PRESENTATION ON THE SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF EDUCATION IN THE US

1. Why do we go to school?
Class: think for a minute or two. We will make a
list on the board.
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2. Why do we go to school?
• Because our parents say we have to
• To get a good job
• To make more money
• To get a bigger world view
• To wizen ourselves
• To better participate in a democracy
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3. What are we taught?
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4. 4
How to line up
How to be respectful of authority

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The process of “passive consumption”
Acceptance of the
current social order

6. The Hidden Curriculum*
This is the process in which we learn the
norms and values of the status quo. We learn
nationalism (flag salute), passive learning
(raise hand and be quiet), and other items
mentioned already.
*Pierre Bourdieau
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7. The Hidden Curriculum
Does our school system encourage
cooperation or competition? Try this, A cute
harmless and inspiring
little song from a Pearson
Publishing 6th Grade course
introduction: “If I win that
means that's your
loss/I guess that makes me
the new boss ...”
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8. Cultural Capital
Cultural capital is a concept that was conceived
by Pierre Bourdieu in the 1960s. It refers to
the cultural exposure that a student receives
from his/her family in the way of art, music,
and literature as well as a world view that is
very broad encompassing more of the world.
How much one has as a child (according to
Borurdieu) has a direct effect upon future
socio-economic status (SES).
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9. Cultural Capital
How much cultural capital do you have? Is it the
same amount as the wealthy have?
You are accumulating it now. As you pass it on
to your offspring they begin with an edge that
they might not have had otherwise.
Cultural capital can be acquired through
education.
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10. Social Promotion
• How are we promoted through school?
Should we be “socially” promoted or
promoted only on merit?
• Consider the following link: (note: you must
be logged in to EBSCOhost prior to
connection)
"What if we ended social promotion?”
See research synopsis in Thomas Homes’ study on page
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11. Tracking (within school effects)
• The process of categorizing students into groups
by IQ and achievement scores.
• The intent is to better facilitate them into higher
achievement.
• The result is labeling and self-fulfilled prophesy.
• Consider the Rosenthal and Jacobson study
• Consider the Jennie Oakes study.
(note: if link fails place cursor in address bar to right of address and hit return
again.)
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12. Between school effects:
• According to the Coleman study (1966) material resources
in schools made little difference to educational
performance.
• The decisive influence was the children’s background.
• FROM YOUR EXPERIENCE, DO YOU AGREE?
(Giddens et al, 2008)
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13. Social Economic Status and
Education
There IS a relationship between social class and
wealth to education—this is not the same as
intelligence.
Most of a student’s success is correlates with
the parent’s education. But teachers appear to
be the single most important factor in a
general sense.
So what is causing what?
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14. Social Economic Status and
Education
Look at the following graphs and see how race
and ethnicity and class overlap. See the
numbers and consider the causes for them.
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Can we safely
assume that the
more education
the more
income? This
graph certainly
looks like it. But
that was before
2008.

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According to Adjunct Action (2014),
adjunct professors in the United
States make $3,000 per 3-unit
course, on average. This translates to
$33,000 per year.
(APA 2015)
•1 in 5 families of part-time faculty
receive Earned Income Tax Credit
payments.
•7 percent of families of part-time
faculty members receive food stamp
benefits.
•7 percent of adjuncts and 6 percent
of their children receive Medicaid.
•Families of close to 100,000 part-
time faculty members are enrolled in
public assistance programs.
(NBC NEWS 2015)
Then why are so many adjunct
professors at or below the
poverty line?

