1.1. This does not fit in with any of my other points, and is in fact not really a point at all as much as it is an observation. I'm Jewish, and reading through this chapter, I was struck by the way in which "churches and synagogues" were mentioned together throughout this chapter as agents of socialization. This seems extremely strange to me, since Jewish people make up just under two percent of the US population, and indeed, there are other religious institutions in this country, such as mosques, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, and Shinto temples, Native American tribal religious institutions, and institutions that are founded by new religious movements, that all have similar impact on their small population percentages that synagogues do on the small Jewish population of the United States. The book probably should have substituted "religious institutions" for "churches and synagogues". This quibble of mine may at first seem pedantic, and to an extent it is. However, there are several reasons beyond simple inaccuracy that I dislike the use of "churches and synagogues". Firstly, as I mentioned, it excludes the institutions of other religious groups. These religious groups are often marginalized within the United States, so erasing them is not a good practice. Secondly, the pairing of Christian and Jewish institutions creates a false picture of equality of influence, and looks to me to be an indirect use of the notion of a Judeo-Christian society. The term Judeo-Christian is bunk. The idea of a shared Judeo-Christian society, worldview, culture, morality, or anything else is bunk. Not only have Christian communities and Christian churches tried to oppress Jewish populations within their borders for as long as they have had the power to do so, but Christianity and Judaism are extremely different religions, that share very few features and interpret their shared religious texts in radically different ways. Modern Western Christianity for example has a great deal more in common with modern Islam for example than it does with modern Judaism, and Judaism, an ethnoreligion, functions much more within Jewish society like other Middle Eastern ethnoreligions, such as the religions of the Druze and the Yazidi than it does like Christianity functions within Christian society. Furthermore, Christian writers have traditionally paired the church and the synagogue in the extremely insulting figures of Ecclesia and Synagoga: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesia_and_Synagoga
1.2. Functional Perspective: I am not a functionalist, however, I am not a strict conflict theorist either. Sometimes social institutions, ideologies, and practices do arise out of a shared need rather than a conflict between two or more societal groups, so I feel it is worth describing here. Functionalism describes society as an interdependent body, much like a single living organism. Just as complex organisms have organs and organ systems, so to does society have institutions. Just as organs and organ systems serve a need for the organism, so to do institutions serve a need for society. Institutions arise out of a need, and social problems arise out of a breakdown of social function. Social problems, therefore can by solved by figuring out which social institution failed and how, and amending the problem with that institution, or by creating a new institution to fill this new need. Some examples: Economic Inequality-Economic inequality serves the purpose in society of differentiating tasks along class lines. It also serves to motivate people to work hard and perform socially necessary tasks, by means of either fear that an individual will fall down the social and economic ladder, or in hopes of ascending the social and economic ladder. Religion-religious beliefs and institutions are shaped by the societies in which they arose, and serve different purposes depending on that society's needs. For example, in modern American society, Christian Identity groups (so-called Neo Nazi churches that preach racial inferiority and that white Christian people are the true Nation of Israel) have arisen to fulfill the needs of their members for a sense of purpose and group identity, and to give structure and voice to feelings of inadequacy that greater racial equality and integration have caused in the most marginalized members of a group in the process of losing some of its previous status.
