Assignment Briefing: Assess how public policy, demographics and classic sociological concepts have shaped our understanding of educational attainment.
With supporting evidence, I will identify the major demographic factors which affect educational achievement. I will discuss the relevance of self fulfilling prophecy, labelling theory, the hidden curriculum and counter school sub-cultures. I will also outline recent educational ideas such as the Academies Programme, the increase in university places and the idea of targeting disadvantaged pupils. I will also link the above ideas to theory, introducing relevant writers and theorists to discuss these ideas.
The functionalist view of education focuses on the positive contributions education makes to the maintenance of the social system. Emile Durkheim saw the major function of education as the transmission of society’s norms and values, taking the view that education perpetuates and reinforces cooperation and social solidarity by ‘fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities which collective life demands.’ Durkheim 1961. Durkheim believed that without these ‘essential similarities’ social life itself would be impossible, arguing that individuals must learn to cooperate and interact with other members of the school community in terms of a fixed set of rules, which in turn prepares them for interacting with members of society as a whole in terms of society’s rules; and believed only the school can provide context where these stills can be learned [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
The Term Paper on Education in Modern Society
Others see it as being biased towards a certain kind of social or ethnical group, and even gender groups, while another crowd might argue that it is actually fair for everyone. A specific group could say that some forms of education can be meaningless, while others possibly will interpret it in a wrong way, although a group of scholars might find a deeper meaning for it. Ken Kesey, author of “One ...
From a Functionalist perspective the education system is seen to benefit all members of society, the same standards are applied to all students regardless of sex, race, family background or class of origin; and schools operate on meritocratic principles – students are sorted by ability thereby ensuring the most talented students go on to get the most rewarding jobs [ (Robert J. Brym & John Lie, 2007) ].
Conflict perspectives in contrast are based on the view there is a conflict of interest between groups in society and education largely serves the interests of the powerful. Bowles and Gintis reject the functionalist view that capitalist societies are meritocratic and believe the hidden curriculum provides capitalists with a workforce that has the personality, attitudes and values that are most useful to them [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
By encouraging the acceptance of hierarchy, education prepares students for relationships within the workplace where workers need to conform to the authority of managers and supervisors. Students also learn to be motivated by external rewards, which is necessary according to Bowles and Gintis as work in capitalist societies is unsatisfying and so workers must be motivated by the external reward of the wage packet, just as the student is motivated by the external reward of qualifications. Bowles and Gintis claim another important aspect of the hidden curriculum is the fragmentation of school subjects as it corresponds with the fragmentation of the workforce; jobs are broken down into separate tasks carried out by specific individuals and in this way workers are denied overall knowledge of the production process- making it impossible for them to set up in competition with their employees. [ (Sociology, 2011) ].
Conflict theorists argue that the school distributes the benefits of education unequally, allocating most of the benefits to children from upper classes and higher-status racial and ethnic groups [ (Robert J. Brym & John Lie, 2007) ]. Research shows the higher a person’s social class, the higher their educational attainment is likely to be. The children of parents in higher social classes are more likely to attain high grades in Key Stage tests and at GCSE, are more likely to stay on in post-compulsory education, to take and pass A Level exams and are also more likely to gain university entrance. For example, in 2000, 74 percent of students from higher professional backgrounds attained five or more GCSE grades A*-C, compared to only 26 percent from routine backgrounds. 57 percent of students from higher professional backgrounds also attainted A/AS level qualifications compared to only 16 percent of students from routine backgrounds [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
The Essay on To What Extent Should High School Students Be Allowed To
To What Extent Should High School Students be allowed to Exercise Freedom of Speech While on Campus I think that nowadays to deal with an issue of students free speech rights is a tough problem for High School administrators. The matter is that students free speech is protected by the First Amendment. Thus it means that students are allowed to exercise free speech while on campus. But what should ...