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25. Who gets the best education?
If primary and secondary education is
financed by property taxes, which districts
flourish and which don’t?
Consider Jonathan Kozol and his comparison
of impoverished schools to affluent ones?
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26. Who gets the best education?
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27. Contrast
Such extreme contrasts do exist. South Central
Los Angeles, East Saint Louis,
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28. Who gets the best education?
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29. Who gets the best education?
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30. Who gets the best education?
And do we all have access to those resources?
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31. How is education paid for?
Do you know? Is it OK with you?
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32. Who pays for education
• State taxes (from personal property taxes—
your home)—mostly for primary and
secondary education).
• Federal funds ( although this is minimal)—
mostly for primary and secondary education).
• Tuition for college (your direct cost of
education)
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35. Who pays for education
• Should education be free and tax paid?
• If so, should this apply to college?
• Medical school?
Consider Northern Europe: in Denmark a college
education is completely free to participating
and qualified students.
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36. Privatization
• School vouchers: Government money granted to
parents who want their children to attend an
alternative to a public school.
• Home schooling: Teaching your children at home via a
qualified curriculum.
• Charter schools: Private schools that nonetheless
receive public money.
• Religious schools: Private schools that receive public
and private money but emphasize a particular religion.
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37. The College Education
John Merrow (in the film Declining by Degrees,
1995) discusses the following issues:
• Grade inflation
• Debt for an education
• Having to work while going to college
• Government cuts in education overall
• Lack or lessening of grant opportunities
• Different educations for different income brackets
more ->
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38. The College Education
• Lack of counseling
• Special privileges to special groups (athletes,
high school honor students)
• An eroding social contract (gone is the easy
access to a college education as is available in
other developed countries)
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39. Who pays for a college education?
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40. You do! Note the ratio of decreases
in Pell Grants:
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41. Want to know why?
41
Who is this guy anyway?

42. The Governor Ronald Reagan
• Once elected, [1966]Mr. Reagan set the educational tone for
his administration by:
• a. calling for an end to free tuition for state college and
university students,
• b. annually demanding 20% across-the-board cuts in higher
education funding,[2]
• c. repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses
• d. engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of
the University of California, and
• e. declaring that the state "should not subsidize intellectual
curiosity,[3]”
http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reaga
n.html
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43. Further
• Mr. Reagan's denunciations of student protesters were both
frequent and particularly venomous. He called protesting
students "brats," "freaks," and "cowardly fascists." And when
it came to "restoring order" on unruly campuses he observed,
"If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with. No more
appeasement!"
• Several days later four Kent State students were shot to death.
In the aftermath of this tragedy Mr. Reagan declared his
remark was only a "figure of speech." He added that anyone
who was upset by it was "neurotic."[4] One wonders if this
reveals him as a demagogue or merely unfeeling.
http://www.newfoundations.com/Clabaugh/CuttingEdge/Reaga
n.html 43

44. Finally the Nail in the Coffin
• Proposition 13 in 1978 limited property taxes.
• Section 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real
property shall not exceed one percent (1%) of the full cash value of
such property. The one percent (1%) tax to be collected by the
counties and apportioned according to law to the districts within
the counties.
• The proposition decreased property taxes by assessing property
values at their 1975 value and restricted annual increases of
assessed value of real property to an inflation factor, not to exceed
2% per year. It also prohibited reassessment of a new base year
value except for in cases of (a) change in ownership, or (b)
completion of new construction.
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45. Who goes to college?
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46. Social problem
All of these issues and more compound to
make education in the United States a severe
social problem.
How does this affect you and your educational
experiences?
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47. #
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48. ADDENDUM
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49. Percentage of
3- to 4-year-
old children
enrolled in
preschool
education, by
country: 2012
U.S. Department of
Education Institute of
Education Sciences
National Center for
Education Statistics
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50. Charter Schools New Orleans
before and after Katrina
It is called “Disaster
Capitalism”
It is now 100 percent. See
why:
http://www.huffingtonpost.c
om/mercedes-schneider/on-
the-success-of-a-100-
c_b_5415246.html
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51. A cute harmless and inspiring little song from a
Pearson Publishing 6th Grade course introduction:
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If I win that means that's your loss/I guess
that makes me the new boss ...Stand your
ground teachers and parents. It is this very
notion of zero-sum competition that is at the
heart of nearly every social problem in this
country. Competition over cooperation is just
fine if you want to see a "last man standing"
on the globe at the expense of everyone else.
But bear in mind, it probably won't be you. Or
me for that matter.

52. Teaching to the Test:
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53. ADDENDUM
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A 2009 study done by Stanford University found that, on
average, charter schools perform about the same or worse
than their traditional public school virtual twins.

