Discussion/ Educational Experience
You will be able to analyze social institutions, social structures, and societal issues and how it relates to a nation’s culture and economy.
- General Education Competency:
You will be able to demonstrate socialization skills that support cultural awareness and a global perspective.
The Discussion Assignment – Educational AnalysisThe goal of this assignment is to examine policies and practices of the education system in two geographically separate cities using one of the three major sociological perspectives. Discussion Prompt: (You will find resources and a sample post below to help you with the assignment. You will be choosing one city from the U.S. and find its sister city (from another country) and researching the following information in comparing education and culture differences and similarities.Prompt:
- Select a major city in the U.S. and examine its sister city from the list of sister cities provided.
- Share some geographic information on A) the U.S. city that you selected and B) its sister city (some of them have more than one city but, you are only required to investigate one sister city).
- Where is the city located?
- What is the population size and demographics?
- What language(s) is/are spoken?
- What is the structure of the education system?
3. Compare and contrast the educational practices and policies of the two cities. Analyze your findings on the education system using one of the major sociological perspectives (refer to textbook explaining the functionalist, conflict or symbolic interactionist theory on education- chapter 12).Write at least three paragraphs- please refer to the city example below. Please make sure one paragraph summarizes each city and the last paragraph compares and contrasts the cities and the education system in each. Please include in the last paragraph one of the sociological perspectives discussed in class (conflict theory, functionalist theory or symbolic interactionist theory) and how it relates to the education system in the two cities you chose.
A list of sister cities in the U.S. and their corresponding city in another country- Link:
A list of sister cities in the U.S. and their corresponding city in another country- Optional Links: (click on the names below)-
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List of sister cities in the United States
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List of Sister Cities – What is a Sister City?Twin towns or sister cities are connected by a form of legal or social agreement to promote cultural and commercial ties.WorldAtlas
What is a sister city? Optional- Link: (opensinnewwindow)
What is a sister city? Optional Videos: (opensinnewwindow)
Link:
Link Video:
Here is a Discussion Post Example: City Example x City Example x – Alternative Formats
(An example of what your primary post should look like- sample)- you do not need to submit in a MSWord format- please post it directly in the discussion board-opensinnewwindow).
on time
Korgen, Sociology in Action, 1e
SAGE Publishing
Chapter 11: Education
11-1: What does it mean to look at education as a social institution?
11-2: How do historical moment, the social structure, and changing systems of production shape the functions of education over time and across place?
11-3: How do functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interaction approach and explain education as an institution?
11-4: How does education reproduce social inequality?
11-5: What are the central issues facing global education today?
11-6: How do policy debates surrounding pre-K, K-12, and higher education all revolve around the tension between public education and individual choice and responsibility for accessing opportunities and achieving success?
1. What is education as an institution?
0. Most Americans grow up to have similar earnings as their parents and occupy the same socioeconomic status.
0. A dominant ideology is a widely held set of beliefs embedded in the culture of a society and acts to inhibit the development of radical political dissent.
0. Institutional education
2. Education is the process through which a society transmits its culture and history and teaches social, intellectual, and specific work skills leading to productive workers and citizens.
2. Education has been institutionalized.
2. Compulsory education emerged to help meet the needs of the industrial era.
2. Durable institutions, such as education, are slow to change.
1. Education and modes of production
1. Preindustrial societies
0. Only wealthy and religious leaders went to school.
0. Most children worked alongside their parents.
1. Industrial manufacturing and large-scale agriculture
1. Industrialization created a need for skilled workers.
1. U.S. Government developed land-grant programs to establish institutions of higher education to train people in science, agriculture techniques, and engineering.
1. “Normal schools” were developed to train people to become teachers.
1. The postindustrial knowledge and service economy
2. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, manufacturing companies moved factories to places with cheaper labor.
2. Knowledge-based work was expanding during this time.
2. Professional and service jobs have grown since the 1970s.
2. Creativity and innovation receive the highest rewards in the new economy.
1. Public education and the postindustrial economy
3. The education system in the United States reflects the industrial age more than the information era.
3. Schools are not meeting the needs today’s professions demand.
1. Theorizing education
2. The social functions of education
0. Education trains and sorts workers by strengths and interests and provides access to various parts of the labor market while leveling the playing field with universal access.
