sociology 36 hours

SOC 1020 Lecture Five

Prof. D. Fasenfest Education Education is typically the second social institution that children encounter, although for many families the second institution might be the Church. Education is the institution that passes on knowledge to the next generation. This knowledge includes basic skills, such as reading and writing, and job skills. Schooling refers to formal instruction under trained specialists. Compulsory education is something that you are all familiar with. This means that children have to go to school. In the U.S. children are required to begin school when they are 6 years old. Most of us believe that Kindergarten is required, but it is actually optional. Most children begin school when they are 5 or just before 5 and attend Kindergarten. In the middle and upper classes, children may begin pre-school as early as 3 years old. While we take compulsory education for granted, it does not exist in every society. In fact, the concept in the U.S. is also relatively young. In the early 1900s when child labor laws went into effect we found ourselves faced with unsupervised children. More importantly, unsupervised poor children. Middle and upper-class children had never been in the work force at a young age with boys getting formal education and girls getting a finishing school (finishing their social training so that they could marry into presentable society or vocational training, perhaps serving as governesses to reach peoples children or as secretaries in firms). Poor children were the ones that went to work with their moms every morning and earned a small wage by doing menial tasks, such as picking up empty thread spools in a sewing factory. Compulsory schooling was a way of dealing with these children. Rather than roaming the streets getting into mischief, breaking the law, or being victimized themselves, children were instead sent to school. The teachers had the same authority to punish as the parents. Early schooling was a really the state taking responsibilities that had previously belonged to the parents. However, compulsory education was essential to being competitive during the Industrial Revolution. It provided a mechanism for training the next level of workers in society. It also provided the opportunity to start socializing the work force. This is why schools used bells to ring children to classes and to lunch and to end the day. This mimicked the practice of factories ringing bells in the morning or blowing whistles to call the workers in for the day. Schools provide socialization, cultural innovation, integration, and social placement. A practice of early education was tracking. This practice continued in the U.S. until the early 80s. Tracking refers to separating children in classes based on their academic abilities. In theory this should work well, allowing the smarter kids to be in class with the smarter kids and the slower kids to be together. This should allow the teachers to keep education at a pace that the class is comfortable with. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. When I was in 8th grade, my school tracked. We had A thru E sections, with students being assigned to the section that corresponded with their GPA…in theory. What really happened was that all the really smart kids

(straight A) were in the A section with all of the rich kids and all of the cheerleaders and basketball players. The E section had the poorest kids, the boy that had a severe stutter, and the girl who was not only poor but one of the ugliest children that I have ever seen in my life. This was pretty typical. The tracking system was a reflection of the social class and status of the student rather than of academic ability. A very intelligent poor child could be in the lowest class and a very unintelligent rich child could be in the highest class. While most schools no longer track, some still do. Home schooling refers to the practice of children being taught at home by their parents. More and more American children are being home schooled with excellent results. Home schooled children in general do very well in the competitive environment of SATs and college applications. Home schooling may be the better option for an extremely bright child, since they are not held back and/or bored by the pace of teaching in a structured school environment. Many parents who home school choose to do so for religious reasons, preferring to include religion in science and history lessons. Home schooling allows them to restrict teaching on subjects like evolution that conflict with their personal beliefs. Others home school because public education doesn’t meet the needs of their child. There are a few problems with public education in our society. First, the quality of education that a child gets is dependent upon its family income. Compulsory education, funded by taxes, was supposed to assure equal education to children. In reality, poor children get a poor quality education. They learn from books that are outdated, don’t have access to the same cultural experiences and don’t have access to new technology. A poor school is far less likely to have a computer lab. A very wealthy school is likely to provide a lap top to each of its students. Middle class and wealthy schools are also likely to practice grade inflation. This means that the number of students receiving As is much higher since teachers are reluctant to give lower grades. In part this is due to the parents, who have lots of social clout in the community, are likely to be angry if junior gets less than an A. These disparities in the quality of education make it harder for poor children to be competitive for college admissions and scholarships. As a result, very few poor children are able to go on to college. Approximately 50% of working class children go to college, but the drop out rate is a much higher than that of the middle class. Approximately 80% of middle and upper class children go on to college. This leads to the poor class being less competitive in getting the jobs that would provide the opportunity to get out of the poverty class. Another problem with the education system is that classrooms are overcrowded. This leads to a lot of time being spent on discipline and less on learning. In fact, some argue that school as it is designed brings kids together in an environment that allows them to learn more deviant acts. Has the notion of public education outlived its usefulness? Also, what alternative would work better? OR should we just fix the system that we have? We noticed in the last lecture that in this increasingly knowledge-based economy education becomes the key to successful employment and a good income…though there is no guarantee you will get a good job, you can more or less count on not finding one if you don’t have a higher education. We have to really wonder what sort of society we are going to have as we read that

more and more poor people are dropping out, that young people of color do not finish school, and the implications of their being relegated to the lowest economic rungs in society. Too much evidence points to more than just not wanting to finish school—but rather that schooling in America still caters to privilege, and that the rich and poor keep reproducing themselves as a result. My final note is about the quality of education, and the fact that while everyone argues that education is the key to the future, Michigan and many other states keep under funding education at each level, and for most states teachers are not well paid. How can we, as a society, expect to attract the best and brightest to teach our children (other than those whose children go to elite schools or live in high income communities) if there are few incentives to become a teacher?