1. Education
Chapter 12

2. Chapter Outline The Development and Structure of Education
Competition of Traditional Public Schools
The Functionalist Perspective
The Conflict Perspective
Symbolic Interactionism
Higher Education Today

3. Questions for Consideration
What are the roles that are defined for students?
What are the roles for teachers in an academic setting?
Does the academic setting change the role for the student and the teacher?

4. Development of Education
The purpose of education is the transmission of knowledge.
Early emphasis in American schools was on “civilizing” the young.
After the turn of the 20th century, the emphasis shifted to education for jobs.
Early schools were modeled after businesses and have become increasingly more bureaucratic.

5. High School Graduates by Race: 1970 and 2003

6. Bureaucracy in Education
Early school administrators based their organizational structure on the factory model.
The bureaucratic model divides the process of education into specializations.
According to the bureaucratic model, education for large numbers of students is more efficient when students are homogeneous in development and ability.

7. Bureaucracy in Education
According to critics of formal schooling, the school’s bureaucratic nature is unable to respond to the expressive, creative, and emotional needs of individual children.

8. Reforms in the Classroom
The U.S. progressive education movement of the 1920s and 1930s was a reaction to the Victorian authoritarianism of early-nineteenth-century schools.
This movement virtually disappeared in the 1950s but resurged in the 1960s and 1970s, in the humanistic education movement.

9. The humanistic movement advocated such steps as the elimination of restrictive rules and codes and the involvement of students in the educational process.
The aim was to create a more democratic, student-focused learning environment.
Three formulations of the humanistic educational impulse are the open classroom, cooperative learning, and the integrative curriculum.

10. The open classroom is a non-bureaucratic approach to education based on democratic relationships, flexibility, and non-competitiveness.
In short, schools adhering to the open classroom approach wish to avoid the bureaucratic features of traditional public schools.

11. In 1991, the first President Bush’s secretary of education, Lamar Alexander, formulated a national educational reform plan with six goals:
Every child must begin school ready to learn.
The national high school graduation rate must be 90 percent.

12. Competence in core subjects must be shown after grades 4, 8, and 12.
American students should be the best educated in the world in math and science.
All adults must be literate and possess the skills necessary for citizenship and competition in a global economy.
Schools should be free of drugs and violence.

13. Illiteracy Rates

14. Questions for Consideration
What patterns in the rates of illiteracy do you see? Explain.
How does the U.S. compare to other countries in the world?

15. Cooperative learning takes place in a non- bureaucratic classroom structure in which students study in groups, with teachers acting as guides rather than as the controlling agents.
Students learn more if they are actively involved with others in the classroom.
An accent on teamwork rather than individual performance to concentrate on results rather than performance comparisons.

16. Integrative curriculum
An approach to education based on student- teacher collaboration; the curriculum is created by students and teachers together.
Subject matter is selected and organized around certain real-world themes or concepts.
Recognizes that students bring to any unit of study a variety of learning styles, interests, and abilities, and different units of study will engage students in varying ways.

17. Competitors to Traditional Public School
Proponents of vouchers contend that the government should make available to families with school-age children a sum of money that they can use in private or parochial schools.
Critics contend that the use of vouchers will erode national commitment to public education, leaving the public school system in even worse shape.
Evidence on the effectiveness of the voucher system is inconsistent.

18. Charter Schools
Charter schools are publically funded schools operated like private schools by public schoolteachers and administrators; have the latitude to use nontraditional teaching methods and to shape their own curricula.
The number of charter schools reached about 5,000 by 2011, with more than 1 million students.
After some fifteen years of charter school operations, the results have been disappointing.

19. Magnet Schools
Magnet schools are public schools that attempt to achieve excellence by specializing in a particular area.
Advocates of magnet schools point to their promotion of diversity, the introduction of school choice, and the positive effects on curriculum and teaching in the regular public schools.

20. Magnet Schools
Critics counter with evidence that magnet schools have not fulfilled their promises with respect to diversity, question the existence of a truly free market in education, and doubt the claimed effects magnet schools are supposed to have on public schools.

