1. Perspective
1.1. Conservative
1.1.1. History
1.1.1.1. Individuals have the capacity to earn or not earn their place within a market economy, and that solutions to problems should be addressed at the individuals level.
1.1.1.2. This perspective developed in the 19th Century, originally by sociologist William Graham Sumner. Conservative perspective looks at social evolution as a process that enables the strongest individuals/groups to survive, and looks to at human and social evolution as adaptation to changes in the environment. Individuals and groups must compete to survive and human progress is dependent on individual drive.
1.1.1.3. Conservative perspective has the belief that the free market is the most economically productive economic system and the system that most represents human needs.
1.1.2. Education
1.1.2.1. Conservatives believe that schools socialize children into the adult roles necessary to the maintenance of the social order.
1.1.2.2. Conservatives see the school's function as one of transmitting the cultural traditions through what is taught. Therefore, the conservative perspective views the role of the school as essential to both economic productivity and social stability.
1.1.2.3. Conservative perspective sees the role of the school as providing the necessary educational training to ensure that the most talented and hard-working individuals receive the tools necessary to maximize economic and social productivity.
1.2. Liberal
1.2.1. History
1.2.1.1. Because liberals place heavy emphasis on issues of equality, they assert that the role of the government is to ensure the fair treatment of all citizens, to ensure that equality of opportunity exists, and to minimize exceeding great differences in the life chances and life outcomes of the country's richest and poorest citizens.
1.2.1.2. John Maynard Keynes believes that the capitalist market economy is prone to cycles of recession that must be addressed through government intervention. Therefore, the liberal perspective insists that government involvement in the economic, political, and social arenas is necessary to ensure fair treatment of all citizens and to ensure a healthy economy.
1.2.1.3. Liberal perspective accepts the conservative belief in a free market economy, but believes if left unregulated the free market is subject to abuse particularly by groups that are at a disadvantage economically and politically.
1.2.1.4. Liberal perspective is concerned mainly with balancing the economic productivity to capitalism with the social and economic needs to the majority of people in the United States.
1.2.1.5. Originated in the 20th Century by U.S. philosopher John Dewey. The Liberal view become politically dominant during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal era.
1.2.1.6. Liberals believe that individual effort alone is sometimes insufficient and that the government must sometimes intercede on behalf of those in need.
1.2.2. Education
1.2.2.1. In line with the liberal belief in equality of opportunity, liberal perspective stresses the school's role in providing the necessary education to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed in society.
1.2.2.2. Liberals point to the school's role in socializing children into societal roles, they stress the pluralistic nature of U.S. society and the school's role in teaching children to respect cultural diversity so that they understand and fit into a diverse society.
1.2.2.3. Liberal perspective stress individual as well as societal needs and thus sees the schools role as enabling the individual to develop his or her talents, creativity, and sense of self.
1.2.2.4. Liberal perspective sees the role of education as balancing the needs of society and the individual in a manner that is consistent with a democratic and meritocratic society.
1.3. Neo-Liberal
1.3.1. History
1.3.1.1. Neo-liberal reform is often a synthesis of conservative and liberal perspectives.
1.3.1.2. Neo-liberal agenda has become an important feature of official federal, state, and local policy. At the federal level, President Bush's No Child Left Behind mandated the use of student achievement tests to measure school quality. President Obama's Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's signature program, Race to the Top (RTT) requires states to expand the number of charter schools and to implement Valued Added Models of teacher evaluations based on student achievement to qualify for RTT funding. At the state level, Chris Christie has pledged to eliminate teacher tenure and seniority based off layoffs, increase the number of charter schools, and pass voucher legislation. At the local level, Cory Booker has initiated a school reform process that includes an expansion of charter schools.
1.3.2. Education
1.3.2.1. Neo-liberal reform stress five areas for educational policy: 1. Austerity - cutting public spending; 2. The market model - free market solves social problems better than government policy; 3. Individualism - educational success or failure is the result of individual effort rather than of social or economic factors; 4. State intervention - state intervention is necessary at times to ensure equal opportunity; 5. Economic prosperity, race, and class - Education should be equal for everyone. They have combined both conservative and liberal perspectives to provide a critique of traditional public education.
1.4. Radical
1.4.1. History
1.4.1.1. The Radical perspective does not believe that free market capitalism is the best form of economic organization, but believes that democratic socialism is a fairer political-economic system. 19th Century German political economist and philosopher Karl Marx suggests that the capitalist system produces fundamental contradictions that ultimately will lead to its transformation into socialism.
1.4.2. Education
1.4.2.1. Radicals believe schools should eliminate inequalities and argue that schools currently reproduce the unequal economic conditions of the capitalist economy and socialize individuals to accept legitimacy of the society.
1.4.2.2. The school's role is to perpetuate the society and to serve the interests of those with economic wealth and political power.
