1. Sociological Perspectives
1.1. Theoretical perspective
1.1.1. . Like x-ray machine it allows one to see past the visible and obvious and examine The hidden structure unlike x-ray pictures however the radical pictures of society are seldom crystal Crystal clear And easy to interpret. Why is this? Partly this is because people are members of society and it is very difficult to be objective or disinterested in the analysts of people.
1.1.2. But critics arise from the objections that functional and conflict theories are very abstract and emphasize the sure and processes at the very general level of analysis although this level of analysis helps In understanding education in the big picture macrosociological theories hardly provide and interpretable snapshot of what school are light on an everyday level.
1.1.3. Some of the sociology of education's most brilliant Theories have attempted to synthesize the Marco and macrosociological Approaches. Basaln Bernstein ( 1990), four instance, has argued that the structural aspects of the educational system has the interactional aspects of the Reflect each other and must be viewed holistically. He has examined how speech patterns reflects youth's social class backgrounds and how students from working-class backgrounds are at a disadvantage in the school setting because schools are essentially middle-class organizations. bernstein has combined a class analysis with the interactional analysis, which links language with educational processes and outcomes.
1.2. The effects of schooling on individuals
1.2.1. One of the first researchers to show that differences in schools are directly related to differences in students outcomes was Ron edmonds ( 1979 a, 1970 9B), the pioneer of the effective school movement. As mentioned earlier the effective school research demonstrates that academically oriented schools do produce higher rates of learning. More recent research which compares public and private, also indicate that in schools where students are compelled to take academic subjects and where there is constant discipline students academic levels go up.
1.2.2. Most students believe that graduating from college will lead to greater employment opportunities and they are right. In 1986, about 54% of the 8 million college graduates in the United States entered professional and technical jobs. Research has shown that large organizations, such as rations, require high levels of education were white-collar, managerial, or administrative, jobs. In fact as we discussed earlier credential credential inflation has led to the expectation among employers that their employees will have an ever increasing amount of formal education.
1.2.3. It may seem obvious, but teachers had a huge impact on students learning and behavior Jackson's( 1968) found that teachers have as many as thousand interpersonal contacts every day with children in their classrooms. Teachers are extremely busy people they must also wear many different occupational have instructor, disciplinarian, bureaucrat, employee or, friends, competent, educator, and so on. Clearly teachers are models for students and as instructional leaders, teachers set standards for students and influence student self esteem and sense of efficacy. In a fascinating study conducted by rosenthal and Jacobson ( 1968) teachers expectations of students were found to directly influence students achievements.
2. Schools as Organizations
2.1. Government
2.1.1. local superintendent
2.1.1.1. Dr. Dee O. Fowler
2.1.2. state superintendent
2.1.2.1. Tommy Bice
2.1.3. state senators
2.1.3.1. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby
2.1.4. representative on state school board
2.1.5. House of Representatives
2.1.5.1. Byrne, Bradley, Roby, Martha, Rogers, Mike Aderholt, Robert, Brooks, Mo,Palmer, Gary, Sewell, Terri A.
2.1.6. local school board
2.1.6.1. Dr. Terri Johnson, President Ms. Ranae Bartlett, Vice President Mrs. Connie Spears Mr. David Hergenroeder Mr. Tim Holtcamp
2.2. Comparison to One Country
2.2.1. countries vary considerably by how they organize their school systems. Few school systems are as complex as that in the United States; for instance, most countries have a national ministry of education or a Department of Education that is able to exert considerable influence over the entire educational system.
3. Equality of Opportunity
3.1. Educational Achievement & Attainment
3.1.1. The civil rights legistration of the 1960s US society still highly stratified by race. An individuals race has and direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. Among 1624 years old, of instance, 5.2% of white students drop out of school whereas 9.3% of African-American students and 17.6% of Hispanic American students are likely to drop out of school.
