Education

• Education


  A social institution through which a society passes on cultural values and norms as well as skills related to social interaction and productivity
• Education in wealthy countries

  • Largely based on schooling or standardized instructions by trained educators leading to a recognized credential
• Even minor changes in how education is organized can have profound effects, for example, how children are grouped in a classroom
• In Canada, children are grouped by age in the education system
• Compulsory education for the masses

  The rise of schooling
• The industrial workforce required skills, information, and habits children couldn't be taught solely in the home
• Transition to textually mediated education allowed the colonial government to exert more control over the education system
• The Constitution Act of 1867 made education the responsibility of the provincial government in Canada
• In the 1950s, less than 50% of Canadians had a grade 9 education; now, 95% do
• Changing perceptions of childhood


  Why the school system went from being limited to the elite to being compulsory for the masses
• Structural Functionalist approach to education

  Emphasizes what schooling achieves for social stability, order, and cohesion
• Schooling was a "civilizing" project, rooted in racialized, class, gendered, and sexualized anxieties about children's development
• Eugenics science was included in textbooks
• Education arose alongside colonial anxieties about children's defencelessness against harmful influences
• Quiet Revolution in 1961


  Before, French and English school boards operated independently; English Canadians were more affluent, so the English school system was more oriented to university admissions. After, the education system was standardized, and the influence of the church was greatly reduced in both English and French schools
• In 1960, the average level of schooling in Quebec was more than a year below the national average; by 2001, the difference had disappeared
• Residential schools


  An assimilationist tool to fundamentally destroy Indigenous peoples' culture and family structure while indoctrinating children into Eurocentric values, norms, and beliefs
• 3,200-6,00 students died while at residential school, with many others experiencing sexual, physical, and emotional abuse
• Many survivors experience mental and physical health problems, and intergenerational trauma is prevalent among survivors and subsequent generations
• Manifest education


  Intended lessons transmitted through formal education (ex: curricula and lesson plans)
• Latent education


  Unintended lessons transmitted through formal education (ex: routines and practices)
• Functionalist perspective


  School curricula are created through a public consensus of what should and shouldn't be taught in schools
• Weberian scholars


  Rationalization and standardization lead to rigorous education bureaucracies, so curricula are not very affected by public discourses
• Conflict theorists


  Curricula are the outcome of powerful interests prevailing over others
• Hidden curriculum


  Latent education, unintended things we are taught in school
• Functionalist perspective on hidden curriculum


  Teaches students about important social values, such as competition and universalism
• Conflict theorists on hidden curriculum

  Promotes capitalism and values that maintain social inequalities in our society, such as passivity and docility
• Feminist approaches


  Attribute gender ideals to fields of study, maintaining inequalities between male and female students
• Latent processes within educational settings perpetuate social inequalities for Indigenous people, such as schools on revenge getting less funding than off-reserve schools, Indigenous students often having to leave their home communities to go to secondary school, and curricula not giving equal coordination to Indigenous peoples' legacies, histories, languages, and ways of knowing
• The TRC Calls to Action are some steps toward decolonization of education
• Symbolic interactionists


  Inquire into how learning processes work: how young people come to embody certain ways of being through socialization processes
• Gender as a verb, an ongoing action

  How preschools gender children through dressing up, formal and relaxed behaviours, controlling voice, bodily instructions, and physical interaction
• Gendering happens throughout the school years, both in terms of femininity and masculinity
• Heteronormativity


  Embedded in school architecture, uniforms and dress codes, curricula, and events, which can have negative impacts on LGBTQ2SI+ youth by marginalizing certain identities and ways of being and privileging others
• Concerted cultivation


  Middle-class parenting style, where parents actively manage children's development through extensive scheduled formal activities and a lot of dialogue, which is more valued and rewarded at children's schools
• Natural growth parenting


  Working-class parenting style, which is not rewarded in schools
• Students' interactions with teachers are not neutral but based on middle-class family norms passed on to children through socialization
• Curricula can influence how students interpret themselves, the communities to which they belong, and their perception of reality
• Africentric schools and Indigenous schools have been developed to combat Eurocentric education
• Stereotype threat


  Occurs when an individual's academic performance is hindered due to their fear of confirming a negative stereotype, they believe others hold about their racial or gender group