In 2002 the first Academies – typically the worst performing schools within the local education authority – opened under the Labour government’s Academies Programme. The aim of the programme was to improve educational outcomes in deprived areas; poorly performing schools were awarded academy status by replacing existing schools which were either in special measures or viewed as under-achieving. However, figures from a study undertaken by Stephen Machin and Joan Vernoit of the CEP show the academies which opened in September 2010 – having been approved by the new coalition government – and the schools which have applied to the coalition government to become academies, are significantly more advantaged than the average secondary school, and even more so than those schools which were approved to open under Labour . Figures show the coalition academies contain far lower proportions of pupils who are eligible for free school meals, and are considerably better performing schools in terms of GCSE performance, indicating there has been a U-turn in the nature of academy schools policy – under the Labour government the policy was aimed at combating disadvantages where as under new government, it is shown to reinforce advantage. [ (Academy schools: the policy U-turn, 2011) ]
An important aspect of Interactionist theory of education concerns the ways teachers make sense of and respond to behaviour of their students. In their book on Deviance in Classrooms, David Hargreaves, Stephen Hester and Frank Mellor analyse the ways students come to be typed or classified and claim it has important effects on the progress of students [ (Sociology Education, 2011) ].
The Labelling Theory argues that the labelling of students can have important effects on their progress as once a label is attached to a person it is common for them to see themselves in terms of the label and act accordingly. The tendency for others to see them in terms of the label and to act towards them on this basis is also more likely and this is seen to result in a self-fulfilling prophecy [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
Great Depression Teachers School Education
During the Great Depression receiving an education was becoming more and more difficult for southerners. From not being able to afford the required supplies needed, to not being able to pay the tut ions, many people found it nearly impossible to attend school. The novel, To Kill A Mockingbird written by Harper Lee shows how the lack of education in society during the Great Depression affected ...
The self-fulfilling prophecy argues predictions made by teachers about the future success or failure of students tends to come true because interactions between teacher and student are influenced by the teacher’s definition of the student. For example, the teacher may encourage and expect higher-quality work from students whom they have labelled as bright and as a result the student’s self-concepts are shaped by this definition. In this way the student’s attainment level is to some degree a result of interaction between the student and the teacher [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
A number of sociologists such as David Hargreaves have suggested that children are not so passive and can resist labels created by teachers and instead develop their own culture in opposition to “school culture”. From his study of a secondary modern school (1967), Hargreaves found the students who developed a deviant/delinquent sub-culture, did so, on the basis of their labelling as failures. Students labelled as troublemakers were placed in lower streams and as a consequence of their negative labelling sought out each other’s company as a means of fighting back. Within their group they awarded high status to those who broke the school rules – disrupting lessons, giving cheek to teachers, failing to hand in homework and playing truant, all brought prestige. Hargreaves also found that a non-deviant sub-culture emerged for the opposite reasons; pupils who were relatively successful within the school also sought-out each other’s company as a means of confirming their superior social status within the school [ (Pupil Sub Cultures) ].
The Labour government also aimed to widen access to further and higher education – increasing the proportion of working class students in particular; and as a result the number of students continuing their education after 16 grew from 2.23 million in 1990/91 to 5.05 million in 2004/5 (Social Trends, 2007).
However participation varied by social class, for example in 2004, 85 percent of 16-year-olds from the ‘higher professional class’ were in full time education compared to 57 percent from the lower (routine) class (Youth Cohort Study, 2004), [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
The Essay on College Education Vs. High School Education Income
In our current economy, the need for a college education has become increasingly valuable despite the high cost of tuition and loans. The demand for skilled, college-educated laborers is high. A college education can also determine a person’s future income potential and, in many cases, it is the only way a person can climb up the socioeconomic ladder. The idea that a college education is ...