1.4.2.3. Radicals believe that schools prepare children from different social backgrounds for different roles within the economic division of labor.
1.4.2.4. Radicals view equality of opportunity as an illusion and as no more than an ideology used to convince individuals that they have been given a fair chance, when in fact they have not. Therefore, the radical perspective argues that schools reproduce economic, social, and political inequality within the U.S. society.
2. Politics of Education
2.1. Vision of Education
2.1.1. Traditional
2.1.1.1. Tends to view the schools as necessary to the transmission of the traditional value of U.S. society, such as hard work, family unity, and individual initiative.
2.1.2. Progressive
2.1.2.1. Tends to view the schools as central to solving social problems, as a vehicle for upward mobility, as essential to the development of individual potential, and as integral part of a democratic society. Progressives believe schools should be part of the steady progress to make things better.
3. Sociological Perspectives
3.1. Theoretical Perspectives
3.1.1. Functional Theories
3.1.1.1. Functional sociologists begin with a picture of society that stresses the interdependence of the social system; these researchers often examine how well parts are integrated with each other. Functionalists view society as a machine, where one part articulates with another to produce the dynamic energy required to make society work.
3.1.2. Conflict Theories
3.1.2.1. Some sociologist believe social order is based on the ability of dominate groups to impose their will on subordinate groups through force, confrontations, and manipulation. In this view, the glue of society is economic, political, cultural, and military power.
3.1.3. Interactional Theories
3.1.3.1. The critique arises from the observation that functional and conflict theories are very abstract, and emphasize structure and process at a very general level of analysis.
3.2. Effects of Schooling on Individuals
3.2.1. Knowledge and Attitude
3.2.1.1. Sociologists of education disagree strongly about the relative importance of schooling in terms of what knowledge and attitudes young people acquire in school. Nobody argues that schools have no impact on student development, but there are sharp divisions among researchers about how significant school effects are, when taking into account students' social class background.
3.2.2. Employment
3.2.2.1. Most students believe graduating from college increases their chances of getting hired - and they are right. But do well-educated employees actually do a better job? Most research shows that the amount of education is weakly related to job performance.
3.2.3. Education and Mobility
3.2.3.1. There is an abiding faith among most Americans that education is the great equalizer in the "great status race".
4. History of U.S. Education
4.1. Common School
4.1.1. The struggle for free public education was led by Horace Mann of Massachusetts. Mann's argument for the establishment of the common school, free publicly funded elementary schools, reflects both the concern for stability and order and the concern for social mobility.
4.2. Public High Schools
4.2.1. Prior to 1875, fewer than 25,000 students were enrolled in public high schools. Four issues: tension between what to teach, problems meeting college entrance requirements, educators unable to agree between teaching subjects that would prepare students for life or traditional academic subjects, and fourth problem was weather all students should pursue the same course of study of weather the course of study should be determined by students' interests. The main goals of secondary education were: health, command of fundamental processes, worthy home-membership, vocation, citizenship, worthy use of leisure, and ethical character.
4.3. Urbanization
4.3.1. As more immigrants entered the US, a new reform movement would sweep the country - The Progressive Movement. Progressive reform insisted on government regulation of industry and commerce, as well as government regulation and conservation of the nation's natural resources. Progressive reformers insisted that government at national, state, and local levels be responsive to the welfare of its citizens rather than to the welfare of corporations.
4.4. Cycles of Progressive and Traditional
4.4.1. Traditional believed in knowledge-centered education, a traditional subject-center curriculum, and teacher-centered education, discipline, and authority. Progressive believed in experiential education, curriculum that responded to both the needs of students and the times, child-centered education, freedom, and individualism, and the relativism of academic standards in the name of equity.
4.5. Equality
4.5.1. All students should be given the same opportunities and education levels. There have been several court cases over the years fighting for equality of all students.
4.6. The Standards Era
4.6.1. The Standards Era was a time of trying to figure out what would be taught and who would regulate the standards for our students to learn from. In 1983, A Nation at Risk was published which provided a serious indictment of U.S. education and cited high rates of adult illiteracy, declining SAT scores, and low scores on international comparisons of knowledge to by U.S. students as examples of the declining of literacy and standards.
5. Equality of Opportunity
5.1. Social Stratification: a hierarchical configuration of families who have differential access to whatever is of value in the society at a given point and over time.
5.2. Caste stratification occurs in agrarian societies where social level is defined in terms of some strict ascriptive criteria such as race/religious worth.
5.3. Estate stratification occurs in agrarian societies where social level is defined in terms of the hierarchy of family worth.
5.4. Class stratification occurs in industrial societies that define social level in terms of a hierarchy of differential achievement by individuals, especially economic pursuits.
5.5. Students in different social classes have different kinds of educational experiences. Studies show that the number of books in a family's home is related to the academic achievement of its children.
