Education

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Education

• Schooling and Economic Development
• Socialization
• Schooling and Social Identity
• Problems in the Schools
• Recent Issues in U.S. Education

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Education A Global Survey

• 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 specifically trained teachers.

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Schooling and Economic Development

• Schooling in any society is closely tied to this
  level of economic development.
• In low and middle income nations, where most of
  the worlds people live, boys and girls spend
  several years in school, but their learning is
  limited to practical knowledge that they will
  need to perform traditional tasks.
• Only the wealthy are able to study literature,
  art and history, because they do not need to work.

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• High-income nations endorse the idea that
  every-one should go to school.
• High-income nations require workers to read and
  write.

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Schooling in India

• India has outlawed child labor, many children
  work in factoriesweaving rugs or making
  handicraftsup to sixty hours per week, which
  greatly limits their opportunity for schooling.
• Most children now receive some primary education,
  typically in crowded classrooms where one teacher
  attends to sixty children.

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Schooling in Japan

• Early grades concentrate on teaching Japanese
  traditions and obligation to the family. By the
  early teens, students encounter the rigorous of
  competitive examinations that resemble the SATs.
• Schooling reflects personal ability and the
  government pays for much of the cost of higher
  education to those students with high examination
  scores.
• Because of this pressure to excel, Japanese
  students out perform students in every other
  high-income nation including the U.S.

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Schooling in Great Britain

• Most wealthy families send their children to what
  the British call public schools, the equivalent
  of U.S. private boarding schools.
• These elite schools enroll about 7 percent of
  British students, not only to teach academic
  skills but to teach children from wealthy
  families families the distinctive patterns of
  speech, mannerism, and social grace.
• Graduates with an Oxbridge degree take their
  place in society, most of the top members of the
  British government have Oxbridge degrees.

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Schooling in the United States

• The U.S. was among the first countries to set a
  goal of mass education. By 1850 about half of
  all children were enrolled in schools. In 1981,
  the last of the states passed a mandatory
  education law-requiring children to attend school
  until age 16 of completion of the eighth grade.
• In the U.S. the educational system stresses the
  value of practical education, knowledge that has
  a direct bearing on individuals work and
  interests.

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• John Dewey championed progressive education,
  constantly updating what our schools teach to
  make learning relevant to peoples lives.
• This is a reflection of pragmatism, todays
  college students select their major area of study
  with an eye toward future jobs.

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Socialization

• As societies develop complex technology,
  schooling gradually emerges, as a distinct social
  institution employing specially trained personnel
  to convey the knowledge needed for adult roles.
• In primary school children learn basic language
  and math skills. Secondary school builds on this
  foundation, and for many, college follows.
• School also transmits cultural values and norms.

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Cultural Innovation

• Education creates and transmits culture. Schools
  stimulate intellectual inquiry and critical
  thinking, sparking the development of new ideas.

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Social Placement

• Formal education helps young people assume
  culturally approved statuses and perform roles
  that contribute to the ongoing life of society.
• Schooling enhances meritocracy by making personal
  merit a foundation of future social positions.

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Latent Functions of Schooling

• 1. As the number of single parent families and
  two-career couples is rising, schools have become
  vital to relieving parents of some child-care
  responsibilities.
• 2. Education engages thousands of young people,
  especially during times when jobs are not readily
  available.
• 3. Many people form lifelong friendships and
  even meet future spouses in high school and
  college. Affiliation with a particular school
  also can create valuable career opportunities.

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Social Control

• Mandatory education laws ensured that schools
  would teach immigrants not only English but also
  cultural values a that support capitalism.
  Compliance, punctuality, and disciplinewere and
  still arepart of what conflict theorists called
  hidden curriculum, subtle presentation of
  political or cultural ideas in the classroom.

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Standardized Tests

• Painter is to painting as ____________ is to
  sonnet.
• a. driver c. Priest
• b. poet d. carpenter

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School Tracking

• Tracking- assigning students to different types
  of educational programs.
• Tracking is also common in other high-income
  nations, including Great Britain, France, and
  Japan.

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Inequity

• Students in private schools appear to achieve
  more than students in public schools. Private
  schools are also more academically demanding and
  have strict discipline policies. Graduates of
  private schools are more likely to attend college
  and enter high-paying occupations.

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Access to Higher Education

• Money is the most crucial factor affecting higher
  education in the U.S. College is expensive and
  the cost is rising rapidly.
• For both men and women, some of the greater
  earnings that come with more schooling have to do
  with social background, because the people with
  the most schooling are likely to come from
  upper-class families to begin with.

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Privilege and Personal Merit

• If attending college is a rite of passage for
  affluent men and women, then schooling transforms
  social privilege into personal merit.
• We see credentials as badges of ability rather
  than symbols of family affluence.

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Discipline and Violence

• Schools today are dealing with issues such as
  drugs and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy,
  andas deadly incidents in a number of schools
  illustrateoutright violence.

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Student Passivity

• Some schools are afflicted with passivity, this
  can be placed on TV, on Parents, and on the
  students themselves. Also our education system
  generates student passivity.
• 1. Rigid Uniformity
• Bureaucratic schools run by outsider specialists
  generally ignore the cultural character of local
  communities and the personal needs of their
  children.

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• 2. Numerical ratings
• Schools officials define success on numerical
  attendance rates, drop-out rates, and achievement
  test scores.
• 3. Rigid Expectations
• Officials expect fifteen year-olds to be in the
  tenth grade and eleventh graders to score a
  certain level on a standardized verbal
  achievement test.
• 4. Specialization
• Teachers are specialized in subjects and do not
  know the complete student.

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• 5. Little individual responsibility
• Highly bureaucratic schools do not empower
  students to learn on their own. Teachers do not
  accelerate learning for fear of disrupting the
  system.

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Dropping Out

• Dropping out-quitting school before earning a
  high school diplomaleaves young people
  ill-equipped for the world of work and at high
  risk for poverty.

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Academic Standards

• A Nation as Risk, was a comprehensive report in
  the quality of U.S. schools published in 1983 by
  the National Commission on Excellence in
  Education.
• Functional illiteracy- a lack of reading and
  writing skills needed for everyday living, is a
  problem for one in eight children who leave U.S.
  secondary schools.

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Improvements recommended by A Nation at Risk
include

• 1. All schools should require students to
  complete several years of English, mathematics,
  social studies, general studies, and computer
  science courses.
• 2. Schools should not promote failing students
  from grade to grade instead, students should
  remain in the classroom as long as necessary to
  learn basic skills.
• 3. Teachers training must improve, and teachers
  salaries should rise to attract talent into the
  profession.