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Chapter 17. Education. Chapter Outline. Education for a Changing World Attainment, Achievement, and Equality The Structure of Educational Institutions. Education for a Changing World.
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Chapter 17 Education
Chapter Outline • Education for a Changing World • Attainment, Achievement, and Equality • The Structure of Educational Institutions
Education for a Changing World • Poorer regions of the world face a dire need for universal access to schools; in the more developed regions, serious issues of educational equity need to be addressed. • There is great concern with the need to improve education in order to train new generations of workers.
Education • Process by which a society transmits knowledge, values, norms, and ideologies. • In the early history of the United States many were excluded from schools: • children of slaves • Native Americans • the poor • many immigrant groups
Why Education is so Important: Sociological Explanations • High stakes • Educational success counts a great deal in explaining success and failure for individuals and entire social groups and communities. • Class and cultural diversity • Schools bring together diverse groups of students, parents, and educators, whose values about learning are often in conflict.
Why Education is so Important: Sociological Explanations • Citizen involvement • People expect to influence changes in the institutions they pay for and are involved in. • Rapid change in knowledge • Our expectations about what education can achieve for society changes as scientific and humanistic knowledge changes.
Manifest Functions Of Education • Formal education transmits the culture of a society to new generations. • It prepares future generations for appropriate occupational and citizenship roles. • Educational institutions evaluate and select competent individuals. • Education transmits requisite social skills for functioning in society.
Latent Functions Of Education • Helps reproduce the existing class structure of societies. • Parents with sufficient wealth can send their children to better public schools by moving to communities that recruit more highly qualified teachers. • It brings young men and women from similar class and cultural backgrounds together in an informal “marriage market.”
Theoretical Perspectives on Education • To the functionalists, schools prepare children for participation in adult activities. • Interactionists view the school as a set of behaviors and relationships. • Conflict theorists view education as serving to justify and maintain the status quo.
Classrooms • This photo of Tibetan refugee children in a class room in northern India illustrates the similarity of classroom organization in many parts of the world.
Thinking Critically If one of the functions of education is to prepare people to function well in society, won’t they benefit from attending schools that reflect the nation’s ethnic, racial, and class diversity? • Many parents feel the superior education provided by private schools outweighs the benefits of attending diverse public schools. • What do you think?
% of Nations Developing Systems of Mass Education, by Decade
Tracking and Inequality • Number of years of school completed is correlated with income, occupation, prestige, attitudes, and opinions. • Early in the 20th century many schools began using tracking systems to separate higher-achieving students from slower learners. • Research on tracking has found students in lower tracks end up in lower-paid and lower-prestige occupations once they finish schooling.
Drop Outs • Research has shown that states that base funding of schools on the results of standardized tests, increase dropout rates. • The main reason for dropping out of school is poor academic performance, but students also drop out because of the demands of work and family roles.
Educational Achievement • How much a student learns, measured by mastery of reading, writing, and mathematical skills. • Studies have found that American parents tend to be more positive about their children’s schoolwork and to believe more in the effects of ability than effort.
Social Class and Educational Attainment and Achievement • Studies find a high correlation between social class and educational attainment and achievement. • Ray Rist claims that the U.S. system of public education is designed to perpetuate social and economic inequality. • Inequality in higher education is primarily a matter of access, or ability to pay.
% Distribution of Public Schools According to School Condition, by Region
1. Sociologists employing the ________ perspective focus on schools at the micro-level of everyday behavior, for example, centering attention on patterns of communication that transpire in classes, in hallways, and on playgrounds. • conflict • functionalist • interactionist • human ecology
Answer: c • Sociologists employing the interactionist perspective focus on schools at the micro-level of everyday behavior, for example, centering attention on patterns of communication that transpire in classes, in hallways, and on playgrounds.
2. Sociologists coming from the ________ perspective stress the role schools play in maintaining inequality and reproducing the class structure. • conflict • functionalist • interactionist • human ecology
Answer: a • Sociologists coming from the conflict perspective stress the role schools play in maintaining inequality and reproducing the class structure.
3. The most basic criticism of tracking is that the practice • contributes to the maintenance of social inequality. • significantly improves opinions of high-tracked students about themselves. • significantly improves opinions of lower-tracked students about themselves. • leads to better jobs and higher incomes for those students who are placed in higher tracks.
Answer: a • The most basic criticism of tracking is that the practice contributes to the maintenance of social inequality.