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56. The Bell Curve controversy
Researchers Herrnstein and Murray (1994) did a
study that claimed that minority groups and
those in lower SES had lower IQs, and that this
was about 40 percent genetically based.
Do you recall the concept of “social Darwinism?”
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57. The Bell Curve controversy
The eight major claims of the study are:
1 General intelligence exists.
2 At least half of the variation in intelligence is genetically transmitted.
3 Intelligence has become more necessary in the work world than before.
4 Colleges have shifted their entrance priorities away from inherited wealth to
those based upon merit.
5 Society is now dominated by a “cognitive elite.”
6 As the elite forms a social group it reproduces itself through marriage.
7 As well, poor people tend to marry those alike passing on their “modest”
abilities to their children.
8 Because of this genetically passed on intelligence we should see the poor as
having higher crime rates and drug abuse.
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58. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Assertion (1) Intelligence is a single, unitary
phenomenon consisting of a "core human
mental ability." This "general intelligence"
underlies all forms of "complex mental
work."
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59. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Response: People may be smart in some
respects, in some contexts, and at some
tasks, but not in others. Some may have a
facility for numbers, others for words…The
kind of intelligence facilitating high
performance in one arena does not
necessarily have the same payoff in another.
…[R]anking on a single intelligence
continuum cannot explain much about their
social and economic outcomes.
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60. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Assertion (2) Standardized intelligence tests
provide a precise measure of general
intelligence, making it possible to rank
individuals on a linear scale according to their
intelligence quotient.
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61. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Response: There are many kinds of cognitive
abilities and many kinds of social endeavors as
well, each favoring a somewhat different set of
skills and talents. IQ scores, therefore, tell us
little about people's overall practical
competence, nor do they dictate social and
economic destinies.
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62. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Assertion (3) Intelligence is "substantially
inherited," with genes accounting for at least
40 percent and as much as 80 percent of the
variation among individuals in cognitive
ability.
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63. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Response: The Bell Curve, according to many
critics, overestimates the genetic basis and
heritability of IQ and underestimates the
influence of the social environment. [..]
While they claim the heritability of IQ may be
as much as 80 percent, other research,
drawing on a wider range of studies, suggests
a much lower figure, somewhere between 30
and 50 percent.
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64. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Assertion (4) People at birth are either
blessed or doomed with a level of
intelligence that is largely unalterable. Social
and educational interventions cannot
appreciably raise the cognitive ability of
persons born with low IQs….Though it is not
impossible to boost IQ, they admit, it is
impractical because of insufficient knowledge
and limitations in "the available repertoire of
social interventions."
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65. Response to The Bell Curve Study
Response: The problem is not that nothing
can be done, but that an "inexpensive,
reliable method of raising IQ is not available."
This is a political, not a scientific, judgment,
however
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66. Icing on the Cake
The ordinary routine of neutral reviewers [peer review]
having a month or two to go over the book with care
did not occur. Another handpicked group was flown to
Washington at the expense of the American Enterprise
Institute and given a weekend-long personal briefing
on the book's contents by Murray himself … just before
publication. The result was what you'd expect: The first
wave of publicity was either credulous or angry, but
short on evidence, because nobody had had time to
digest and evaluate the book carefully.
(The Bell Curve Flattened - Slate Magazine 1997)
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67. Response to The Bell Curve Study
For a more complete critique of the work of
Murray and Herrnstein, see the following link:
Critique of the Bell Curve study
(NOTE: You must already be logged in to
Hartnell’s EBSCOhost for link to work.)
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68. FINLAND AND EDUCATION – WHY?
• Finnish students only take one standardized
test during their entire primary and secondary
schooling
• The Finnish test, called the National
Matriculation Examination, is taken at the end
of high school and graded by teachers, not
computers… The test also doesn't shy away
from controversial or complex topics.
68http://www.businessinsider.com/4-things-finlands-schools-do-better-than-america-2015-4

69. MORE ON FINLAND:
• Here are some typical questions, according to
Sahlberg:
• “In what sense are happiness, good life and
well-being ethical concepts?”
• “Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted that
a socialist revolution would first happen in
countries like Great Britain. What made Marx
and Engels claim that and why did a socialist
revolution happen in Russia?”
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70. Hours per
year teachers
required to
spend
teaching for
2012.
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Telegraph.co.uk

71. Homework
around the world:
how much is too
much?
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/edu
cation/educationnews/1145391
2/Homework-around-the-world-
how-much-is-too-much.html
Note that Shanghai and
Finland have about the same
PISA rating but what is all the
HW about for Singapore?

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