3.1.2. Historically an individuals gender was directly related to his or her educational achievements. Even though women are often rated as being better students than men, in the past they were less likely to attend the same level of education. Today, females are less likely to drop out of school and males, and are more likely to have a higher level of reading proficiency than males the same is true for writing. The one area that males outperformed females is in the mathematics proficiency they're are numerous explanations as to why males the better than females in mathematics, the most convincing of which is related to the behavior of classroom teachers who tend to assume that females will not do as well as males and mathematics.
3.1.3. Today the field of special education remains in conflict. The field of disability students has emerged to challenge convention periods in the field. Disability studies theories argue that handicapping conditions are far than more part social constructed and although there may be commented differences at polar and, the vast majority of children labeled as handicapped can be better served in mainstream settings.
3.1.4. Students in different social classes have different kinds of educational experiences there are several factors that can influence these class based experiences. For instance, education is extremely expensive. The longer a student stays in school, the more likely he or she needs parental financial support. Obviously, this situation favors wealthier families.
3.2. Response to the Coleman Study
3.2.1. there were two major responses to Coleman's findings. On one hand, other socialists examined and re-examined homes data on the other hand a group of minority scholars, lead by Ron Edmonds of Harvard University, said about the task of defining those characteristics of schools that made them effective. Edmonds Argued strongly that all students should learn and that differences between schools had a significant impact on student learning.
4. Educational Inequality
4.1. Sociological Explanations of Unequal Achievement
4.1.1. functionalists expect that the schooling process will produce unequal results, but these results ought to be based on individual differences between students, not on group differences. The us, although there are a persistent relationship between family background and educational outcomes, this does not in and of itself mean that the system fails to provide and equality of opportunity.
4.1.2. Conflict theorists are not in the least bit surprised by the data given that conflicts theorists believe that the role of schooling is to reproduce rather than eliminate the quality, the fact that educational outcomes are to a larger degree based on family background is fully consistent with this perspective. Nonetheless, conflict theories are also considered with inequality and its eradication.
4.1.3. Social logically research on educational outcomes attempt to separate the independence effects of these variables, although their relationships is often difficult to distinguish. Eight is clear, however, that although gender and race in ethnicity have indicated effects, and that women, African-Americans, and other ethnic groups are often negatively affected by social and school processes, social class backgrounds has the most powerful effect on educational advancement and attainment.
4.2. School Centered Explanation
4.2.1. Early in the chapter we reviewed the early research of Coleman and Jencks on the relationship between school quality and resources, and an equal academic at attainment. Although their research questioned the conventional wisdom that between school differences are the key factor in explaining differences in student performance between groups, eight did not include the probability that schools have significant effects on students.
4.2.2. The use of federal aid to equalize school funding is a controversial issue proponents argued that such aid has occurred historically, as in the elementary and secondary education act of 1965 they also argued that it is the fairest and most progressive system of school financing, as it would guarantee equality of opportunity regardless of residence.
4.2.3. A complete individualistic explanations states that these differences are the result of individual differences in intelligence or initiative. Another student centered explanation sees this difference as a result of student differences prior to entering school.
5. Educational Reform
5.1. School-based reforms
5.1.1. By the late 1980s however school choice was at the forefront of the educational reform movement. Present Reagan and Bush supported choices and one influential White House report enumerated a number of reasons why a choice was the right reform for the time in essence, choice was a panacea that was non-bureaucratic, inexpensive, and fundamentally egalitarian because it allows market forecasts to share school policy rather than subjecting educators to the heavy hand of the educational bureaucracy.
5.1.2. At the 1980s Campbell closed the researchers reason that magnet schools and private schools were superior to neighborhood public schools because schools of choice reflected the desires and needs of their constituents and were thus sensitive to change. For several decades the idea of school choice had been on the fringes of the educational policy world in the form of voucher proposals.
5.1.3. Intradistrict choice plans are for to any option available to students within a given public school district. These options range from a choice of curriculum with a particular school to allowing students to attend any school in the district. One particular Intradistrict choice plan that has gained a great deal of recognition is controlled choice. In this type of plan students choose that a school anywhere in the district were within some zone within a district. The key to this policy is that students choices are not allowed to upset racial balances. In fact some students may not be able to enroll in their first choice school if it would mean increased districtwide racial segregation.
