education and inequality

• Education - formal and informal process of transmitting knowledge, beliefs, and skills from one generation to the next.
• Education - equipping the minds of the younger generation with the necessary critical skills to challenge and change the existing knowledge and practices.
• Education institutions - reproducing the existing belief system and practices of a particular society.
• Education - one of the most pervasive institutions that determines one’s future status.
• The Functionalist Perspective - manifest and latent functions of education.
• Cultural Transmission of Values is by which schools pass a society’s core values from one generation to the next.
• Social Integration is the process by which schools help to mold students into a more cohesive unit.
• Gatekeeping is by which schools determine which people will enter what occupations.
• Robert Merton (1949) coined the term “self-fulfilling prophecy”, false assumption that something is going to happen that then comes true simply because it is predicted.
• Education is seen as an important determinant of national development.
• The Rist Research - Ray Rist (1970) conducted participant observation in an African American grade school with an African American faculty.
• Education contributes to new innovations that lead to inventions, discoveries, and economy.
• Determinants of disadvantages

  gender stereotypes, gender-insensitive pedagogy, sexual harassment, gendered curricula and subjects, and underrepresentation of women in positions of authority.
• Education is an effective instrument to spread and disseminate knowledge among different sectors of society.
• RA No. 9710, also known as the Magna Carta of Women, provides for equal access and elimination of discrimination in education, scholarships, and training.
• Education is a right based on United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
• Education provides basic knowledge and skills that enhance the productivity of labor.
• Rist found that after only eight days in the classroom, the kindergarten teacher felt that she knew the children’s abilities.
• The Hidden Curriculum refers to the attitudes and unwritten rules of behavior that school teach in addition to the formal curriculum.
• Condemning child labor, Americanizing the immigrants, Truancy and Reform Schools, High School graduates vs College graduates, College attraction are significant points in the history of education.
• Gatekeeping - by tracking and sorting students into different educational programs based on their perceived abilities.
• The Conflict Perspective examines how the educational system reproduces social inequality.
• Discrimination by IQ

  • Poor people who score lower on these tests are assigned in less demanding courses to match their supposedly inferior intelligence.
• Pierre Bourdie - cultural capital privileges accompanying a social location that help someone in life

  • more highly educated parents
  • from grade school through high school being pushed to bring home high grades
  • enjoying cultural experiences that translate into higher test scores
  • better jobs, and higher earnings.
• Discrimination by IQ is manifested in exams and the cultural bias that is built into IQ tests is clearly not tilted in favor of the lower classes.
• Contest mobility - no sharp division and transfer among different programs, with no fixed end points.
• Credentials - diplomas and degrees used to determine who is eligible for a job.
• Illich (1970) claims that education is central to economic stratification and "highly credentialized professionals are the epitome of modern stratification".
• Symbolic Interactionist - Fulfilling teacher expectation

  • study face-to-face interaction in the classroom.
• Social Placement

  -High income and prestige are offered for those who put up years in education.
• Conflict Perspective - Predicting whether the child will go to college or not

  ● Family background > children’s abilities
• Randall Collins - The Credential Society (1979) is one in which employers use diplomas and degrees to determine who is eligible for a job.
• Functionalist Perspective

  1. Teaching Knowledge and skills
  2. Cultural Transmission of Values
  3. Social Integration
  4. Gatekeeping

  • Credentials

  5. Social Placement
• Conflict Perspective

  1. The Hidden Curriculum
  2. Discrimination by IQ
  3. Pierre Bourdieu - Cultural capital
  4. Randall Collins - The Credential Society (1979)
• hierarchy of job = hierarchy of skills
• sponsored mobility - branching in education; determining job/education to specialization
• System on Education

  1. sponsored mobility
  2. contest mobility
• RA no. 9710 - An act Providing for the Magna Carta of Women in 2008
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  Teaching Knowledge and skills

  • Each generation must train the next to fulfill the group’s significant positions
  • Child care
  • Sex education and birth control advice
• Gatekeeping

  "Sorts people on the basis of merit" Talcott Parsons (1940), Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945).