0. The hidden curriculum is responsible for reinforcing elements of social status and order.
0. Socialization: Cohesion and control
2. Secondary socialization involves teaching kids how to behave appropriately in small groups and structured situations.
0. Labor force preparation
3. Compulsory schooling emerged as part of a modern era where merit, talent, and effort were expected to replace privilege and inheritance as determinants of social status and mobility.
3. Those with the highest abilities receive the most training, earn the highest credentials, and enter challenging fields.
0. Building an educated citizenry
4. History and civics are taught to help develop an educated citizenry capable of making informed and responsible decisions.
4. Only 18% of American eighth graders are at least proficient in U.S. History, 27% in Geography, and 23% in Civics.
2. Conflict, power, and education
1. Conflict theorists say the power dynamics of society shape schools and student outcomes.
1. Schools differ in quality of teachers, facilities, classroom interactions, and school discipline.
1. Social class and school experiences
2. Savage Inequalities highlighted the stark differences between poor schools and wealthy schools, revealing they do not provide equal opportunities for children.
2. Gender and racial biases exist regarding student treatment—boys’ answers are valued more than girls while non-White students are disciplined more harshly than White students.
1. Curriculum, ideology, and inequality
3. School curriculums reinforce dominant ideologies because they present the perspectives of those in power.
3. Inequalities tend to be minimized or ignored.
3. Schools create a false consciousness among students from poor and working class families.
1. Tracking and inequality
4. Schools reproduce social stratification by tracking students toward occupations consistent with their social class.
2. Symbolic interaction, socialization, and cultural production in schools
2. Symbolic interactionists focus on the social interactions in education.
2. Peer interactions help teach norms and values, group boundaries, and definitions of self.
2. Interactions with teachers and administrators teach kids about trust and submission to nonparental authority figures.
2. Socialization and socioeconomic status.
3. The social skills and behavioral expectations of the educational system have been developed by those with high levels of education and professional experience.
3. Students who come from similar social classes as the school developers will adopt school norms easier than students from blue-collar families.
3. Children with educated parents are more likely to be exposed to books and other reading materials, structured leisure activities, and cultural events.
1. Education and social inequality in the United States.
3. Human capital is the knowledge, skills, habits, and attributes necessary to succeed in work and in life.
3. Class and family background
1. Research shows that educational institutions reproduce relations of power and social inequality rather than level the playing field.
1. Student socioeconomic status is the strongest determinant of student outcomes.
1. Leveling the playing field with early education
2. Quality preschool programs improve nutrition and stimulate brain development, closing the gap between poor and privileged children.
2. Only 64.8% of 3- to 5-year-olds are enrolled in preschool programs.
2. Early education and care in the United States have traditionally been left up to individual families.
2. Approximately 70% of U.S. women with children under the age of five work in the paid labor force.
2. Childcare typically isn’t affordable, with costs running between $4,800 per year to over $21,000.
3. Race and ethnicity
2. The Supreme Court declared school segregation unconstitutional in the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
2. Mandatory busing programs were enacted in highly segregated school districts in the 1970s to help reduce segregation.
2. Magnet schools were developed as the original school choice program.
2. Public schools have largely resegregated, with segregation returning to pre-Brown levels.
2. Between 2000 and 2014, the percent of K-12 schools with 75–100% of students who are poor and Black or Hispanic has nearly doubled.
2. Affirmative action in college admissions
5. In the 1960s and 1970s, some colleges and universities started engaging in affirmative action programs to recruit minority students and identify promising students from underrepresented populations.
5. In 1996, California passed a referendum barring racial preferences in admissions, which was followed by several other states.
5. Court decisions have ruled that race can only be considered as part of individualized assessments of applicants.
5. Whites and Asians reach higher levels of educational attainment than Blacks and Hispanics (Table 10.1).
2. A “Model Minority” in education
6. The assumption that Asian students are academically gifted ignores the diversity and circumstances of those classified as “Asian.”