1.3. Conflict Perspective: Conflict theory arose in opposition to functionalism, which was at the time the only game in town. Karl Marx envisioned society as a set of competing groups, each striving to accumulate as much power, influence, and access to resources as possible. Marx, the father of Communism as a political theory, focused primarily on class, (though he touched on gender, race, and nationality as well) and saw class as the predominant grouping, He also did not account well for groups within groups, or overlapping groups, in other words, multifaceted Identities. This has been amended in many modern expressions of Conflict theory, such as critical race theory, feminist theory, and queer theory, by the notion of intentionality, in which a single member of society may be part of one privileged group, but not another, or part of multiple non-privileged groups at the same time, and that the expression of disadvantage is different depending on one's specific grouping, for example, a black non-disabled lesbian woman would experience racial inequality differently than a black physically disabled straight man would, even though they are both part of the black group. Conflict theory is useful for sociologists looking to explain inequality and the "winners" and "losers" of society. In this model, since everyone is in conflict with everyone else for resources, social problems are not a failure of the social system, but instead a manifestation of how a given institution was designed to benefit one group and not another. Modern manifestations of conflict theory are also much more able to acknowledge that just as people who are less privileged act against their own group, privileged people also sometimes act against their privileged groups, and that being privileged in some way does not necessarily mean that an individual did anything to cause this status, or that they want it. They may even be working to end inequality, and still benefit structurally from it. Max Weber is an early conflict theorist who first applied Marx's theoretical principals to non-class based groups, thus opening up the theory to its modern use. Examples: Economic Inequality-The rich as a class have succeeded in accumulating more resources than other groups, and use societal institutions such as money, capitalist economics, the government, and the church in its role as an ideological shaper to maintain this possession of power and resources. The poor must now work for the rich in exchange for a pittance in order to survive. The poor cannot save, get ahead, or accumulate enough power and resources to challenge the rich as individuals, and thus the system continues until revolution. Religion-Religion in Marx's particular brand of conflict theory was an institution imposed by the powerful on the rest of society to justify their power and to placate the masses Things to think about in education with Conflict Theory Waller: posits that authoritarianism is innate to schools, since students are forced to be there, and therefore disobedience of authority in a school system is resistance to an oppressive system. As an unhappy elementary and middle school student, I would have loved this idea. Collins: asserts that diplomas are not recognitions of knowledge gained, or of achievement, but are instead status symbols, and that greater diploma attainment does not reflect greater knowledge attainment, but is instead reflective of how degrees are used by the powerful as a means to ensure that they continue to be the ones with access to power and resources. This helps explain why a high school degree from a prep school means more than one from PS 123 from Chicago (I have no idea if this school exists, or if it's a high school, by the way) . Cultural and social capital: the idea that cultural markers and social bonds also contribute to one's ability to accumulate resources: groups with low status also have denigrated cultural markers.
1.4. Interactionalist Theories Unlike functionalism and conflict theories, which are macro theories about the "what" and "why" of sociology, Interactionalist theories are micro theories about the "how". It is entirely possible to be a symbolic interactionalist for example, and also either a conflict theorist or a functionalist. Interactionists are interested in the often overlooked processes that result in how an individual fits into society. For example, an interactionalist would be interested in labeling. How does being convicted of a crime contribute to one's likelihood to reoffend, verses committing a crime and not being charged? From my own life, I can talk about how being labeled as "weird" led to my adoption of this negative label. Other children have much more far reaching consequences: is that child really smarter, or are they just acting up to expectations, for example. This theoretical framework is useful when looking at how individual teacher behavior affects students. One study mentioned in the books involves teachers being told that certain children were on the verge of a mental growth spurt, and that other children weren't. The children who were supposed to be approaching a mental growth spurt were selected at random. Yet teachers' behavior toward these children was different, and the children who were expected to improve most by their teachers did. The opposite can also be true, a student succeeding in spite of expectations, but it is rarer. This of course is important in a conflict theory framework, because who do you think teachers tend to expect more from? White, affluent, able bodied, privileged children. Who are most likely to face low teacher expectations, low advancement, and low self esteem? Poorer students of color and students with disabilities. It's important to remember as teachers that our biases are unconscious, and so as part of intentional teachers, we must be self reflective.
1.5. Curriculum Expresses Culture In other words, school and curriculum is not value neutral. School and curriculum conveys the dominant culture , and reflect the values, prejudices, beliefs, and priorities of the dominant culture. If this is the case, then to a certain extent, one's cultural affiliation with the dominant group, or one's ability to assimilate into that cultural framework becomes a deciding factor in student success. Also school becomes a place of enculturation, and can too easily turn into a place of forced assimilation.
1.6. I disliked the bit in this chapter about student on student violence, as it strongly implied it to be much more common in poor schools. Although poor children often do face a much greater degree of violence, I can tell as a child from an affluent school that there is a lot of violence in affluent schools. I was severely bullied, and stalked, and faced an attempted murder. All of these violent offenses against me, and many of the ones I witnessed perpetrated against other students at my schools, were covered up and erased. These were good kids, who were going to good colleges, and were going to have good jobs. Why ruin that for them? Violence committed by the "right" kind of kid is much less likely to be counted. Just as poor and nonwhite children are much more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white peers, so too are crimes committed by nonwhite children much more likely to be treated as actual crimes.
