Education

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Education
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Education vs. Schooling

• Education
• The social institution through which society
  provides its members with important knowledge,
  including basic facts, job skills, and cultural
  norms and values
• Schooling
• Formal instruction under the direction of
  specially trained teachers

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Functions of Schooling

• Socialization
• Primary schooling
• Basic language and mathematical skills
• Secondary schooling
• Expansion of basic skills to include the
  transmission of cultural values and norms
• Cultural innovation
• Educational systems create as well as transmit
  culture
• Social integration
• Brings a diverse nation together
• Social placement
• The enhancement of meritocracy

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Latent Functions of Schooling

• Schools as child-care providers
• Schools consume considerable time energy-
  activity thus fostering conformity
• Engages young people at a time in their lives
  when jobs are not plentiful
• Sets the stage for establishing relationships
  networks
• Link between particular schools and career
  opportunities

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Critical Analysis

• Functionalist approach overlooks that the quality
  of schooling is far greater for some than for
  others.
• U. S. Educational system reproduces the class
  structure in each generation
• System transforms privilege into personal
  worthiness and social disadvantage into personal
  deficiency

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Schooling and Social Inequality

• Social control
• Mandatory education laws encouraged compliance,
  following directions, and discipline
• Hidden curriculum subtle presentations of
  political or cultural ideas in the classroom
• Standardized testing
• Is it biased based on race, ethnicity, or class
• School tracking
• Assigning students to different types of
  education programs
• Does it segregate students into winners and
  losers?
• Inequality between schools
• Public vs. Private schools
• Parochial schools operated by Roman Catholic
  Church
• Suburban vs. Urban districts

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Critical Analysis

• Social conflict approach minimizes the extent to
  which schooling upward social mobility for
  talented men and women from all backgrounds
• Todays college curricula (including sociology
  courses) challenges social inequity on many fronts

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Access to Higher Education

• Money is largest stumbling block to higher
  education
• Even for state-sponsored schools
• Family income is still best predictor for college
  attendance
• Families making at least 75,000 send 64 of
  their children to college
• Families making under 10,000 send 21.1 of their
  children to college
• On average, a person with a college degree will
  add almost 500,000 to his or her earnings over a
  lifetime
• A woman with a bachelors degree will earn
  two-and-a-half times as much as a woman with
  eight or fewer years of schooling

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National Map 20-1 Average Annual Teacher
Salaries
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Credentialism

• Evaluating a person on the basis of educational
  degrees
• Diplomas and degrees are viewed as evidence of
  ability
• Over-education is often the case when people are
  overqualified for the job at hand

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Problems in SchoolsMany Believe That a So Called
State of Emergency Best Characterizes Our
System of Education These Days

• School discipline
• Many believe schools need to teach discipline
  because it isnt addressed within the home
  setting
• Violence in schools
• Students and teachers are assaulted
• Weapons are brought to school
• Societys problems spill into schools
• Answer
• Adjust attitudes so learning is the focus
• Skillful and committed teaching
• Firm disciplinary standards enforced
• Administrative and parental support

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Figure 20-3 Educational Achievement for Various
Categories of People Aged 25 Years and Over, 2002
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Cooling Out the Poor Transforming
Disadvantages Into Deficiency

• Just as schools can transform social privilege
  into personal merit, they can transform social
  disadvantages into personal deficiency
• Cooling out
• The self-fulfilling prophecy by which poor
  students end up settling for no more than society
  offered them when they were first born
• Some believe that community colleges play an
  important part in the cooling out process
• Allowing students to fail in community college
  allows society to point the finger at them and
  ask them to accept personal responsibility for
  blowing their opportunities
• Are the students at fault here, or is the
  educational system guilty of not caring enough?

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Theodore Sizers Ways in Which Bureaucratic
Schools Undermine Education

• Rigid uniformity
• Insensitive to cultural character of community
• Numerical ratings
• Success defined in terms of numbers on test
  scores
• Rigid expectations
• Age and grade level expectations
• Specialization
• Many courses, many teachers
• No one teacher knows a student
• Little individual responsibility
• Little empowerment to learn on ones own
• Dont upset or accelerate learning for fear of
  disrupting system

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The Silent Classroom the Norm Is to Not Talk
in Class, andStudents Can Get Upset at Others
Who Talk Too Much

• No matter what the class size
• Only a handful of students speak
• Passivity is the norm
• It is deviant to speak up in class
• What makes a difference
• Female instructors tend to call on men and women
  equally, whereas male instructors tend to call on
  men
• Reasons
• Students are conditioned to listen
• Instructors come to class with lectures prepared
  and students do not wish to get sidetracked

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Many Students Expect Learning to Be Delivered and
Dont Realize They Are Part of the Process

• Apathy is high among students
• Reasons
• Television
• Parents
• Schools
• Other students
• High tech may hold one key for sparking interest
• Bringing multimedia into the classroom

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Academic Standards

• A Nation at Risk - a 1983, governmental
  commission
• Troublesome findings concerning what students are
  and are not learning in school
• 40 of those screened could not draw inferences
  from written materials
• 33 of those screened could complete multi-step
  mathematical problems
• Other insights
• Functional illiteracy a lack of reading and
  writing skills needed for everyday living
• Lack of interest in the importance of education
  apathetic attitudes toward classes, course
  materials, doing assignments, and attendance
• Belief that good grades need not be earned, but
  rather just rewarded (as if they had a right to
  them)

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Academic Standards

• Global performance
• U.S. Eighth graders still placed 17th in the
  world in science and 28th in mathematics!
• Recommendations from A Nation at Risk - a 1983,
  governmental commission
• All schools should require several years of
  English, math, social studies, general science
  computer science
• No more social promotion of failing students
  from grade to grade
• Teacher training and salaries should improve

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Figure 20-4 Functional Illiteracy in Global
Perspective
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School Choice

• Introduction of competition to public schools and
  giving parents options might force all schools to
  do a better job
• Critics charge that these programs erode our
  nations commitment to public education
  especially in inner city schools
• Magnet schools schools that offer special
  facilities and programs to promote educational
  excellence in a particular area, i.e. Arts,
  computers,foreign language, etc
• Charter schools public schools that are given
  more freedom to try out new policies and programs
• Schooling for profit school systems operated by
  private profit-making companies (including public
  schools)

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MainstreamingIntegrating Students With Special
Needs Into the Overall Educational Program

• Five million students are classified as mentally
  or physically disabled
• Many of the five million receive marginal
  classroom experiences
• Inclusive education maintains that it is good to
  integrate all children
• Mainstreaming needs to be approached with a
  measure of common sense
• In cases in which one has to serve the severe and
  profound populations, a segregated classroom may
  be best

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21st Century Schooling

• Computers and other high-tech tools will become
  increasingly important
• The amount and quality of high-tech equipment may
  become one of the new marketing tools for schools
  to out-perform one another
• Computers, however, only hold part of the answer.
  We need humans to put into place a program that
  aims at providing high quality education
• Will the education system play a role in dividing
  people into two groups in the future
• Those literate and illiterate in computer skills
• Will we become a country of haves and have nots
  divided along lines of high-tech competencies