the importance of education and literacy for life chances
- In a modern society, people have to be furnished with basic competencies— such as reading, writing, and calculating—and a general knowledge of their physical, social, and economic environments, but it is also important that they learn how to learn so that they are able to master new, sometimes very technical forms of information.
- stepping-stones into job opportunities and careers
- needs pure research and insights with no immediate practical value to expand the boundaries of its knowledge
-literacy is the baseline for education
main reasons for homeschooling
- concern about the school environment
- a desire to provide moral instruction
- dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools
educational trends in the 20th and 21st centuries
Population Age25 and over 1940-2020
- Bachelor’s degree or higher & high school, or some college increased
- less than high school declined
-inequalities are narrowing but remain
association between education and earnings
higher education –> higher earning/ lower unemployment rate
functionalist, symbolic interactionist, and conflict perspectives on education
- Functionalist (Merton): education is necessary for socialization (why did parents miss school so much during the pandemic?) keeping kids busy, social control, learning skills, etc.
- Conflict theory: education is a divisive force contributing to the reproduction of inequality
- symbolic interactionist: focus on the meanings created within school such as labeling, etc. (Intellectual bloomer improved academic performance resulted from their heightened sense of themselves as achievers)
education as an equalizer or perpetuator of class disparities
- historically, education has been seen as a primary means for promoting equality
- but research indicates this is often not the case along all theories
- in fact, our current system of education largely reproduces inequality
- ex. SATs
benefits and disadvantages of standardized testing (SATs)
-was designed to give students an equal chance at being considered for admission by college; as long as you are intellectually capable, you do well
BUT:
- high-school GPA is stronger indicator of college freshman GPA
- SAT predicts college success only for white students; not as well at predicting college GPA for African American and Latino students
key findings of Kozol’s Savage Inequalities
Segregation and disparities
Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 book showed massive inequalities in schools in the US:
- East St.Louis, Ill.: poor, black, no resources
-Westchester County, N.Y.: wealthy white, an abundance of resources
critiques: including the unsystematic way that he chose the schools he studied
key theme of Coleman’s “between-school effects” analyses
- earlier on (1966), James Coleman offered a more systematic way of studying educational inequality
- he found that actual school facilities were less different than expected
- his conclusion: student background was more important than school facilities or resources
“Inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school”
racial disparities in schooling
The report found that a large majority of children went to schools that effectively segregated Black students from White students.
In almost 80 percent of schools attended by White students, African Americans constituted 10 percent or less of the student body.
White and Asian American students scored higher on achievement tests than did Black students and other ethnic-minority students.
Coleman had supposed his results would also show mainly African American schools to have worse facilities, larger classes, and inferior buildings than schools that were predominantly White.
hidden curriculum
Traits of behavior or attitudes that are learned at school but not included within the formal curriculum; for example, gender differences
bowles & Gintiss’s views on education and inequality
- Modern education is a response to the economic needs of industrial capitalism
- Schools help provide the technical and social skills required by industrial enterprise, and they instill discipline and respect for authority in the future labor force
- Authority relations in school, which are hierarchical and place a strong emphasis on obedience, directly parallel those dominating the workplace
schools “are destined to legitimize inequality, limit personal development to forms compatible with submission to arbitrary authority, and aid in the process whereby youth are resigned to their fate
intelligence
Level of intellectual ability, particularly as measured by IQ (intelligence quotient) tests.
IQ Intelligence quotient
A score attained on tests of symbolic or reasoning abilities.
educational reform in the U.S.
- starting in the 1960s, desegregation and busing were used to promote equality
- much disagreement remains over what needs to happen to improve our system today
- a renewed focus on literacy is another mode of reform
- the promotion of school choice
- -> Vouchers
- ->Charter schools
- -> private schools (tax breaks for using this system)
- -> home schooling
functional literacy
Reading and writing skills that are beyond a basic level and are sufficient to manage one’s everyday activities and employment tasks.
standardized testing and its critiques
A procedure whereby all students in a state take the same test under the same conditions.
Critics have argued that the emphasis on standardized testing as the metric by which schools are evaluated encourages teachers to teach a narrow set of skills that will improve students’ test performance rather than help students acquire a more diverse set of concepts and skills that might enhance their education in other ways
school tracking and its critiques
Dividing students into groups that receive different instruction on the basis of perceived similarities in ability.
- being placed in a particular track labels a student as either able or otherwise
- Children from more privileged backgrounds in which academic work is encouraged are likely to find themselves in the higher tracks early on—and by and large stay there.
- school systems typically track students on the assumption that bright children learn more quickly and effectively in a group of others who are equally able and that clever students are held back if placed in mixed groups.
contemporary education reforms in the U.S.
- giving schools more control over their budgets
- refunding of federal programs, such as Head Start, which promotes school readiness for young children from low-income families
- the ability of parents to use public funds, in the form of vouchers or tax credit, to enroll their children in various alternatives to public schools.
- > private schools, charter schools
- public schools will improve if forced to compete with alternatives
who has benefited from school reforms in the US
benefit middle- or upper-income families than poor families, because vouchers will be insufficient to make alternative schools affordable to the poor
