fitting role neither in the middle class nor in the working-class.
  • Their political ideologies may differ from those of their parents.
Hide Solution
collegedunia
Verified By Collegedunia

The Correct Option is C

Solution and Explanation

The passage describes Straddlers as having difficulty fitting into either the working-class or the middle class. However, it does not suggest that they lack a fitting role altogether; instead, they occupy a limbo or transitional space. Therefore, the Correct Answer is: \[ \boxed{(3) \ \text{They have a more fitting role neither in the middle class nor in the working-class.}} \]
Was this answer helpful?
0
0

Top Questions on Reading Comprehension

View More Questions

Questions Asked in CAT exam

View More Questions