SOC112S

• Education


  The social institution through which society provides its members with important knowledge, including basic facts, job skills, and cultural norms and values
• Schooling


  The formal instruction under the direction of specially trained teachers
• Structural-functional theory


  • Looks at ways in which formal education supports the smooth operation and stability of society
• Manifest Functions of Schooling

  • Socialization
  • Cultural Innovation
  • Social Integration
  • Social Placement
• Socialization


  Families are responsible to teach skills and values and thus to transmit a way of life from one generation to the next. Trained teachers are responsible to develop and pass on the more specialized knowledge that adults will need to take their place in the workforce.
• Technologically Simple Societies


  Technologically Complex Societies
• Why formal schooling separates education into primary, secondary, and tertiary educations?
• Cultural Innovation


  Faculty at colleges and universities create culture as well as pass it on to students. Research in the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the fine arts leads to discovery and changes in our way of life.
• How sociologists and psychologists help to transform culture?
• Social Integration


  Schooling molds a diverse population into one society sharing norms and values, especially in ethnically diverse urban areas or plural societies. This is one reason that states enacted mandatory education laws.
• Social Placement


  Schools identify talent and match instruction to ability. Schooling increases meritocracy by rewarding talent and hard work regardless of social background. Schooling provides a path to upward social mobility.
• Latent Functions of Schooling

  • Provides childcare for the growing number of one-parent and two-career families
  • Occupies thousands of young people in their teens and twenties who would otherwise be competing for limited opportunities in the job market
  • Brings together people of marriageable age
  • Establishes networks that serve as a valuable career resource throughout life
• Social-conflict theory


  • Explains how schooling both causes and perpetuates social inequality
• Social Control


  Schooling is a way of controlling people, reinforcing acceptance of the status quo and the importance of following orders
• Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) claim that the rise of public education in the late nineteenth century came at exactly the same time that factory owners needed an obedient and disciplined workforce
• Standardized Testing


  Critics insist that some bias based on class, race, or ethnicity will always exist in formal testing or standardized tests. Because test questions will always reflect our society's dominant culture, minority students are placed at a disadvantage
• Tracking


  The educational practice of assigning students to different types of educational programs, such as college preparatory classes, general education, and vocational and technical training, typically based on their performances in standardized examinations
• Tracking supposedly helps teachers meet each student's individual needs and abilities
• Observe the Diagram Now: School tracking is most obvious in the upper secondary education in Malaysia when students go into different tracks according to their academic performances.
• Savage inequalities


  Jonathan Kozol (1992) considers tracking as an example of "savage inequalities" in our school system. Do well on standardized tests and get into higher tracks, where they receive the best the school can offer. Do less well on these tests and end up in lower tracks, where teachers stress memorization and put little focus on creativity.
• Inequality among Schools


  • Private Schools
  • Public Schools
• Unequal Access to Higher Education

  Schooling is the main path to good jobs, and thus upper social mobility in our society. Yet, the promise of schooling has not overcome the racial inequality that exists. A crucial factor affecting access to higher education worldwide is family income as college or university is expensive. This economic difference causes an education gap between whites and minorities in the United States to widen at the college or university level.
• Privilege and Personal Merit


  We rarely recognize the resources—in terms of both money and cultural capital—that made educational achievement possible. Given our cultural emphasis on individualism, we tend to see credentials as badges of ability rather than as symbols of family affluence. Schooling transforms social privilege into personal merit.
• Credential Society


  A society that evaluates people on the basis of their schooling by rewarding academic qualifications
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy


  People (e.g., teachers) who expect others (e.g., students) to act in certain ways often encourage that very behavior
• What are your examples of indiscipline and violence at schools based on your observations or experiences?
• Student Passivity


  Student passivity seems to be a classroom norm. According to David Karp and William Yoels (1976), most students think classroom passivity is their own fault. Most college students find little value in classroom discussion and see their proper role as listening quietly and taking notes. Schools must share the blame as the bureaucratic educational system itself encourages student passivity and boredom. Students may even become irritated if one of them is especially talkative.
• Dropping Out
• Discipline and Violence


  Examples of indiscipline and violence at schools based on your observations or experiences
• Student Passivity


  Classroom norm where most students think passivity is their own fault, find little value in classroom discussion, and see their proper role as listening quietly and taking notes
• Schools must share the blame as the bureaucratic educational system itself encourages student passivity and boredom
• Dropping Out


  Quitting school before earning a high school diploma
• Grade Inflation


  Awarding of ever-higher grades for average work
• Factors of grade inflation

  • Teachers are concerned about the morale and self-esteem of their students and perhaps their own popularity
  • The increasing competitiveness of entry into college, university, and graduate schools increases pressure on teachers and lecturers to award high grades
• Medicine


  Social institution that focuses on fighting disease and improving health
• In preindustrial societies, health care was the responsibility of individuals and their families, and people turned to various traditional health practitioners
• In industrial societies, health care falls to specially trained and licensed professionals, from physicians, anesthesiologists to X-ray technicians, who rely on surgery and drugs in treatment and form the medical establishment
• Holistic Medicine


  Approach to health care that emphasizes the prevention of illness and takes into account a person's entire physical and social environment
• Structural-Functional Theories on Health and Medicine

  Talcott Parsons (1951) viewed illness as dysfunctional because it undermines people's abilities to perform their roles
• Sick Role


  Patterns of behavior defined as appropriate for people who are ill