system .. It was a good influence on me. They were like setting an example, if
you like. You don’t have to be like this, you can be a boring old professor or
teacher. You can still enjoy yourself and at the same time put something back
into it. ”
For Billy then, not only a sense of agency, but a sense of reciprocity was transferred
through his college education. The agency arose through the college as an institution
in which independent decisions could be made, and through the manner in which his
subjects were delivered (although Sociology was also found to be a subject where
students studying it reported an increased sense of insight and efficacy). The
reciprocity arose not as a result of institutional or curricular factors but through
observation and positive experience with the ‘gifting’ aspect of education - that
“ ...you can still enjoy yourself and put something back in. ”
In short, the effect of education on social capital is extremely diverse. We have
identified a number of different types of competence that education generates, and
that relate more or less directly to civic activity and social inclusion. We have
illustrated various ways in which participation in learning involves people in the
development or transformation of their values. Learning extends or enriches the
networks within which people operate, with benefits that go beyond the personal and
the social to the civic as well as the economic. Finally we have illustrated how
education mediates the relationship between social capital and social variables such as
age and gender. This last section has taken us into more detailed accounts of
individual biographies; we develop this line of presentation more fully in Part C.
9.2 Social cohesion
Social cohesion can be conceived as a characteristic of societies as a whole, referring
to ways in which their constituent groups - or communities - are linked together.
Social capital can, of course, contribute towards this societal bonding where the
strength and values of particular communities are such as to encourage good relations
with other communities. This is often referred to in the literature as ‘bridging’ social
capital, whose quality is such as to encourage trust and mutuality with others outside
the group as well as with those within. However, not all forms of association and
networking will have this effect, especially where the groups concerned are inward-
looking, self-interested or intolerant of other groups.
What evidence do we have from our interviews, then, of learning contributing
positively to inter-community relations and cohesion at the societal level?
Addressing this question from the evidence of individual biographies may be seen as
problematic, since societal cohesion is, by definition, referring to relations in the
aggregate. However, in qualitative terms there is considerable evidence from our
respondents as to how learning effects on individual behaviours and attitudes may
make individual contributions to wider social cohesion.
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