1. Curriculum and Pedagogy
2. Sociological Perspectives
2.1. Theoretical Perspectives concerning the relationship between school and society.
2.1.1. 1. Functional Theories: * view society as a machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work. *Emile Durkheim believed that the education was of critical importance in creating the moral unity necessary for social cohesion and harmony. *tend to assume that consensus is the normal state in society and that conflict represents a breakdown in shared values.
2.1.2. 2. Conflict Theories: * the social order is not based on some collective agreement, but on the ability of dominant groups to impose their will on subordinate groups through force, cooptation, and manipulation. * the glue of society is economic, political, cultural, and military power. * do not see the relation between school and society as unproblematic or straightforward. * schools are similar to battlefields, where students struggle against teachers, teachers against administrators, and so on. * Karl Marx is the intellectual founder of the conflict school in the sociology of education. * Max Weber, Willard Waller, Randall Collins, Basil Berstein.
2.1.3. 3. Interactional Theories: * relation of school and society are primarily critiques and extensions of the functional and conflict perspectives. * Interactional theories attempt to make the commonplace strange by turning on their heads everyday taken-for-granted behaviors and interactions between students and students, and between students and teachers. * Basil Bernstein has argued that the structural aspects of the educational system and the interactional aspects of the system reflect each other and must be viewed wholistically.
2.2. 5 Effects of Schooling on Individuals
2.2.1. 1. Knowledge and Attitude: Research has indicated that the more education individuals receive, the more likely they are to read newspapers, books, and magazines, and to take part in political and public affairs. More highly educated people are more likely to be liberal in their political and social attitudes. Education is also related to individuals' sense of well-being and self esteem. The more years of schooling leads to greater knowledge and participation. 2. Employment: Most students believe if they graduate from college they will have greater employment opportunities and they are right, Possession of a college degree is significantly related to higher income. 3. Teacher Behavior: Teachers have a huge impact on student learning and behavior. Teachers can have as many as 1,000 interpersonal contacts with the children in their classroom each day. 4. Student Peer Groups and Alienation: Students in vocational programs and headed toward low-status jobs were the students most likely to join a rebellious subculture. Today, violence is praised and being 'bad' is no longer viewed as a bad thing. It is considered being tough and smart. 5. Education and Inequality: We all know that income, power, and property are unevenly distributed in society. Students who attend suburban schools and private schools get a better educational experience than other children. Racially mixed schools benefit minorities and do not suppress white achievement. Although girls start school cognitively and socially ahead of boys, by the end of high school girls have lower self-esteem and lower aspirations than boys do.
3. Philosophy of Education
3.1. Existentialism is a rather modern philosophy. Although its roots can be traced back to the Bible, one may date it as beginning with the nineteenth-century European philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The more recent philosophers who work in this school include: Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, Jean Paul Sartre, and Maxine Greene. Unlike traditional philosophers, existentialists pose questions as to how their concerns impact on the lives of individuals. Existentialists believe that individuals are placed on this earth alone and must make some sense out of the chaos they encounter. They also believe that education should focus on the needs of individuals, both cognitively and effectively and that education should stress individuality. They see education as an activity liberating the individual from a chaotic absurd world. Teachers should understand their own "lived worlds" as well as that of their students in order to help their students achieve the best "real worlds" they can. Teachers must take risks, expose themselves to resistant students, and work constantly to enable their students to become, in Greene's words, "wide awake." They view learning as intensely personal. They believe that each student has a different learning style and it is up to the teacher to discover what works best for each child. The role of the teacher is to help students understand the world through posing questions, generating activities, and working together. Existentialists would choose curriculum heavily biased toward the humanities. Literature especially has meaning for them since literature is able to evoke responses in readers that might move them to new levels of awareness. They believe in exposing students at early stages to problems as well as possibilities, and to the horrors as well as accomplishments humankind is capable of producing.
4. History of U.S. Education
4.1. Historical Interpretation of U.S. History: The Democratic-Liberal School Democratic-liberals believe that the history of U.S. education involves the progressive evolution, albeit flawed, of a school system committed to providing equality of opportunity for all. Historians such as Ellwood Cubberly, Merle Curti, and Lawrence A. Cremin are representative of this view. Cremin portrays the evolution of U.S. education in terms of 2 related processes: popularization and multifariousness. Education history in the U.S. involved both he expansion of opportunity and purpose. That is, as more students from diverse backgrounds went to school for longer periods of time, the goals of education became more diverse, with social goals often becoming as or more important than intellectual ones.
5. Equality of Opportunity
6. Politics of Education
6.1. The four purposes of Education
6.1.1. 1. The intellectual purposes of schooling are to teach the basic cognitive skills such as reading, writing, and mathematics; to transmit specific knowledge and to help students acquire higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, evaluation, and synthesis.
6.1.2. 2. The political purposes of schooling are to inculcate allegiance to the existing political order; to prepare citizens who will participate in this political order; to help assimilate diverse cultural groups into a common political order; and to teach children the basic laws of the society.
6.1.3. 3. The social purposes of schooling are to help solve social problems; to work as one of many institutions, such as the family and the church to ensure social cohesion; and to socialize children into the various roles, behaviors, and values of the society. This process is a key ingredient to the stability of any society.
6.1.4. 4. The economic purposes of schooling are to prepare students for their later occupational roles and to select, train, and allocate individuals into the division of labor. The degree to which schools directly prepare the students for work varies from society to society, but most schools have at least an indirect role in the process.
6.2. The Role of the School: The liberal perspective.
6.2.1. *to ensure that all students have equal opportunities to succeed in society.
6.3. Explanations of Unequal Educational Performance: The Conservatives perspective.
6.3.1. * 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. * The school system is designed to allow individuals the opportunity to succeed. * If they do not succeed, it may be because they are, as individuals, deficient in some manner or because they are members of a group that is deficient.
6.4. Definition of Educational Problems: The Conservatives perspective.
6.4.1. 1. In Their response to liberal and radical demands for greater equality in the 1960's and 1970's, schools systematically lowered academic standards and reduced educational equality. (decline of standards) 2. In their response to liberal and radical demands for multicultural education schools watered down the traditional curriculum and thus weakened the school's ability to pass on the heritage of American and Western civilizations to children. ( decline of cultural literacy) 3. In their response to liberal and radical demands for cultural relativism schools lost their traditional role of teaching moral standards and values. ( decline of values or of civilization) 4. In their response to the liberal and radical demands for individuality and freedom schools lost their traditional disciplinary function and often become chaotic. ( decline of authority) 5. Because they are state controlled and immune from the laws of a competitive free market, schools are stifles by bureaucracy and inefficiency.