Title: Education
1Education
2Education 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
3Schooling Economic Development
- Schooling in India
- Schooling in Japan
- Schooling in Great Britain
- Schooling in the United States
4Functions 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
5Latent 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
6Critical 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
7Schooling 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
8Critical 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
9Access 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 20,000 send 27 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
10Credentialism
- 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
11Problems 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
12Theodore 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
13The 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
14Many 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
15Academic 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)
16Academic 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
17School 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)
18Home Schooling
- Home schooling involves more school-age children
than magnet schools, charter schools, and
for-profit schools combined.
19Advocates of Home Schooling
- Poor performance of many public schools
- The system works, students who learn outperform
those who learn in schools
20Critics of Home Schooling
- Home schools reduce the amount of funding going
to local public schools, which ends up hurting
the majority of students - Home schooling takes some of the most affluent
and articulate parents out of the system. There
are the parents who know how to get things done
with administrators
21MainstreamingIntegrating 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
22Adult Education
- In 2000, more than 88 million U.S. adults over
age twenty-five were enrolled in some type of
schooling - Why do adults return to the classroom?
- To advance a career or train for a new job, but
many also point to the simple goal of personal
enrichment
23The Teacher Shortage
- Schools have adopted new recruitment strategies
- Using incentives such as higher salaries and
signing bonuses to attract people - States could make certification easier to get
- School districts are going globalactively
recruiting in such countries as Spain, India, and
the Philippines to bring talented women and men
from around the world to U.S. classrooms
2421st 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