Education Terms and Concepts

for each social institution you should understand the impact of various forms of social stratification (ie class/race/ethnicity/sex/gender, etc) on the life chances related to that institution

education

tracking

hidden curriculum

charter schools

vouchers

homeschooling

Kozol separate and unequal

Education Overview

Education: The central means by which a society transmits its knowledge, values, and expectations to its members. It can be either formal or informal and is commonly tied to the school system.

Modern education in Western civilization has its roots in ancient Greece around the eighth century bce. The importance of education increased during the European Enlightenment when particular types of knowledge—reason, logic, and science—became valued over religion. In 1852, school became legally mandatory in Massachusetts, the first U.S. state to require it. By 1929, mandatory education from the elementary level through high school had spread to every state in the nation.

Beyond the transmission of knowledge, education reproduces society by transmitting values, norms, and social stratification. Tracking is the practice of identifying particular students as “gifted” or “slow” and placing them in corresponding courses at school. Just as educational attainment affects social status and life chances, social status also affects access to education. Females, nonwhite ethnic groups, the poor, and the disabled face individual and institutional discrimination in schooling. The “hidden curriculum” refers to the lessons that students learn indirectly through their school experience, but that are an implicit part of their socialization in the school environment. Bowles and Gintis argue that U.S. schools train a labor force with the appropriate skills, personalities, and attitudes for the capitalist industrial economy. Thornton argues that U.S. social studies classes systematically exclude mention of gays or lesbians, and that this silence implies that nonheterosexuals are not worth mentioning and are not full members of society.

Classic Studies of Education

Rosenthal and Jacobsen’s Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher Expectations and Pupils’ Intellectual Development takes a symbolic interactionist approach to experimental research. The researchers administered an IQ test to students, then randomly labeled one group of students (of various IQ levels) as “gifted,” and told their teachers that these students could be expected to make great academic progress in the coming year. At the end of the year, the researchers administered the same IQ test and found that students who were labeled at random as “gifted” increased their scores by a higher margin than their peers. The researchers concluded that teachers’ attitudes about students unintentionally influenced academic performance.

1. Kozol’s Savage Inequalities takes a conflict approach to ethnographic research on Chicago’s suburban and urban public schools. He documents how children in poor neighborhoods receive inferior educations, thus reproducing inequality.
2. Collins’s Credential Society argues that the true function of schools is to reproduce the existing class structure. He makes the controversial claim that members of lucrative occupations have set up educational requirements in order to keep the number of job applicants down and to ensure that a large population is forced to work in unpleasant jobs for low wages. In order to eliminate the reproduction of inequality, Collins recommends abolishing educational requirements for employment.
3. The phrase crisis in education refers to the belief that American public schools are failing to provide ade­quate training for students. Some people fear that Americans will no longer be able to compete on a global level due to U.S. public schools’ lack of sufficient funding, crumbling infrastructure, low pay for teachers, overcrowded classrooms, and high crime rates on campus. The No Child Left Behind Act, signed into law in 2001, was created to remedy aspects of the crisis in education; however, its effectiveness has remained controversial.

Educational trends may play an important role in the years ahead.

1. Charter schools are public schools run by private entities. They are thereby freed from some of the bureaucratic regulations that apply to traditional public schools.

Early-college high schools blend high school and college into a program in which students can earn a high school diploma and two years of college credit at the same time.

1. Home schooling is the education of school-age children under their parents’ supervision outside of a conventional school campus. Many parents choose home schooling to control their children’s academic education and limit their exposure to the socializing effects of peer culture in schools.

Unschooling is similar to homeschooling in that parents are in charge of their children’s learning, but unlike homeschooling, rejects traditional curriculums and teaching methods.

1. School vouchers allocate government funds to help parents in poorer neighborhoods send their children to the private school of their choice. Most school voucher programs fund 75 to 90 percent of the cost of a private school.

Community colleges are two-year schools that provide general, post–high school education to students preparing to transfer to a four-year college. They may also provide vocational and technical training, retrain workers seeking career changes, and provide enrichment classes for senior citizens.

