Chapter 11

Education: What Are We Learning?

Soc 100 Dr. Santos

State of the World’s Education: An Overview

• For most “education” is an informal process

• Schooling refers to learning skills like reading and math, in a building via systematic instruction by a trained professional

• The UNESCO standard:– 6 years of primary school – 3 years of intermediate and

secondary school• Formal education is schooling that

takes place in a formal setting with the goal of teaching a predetermined curriculum

State of the World’s Education: An Overview

• Measuring educational quality:

– Student-teacher ratio– Literacy rates– Mass education systems,

the standardization of national educational curricula is a trend spreading around the world

Education and Individuals: Micro-Level Theories

• Social Interaction within the Classroom: Symbolic Interaction Perspective

– Young people spend much time in school or school-related activities

– Student therefore becomes a master status

Education and Individuals: Micro-Level Theories

• Making Choices in Educational Settings: Rational Choice Theory

– If the benefits associated with a situation outweigh the costs, the individuals is likely to make the decision to act in the specified way to continue receiving benefits; if costs outweigh benefits, the individual will seek other courses of action• Dropping out of school • Teacher retention

Why Societies Have Education Systems: Macro-Level Theories

• The Purposes of Education: Functionalist Perspective

– Socialization– Training individuals– Promoting Change– Enhancing Personal and

Social Development

Why Societies Have Education Systems: Macro-Level Theories• Latent Functions of

Education:– Unintended, unorganized,

informal results of the educational process• Keeps children of the streets • Provide young people with a

place to congregate• Foster a “youth culture”• Mate selection market• Weakens parental control over

youths• Moves youth toward

independence• Provides experience in large,

impersonal secondary groups

Why Societies Have Education Systems: Macro-Level Theories• Stratification and Education:

Conflict Perspective• Schools used by powerful

and affluent groups to ensure that their own self interests are met

• Schools do not provide equal educational opportunities for all children in a society

– This creates the reproduction of class

Who Does What? Statuses and Roles in the Educational System

• Students and the Peer Culture of Schools – Peer groups formed– Student peer culture

develops– Gender dynamics– Sexual harassment arises– At risk students appear

Who Does What? Statuses and Roles in the Educational System• Teachers: The Front Line

– Serve as gatekeepers– Middle of the educational

hierarchy– Role strain– Fair status and rewards?– The “accountability

movement”– Deprofessionalism

Who Does What? Statuses and Roles in the Educational System• Administrators: The

Managers of the School System

– Issue budget reports– Engage in staff negotiations– Hire, fire and train staff– Meet with parents– Manage public relations– Preparing reports – Keep up with new regulations– Oversee discipline – Act as buffers between parents

and teachers when conflicts arise

The Bureaucratic School Structure • Weber’s Bureaucratic

Model applies to schools:– Division of labor– Administrative hierarchy– Specific rules and

procedures– Formalized relations– Rationality

The Informal System: What Really Happens Inside Schools?

• The informal system of schooling includes the unspoken, unwritten, implicit demands that we must learn in order to master the system

• The hidden curriculum refers to the implicit demands found in every learning institution that students have to learn and respond to in order to succeed within the educational system

Educational Climates of Schools

• The School Climate

• The Classroom Climate

• The Value Climate of Schools

Power Dynamics and Coping Strategies in the Classroom• How rules are enforced

and who has control are part of the power dynamics in classrooms– Teachers and students

develop coping strategies

Power Dynamics and Coping Strategies in the Classroom

• Conformists: Do the school work expected to get good grades and matriculate

• Innovators: Cheat of plagiarize to pass a course or win an academic contest

• Retreatists: Rebel against school establishments by not conforming or cooperating

• Ambivalence (Ritualists): Get by but do not exceed at school

• Rejection with replacement: Become a discipline problem or drop out of school to pursue other activities

Education and the Social Institution of the Family

• Family background, according to many sociologists, is the single most important influence on children’s school achievement– Role of parent’s motivation– Importance of social class– Family and work structures