5.6. An individual's race has a direct impact on how much education he or she is likely to achieve. Minorities do not receive the same educational opportunities as whites, and their rewards for educational attainment are significantly less.
5.7. In the last 20 years, gender differences between men and women, in terms of educational attainment, have been reduced. Women tend to do better in language and writing while men tend to do better in math.
6. Schools as Organizations
6.1. The nature of teaching is a demanding one. Teachers must be skilled in many areas; teachers must be: colleagues, friends, nurturer of the learner, facilitator of learning, researcher, program developer, administrator, decision maker, professional leader, and community activist.
6.2. Degree of Openness: the school system is designed to give students many opportunities for advancement- the school system is quite open. All children are entitled to enroll in public school and to remain in school until they graduate.
6.3. Private schools: tend to attract students from families that are relatively affluent and have a commitment to education. .There is a lot of diversity in the private sector, although most are not affiliated with religious organizations. There are 15 major categories of private schools. Most private schools are located on the East and West Coasts.
6.4. School cultures are the unity of interacting personalities. The personalities of all who meet in the school are bound together in an organic relation. The life of the whole is in all its parts, yet the whole could not exists without any of its parts. The school is a social organism.
6.5. School are separate social organizations because: they have a definite population, they have a clearly defined political structure, they represent the nexus of a compact network of social relationships, they are pervaded by a "we feeling", and they have a culture that is definitely their own.
6.6. A highly qualified teacher will meet these conditions: have a college degree, full certification, demonstrate content knowledge in the subject they are teaching. Demonstrating content knowledge can come in various forms: pass a state test of literacy and numeracy, pass a rigorous test in the subject area, or veteran teachers may either pass the state test, have a college major, or demonstrate content knowledge though some other uniformly applied process designed by the state.
7. Philosophy of Education
7.1. Generic Notions
7.1.1. Pragmatism is an American philosophy that encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve their desired ends. Pragmatists do study the past, but generally are more interested in contemporary issues and in discovering solutions to problems in present-day terms. Pragmatists are action oriented, exponentially grounded, and will generally pose open ended questions.
7.1.2. Believe in attaining a better society through education. Dewey's ideas are often referred to as progressive and proposes that education starts with the interest of the children.
7.2. Key Researchers
7.2.1. George Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), John Dewey (1859-1952) Frances Bacon, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
7.3. Goal of Education
7.3.1. Importance of the school as a place where ideas can be implemented, challenged, and restructured, with the goal of providing students with the knowledge of how to improve social order.
7.4. Role of Teacher
7.4.1. To act as a facilitator. Teacher will encourage, offer suggestions, questions, and helps plan courses to study.
7.5. Method of Instruction
7.5.1. Children will learn individually and in groups. Problem-solving or inquiry method. Children will take field trips and work on projects. Formal instruction is abandoned and traditional time blocks for specific discipline instruction is eliminated.
7.6. Curriculum
7.6.1. Follow a core curriculum or an integrated curriculum. A particular subject matter under investigation by students would yield problems to be solved in math, science, history, reading, writing, music, art, wood or metal working, cooking, and sewing.
8. Curriculum and Pedagogy
8.1. Major stakeholders
8.1.1. State Senators: RICHARD SHELBY & JEFFERSON “JEFF” SESSIONS
8.1.2. House of Representatives: MO BROOKS
8.1.3. State Superintendent: Thomas R. Bice, Ed.D
8.1.4. Representative on State School Board: Cynthia Sanders McCarty, Ph.D.
8.1.5. Local Superintendent : Bill W. Hopkins, Jr.
8.1.6. Local School Board: Mr. Billy Rhodes, Mr. Paul Holmes, Mr. Tom Earwood, Mr. Mike Tarpley, Mr. Jeff McLemore, Mr. Adam Glenn, Mr. Adam Glenn
8.2. Approach to curriculum
8.2.1. The division of curriculum is offered in the United States. Some students may receive an academic curriculum while some may receive a vocational or general curriculum. Students are also grouped by ability.
8.3. Choice of pedagogic practice
8.3.1. How something is taught is important because it can make the difference between learning the material or not learning it.
8.3.2. Trans formative tradition rests on a different set of assumptions about the teaching and learning process. This tradition believes that the purpose of education is to change the student in some meaningful way, including intellectually, creatively, spiritually, and emotionally.
8.4. What do teachers do?
8.4.1. Schools teach a specific curriculum, one that is mandated by the state education department and implemented in an organized manner within the schools.
8.5. What is learned in schools?
8.5.1. It is difficult to separate school effects from more general processes of childhood development. It is difficult to separate the effects of schooling from other variables including social class and cultural factors.
8.5.2. Schools do have important effects on students. Evidence indicates that students who have higher levels of education attainment do know more about school subjects. Schooling does increase knowledge; there is a strong correlations between formal schooling and tests of cognitive development.