Sociological Media Application Paper

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Chapter 11

Education: What Are We Learning?

Schooling:
Learning skills like reading, writing, and math, in a building, through systematic instruction by a trained professional
In most affluent countries and urban areas, formal schooling is necessary for survival and success.
Literacy is necessary for democratic governments, where informed citizenry elect officials and vote on public policies.
Formal schooling is a modern concept, which became necessary once jobs required literacy and math skills.

Overview of the World’s Education

UNESCO:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
“global center for discussion and implementation of educational ideas and organization models”
The UNESCO standard:
6 years of primary school
3 years each of intermediate and secondary school
Emphasis on comprehensive rather than specialized training

Overview of the World’s Education

What is considered essential knowledge to be taught in schools is based on a country’s level of development, cultural values, and political ideology, and on international guidelines.
Education around the world is strongly influenced by models developed in Global North countries.

Overview of the World’s Education

Symbolic Interaction Perspective

Focuses on meaningful interaction in schools and classrooms, and how students actively construct reality
For example, popularity contests
Because young people spend much time in school or school-related activities, the status of students affects their self-concepts and selves.

Education: Micro-Level Theories

Rational Choice Theory

Focuses on cost/benefit analysis in individual decisions about education
If benefits of an action outweigh costs, individuals are likely to take the action; if costs outweigh benefits, they will seek other courses of action.
For example:
Students deciding whether to drop out of school
Teachers deciding whether to stay in the profession

Education: Micro-Level Theories

Students and the Peer Culture of Schools

Student peer culture:
A stable set of activities, routines, artifacts, values, and concerns that children produce and share in interaction with peers
Peer cultures create identities and labels.
Students’ class, race, gender, and sexuality affect their school experiences.
The environment outside the school affects students’ experiences within it.

Statuses and Roles in Education Systems

Teachers: The Front Line

The front line in implementing school goals
Serve as gatekeepers, controlling the flow of students, activities, resources, and privileges
Role strain: need to judge students’ performance while also encouraging them
Fair status and rewards?
Threats to professional autonomy and self-regulation

Statuses and Roles in Education Systems

Administrators:

Managers of the school system

The top of the hierarchy in local schools
Mediate between individual schools and larger educational systems
Responsible for:
Budgeting, reporting, regulatory compliance
Staff hiring, firing, training, and negotiations
Parent and public relations; acting as a buffer in conflicts between parents and teachers
Overseeing discipline

Statuses and Roles in Education Systems

The Informal System

Informal system of schooling:
Unspoken, unwritten, and implicit norms of behavior
Created and enforced by teachers and/or by student peer culture
Includes the hidden curriculum, educational climate, value climate, and classroom power dynamics and coping strategies
The hidden curriculum:
The implicit “rules of the game” students must learn and respond to in school to be socially accepted and to succeed in the education system

What Really Happens Inside Schools?

The Informal System, cont.

The educational climate of schools:
The general social environment of schools and classrooms, for example, stimulating or stifling
Influenced by factors such as teacher expectations, student groups, classroom layouts, architecture
May vary by students’ gender, race, ethnicity, class
The value climate of schools:
Students’ motivation, aspirations, and achievements
Shaped by students’ home environments, parental and teacher expectations

What Really Happens Inside Schools?

Power dynamics and coping strategies

in the classroom:

Teachers try to get students to obey, cooperate, take responsibility; students try to win some control and freedom from teachers.
Both develop coping strategies, which become part of the “hidden curriculum.”

What Really Happens Inside Schools?

Merton’s strain theory of deviance applied

to students’ coping strategies:

Conformity: acceptance of school-established goals and means; for example, doing expected work
Innovation: finding alternative means to achieve conventional goals; for example, cheating to pass a course
Retreatism: rejecting school goals and means; for example, rebelling, not conforming or cooperating
Ritualism: ambivalence about goals; for example, following rules but not excelling at school
Rejection with replacement: rejecting goals and means and pursuing an alternative; for example, dropping out of school to pursue other activities

What Really Happens Inside Schools?

Formal Education Systems

Developed in 16th-century Europe, when other social institutions required new roles, skills, and knowledge that parents could not teach
Originally, schooling was only for the elite; later it became available to the masses and some societies began to require it for basic literacy (usually the third-grade level)
Schools became major formal organizations and developed extensive bureaucracies

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

The Bureaucratic School Structure

Weber’s bureaucratic model applied to schools:
Division of labor
Administrative hierarchy
Specific rules and procedures
Formalized relations
Rationality
Pros of bureaucratic schools:
Cost-effective, efficient, productive
Cons of bureaucratic schools:
Impersonal, rigid, alienating, lack of attention to personal needs

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

Education and the social institution of family:

Family background is thought to be the most important influence on children’s school achievement.
Role of parents in motivating and preparing children for school
Social class and changing work structures affect parents’ ability to encourage and direct children

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

Education and Racial background

“Cradle to Pipeline” (Children’s Defense Fund)
Gap in educational achievement for boys is especially strong for African American, Hispanic, and low-income males
Black students are 3.5 times and Hispanic students 1.5 as likely to be suspended as white students

Educational decision-making at the meso level:

Who should decide what children learn?
Decision-making in the United States:
Local level influences: Interest groups engage in conflict over contents of school curriculums and libraries
National level influences:
National influence limited by the U.S. Constitution, which leaves many educational decisions to the states
Ability to give or withhold funding to schools depending on compliance with federal laws
The Race to the Top for all schools
Obama’s plan to focus on Early Childhood Education
No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

Educational decision-making at the meso level:

No Child Left Behind (NCLB):

To create accountability, requires schools to administer achievement tests in math and reading
Schools that fail to meet guidelines are penalized
Has had an impact: 70% of schools have reduced instructional time in subjects that are not tested

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

Educational decision-making at the meso level:

Positive aspects of NCLB:
Expects every child to succeed
Helps create consistency between school systems
Negative aspects of NCLB:
Overemphasizes testing
Penalizes schools with high numbers of low-income and/or disabled students
Gives schools unrealistic timetables for improvement
Does not provide necessary funding
Disadvantages small, poor, and rural school districts

The Meso-Level: Educational Organizations

The Purposes of Education:

The Functionalist Perspective