1. Distance learning has increased exponentially with the development of online technologies.Government and Politics Overview
   Politics: The methods and tactics of managing a political entity such as a nation or state, as well as the administration and control of its internal and external affairs.

Government: A formal, organized agency that exercises power and control in modern society.

1. Authoritarianism: A political system that denies ordinary citizens representation by and control over their own government.

Dictatorship: A political system in which power is concentrated in the hands of a few elites who control military and economic resources.

1. Totalitarianism: A political system in which the government seeks to control every aspect of citizen’s lives, public and private.
2. Monarchy: A political system ruled by a king or queen, with the succession of rulers kept within the family.
3. Democracy: A political system in which all citizens have a right to participate.

The American Political System

1. Many voting-eligible U.S. citizens do not exercise their right to vote. Many variables affect voter participation, including age and race. Even external factors such as geographic location and the weather can influence voter turnout in a particular election. Voter turnout began improving only during the 2004 election and increased in the 2008 election. The second highest voter turnout occurred during the 2008 election, with 61.4 percent of the eligible voting population. In the 2012 election, there was a voter turnout of 57.5 percent of the eligible voting population.
2. The disenfranchised are those who are barred from voting. A majority of states disenfranchise convicted felons while they are incarcerated. Other states also disenfranchise felons while they are on parole, on probation, or permanently.
3. Controversy arises over who actually rules the United States despite the fact that it is officially a democracy. The theory of pluralism argues that power is held by a variety of organizations and institutions, each with its own resources. Structural functionalists maintain that the United States is a pluralist system with checks and balances that prevent any one group from having too much power over others. Conflict theorists, on the other hand, argue that power in the United States is held by a small group of power elites, a small group of white males who know each other personally and professionally and control the economy, politics, and the military.
4. Special-interest groups play an important role in the political process by raising and spending money in order to influence elected officials and public opinion. Special-interest groups can include corporate organizations, lobbies, political action committees (PACs), and 527 (tax-exempt) committees.

The media play a key role in the political process. The Founders probably envisioned the media as a means of informing and educating the public while checking and balancing the government’s power. However, politicians today have to be media savvy in order to reach the voting public. The internet played a key role in the 2008 elections as a source of campaign news. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter also had a major impact on the outcome of the elections.

The section on linking microsociology and macro­sociology in politics reviews how government agencies like the Department of Education shape students’ everyday life. Also, individuals influence the democratic process by signing petitions, voting, and participating in demonstrations.

Terms and Concepts Government and Politics
for each social institution you should understand the impact of various forms of social stratification (ie class/race/ethnicity/sex/gender, etc) on the life chances related to that institutionpoliticsgovernmentpower authorityauthoritarianismdemocracymonarchydisenfranchisedpower elite or elite theorypluralismspecial interest groupsPACsprotest movements

One Assignment which covers both Education and Politics
Hello – you will see the same assignment listed for both chapters Education and Government and Politics.Make sure you are using terms and concepts from both chapters in your answer.

1. Prompt

First, read this NY Times article https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory.html (Links to an external site.) (for those searching for it via our library, look for it by its title, “Critical Race Theory, A Brief History,” its author, Jacey Fortin, or its publication date, November 8, 2021).

1. Then read this article

https://contexts.org/blog/sociology-and-the-racial… (Links to an external site.)

1. The NY Times article ends with a quote from Professor Matsuda:
2. I see it like global warming. We have a serious problem that requires big, structural changes; otherwise, we are dooming future generations to catastrophe. Our inability to think structurally, with a sense of mutual care, is dooming us — whether the problem is racism, or climate disaster, or world peace.
3. We have spent this semester thinking “sociologically,” meaning looking at large scale social institutions. How can you take what you learned about the institution of education and the institution of politics to explain why this backlash against CRT might be happening and how it might impact our society? Please note, it is expected that you will utilize terms/concepts from both the education chapter *and* the politics chapter. You should use the proper terminology from both (ie remember that functionalism is not used in politics, but rather pluralism and political elite or elite theory instead of conflict theory).
4. You may want to refer to the map at
5. https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-ra… (Links to an external site.)

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