Chapter 16 sociology

Postmodernist perspective

Jean Francos Lyotard. knowledge has become a commodity that is exchanged between producers and consumers. "knowledge" is a database. Teaching and learning is about data presentation.

class segregation

Which of the following is NOT a major issue facing contemporary K-12 education?

detracking movement

which emphasizes that students should be deliberately placed in classes of mixed ability to improve their academic performance and test scores. This may close the achievement gap among students.

cultural capital

According to French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, students from diverse backgrounds come to school with different amounts of __________, which refers to a person's social assets, including knowledge of how to dress, language competency, and knowledge of art and music.

symbolic interactionist

According to __________, the process of labeling is directly related to the power and status of those persons who do the labeling and those who are being labeled.

Latent functions

According to the functionalist perspective, all social institutions, including education, have functions that are the hidden, unstated, and sometimes unintended consequences of their activities.

Education serves at least three latent functions

Restricting some activities. States have mandatory education laws that require children to attend school until they reach a specified age (usually age sixteen) or complete a minimum level of formal education (generally the eighth grade). Out of these laws grew one latent function of education: keeping students off the streets and out of the full-time job market until they are older. Matchmaking and production of social networks. Because schools bring together people of similar ages, social class, and race/ethnicity, young people often meet future marriage partners and develop lasting social networks. Creation of a generation gap. Students learn information and develop technological skills that may create a generation gap between them and their parents, particularly as the students come to embrace a newly acquired perspective.

charter school

What is the term for a primary or secondary school that receives public money but is free from some of the day-to-day bureaucracy of a larger school district that may limit classroom performance?

Mass education

refers to providing free, public schooling for wide segments of a nation's population. As industrialization and bureaucratization intensified, managers and business owners demanded that schools educate students beyond the third or fourth grade so that well-qualified workers would be available for rapidly emerging "white-collar" jobs in management and clerical work.

Tracking

refers to the practice of assigning students to specific curriculum groups and courses on the basis of their test scores, previous grades, or other criteria. Conflict theorists believe that tracking seriously affects many students' educational performance and their overall academic accomplishments.

Cultural Transmission

the process by which children and recent immigrants become acquainted with the dominant cultural beliefs, values, norms, and accumulated knowledge of a society—occurs through informal and formal education. However, the process of cultural transmission differs in preliterate, preindustrial, and industrial nations.

Education serves six major manifest functions in society:

Socialization. From kindergarten through college, schools teach students the student role, specific academic subjects, and political socialization. Transmission of culture. Schools transmit cultural norms and values to each new generation and play an active part in the process of assimilation of recent immigrants. Multicultural education. Schools promote awareness of and appreciation for cultural differences so that students can work and compete successfully in a diverse society and a global economy. Social control. Schools teach values such as discipline, respect, obedience, punctuality, and perseverance. Schools teach conformity by encouraging young people to be good students, conscientious future workers, and law-abiding citizens. Social placement. Schools identify the most-qualified people to fill the positions available in society. As a result, students are channeled into programs based on individual ability and academic achievement. Graduates receive the appropriate credentials to enter the paid labor force. Change and innovation. Schools are a source of change and innovation to meet societal needs. Faculty members are responsible for engaging in research and passing on their findings to students, colleagues, and the general public.

50 percent

Today, about ____________ of U.S. undergraduates are educated in community colleges.

affirmative action

What term describes policies or procedures that are intended to promote equal opportunity for categories of people deemed to have been previously excluded from equality in education, employment, and other fields on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity?

b. laws requiring states to test every student's progress towards established standards

Which of the following is NOT a key component of the federal government initiative known as "Race to the Top," which offers incentives to states that implement systemic reform to improve teaching and learning in school?

c. The problem of increasing costs of higher education for students is compounded by slashed funding for public higher education.

Which statement about the cost of a college education in the United States is true?

credentialism

a process of social selection in which class advantage and social status are linked to the possession of academic qualifications. Credentialism is closely related to meritocracy, a social system in which status is assumed to be acquired through individual ability and effort.

Conflict perspective on education

emphasize that schools solidify the privileged position of some groups at the expense of others by perpetuating class, racial-ethnic, and gender inequalities (Ballantine and Hammack, 2012). Contemporary conflict theorists also focus on how politics and corporate interests dominate schools, particularly higher education.

community colleges

enroll about 12.3 million students annually in credit and non credit courses. accounts for 45% of all US. undergraduate enrollment women make up 57% of community college students.

event dropout rate

estimates the percentage of both public and private high school students who left high school between the beginning of one school year and the beginning of the next without earning a high school diploma or an alternative credential such as a GED

Cultural Capital

social assets that include values, beliefs, attitudes, and competencies in language and culture (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Cultural capital involves "proper" attitudes toward education, socially approved dress and manners, and knowledge about books, art, music, and other forms of high and popular culture

Affirmative action

is a term that describes policies or procedures that are intended to promote equal opportunity for categories of people deemed to have been previously excluded from equality in education, employment, and other fields on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity.

Formal education

is learning that takes place within an academic setting such as a school, which has a planned instructional process and teachers who convey specific knowledge, skills, and thinking processes to students.

Education

is the social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural values within a formally organized structure

hidden curriculum

is the transmission of cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority, through implied demands found in the rules, routines, and regulations of schools.

informal education

learning that occurs in a spontaneous, unplanned way—from parents and other group members who provided information on survival skills such as how to gather food, find shelter, make weapons and tools, and get along with others.