21. For-profit Schools
For-profit schools, supported by government funds but run by private, profit-seeking companies, are proposed as a superior alternative to the traditional public schools.
Supporters of for-profit schools point to several advantages: their competitive model and their responsiveness to parent preferences.

22. For-profit Schools
Critics note that research has found no evidence of an increase in student achievement at Edison, that for-profit schools are a drain on public funds, they see profit and education as antithetical, and are concerned about the lack of oversight of for- profit schools.

23. Homeschooling
Prior to laws mandating school attendance, children were educated at home or in informal community schools.
From 1999 to 2007, the percentage of homeschooled children increased by 74 percent, now involving some 1.5 million students.

24. Homeschooling
The most salient reason parents give for homeschooling is the desire to provide religious or moral instruction. A second tier of motivations involve parental concern about things such as safety, drugs, and peer pressure in the school environment and dissatisfaction with academic instruction.

25. Functionalist Perspective
Functions of Education
Cultural transmission
Schools teach basic academic skills, as well as basic norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the society.
Social integration
Schools remain the major agent of socialization. Schools offer a diverse population a common identity.

26. Functionalist Perspective
Functions of Education
Selection and screening of talent
Tracking – placing students in curricula consistent with the school’s expectations for students’ eventual occupations.
Promotion of personal growth and development
Schools expose students to a wide variety of perspectives and experiences.

27. Functionalist Perspective
Functions of Education
Dissemination, preservation, and creation of knowledge
Schools disseminate knowledge not only in the classroom. Innovation – the creation or discovery of new knowledge through research or creative thinking.

28. Latent Functions of Education
Day-care facilities for dual-employed couples or single parents.
Help locate potential marriage partners.
Prevent delinquency by holding juveniles indoors during the daytime.

29. Latent Functions of Education
Training grounds for athletes.
Inculcate discipline needed to follow orders in a bureaucratized society.

30. Conflict Perspective and Education
Meritocracy – social status is based on ability and achievement rather than social class or parental status.
Under this model, all individuals have an equal chance to succeed and develop their abilities.
Many believe that the U.S. is a meritocratic society, however there are recurring problems that indicate the model does not always work the way we think it does.

31. Critique of Meritocracy in America
Critics argue that public education primarily serves the economic elite.
Schools are not equal for children of all social classes, students do not all have the same starting point.

32. Critique of Meritocracy in America
Randall Collins contends that America is composed of status groups competing with one another for wealth, power, and prestige.
Collins argues that the elite has structured public schools to reinforce the shared culture of their group.

33. Critique of Meritocracy in America
Racial and ethnic minorities face related barriers to achievement.
College entrance examinations demonstrate lower performance by these groups.
The SAT was created in 1926 to enable talented youth, regardless of social class, to attend premier colleges and universities. Ironically, we have seen that social class is a major factor in SAT performance.

36. SAT Scores by Race and Ethnicity

37. Question for Consideration
How would a conflict theorist interpret the context of the U.S. as a meritocracy based on this data?

38. Educational Equality
Addresses equality in relation to “effects” of schooling.
Educational equality exists when schooling produces the same results for lower-class and minority children as it does for other children.
Historically in the U.S., not all children have been considered deserving of a formal education. Native Americans, Latinos and African Americans were specifically excluded.

39. Educational Equality
Not until 1954 was separate-but-equal challenged with Brown v. Board of Education.
Results, not resources, are the test of educational equality.

40. Testing Cognitive Ability
Cognitive ability is the technical term for intelligence, one’s capacity for thinking abstractly.
Cognitive ability testing is an important element in sorting and tracking students, it contributes to educational inequality.

41. Testing Cognitive Ability
Social scientists have generally criticized advocates of genetic differences in intelligence for failing to consider adequately the effects of the social, psychological, and economic climate experienced by children of various backgrounds.
We have discovered the older people are, the higher they score on intelligence tests. Researchers have concluded that environmental factors affect test performance.

