1. Educational Philosophy
1.1. Generic Notions
1.1.1. John Dewey
1.1.1.1. His ideas were influenced by the theory of evolution and by the eighteenth-century optimistic belief in progress.
1.1.1.2. His progressive methodology rested on the notion that children were active, organic beings, growing and changing, and thus required a course of study that would reflect their particular stages of development.
1.2. Key Researchers
1.2.1. Jean-Jacques Rosseau
1.2.1.1. Believed that individuals in their primative state were naturally good and that society corrupted them.
1.2.2. Theodore Brameld
1.2.2.1. Viewed schools as vehicles for improving and changing society
1.3. Goal of Education
1.3.1. Dewey's vision is the role of the school is to integrate children, not just any type of society, but a democratic one
1.3.2. The primary goal is growth
1.4. Role of the Teacher
1.4.1. The teacher is no longer an authoritarian figure from which all knowledge flows
1.4.2. The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study
1.5. Curriculum
1.5.1. Idealists place great importance on the study of classics
1.5.2. A good example of an idealists' curriculum would be the Great Books curriculum at St. John's University in Annapolis, Maryland
1.6. Method of Instruction
1.6.1. Dewey proposed children learned both individually and in groups
1.6.2. Abandoned formal instruction
2. Schools as Organizations
2.1. Governance
2.1.1. Senators
2.1.1.1. Richard Shelby & Jefferson Sessions
2.1.2. House of Represenatives
2.1.2.1. Terri Collins, Ed Henry, & Mike Ball
2.1.3. State Superintendent
2.1.3.1. Thomas R. Bice
2.1.4. State School Board Represenative
2.1.4.1. Mary Scott Hunter
2.1.5. Local Superintendent
2.1.5.1. Steve R. Benton
2.1.6. Local School Board
2.1.6.1. Terry Nichols, Stacy Goodson, Charlotte Gardner, Kenneth Griffin, & Chris Johnson
2.2. Comparison to Early Great Britain
2.2.1. Education is considered to be the responsibility of the parents.
2.2.2. All schools are operated under religious organizations.
3. Curriculum and Pedagogy
3.1. Historical Curriculum Theory
3.1.1. 1. 1. The Humanist Curriculum reflects the idealist philosophy that knowledge of the traditional liberal arts is the cornerstone of an educated citizenry and that the purpose of education is to present two students the best of what has been written and thought.
3.1.2. 2. 2. The conservative curriculum reformers believed that the purpose of schooling was to transmit a common body of knowledge in order to reproduce a common cultural heritage.
3.1.3. 3. 3. The social efficiency element of the Cardinal Principles, which inverted Dewey's notion of the school as a lever of social reform into the school as a mechanism to adjust the individual to society, became the cornerstone of the new progressivism.
3.2. Sociological Curriculum Theory
3.2.1. 1. Sociologists of curriculum have focused on not only what is taught but why it is taught.
3.2.2. 2. Sociologists believed that the school curriculum includes both what is formally included as the subject matter to be learned as well as the informal or hidden curriculum.
3.2.3. 3. The sociology of curriculum concentrates on the function of what is taught in schools and its relationships to the role of schools within society.
4. Education Inequality
4.1. Sociological Explanations of Unequal Achievement
4.1.1. 1. Functionalists believe that the role of the schools is to provide a fair selection process for sorting out the best and brightest individuals regardless of their family backgrounds.
4.1.2. 2. A system that could guarantee equitable and fair treatment to all would not necessarily provide equal results as individuals would still play a significant role in creating inequalities.
4.1.3. 3. The attempt to pigeon-hole the explanation into one explanatory system denies the connection between schooling and other societal institutions.
4.2. School Centered Explanation
4.2.1. 1. Suggest that school processes are central in understanding unequal education performances.
4.2.2. 2. The use of foundation state aid programs, which seek to make sure all districts receive a minimum standard of funding, with more state aid going to poorer districts in order to enable poorer districts to meet the minimum level is one way of providing equal equality of education.
4.2.3. 3. A number of theorists, however, argue that there are significant differences between the culture and climate of schools in lower social-economic, and higher social economic communities.
5. Politics & Education
5.1. Progressive Vision
5.1.1. Schools are Central to Solving Social Issues
5.1.2. Schools are a Vehicle for Upward Mobility
5.1.3. Schools are Essential to the Development of the Individual
5.2. Liberal Perspective
5.2.1. John Dewey
5.2.2. John Maynard Keynes
5.2.3. New Deal Initiatives of FDR
6. History of Education
6.1. 1749 Utilitarian Reform
6.1.1. Benjamin Franklin
6.1.2. "Proposals Related to Examination of the Ideas of Benjamin Franklin"
6.1.3. Curriculum Focused on Practical Aspects Like Math, Accounting, and Natural History
6.2. Democratic-Liberal School
6.2.1. Believes in Evolution of a School System Committed to Providing Equal Opportunities for All
6.2.2. Interprets the History of Education Optimistically
6.2.3. Horace Mann & Henry Barnard
7. Sociology of Education
7.1. Interactional Theories
7.1.1. Focus on the Interactions Between Students/Students and Students/Teachers
7.1.2. Basil Bernstein
7.1.3. Structural and Interactive Aspects Must Be Viewed Wholistically
7.2. Three Effects of Schooling on Indivuals
7.2.1. Knowledge and Attitudes
7.2.2. Employment
7.2.3. Education and Mobility
8. Equality of Opportunity
8.1. Educational Achievement and Attainment
8.1.1. 1. According to figure 8.11, the African-American reading skills on entering kindergarten has been normalized to the reading performance of white students.
8.1.2. 2. In figure figure 8.12, the mathematical skills on entering kindergarten shows the black students across all economical backgrounds trail white students, but that they are still normalizing from historical statistics.
8.1.3. 3. 92.1 percent of whites graduated from high school and 33.3 percent received a bachelor's degree while 84 percent of African-Americans graduated from high school, and 19.9 percent got a bachelor's degree.
8.2. Reports to the Coleman Study
8.2.1. 1. Where an individual goes to school is often related to her race and social-economic background, but the racial and social composition of a school has a greater affect on a student's achievement than an individual's race and class.
8.2.2. 2. In a recent article Baker and Riordan argue that Catholic schools in the 1990's have become more elite, belying the argument that they are modern schools.
8.2.3. 3. Catholic schools seem to advantage low-income minority students, especially in urban areas, but they are becoming more elite in suburban, public schools.
9. School Reform
9.1. School Based Reforms
9.1.1. 1. Congressional support for greater school choice was expressed in a bill that was passed by the House of Representatives in the summer of 1990 which provided direct federal support for open-enrollment experiments.
9.1.2. 2. In 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris ruled that the Cleveland voucher program did not violate the establishment clause for the First Amendment.
9.1.3. 3. The School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 provided seed money to states and local partnerships of business, labor, government, education, and community organizations to develop school-to-work systems.
9.2. Societal, Community, Economic, or Political Reforms
9.2.1. 1. As of 2000, 23 states have enacted statutes authorizing their state education agencies to take control of school districts from local authorities; Alabama is among these states.
9.2.2. 2. Supreme Court decision in Rodriguez v. San Antonio which declared there is no constitutional right to an equal education, school finance equity, and adequacy advocates litigated at the state level.
9.2.3. 3. Dryfoos's model of full service schools, Canada's Harlem Children's Zone, and Newark's Broader, Bolder Approach, are three models of community based reforms.