My Foundations of Education

1. Sociological Perspectives

2. Philosophy of Education

3. Curriculum and Pedagogy

4. Educational Inequality

5. Educational Reform

6. Functionalism wants to create unity and solve problems through reform, programs, and curriculum. This ideal views conflict as the destruction of  of shared values because of the lack of unity.

7. Conflict theories highlight the use of disagreement to create a battlefield where power dominates. The belief is that there can be no unity because of the different perspectives, so whichever group has dominance will lead the reform or programs to change education.

8. Interactionalism is based on the more meaningful content of educational reform as opposed to the theoretical or logical basis of content. This is about the actual relationships, interactions, and behaviors that take place in the classroom everyday and everywhere.

9. Employment is probably the number one effect on education for students. In this world so heavily based on capitalism, parents are pushing and children are working towards careers as early as elementary school.

10. Teacher behavior has a strong effect on education. This can do many things to and/or for students: motivate, stifle, discourage, encourage, mold, stagnate, or catapult them.

11. Education and inequality are very big factors in today's schooling in that students are mainly going to school for employment. When students feel they did not have the equal opportunity for schooling, they can become discouraged. Or, if they really did receive a lesser opportunity, they are behind in terms of experience, knowledge, and many other things.

12. Student peer groups are very prominent in terms of affecting education. The people students surround themselves with can do about as much as their teacher's behavior can do, stifle or catapult them. As well, alienation can affect social behaviors and psychological process of individuals immensely because of the molding of the mind that this is how society will be.

13. Gender seems to be a small issue, but is actually becoming a much more prominent issue within the school system. These issues can stem anywhere from expected performance in certain subjects to expected behaviors among peers. As well, the rising efforts to accommodate for individuals going through gender identity changes are posing more problems as far as equality goes.

14. Pragmatism is the action based philosophy, that meaning they try to attain a goal with a series of certain actions. The general notions include the responsibility of the school to reflect the community that surrounds it to keep the societal roles maintained. The goal of education in the pragmatism perspective is to prepare students for life in a democratic society. The role of the teacher is the facilitator of knowledge as opposed to the container and distributor of all knowledge. The method of instruction in this ideal view is to learn individually as well as in groups. As well, students should start to learn through inquiry. Finally, the curriculum based on pragmatism should include and connect all areas of subject matter to fully investigate a topic.

15. Politics of Education

16. History of U.S. Educatoin

17. Schools as Organizations

18. Equality of Opportunity

19. Purpose One-Politics: This purpose of schooling is to teach the foundation of allegiance, and assimilate foreigners to the same mind frame.

20. Purpose Two-Social: This purpose explains the effort to solve problems within one's community. As well, it explains the molding of children to become people of certain roles with certain values.

21. Purpose Three- Economic: This purpose also explains the molding of young students into the role they will play into their society, but also is the preparation of students to become a part of the working classes.

22. Purpose Four- Intellectual: This purpose goes into the teaching of cognitive skills and the development of those skills to more complex levels. As well, this is the transfer of knowledge, laws, rules, and etc.

23. The radical perspective was the most relevant to my personal thoughts more times than not. The role of school, from this perspective, is to perpetuate a social standard of economical and political power. This is the defined problem of education for radicals because of the false sense of equality that is created. The division lies with the students who come from a well-off or wealthy household and the students that come from a struggling or poor household. The inequality displayed is the belief that everyone is getting a fair shot at a "good" position in life, when the adult society shows power and money controls everything.

24. I feel that the rise of the common school during the Industrial Revolution had the biggest impact on education. The explanation of the what was going on in that era is still relevant to things that are happening today. There are people searching everywhere for work, there are people "getting by" in school, and research is showing that there are people that can barely read that are graduating high school. The system is flawed and there are politicians trying to make efforts to give everyone a fair shot at "good" education. There are organizations trying to get youth back in school and government programs giving monetary waivers or assistance to impoverished students so they can focus on school. I feel as though it is the biggest change because it reflects on things taking place almost 200 years later.

25. The democratic-liberal interpretation of history of the U.S. educational system is one that is mainly based on optimism as explained by the text. The historian, Lawrence Cremin, interpreted the educational system of America as one that popularized education for the purpose of social development as well as intellectual growth. This feeds into the Democratic-liberal basis of leading education to move towards both equity and excellence without sacrificing either.