1 Education

2 Education and income  A high school diploma and a college degree both raise personal income.

3 U.S. focus of education  Practical and job related

4 Japan vs America  Japan-entrance based on personal ability demonstrated on achievement tests

5 Manifest functions  Socializing of young  Creating new culture  Integrating people into a new society

6 Latent functions  Child care  Consumes time & energy  Lasting relationships

7 Conflict perspective  Educational tracking  Best schooling goes to students who are more privileged to begin with. Segregates students into different worlds

8 College attendance  As family income increases, the share of children going to college goes up.

9 Community colleges  Enroll almost 40% of college students  Greatly expand the opportunity to attend college  Enroll ½ of African American and Hispanic undergraduates

10 Illiteracy in the United States  Functional illiteracy People leave school without learning basic skills  Major concerns Urgent problem Greater than 5 other countries 40 M adults=8th grade language skills

11 Problems fostered by bureaucracy  Imposes uniformity and ignores cultural variations  Numerical performance and test scores = success  All students are expected to progress at the same rate

12 A Nation at Risk  Requires more Math, English, Social Studies, Science, and Computer science  Improve teacher training  Raising teachers’ salaries

13 Credentialism  Evaluating people on the basis of educational degrees

14 Strategies for change (Summary)  “School choice” model  Magnet schools

15 “School choice” model  Assumes U.S. public schools perform poorly because they have no competition  Designed to increase competition

16 Magnet schools  Encourages students to specialize in specific areas of study

17 The teacher shortage  Shortage of teachers in the us today.