Sociology Chapter 14: Education

Brown v. Board of Education

In 1954, the Supreme Court overruled Plessy v. Ferguson and declared that racially segregated facilities are inherently unequal and ordered all public schools desegregated.

Robert Rosenthal

In a 1963 study, he and Lenore Jacobson found that student performance is substantially affected by the expectations of their teachers.

Cultural Transmission

In which major portions of society's knowledge are passed from one generation to the next.

De Jure Segregation

Laws prohibiting one racial group from attending school with another, it had little effect on de facto segregation.

No Child Left Behind Act

A U.S. law enacted in 2001 that was intended to increase accountability in education by requiring states to qualify for federal educational funding by administering standardized tests to measure school achievement. It raised $50 billion in funds after being signed by George W. Bush.

Child Care

A latent function of education that became more important since WWII with women entering the labor force. Schools owe to provide children with at least one meal per day.

Postponing Job Hunting

A latent function of education where schools slow the entry of young adults into the labor market. It helps keep unemployment down as well as competition for low-paying unskilled jobs.

Ellen Winner

A psychologist and a professor at Boston College. She specializes in psychology of art, but has also proposed that gifted children have 3 typical traits: -*Precociousness*. Gifted children begin early to master some domain. -*Nonconformity*. Gifted children insist on doing things according to their own specific rules. -*A rage to master*. Gifted children exhibit a passion to know everything there is to know about a subject.

Unsafe School

A school, likely urban, where students bring knives, guns, and other weapons by the day. Many of these schools therefore have students go through metal detectors upon entering grounds.

Horace Mann

A secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education; known as the "Father of the public school system". He was a prominent proponent of public school reform, & set the standard for public schools throughout the nation. He said that public education was to be "the great equalizer of the conditions of men".

Lester Frank Ward

A sociologist who attacked social Darwinism in his book, Dynamic Sociology. He rather believed that the main purpose of education was to equalize society. Though primarily unequal in knowledge, this person thought that education would equalize society by making education available to all, and that its main job was to ensure that the heritage of the past was transmitted to all members of society.

Homeschooling

An alternative to traditional schooling in which parents assume the primary responsibility for the education of their children. This trend toward an old practice has occurred for a distinctly modern reason: a desire to wrest control from public education and reestablish the family as central to a child's learning. There are 3 reasons parents choose to do this: -⅔ of parents are concerned about the school environment. -Others want to provide religious or moral instruction. -Still others are dissatisfied with the academic instruction available schools.

High School Dropout

An individual who does not complete all high school requirements and does not earn a high school diploma. This does not only affect themself in damaging his or her employment and earnings potential. It also affects society in general: -They pay less in taxes because of their lower earnings. -They increase the demand for social services, including welfare, medical assistance, and unemployment compensation. -They are less likely to vote. -They have poorer health. -Half of all state prison inmates did not complete high school. This rate is 5.1% for white students, 8.0% for black students, and 15.1% for Hispanic students.

James S. Coleman

Examined adolescent socialization in schools in The Adolescent Society, and studied equality of educational opportunities in his report, suggesting that student achievement is largely linked to social background and socioeconomic status. It was through his cross-sectional study of students where the results continued to prove that American education was still mostly unequal.

Gifted

Having above-average intelligence (an IQ of 130 or higher) and/or superior talent for something. This can have connotations both positive and negative. Aristotle thought that those who were geniuses were not without a small portion of insanity.

De Facto Segregation

Segregation resulting from residential patterns.

Functionalist Education

Suggests that education contributes to the maintenance of society and provides opportunity for upward social mobility. Education has many manifest and latent operations, latent ones including child care, the transmission of ethnocentric values, and respect for the American class structure.

White Flight

The mass departure of whites from the cities to the suburbs. This factor made the integration of public schools more difficult.

Median Income

The relationship between education and *this* is that each higher level of education attained brings higher ______ ______.

Math

The science of patterns and order and the study of measurement, properties, and the relationships of quantities using numbers and symbols. Major assessments of US students have found them most lacking in this ability.

Universities

The single most important element in the phenomenon of continuing innovation in American society is the performance of high-caliber academic and research ____________.

Hidden Curriculum

The social attitudes and values taught in school that prepare children to accept the requirements of adult life and to fit into the social, political, and economic statuses the society provides. *This*, according to conflict theory, includes getting students to accept society as it is.

Tracking

The sorting of students into different programs on the basis of perceived abilities. It is influenced by socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and place of residence. The process is based on performance levels from students, making it difficult for students to break out of a category since they do what the teachers expect of them at that skill level. In a way, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Conflict Education

To people under this view, society is an arena for problem, not cooperation. To them, institutions become the instruments by which those in power control the less powerful. "The function of school is to produce the kind of people the system needs, to train people for the jobs the corporations require and to instill in them the proper attitudes and values necessary for the proper fulfillment of one's social role." In this perspective, the most important thing that schools actually do is preserve the existing class system.

Inculcate

To say that schools are places of socialization means that schools _________ the ways of society in children.