2. Politics of Education
2.1. Progressivism: education is meant to give children the tools to make their own visions a reality. This means acknowledging that these children will grow up into adults who may or may not agree with the role society and tradition expects them to play. American society is, let's face it, extremely oppressive to a great number of people, and the people who are most concerned with tradition and traditional values are the ones currently at the top. Over the past decades, we have indeed made vast strides towards greater equality, and though we are not there yet, this has made many people in the groups that have historically held a lion's share of power increasingly nervous. As they have begun to feel their status threatened, they have doubled down in how important they view "traditiProgressivism: education is meant to give children the tools to make their own visions a reality. This means acknowledging that these children will grow up into adults who may or may not agree with the role society and tradition expects them to play. American society is, let's face it, extremely oppressive to a great number of people, and the people who are most concerned with tradition and traditional values are the ones currently at the top. Over the past decades, we have indeed made vast strides towards greater equality, and though we are not there yet, this has made many people in the groups that have historically held a lion's share of power increasingly nervous. As they have begun to feel their status threatened, they have doubled down in how important they view "tradition"
2.2. Radicalism: My background prior to coming here was in the social sciences. I am finishing up a bachelor's degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology. This means that my theoretical perspectives are already relatively well developed, and I am a fairly ardent conflict theorist. Our modern western society, including the U.S. is extremely unequal and this inequality is structurally and culturally supported. Schools exist within this framework. Everything from the funding schools get, to the programs they can implement, and even how teachers treat their students is affected by this structural institutional inequality. One of our most important jobs as educators is to challenge this systematic inequality and to help students recognize injustice when they see it. I have been on the losing and winning side of many different structural inequalities. As a disabled student, a Jewish student, as queer student, and as a girl, I faced horrible and at times unbearable challenges. I dropped out of high school when at last due to a combination of my disability and bullying, it stopped being worth it to continue. I have also benefited from my place in the U.S. racial hierarchy, and my family's economic status, which gave me access to an intellectually rigorous public school education schools with a low police presence. That I am not an immigrant and my first language is English likewise lent me an advantage in school. That my gender identity matches the one assigned to me at birth has meant that I have never been misgendered, or feared for my safety because of trans or genderqueer status. These are only some of many axises of power upon which I am not oppressed. In short, my belonging to both enfranchised and disenfranchised groups has left me with a level of understanding how belonging to such groups effects one's access to the levers of power.
2.3. Excellent study taking a quantitative view of how punishment is applied unequally across race and disability status lines: Vincent, C. G. Sprag, J. R. & Tobin, T. J. (2012) Exclusionary Discipline Practices Across Students, Racial/Ethnic Backgrounds and Disability Status: Findings from the Pacific Northwest. Education & Treatment of Children. 35(4) 585-601
2.4. Traditionalist approaches to education: Take for granted that society as it is, or often as it was, should be perpetuated. At least in my experience most traditionalists had a relatively good schooling experience, and want to "give kids what they got" Are leery of change, or want to return things to a previous point Wish to apply free market principles to public institutions like education Believe everyone starts out with the same shot
2.5. Neo-Liberalism: Ahh, the name that confused me so bad as a baby Poli-Sci student! In International Relations, we learned that what Americans cal Neo-Conservatism, political theorists call Neo-Liberalism. Oy. Strange hatred of teacher's unions (maybe when the experts in the field disagree with you, you should listen? Nah!) Agree with liberals and radicals hat schools are failing low income students, propose solutions that would make the problem worse, such as punishing failing schools by withdrawing their already scant funds In love with the free market, and also austerity Do acknowledge the effects of race and class, then list headbanging ridiculous reasons for this I have such a hard time taking Neo-Liberals seriously about anything.
2.6. Authority in Education: A Thought Conservatives often talk about the breakdown of authority in school. This hierarchical approach to education does not ream like a particularly good way of instilling traditional American values like democracy and individualism.
3. History of U.S. Education
3.1. Colonial Era Education Before the establishment of the United States as an independent nations several colonies and religious groups within colonies had already estanlished universities on the model of Oxford. Many of these universities were founded primarily to train non Church of England clergy. The wealthy hired private tutors for their children, especially sons. Even this early in American history, access to education was not only a class issue, but recognized as such. 1647: Old Deluder Laws: laws that were designed to provide for the education of children so that they could read the Bible and not be swayed by Satan. Thus the notion of schools as a means to enforce cultural and religious views is an early feature of U.S. education. 1749: Benjamin Franklin argued for secular utiltarian education that students could used to better themselves and their lives. This education would focus on practical skills, languages, science, reading, writing, public speaking, math, etc. 1779: Thomas Jefferson articulates the idea that an educated populace is the safeguard of democracy, proposed educating all (free) children so that they could read newspapaers and stay informed so as to vote well. He also proposed a scholarship program for talented but poor students. This proposal failed. Dame School: Schools common in New England where young children were taught mostly by elderly widows. These lessons focused on recitation. Town School: Schools set up by the Old Deluder Law in larger New England towns where children learned reading, writing, and religion in an authoritarian memorization mode. Secondary New Englad education was boys only, and taught Latin and Greek, and was designed to reproduce and maintain the Puritain oligarchy The middle colonies had a mish mash of assorted religious schools. Of these, the Quakers of Pennsylvania were fairly unique in providing a kinder individual focused education for children. In the South, only aristocratic students had education, in the form of private tutors, who were often indentured servants or convicts- a fact that makes more sense when you think about how many minor crimes there were at the time. Boys learned the classics, while girls were mostly confined to social graces like music and dancing, and of course to domestic management. Poor children, and of course slaves were not educated. There were laws in fact against teaching slaves, in some places. Some slaves were able to get access to an education, however this was rare. Native American children were educated in tribal culture within their own nations. A few attempts by Europeans at education, enculturation, and assimilation were made, thus showing some of the early signs of later brutal forced assimilation of Native Americans through school.
