Chapter 16, Education

1. Chapter 16, Education • Schooling and Society: Theories of Education • Does Schooling Matter? • Education and Inequality • School Reform

2. Education in the United States • Compulsory education was established in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century. • State laws often excluded minorities like Black Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, and Chinese immigrants. • Today, almost 90% of those under 35 in the U.S. have a high school diploma.

3. Functionalist View of Education • Education unifies and stabilizes society. • Serves functions of socialization, occupational training, and social control. • Schools inculcate values needed by society.

4. Conflict View of Education • Emphasizes the disintegrative and disruptive aspects of education. • Educational level can be used as a tool for discrimination via credentialism. • Schools are hierarchical institutions reflecting conflict and power relations in society.

5. Symbolic Interactionist View of Education • Focus is on what arises from the operation of the interaction process during the schooling experience. • Teachers expect certain behaviors, good or bad, from students. • Behavior is caused by the expectation instead of being anticipated by it.

6.  Effects of Education • Number of years of formal education has a modest effect on occupation and income. • Direct effect of class origin upon occupation and income, independent of education. • The social class one is born into has a greater effect on later occupation and income than educational attainment.

7.  Views of Intelligence • Unidimensional- A person who is good at one kind of mental activity would be expected to excel at other kinds. • Multidimensional - Cognitive gifts of one sort need not go along with other cognitive abilities.

8.  Seven Kinds of Intelligence • Logical-mathematical • Linguistic • Spatial • Musical • Interpersonal • Intrapersonal • Body-kinesthetic

9.  Criticisms of Standardized Tests • They measure limited ranges of ability, such as quantitative or verbal aptitude, and ignore other cognitive abilities such as creativity. • The tests were designed by middle class White males, and Include cultural and gender biases. • Predictive ability - especially for minorities and women - is compromised.

10. The Bell Curve Debate Two points: • Intelligence is 70% inherited and 30% related to the environment. • Lower classes are less endowed with genes for high intelligence than the upper classes.

11. Criticism of the Bell Curve • Studies show standardized tests are not as accurate a measure of intelligence: • Of minorities as whites. • Of women as men. • Of individuals of lower status as those of higher status.

12. Criticism of the Bell Curve • Presumes intelligence is genetically heritable, but there is evidence that environment may have a greater contribution. • Base a between-group conclusion on a within-group estimate of genetic heritability.

13. Research on Gender and Education Findings from report commissioned by AAUW: • In general, teachers pay less attention to girls and women. • Women lag behind in math and science ability and achievement scores. • Some standardized math and science tests retain gender bias.

14. Research on Gender and Education • Standardized math tests tend to under-predict women’s actual grades in mathematics. • Teachers tend to treat Black women and White women differently. • Textbooks ignore or stereotype women. • As girls approach adolescence, their self-esteem tends to drop.

15. School Reform • Unequal funding - partial funding of schools through property taxes results in funding inequalities. • Back-to-basics has resulted in a reduction of elective courses, increased discipline, and stiffer standards in grading. • The multiculturalism movement seeks to introduce more materials on different cultures.