5.2. Societal, community, economic, or political reforms
5.2.1. What is wrong with the US schools in this regard is not new it is then the subject of criticism from deweys progressive call for children centered schools that were laid emphasize community and development, to the romantic progressive critiques of schooling in the 1960s as authorization and stifling, to current calls for educational reform from a variety of individuals and groups all these emphasize the need to create schools to educate children in all aspects of life the social, psychological, emotional, moral and creative not just the intellectual.
5.2.2. What we are suggesting is that educational reform needs to be aimed at creating schools that teach students the basic skills and knowledge necessary in a technological society where students have the opportunity to develop their emotional, spiritual, moral, and creative lives where concerned and respect for others is a guiding principle were carrying, Cooperation, and community are stressed where students from different social classes, race, genders, and ethnic groups have quality of opportunity and where inequality of class, race, gender and ethnicity are substantially reduced.
5.2.3. At the beginning of this chapter we discussed the effects teachers and suggested that effective teaching is necessary but not sufficient to solve educational problems without reforms aimed at social problems, many educational dilemmas will remain unsolved. At the school level, unless schools are restructure to support good teaching and learning, teachers will continue to swim upstream against the current of school improvement.
6. Politics of Education
6.1. conservative
6.1.1. 1.
6.1.1.1. Conservative perspective is a positive view of US society and leave us that capitalism is the best economic system ensures maximum productivity with the greatest degree of individual freedom social problems from its vantage points are caused by individual and groups it must be individuals and groups that solve them on their own which little or no Government influence
6.1.2. The conservative perspective sees the role of the school as providing the necessary educational training to ensure that almost counted and hard-working individuals perceive is necessary to Maximize economic and social productivity.
6.1.3. Conservatives believe that schools socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order they see this cools function as one of transmitting the cultural transitions through what is taught. Conservatives argue that individuals or groups of students rise and fall on their own intelligence hard work and initiative and that achievement is based on hard work and sacrifice. This is designed to allow individuals the opportunity to succeed.
6.2. traditional
6.2.1. Traditionalist believe that schools should pass on the base of what was and what is
6.2.2. The traditional curriculum levels out the diverse cultures of the groups that comprise the pluralistic Society.
6.2.3. Traditional visions can keep you this cool as necessary to the transmission of the traditional values of US society such as hard work family unity, individual initiative and so on.
7. History of U.S. Education
7.1. THE RISE OF THE COMMON SCHOOL
7.1.1. Historians point to the period of 1822 1860 in the United States as one in which enormous change took place with unprecedented speed. The Industrial Revolution which began in the textile industry in England, cross the Atlantic Ocean and brought its factory system with it new machinery to urban areas, Particularly in the North. Urban clusters grew more dance as migrants form agricultural areas and immigrants from Europe flocked to the factories, looking for work.
7.1.2. The struggle for free public education was led by horace mann of Massachusetts. Abandoning a successful career as a lawyer, mann lobbied for a state board of education, and when the massachusetts legislature created one in 1837, Horace Mann became its first secretary, an office He occupied for 11 years his annual report served as models for public school reform throughout the nation, and, partly due to Mann's efforts, and first date normal school, or teacher training school, was established in Lexington Massachusetts, in 1839.
7.1.3. Although many historians particularly liberals and conservatives, you Mann as one of America's greatest educational reforms, Radicals take issue with is arguments, pointing to the commons as a pernicious vice for teaching skills such as hygiene, punctuality, and rudimentary skills that world creates docile, Willing workers.
7.2. Education For women and African-Americans
7.2.1. That perspective role of women held sway throughout the 19th century and for some into the 20th century as well. Generally, education for women was viewed as biologically harmful or too stressful. Thus, the first half of the 19th century educational opportunities for women were severely limited. Few females achieve an education other than rudimentary literacy and numeracy.
7.2.2. In 1821 Emma Hart Willard open the Tony female seminary In Tony, New York the curriculum at this e-mail seminary included so-called serious subjects of study such as mathematics, science, history, and geography. Modeled on the curriculum of single-sex male academics, Tony female seminary sought to deliver an education to females that was similar to that of their male counterparts.