3.2. 1820 until the Civil War: The Common School This was a period of tremendous change in the U.S., and worldwide. In the South, the invention of the cotton gin made cotton less expensive and difficult to process, thus fueling the rise of cotton based Southern plantations, which entrenched the economic position of slavery, which previous to the cotton boom was not especially profitable, at least in the U.S., and was held by many to be a dying practice. This rise in cotton production helped fuel industrialization in the North, where high population density cities with growing immigrant populations, were becoming increasingly a feature. The early Reform Movement was born at this time, with zealous Evangelical Christians leading the causes of temperance, abolition, pacifism, and education, among others. The reformers sought to end social ills. By 1928, all free men who were not "emotionally disturbed" (who decided emotional disturbance? What were the criteria? Also, the status of nonwhite voters was incredibly complicated. Some areas had laws against minority groups voting, some did not, some had laws against some minority groups but not others..) could vote. Given that most of the population was illiterate, there were a lot of very poorly educated and very poorly informed Americans voting. In New England, free public schools were required under the Old Deluder Law, but most towns disobeyed this requirement. The rest of the country fared equally badly, with charity schools providing the only education accessible to poor children. Horace Mann: lobbied for free public education, and convinced Massachusetts lawmakers to create the first state board of education, which he became head of. Advocated for the creation of teaching schools. Argued for schools and education as an equalizing device, and as an engine of social stability. Opposition to public schools came in the form of people who did not want to pay for it (so what else is new?) and from Catholics, who saw schools as engines of Protestant assimilation (which they were, actually.) Women, even in wealthy families that valued education for boys, were not expected to attain an education beyond basic literacy, and math, and what additional skills women learned, such as music, art, conversation, and domestic work were supposed to be used in service of their husband. Education for women was widely held to be damaging to our heath, and could, horror of horrors, make us infertile or insane. However, by the 1820s, some women were indeed pushing for and attaining high level educations. Women's collages opened at this time, including Athens college (!) and a few state colleges began admitting women Education for African Americans in the era of slavery remained bleak. After slave revolts, like Nat Turner's Revolt, not to mention the successful revolution in Haiti, white Southern plantation owners across the South lobbied for and got laws against teaching slaves to read. Free black people across the country had to make due with no schools or segregated schools, leading to many black communities to found their own schools
3.3. Post Civil War until 1900: With the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of Black Codes and Jim Crow, which evolved from Slave Codes, education for black people was extremely limited, and for many, inaccessible. However, it was in this period that the Historically Black Collages, the HBCs were founded. Gigantic corporations, headed by the Robber Barons ruled the day, creating an ever rising gap between the very rich and the desperately poor. Mark Twain dubbed this era the Gilded Age, because like wood that had been gilt, there was only a fine layer of gold over much more humble, even rotten realities. Also a this time, immigrants from predominantly Catholic Southern and Eastern European countries like Italy, and Poland, along with a tide of Jewish immigrants began to arrive in great numbers in the eastern cities. Nativist movements, already powerful enough from anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment to help found the Republican party before the Civil War, swelled, . One answer to the social stresses caused on the old order by the rise of so many people with different cultural and religious backgrounds, in desperate poverty, was enculturating education. Schools as engines of cultural conformity became highly popular with elite and middle class WASP Americans who felt threatened by the immigration wave (again, so what else is new?) John Dewey and the Progressive movement: John Dewey sought to restructure schools into "embryonic communities" and advocated a curriculum tailored to student interests and needs. John Dewey created a laboratory school, to implement his ideas and train teachers in them. Child-centered reform: Stanley Hall: traditional education has stifled children's natural drives and instincts, and schools need to change to be more responsive to individual differences and talents/ Social engineering reform: Edward L. Thorndike: Thorndike used behavioralist observations to argue that children were bank slates and should be shaped by the school system into individuals better suited to a just and orderly society.
