Answer ONE of the discussion prompts below (based on the lectures, Canvas readings, Chapters 12 and 11 on education and the family) and RESPOND TO ONE OTHER student’s post.

Answer ONE of the discussion prompts below (based on the lectures, Canvas readings, Chapters 12 and 11 on education and the family) and RESPOND TO ONE OTHER student’s post. In your response, make sure you specify where and why you agree with something in that post AND then something you would like to add to the post and/or (respectfully!) disagree with it. Since the second post asks people to discuss their personal situations with respect to family, RESPONDERS should NOT critique those circumstances or choices, but should focus their response on the broader sociological analysis offered by the poster and consider whether there might be other factors to consider. As always, focus on the sociological application with respect and empathy.

Education is often thought as an equalizer, as a remedy for the large patterns of inequality that we saw in the second section of this course (covering class, race/ethnic, and gender inequality). Using the lecture material, chapter 12, and the Canvas reading on education, discuss two reasons to be optimistic that education can successfully reduce those inequalities and two reasons why we should be pessimistic that education can reduce those inequalities.

Using your sociological imagination and materials from the text and from lecture, situate your own family and your own romantic relationships (current and/or future!), and discuss how they are (or will be) affected by what’s going on in the larger society around you. That is, connect your biography to history, your personal troubles to public/structural issues, your individual situation to larger societal circumstances. In your answer, use at least three of the following concepts/theories from the course materials on family/intimate relationships:

symbolic interactionist theory of the family

functionalist theory of the family

feminist theories of the family

social class

race/ethnicity

gender

endogamy

exogamy

If focusing on yourself and/or your family seems too personal, then analyze from a sociological point of view another set of family/intimate relationships that you know well, whether that be friends or relatives or families from a work of fiction, a movie, or a television show with which you are closely familiar.

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