7.2.3. Although educational opportunities for women were expanding during. Proceeding the Civil War, education for African Americans was severely limited. After Nate Turner's revolt in 1831 Southerners believe more than ever that C bread both insubordination and revelation. Thus they forbid the teaching of reading and writing to the slave population. In the North, Education for African-Americans was usually of inferior quality and separate from the mainstream public school if provided at all by the public.
8. Philosophy of Education
8.1. generic notions
8.1.1. Plato's method of doing philosophy was to engage other individuals in a dialogue and, thought the dialogue, question That individuals point of view . This questioning was done in a systematic Logical examination Of both points of view. Plato thought that education in particular, was important as a means of removing individuals collectively towards achieving the good. He believed that the state should play an active role in education and that is should encourage the brighter students to follow a curriculum that was more abstract and more concerned with ideas rather than the concrete matter. Thus, brighter students would focus on ideas, and data collecting would be assigned to the last Able.
8.2. goal of education
8.2.1. Educators who subscribe to idealism are interested in the search for truth through ideas rather than of examination of the false shadowy World of matter teachers encourage their students to search for truth as individuals with the discovery of truth comes responsibility responsibility of those who achieve the realization of truth to enlighten others. Education is transformation ideas can change lives.
8.3. role of teacher
8.3.1. Is it tedious possibility to analyze and discuss ideas with students in order for students to move to new levels of awareness so that ultimately they can be transformed. Teacher should deal with abstract notions through the dialectic method but should aim to content analysis with action as well. Roles of the teacher is to bring out that which is already in the students mind. An idealist teacher supports moral education as a means of linking ideas to action.
8.4. key researchers
8.4.1. Deweys form of pragmatism instrumentallism and experimentalism was founded on the new psychology, behaviorism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. Additionally , His ideas were influenced by the theory of evolution and by aand 18th century optimistic belief in progress. For dewet, this meant the attainment of a better society through education the us the school became an embryonic community where children could learn skills both experimentally as well as from books, in addition to traditional information which would enable them to work cooperatively in the democratic society.
8.5. method of instruction
8.5.1. dewey proposed that children learn both individually and in groups he believed that children should start their mode of inquiry by posing questions about what they want to know. Today we refer to this method of instruction as the problem-solving or inquiry. Most often written by teachers and students together, or used field trips and projects that reconstruct some aspects of the children's course of study where also and internal part of learning in deweys Laboratory school.
8.6. curriculum
8.6.1. Idealists place greater Importance on the study of classes . For idealists all contemporary problems have their roots in the past and can best be understood by examining how previous individuals dealt with them. Interesting proposal that has not taken root in Mortimer Adlers paidedeia proposal ( 1982) , which advocates great literature for children of all abilities.
9. Curriculum and Pedagogy
9.1. historical curriculum theory
9.1.1. The humanists curriculum reflects the idea the list philosophy that knowledge of the traditional liberal arts is the cornerstone of and educated citizenry and that the purpose of education is to present to students the best of what has been taught and written.
9.1.2. The developmentlist curriculum is related to the needs and interests of the student rather than the needs of society is curriculum emanated from the aspect of deweys writings related to the relationship between the child and the curriculum.
9.1.3. furthermore in the 1960s and 70s the reemergence of what Ravitch called romance progressivism occurred, placing its philosophical allegiance squarely within this form of curriculum and pedagogy.
9.2. sociological curriculum
9.2.1. the social efficiency curriculum was a philosophy pragmatist approach developed in the early 20th century as a putatively democratic response to the development of mass public secondary education.
9.2.2. the social meliorist curriculum which was philosophically social Reconstructionist developed in the 1930s both out of the writings of Dewey, who was concerned with the role of the schools in reforming society as well as a response to the growing dominance of the social efficiency curriculum.
9.2.3. Social efficiency curriculum resulted in the organization of the curriculum into distinct tracts. Although we will discuss the significance of the curriculum later in the chapter is important to note that the degree of overlap between various segments of the curriculum varied according to the type of school and its philosophy of curriculum.