42. Testing Cognitive Ability
Robert Williams and other social scientists have argued that intelligence tests have a cultural bias (an unfair measure of cognitive abilities because they are designed for middle-class children and because the results measure learning and environment as much as intellectual ability.
Most tests assume fluency in English, which also impacts performance.

43. Promoting Equality in Education
Four avenues have been identified by policy makers and educators for improving educational equality.
School Desegregation
Compensatory Education
Community Control
Private Schooling

44. Symbolic Interactionism and Education
Hidden Curriculum – transmission to children of a variety of nonacademic skills, such as discipline, order, cooperation and conformity.
These skills are thought to be necessary for success in modern bureaucratic society.

45. Symbolic Interactionism and Education
Textbooks and Teachers
Textbooks implicitly convey values and beliefs.
Teachers intentionally socialize students by having them perform academic tasks in predetermined ways.

46. Schools and Sexism In a coeducational setting:
Girls learn to talk softly, avoid certain subjects, defer to the alleged intellectual superiority of boys, and to emphasize appearance over intelligence.
Boys are more talkative in class, raise their hands more often, move around more, argue with teachers more, and get more of the teachers’ attention than do girls.

47. College Enrollment
Several trends account for the continued increase in college enrollment.
despite a decline in the number of year- olds, a substantially larger proportion of this age category is attending college
the number of students over age 24 attending college, particularly women, continues to grow
the number of students remaining in college after their first year has increased.

48. Four Factors account for these trends.
fearful of declining enrollments, colleges and universities have mounted strong student recruitment campaigns.
low-paying service jobs increasingly replace high-paying manufacturing jobs, resulting in fewer attractive non-educational options for those with only high school diplomas

49. Four Factors account for these trends
the increase in the number of community and branch colleges offers an opportunity for many who could not otherwise have enrolled to continue their education
the recession that began in 2008, with its persistently high unemployment, is fueling the increase as well.

50. State Budgets and the Cost of College
At the same time that college enrollments are accelerating, state revenue shortfalls across the nation are spawning deep cuts in higher education budgets.
State colleges and universities have responded to reduced state funding by increasing both private funding and tuition charges.

51. College Enrollment in the United States: 1965–2016

52. Median Annual Income by Gender, Race, and Education

53. Economic Benefits of College
Is college worth the investment?
A college degree is a ticket to better jobs and higher incomes.
How strong is the relationship between occupational status and education?
The benefits of college are even more apparent occupationally.

54. Community Colleges College enrollment is at an all-time high.
The enrollment surge in American’s 12,000 community colleges contributes heavily to this continued growth of college enrollment.
In 2011, two-year schools accounted for over 43 percent of the total number of students in public institutions of higher education.

55. Community Colleges
While four-year institutions concentrate on state or national matters, community colleges attend to local students and local issues.

56. Distance Learning
What are the advantages of distance learning to colleges and universities?
Online instructional technology allows faculty to deliver pretty much the same content that they present in class, but for less money.

57. For-Profit Colleges and Universities
How prevalent are for-profit colleges and universities?
In recent years strictly for-profit colleges and universities have arrived on the scene.
For-profit colleges and universities have about 3 million students annually.

58. For-Profit Colleges and Universities
Compared to the total college student population of some 18 million, this is not particularly large.
Currently, they award a relatively small proportion of all degrees in higher education, only 15 percent of associate degrees and 4 percent of bachelor’s degree.

59. Critiques of for-profit colleges and universities?
Most educators believe that for-profit colleges and universities undermine the intellectual integrity of higher education.
They charge that underqualified instructors are teaching underdeveloped courses.

60. Critiques of for-profit colleges and universities?
Educators also lament the loss of personal interaction between teachers and students and between students and other students.
Moreover, there is the problem of accreditation and transfer of credits.

61. Questions for Consideration
Can you think of specific examples from your educational experience that demonstrate a hidden curriculum?
What do you think are future impacts to higher education? How does this impact you?