achievement gap
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intelligence
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emotional intelligence
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IQ (intelligence quotient)
-a score attained on tests of symbolic or reasoning abilities
-most of these tests consist of a mix of concept and computational problems. They're made so that the average score is 100 points: Anyone scoring below is labeled "below-average intelligence," and anyone above is "above-average intelligence"
-sociologists remain critical and wary of the concept, because it's been proven that this is powerfully affected by the socio-economic resources of your parents... so is it really innate/ inborn??
-correlate highly with academic performance as well as social, economic, and ethnic differences (which are associated with variations in levels of educational attainment)
3 perspectives/theories of the role schooling plays in the larger society
1. schooling as a process of assimilation/acculturation
2. schooling as a credentialing mechanism
3. schooling as a process of social/cultural reproduction
assimilation
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credentialism
-
schooling theory
that argues that the specific skills/info that kids learn in class are much less relevant to their later achievements than the actual diploma
-content is much LESS important
-primary social function comes from the need for degrees to determine one's credentials for a job
-it reinforces the class structure within a society, since educational attainment is closely related to class position
hidden curriculum
-traits of behavior or attitudes that are learned at school but not included in the formal curriculum-- for example, gender differences
-refers to the idea that students from different social class backgrounds are provided diff types of education, in terms both of curricular materials and the kinds of interactions in which they are engaged by their teachers
-suggests that the expansion of education was brought about by employers' needs for certain personality characteristics in their workers-- self-discipline, dependability, punctuality, obedience, etc-- which are all taught in schools!!!
-cruder way is that schools help the ruling class's need to exploit a docile/cooperative workforce.. thus teaching poor kids that their role in life is "to know their place and to sit still with it"
-in this perspective, schooling thus reproduces social class stratification
cultural capitalism (Pierre Bordieu)
-the advantages that well-to-do parents usually provide their kids
-this theory says that rich kids come to schools with certain kinds of cultural capital (speech patterns, demeanors, tastes, etc) that is valued, and thus rewarded, by the school. Poor kids, though, don't have these same cultural characteristics valued by the school and are thus placed at a disadvantage in schools
Pierre Bordieu
-argued that schools reproduce social class inequality by rewarding certain cultural norms over others
-focused on the role of culture in the process of reproduction
-also focuses on
habitus
, or a class-based set of dispositions, such as taste, language use, and demeanor. He said that these dispositions are internalized unconsciously through social practices within one's social group (ie poor kids are socialized into a particular habitus that's not valued within the school system)
-here, the cycle of domination seems unbreakable
contested spaces
-challenges the cultural capitalism/habitus notion of schools and proposes that social reproduction doesn't happen without struggle or opposition from oppressed groups
-according to Willis, these people's being in control of their destiny points to possibilities for organized resistance
between-school effects
-the way students' experiences at School A differ from those at School B
-conclusion that the material resources provided in schools didn't make much of a difference to academic performance; the main influence is the kids' backgrounds
-other study said that educational reforms can produce only minor effects on existing inequalities
tracking/ ability grouping
-dividing students into groups that receive different instruction on the basis of assumed similarities in ability or attainment
-like how OLPH does levels, or how GBS does studies/regular/honors/AP
-sociologists have long believed that it's negative, because its use partly explains why schooling seems to have little effect on existing social inequalities, since being placed in a particular track labels a student as either able or unable
-once attached, such labels are hard to break away from
school-to-prison pipeline
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acting white" thesis (Ogbu, Fordham)
-thesis that black students do NOT try to get good grades because it is perceived as "acting white"
-they don't embrace school norms because they associate it with white cultures
abstract attitudes
-ideasd that are consistent with mainstream societal views
-ie the blacks' attitudes were consistent with the mainstream one that placed a high value on education and the attainment of academic credentials for future success
concrete attitudes
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cultural navigators
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gender gap
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stereotype threat
-the idea that when black students think they're being judged not as individuals but as members of a negatively stereotyped social group, they will do worse on tests
functionally illiterate
-level of reading level where when high schoolers leave school, they can't read or write at the 4th grade level
-among minority youth, this makes up about 44% of 17-yr olds
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, 2001
-Congressional act of Bush that implemented a host of policies trying to improve academic outcomes for ALL children and close the achievement gap
-very comprehensive, but at the top of its agenda is instituting
standardized testing
as a means of measuring students' academic performance
-strong push for
school choice
, parents are to be given choices as to where to send kids to school, which thus jeopardizes low-performing schools
-states no longer required to offer non-English-speaking students bilingual education
standardized testing
-a situation in which all students take the same test under the same conditions
-has been widely criticized because it encourages teachers to teach a narrow set of skills that will increase students' test performance, rather than helping them to acquire an in-depth understanding of important concepts and skills
-others think its a punitive model of school reform, putting the jobs of poor faculty members at risk
Race to the Top
-an Obama implementation created to spur innovation and reforms in state and local district K-12 education
-states were given points for meeting certain policies, meeting standards, promoting charter schools, and privatization of education
-has been condemned by those who say the tests are an inaccurate way to meausre teachers
factors that led to the rise of education in the 19th cent
1. development of the school (happened before education)-- original purpose to disclipline children
2. development of printing and the arrival of "book culture"-- developed to provide skills of literacy and computation
edutainment
-a sort of parallel education indsutry linked to the software industry in general and to museums, science parks, and heritage areas
-entertainment w/ an educational flare ;)
information poverty
-the state of people who have little or no access to information technology, such as computers
-think about the Haitian refugee camp with the guy who wrote letter to cat
-considered a "material deprivation" that has a negative effect on schooling
-Internet access has become a new line of demarcation between the rich and the poor
lifelong learning
-an education that takes place in diverse settings
-learners are active, curious, social actors who can gain meaning from many dif sources, and knowledge can be gained through all types of encounters-- even with friends and neighbors
-in schools, we see that there's a growing number of opportunities for pupils to learn OUTSIDE the confines of the classroom
-plays a pretty big role in the move toward a knowledge society
cyberspace
-electronic networks of interaction between individuals at different computer terminals
-think about julia's Spanish class of talking to Spaniards on a "computer date"
-breaks down the boundaries between schools and the outside world
The bell curve
-Herrnstein and Murray's argument that since the IQs between races were so starkly different, such differences in
inherited intelligence
contributed greatly to social divisions in American society; the smarter the individual, the greater chance he/she has to rise on the social scale
-even predicts economic success