As a result the Educational Maintenance Allowance was introduced in 2004 in an attempt to reduce the class gap to further education and as a result staying on rates increased by around 6 per cent. However, the class gap in higher education continues to widen; In 2001, 79 percent of young people from professional backgrounds were in HE compared with 55 percent in 1991 – a gain of 24 percent. While at the other end of the scale 15 percent of young people from unskilled manual backgrounds were in HE in 2001, compared with 6 percent in 1991 – a gain of only 9 percent; indicating that despite Labour’s aim to close the class gap, those at the top of the class system have gained far more from the policy (Galindo-Rueda et al, 2004) and there is evidence that Labour’s introduction of tuition fees and scrapping of maintenance grants in 1998 reduced participation of those from low income backgrounds [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
Although class inequalities are the most extreme, there are also inequalities found between males and females and between various ethnic groups. Research into gender inequalities in education seems to have had greater influence on education policies than has research into class inequalities. Since the 1970’s, equal opportunities approaches and anti sexist approaches have influenced education policies in the UK, with the effect of a dramatic turnaround of educational inequalities between the sexes; a resulting shift from concerns about the underachievement of females (before 1990) to concerns about the underachievement of males (since 1990) [ (Ian Marsh et, al., 2009) ].
Results show girls attainment grades at GCSE level from 1990 to 2006 was consistently higher than those of boys, with the gender gap widening from 7.6 percent in 1990 to 9.6 in 2002. The gender gap in A Level attainment grades also increased from 2 percent in 1990/1 to 10 percent in 2004/5. However, according to some researchers, the focus on gender has diverted attention from class which has over five times the effect on educational attainment that gender has, and ethnicity which has twice the effect (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000).
The Essay on Flatland Higher Classes
Flatland Edwin A. Abbott starts his book Flatland with a very dry description of the figures in Flatland. This sets the reader up for the rest of the book, and quite simply, the rules of this foreign planet. The book is set in a world of only two dimensions, a flat land in you will. All shapes are seen as straight lines, this hardship is explained further in the later parts of the novel. Houses ...
It seems that educational attainment cannot be explained solely through class, ethnicity or gender and it is necessary to look at the interactions between these factors to identify the groups that have lowest and highest attainment [ (Disadvantage, ethnicity, gender and educational attainment:, 2010) ]. For example although girls generally outperform boys, in 2001/2, 43 percent of Bangladeshi males were participating in higher education compared with 33 percent of Bangladeshi females and 54 percent of Pakistani males were participating in higher education compared with 44 percent of Pakistani females. Minority ethnic students are more likely to come from low income families – Pakistanis and Bangladeshis especially; over 60 per cent of Pakistani and Bangladeshi households are defined as in poverty compared to 20 percent of white households (Modood, 2006), However in 2001/2 Whites, at 38 percent, had the lowest partition rates in Higher Education, below Bangladeshis at 39 percent and Pakistani at 49 percent [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black Caribbean, and Black African (who had the highest partition rates in higher education at 73 percent) however are less likely to study at the prestigious universities, are more likely to drop out, and are less likely to attain a high grade degree. This is less applicable to Indian and Chinese students however (Modood, 2006) who have the largest proportion of middle class members and the highest attainment [ (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) ].
In conclusion it would appear that recent reforms in education such as the Academies Programme, the widening of access into further and higher education and sociological concepts such as the labelling theory, self fulfilling prophecy, counter school sub-cultures and the hidden curriculum have shaped our understanding of educational attainment and have all been influenced by demographic factors such as class ethnicity and gender. Although it is clear that each factor has an impact on the education and attainment of students, it is also clear that different factors have different effects, for example class has over five times the effect gender has, and ethnicity has twice the effect. When these demographic factors are combined the results are also varied, for example in 2001/2 Pakistanis, who are more likely to come from low income backgrounds, had the same partition rates in Higher education as Chinese students – who have the largest population of middle-class members; however Pakistani students are less likely than Chinese students to gain a high grade degree and are also more likely to drop out. Also, although there is evidence of girls outperforming boys throughout the educational system, in 2001/2 there were a higher percentage of Bangladeshi and Pakistani boys in higher education compared to Bangladeshi and Pakistani girls, which is evidence of the fact that focusing solely on one demographic factor is not sufficient to gain a full understanding of educational attainment.
The Term Paper on Changing Nature of Higher Education
Proprietary education first appeared in the 1600’s about the same time that institutions like Harvard were being created. For much of US History these schools provided popular mass education in contrast to traditional colleges that were often reserved for the elites (Thelin, 2011). Generally, the purpose of these schools, besides profitability was to provide practical and narrowly focused ...
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