Chapter 16 - Education
Hidden Curriculum
The type of nonacademic knowledge that students learn through informal learning and cultural transmission. Reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and serves to bestow status unequally.
Social Placement
The use of education to improve one's social standing.
Cultural Transmission
The way people come to learn the values, beliefs, and social norms to their culture.
Sorting
Classifying students based on academic merit or potential.
Cultural Capital
Cultural knowledge that serves metaphorically as currency that helps us navigate a culture.
Credentialism
Emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications.
Tacking
Formalized sorting system that places students on "tracks" that perpetuate inequalities. Leads to self-fulfilling prophecies in which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations.
Head Start Program
Give low-income students an opportunity to make up the preschool deficit.
Informal Education
Learning about cultural values, norms, and expected behaviors by participating in a society. Occurs both in a formal education system and at home.
Formal Education
Learning of academic facts and concepts through a formal curriculum.
Universal Access
People's equal ability to participate in an education system.
No Child Left Behind Act
Requires states to test students in designated grades. Determines eligibility to receive federal funding.
Education
Social institution through which a society's children are taught basic academic knowledge, learning skills, and cultural norms.
Grade Inflation
The observation that the correspondence between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing over time. What used to be considered C-level is now a B or A.