3. Gender and education
3. Women didn’t begin entering higher education in significant numbers until the 1960s and 1970s (Figure 11.1).
3. Women’s lower returns for education
1. Women do not experience the same financial benefits as men from higher education (Figures 11.2 and 11.3).
3. School funding and inequality
4. Public schools receive funding from local, state, and federal funds (Figure 11.4).
4. Local funding is typically tied to property taxes, so wealthier areas can provide more funding.
4. Differences in local funding influence the quality of education students receive.
4. Parental engagement with schools also varies by social class, with those in professional occupations having more flexibility to help.
4. Reproducing inequality within schools
4. Tracking involves placing students in classes based on “ability.”
4. Tracking privileges some students over others.
4. Higher class White and Asian students are overrepresented in college prep tracks, while lower class Black and Hispanic students are overrepresented in vocational tracks.
4. Tracking can help structure student interactions, influencing self-concept and perceptions of potential achievements.
4. Education is related to unemployment and earnings (Figure 11.5).
4. Higher education
5. The GI Bill democratized higher education by making it available to returning soldiers regardless of parental social class.
5. Community colleges offered a College for All (CFA) model with open enrollment policies.
5. More lower class students now enroll in college but are less likely to graduate than their middle-class peers.
5. Lower socioeconomic status students face nonacademic barriers, such as lack of family support and having to work while going to school.
5. Types of colleges, student success, and tracking
4. State flagship universities have the opportunities and resources to give students an edge upon graduation.
4. Nonflagship universities typically prepare students for midlevel management and local leadership roles.
4. Community colleges help people obtain white-collar work or management of low-wage work, such as retail.
4. With tracking starting as early as third grade, a student’s future class may be determined long before high school.
5. Funding for higher education
5. States have cut back on the amount of funding they provide to higher education (Figure 11.6).
5. Individuals have to pay more for higher education, putting it out of reach for many (Figure 11.7).
1. Global education and global inequality
4. Giving U.S. students a global perspective
0. Approximately 1.2 million foreign students were studying in the United States in 2015.
0. Only 1.5% of all U.S. students currently enrolled in institutions of higher education have studied abroad, and only 10% have had a study abroad experience.
0. Almost 40% of companies reported in 2013 that they missed international business opportunities because of a lack of internationally competent personnel.
4. Global literacy and education
1. International efforts have increased the number of children who attend school and achieved greater gender parity.
1. Fifty-eight million children remain out of school globally and about 100 million do not complete primary education.
1. Lower income children are less likely attend school.
1. Security and funding concerns exist worldwide.
4. Finland: Global leader in quality education
2. The gap between the highest and lowest performing students is small.
2. Tracking is not involved.
2. It is a learner-centered system that emphasizes happiness and well-being.
1. Leveling the playing field: Public policy and education
5. Pre-K education
0. Research shows 90% of the brain’s architecture is developed by age 5.
0. Investing in Pre-K education can reduce spending on special education, juvenile justice, criminal justice, and social welfare programs.
0. The Abecedarian project
2. Children were randomly placed in a high-quality education and childcare program.
2. Children in the program were 4 times more likely to attend college than kids who were randomly assigned to the control group.
5. K-12 education
1. A 1983 report found U.S. schools underperformed and failed to produce a globally competitive workforce.
1. The No Child Left Behind Act was designed to improve the quality of education for all children.
1. The NCLB Act increased standardized assessments, raised penalties for low performance, expanded school choice, monitored teacher quality, enacted a “reading first” approach, and consolidated bilingual/immigrant education programs.
1. School choice options provide the ability to attend a public school of a family’s choosing, a charter school, or a voucher to subsidize attending a private school.
1. Charter schools and vouchers
4. Charter schools and vouchers are used create a market in public primary and secondary education.
4. Charter schools are publicly funded schools, established under a charter (mission, philosophy), and governed by parents, educators, community groups or private organizations.
4. Students who attend charter schools are more likely to go to college but do not score better on SAT or ACT exams than other public school students.
4. Vouchers are certificates of government funding that make each student’s state funds portable.
4. Voucher proponents say students should be able to use their funds to attend their school of choice.
4. Voucher opponents say state funds are for the educational system, not individual students.
4. Voucher opponents say the use of vouchers will continue to segregate schools.
4. Test scores have not improved since the NCLB Act.
4. The Every Student Succeeds Act was passed in 2015, deemphasizing the punitive responses for poor performance.
5. The future of public higher education
2. Is higher education a public good or a private expense?
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