3.4. 1880-WWII Public high schools become much more common and much better attended, and many become compulsory. At this point most people attending secondary education are no longer expecting to go on to college. At this point, high schools began to focus on preparing students to leave them with the skills deemed necessary to be good citizens (and employees) and on preparing a subset of students for higher education. Core subjects, and the beginning of the horrible tracking system began Life adjustment courses, courses to improve daily living gained prominence. Somehow, I get the feeling these courses were highly gendered and class and region stratified. This movement argued for practical skills over say, traditional hard sciences, exemplified both faith in education and anti-intellectualism in one tidy all-American package. According t my grandmother, in the 1950s, she was one of only a handful of high school students at her school to be taking academic classes. Most of the girls were either in secretarial school, or in all day home ec. The boys were in classes run by the Future Farmers of America.
3.5. 1945-1980 The debate between the academic and social roles of education continued into this era, as did the debate as to whether all children should receive the same education. Many reformers in this era stressed the importance of opening up opportunities for post secondary education, in the form of universities, community colleges, and vocational schools. This era was also characterized by swings between progressive and traditional reform.After the leaps that the progressive life adjustment idea had made in the public sphere traditionalists argued that the progressives had cheapened education by taking away the academic rigor of high school for students judged to be not college eligible, and had taken away the academic focus of school in favor of the social focus. Ironically, this aligns them much more closely with many modern liberals and radicals who disdain the idea of two educations, one for the deserving (the rich, or the extraordinarily talented) and one for the rest. The launch of Sputnik, and the Cold War arms race it represented helped turn the tide in favor of traditional reformers, because it frightened the nation into improving academic standards in the name of being able to compete with Soviet scientists. From 1957 until the mid 1960s, reformers stressed academic excellence and educational standards. The mid 1960s with the Civil Rights era brought an emphasis on school equity, which helped herald the rebirth of progressive school reform, with a new emphasis on alleviating school inequality, racism, and authoritarianism, and on filling the individual needs of children. At this time, many secondary and post secondary students began speaking out about their own feelings as to what education should and shouldn't be, and also began to protest the Vietnam War, and march for political reforms and civil rights. A major shock to the system came when four student protestors at Kent State were killed my the Ohio National Guard. This was in some ways a microcosm of America's paradoxical stand that we are the nation of freedom, so shut up, sit down, and stop getting in the way of freedom. The willingness American society displays to curtail freedom in the name of Freedom in school systems staggered me growing up. Teaching children to obey authority seems to be antithetical to making a democratic voting public. Open education, or education in which children were more involved in the educational process, in which they had greater agency, became a goal of many reformers. However, in the 1960s and 1970s, few classrooms adopted this model. Civil Rights leaders during this period challenged segregation in many eras including public schools. In Brown v. Board of Education, segregated schools were declared unconstitutional. A key part of dissent for segregation right from the beginning was the idea that there should be no ruling class of citizens, and that there should be no caste system, race based, or otherwise. Desegregation in schools was a fraught process, especially in the South, where mobs of angry white protestors, horrified that white children might have to share a classroom with black children tried to physically prevent black children from attending schools. In Boston, secret segregation continued for a long time after Brown v. Board, and to undo the damage, forced busing was imposed, leading to again, more angry white parents I feel this is a good time to mention the term NIMBY, or Not In My Backyard, a common reason for opposing desegregation. Many universities at this time became coeducational, and many became open enrollment, something many have since rolled back. Regardless, post secondary education was widely expanded at this time, and to an extent, the genie is out of the bottle.
3.6. 1980s-2012 The pendulum began to swing back towards conservatives and traditionalists in education at the end of the 1970s Coupled with the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, this led to calls for reform, under the notion that the earlier attempts to establish educational equality had resulted instead in bringing everyone down to the same low achieving level. This I think again has an element of NIMBY in it. The idea that when you raise up one group, you do have to sometimes take a little bit of power or funding away from another group that had previously had an unfair monopoly on those resources is bound to make members of the advantaged group less than thrilled. Sure, educate black children better, but not at my child's expense. A Nation at Risk: a report issued in 1983 that alleged there was an educational crisis in America resulting from lowered standards, which led to children not learning enough and illiteracy as adults. The cure for this was higher educational standards, and raising admittance requirements for admission to college. Radicals called especially the latter as an indication of a new elitism. Growing dissatisfaction with academic standards in public schools had led to more recent reforms, such as NCLB, which was implemented in the hopes of measuring school compliance to standards, and to the growth in initiatives to apply free market principles to public schools.