Various social groups have goals for the schools

• Individuals want to enhance their status

• Community leaders expect schools to produce youths who will conform and contribute to the community

• Ethnic and religious groups want their values and their worldview represented in the curriculum

• Societal leaders expect that education train students to be contributing members of society

Decision Making at the Meso Level

• Local Level Influences– Reading material selection– Sex education, church-

state relations, “evolution”

• National Level Influences– Funding– NCLB

No Child Left Behind

• NCLB requires schools to administer achievement tests for accountability– Schools failing to meet

guidelines are penalized– Tests focus on math and

reading– 70 percent of schools are

reducing instructional time in other subjects to teach more reading and math

No Child Left Behind• Positive aspects of NCLB:

– It sets high standards for children– It expects every child to succeed– It helps create consistency between

school systems• Negative aspects of NCLB:

– It overemphasizes testing– It places unrealistic time tables for

schools to meet– It does not provide the necessary

funding – It does not account for or address

the social inequalities that affect educational performance

– Rural and small schools are often disadvantaged by NCLB

Can Schools Bring about Equality in Society?

• The goals of equal educational opportunity, according to James Coleman:

– To provide a common curriculum for all children regardless of background

– To provide that children from diverse backgrounds attend the same school

– To provide equality within a given loyalty system

The Coleman Report• Findings

– Minority students (except Asian-Americans) scored lower on tests at each level of schooling that did what students

– The majority of children studied attended segregated schools with same-race teachers

– The socioeconomic makeup of the school, the home background, and the background of other students in the school made the biggest difference in students’ school achievement levels

The Coleman Report• Findings, continued

– Curriculum and facilities made little difference in student achievement

– White children had somewhat greater access to physics, chemistry, language labs, textbooks, college curricula, and better qualified and higher paid teachers, but the differences were not very great

• Coleman recommended that integrating schools would provide an equal climate for achievement: magnet schools

Jencks Study

• Findings– Jencks found that schools

alone cannot create equal opportunity

– He found that even if schools reduce the educational attainment gap, economic inequality among adults continues to exist

– Children’s school, home, community, and physical environments must all be equalized for opportunity to be equalized

Who Gets Ahead and Why? The Role of Education in Stratification

• Education is a meritocracy, or a social group or organization where people are allocated to positions according to their ability and credentials

• The fact that many children do not attend school on an equal footing, questions whether or not a meritocracy exists

Sources of Inequality

• Testing can place students according to achievement and determining progress– Importance for tracking– IQ tests– Achievement tests– Bias in tests

Sources of Inequality• Tracking or Streaming

– Tracking or streaming refers to placing students in groups based on their ability levels, and is another way in which schools contribute to the stratification process

– Begins in primary school– Tracking correlates directly with

the child’s background and ethnic group, language skills, appearance, and other socioeconomic variables

– The negative effects of tracking can be reduced if the system of placement is flexible

Sources of Inequality

• School Funding– In the US, unequal school

spending results from reliance on local property taxes as well as state and federal funds• This perpetuates existing

inequalities

Educational Trends and Social Policy Issues

• Education of Girls– Worldwide, gender

inequality in educational access is a large problem

– In the US, boys are falling behind in every category

Educational Trends and Social Policy Issues• A Nation at Risk: The Imperative

for Educational Reform – Strengthen high school graduation

requirements– Raise college entrance

requirements– Emphasize basic skills– Require a longer school day and

year-round schooling– Improve the training and status of

teachers– Hold educators responsible for

students’ performance– Provide the funds necessary to

improve the educational system– To hold families accountable

Global Issues in Education• Social economic values of

the society are reflected in approaches to learning and in motivation of students

• Educational systems also reflect the economic and political institutions of a given society and its place in the world system

• Governments compare their academic test scores to other students worldwide

The Future of Education in the Global System

• Immigration• The “Digital Divide”• The “Virtual University”• The “school-to-work”

transition

Average SAT Scores by Family Income, 2004