Transcript
Education
Social Problems Lecture 17
Cary Gabriel Costello
Reflecting on education
Why are you at college in general
What got you here
Why are you at UWM
Why not Harvard, or MATC?
On public education
The Jeffersonian called for a national school system supported by taxes, so that all U.S citizens would have education to be informed voters.
He did not get his wish, education remained private with most being schooled at home. Colleges were very few and private, most only accepted white men, and only wealthy attended.
But a long trajectory to getting there
History of public education
Elementary focus for many years
High school and college emerge together
The Wisconsin Idea
Slow spread of public basic education
Starting with one room all age schoolhouses
Voluntary: Most children who attended stayed only long enough to read and do simple math.
1840’s: 55% of American children school at least part of the year
1910: 70% attended, half in one room schools, half in schools with grade divisions
Public High schools
In the 1800’s some high schools developed but were only for youths hoping to attended college
The ideal of a high school education being necessary spread rapidly in the 1990s
By 1940, half of U.S young adults had high school diplomas
Today. its 85%
Public Colleges
Wisconsin was a leader in the founding of state-sponsored college education in 1848
The Wisconsin ideal that state-sponsored university education and research must benefit the entire state
What is education for?
Functionalist perspective: the manifest function is to educate students so they can be productive in the economy and participate in the democratic process
Education: the great equalizer
The latent functions of education
Functionalists name several:
Babysitting: just keeping young people busy so parents can work
Social network production
Shifted functions from the family : counseling, meeting emotional and physical needs of students
School lunch provided to students living below the federal poverty line
Conflict perspectives
Education is not a great equalizer but a divider
Reproducing patterns of privilege according to race, gender and class
Education does not equalize
Total years of schooling are predicted by the race, gender and class of a student
For students with the same educational attainment, whites earn more than Latinx and African Americans
True for all ranges of years of schooling, but more pronounced as years of schooling increase
Inequality and school funding
Funding of public elementary education is about 10% federal, 40% state, and 50% from local property taxes
Schools in wealthy areas can spend much more per pupil based on a lower rate of tax
Low school funding
Facilities are poor, old, dingy
Far fewer computers, old textbooks
Poor teacher salary can’t attract the best teachers
Larger class sizes
Inequality in treatment
Schools have a formal curriculum
Math, reading, social studies etc.
Schools have a hidden curriculum
Functionalist approach: instill values such as docility, punctuality, orderliness, busyness
Conflict approach: reproduce a social hierarchy and assign students to that hierarchy of privilege
Inequity in Wisconsin
Wisconsin has the worst racial disparity in school suspensions of any U.S. state
WI is the second worst state in terms of the disparity between white and black high school graduation rates
School inequality is increasing nationally
Through increasing de facto segregation
Because of the siphoning off of public school funds into private school voucher systems that only richer families can benefit from
Because of a failing experiment with charter schools, which have increased segregation but which have a high failure rate
Pierre Bourdieu
20th century French sociologist
Wrote about how students enter education with different backgrounds and how schools transform this into stratified credentials (e.g. grades, types of diploma)
Bourdieu on cultural capital
If economic capital is money and social capital exists in social networks, cultural capital is the resource an individual has in terms of the value of his/her knowledge, style, interests and skills
Students enter school with different amounts of the cultural capital valued by schools
How cultural capital is “read”
Every student has cultural capital of some variety, but certain types are privileged
The knowledge, skills, grammar, interaction style etc. that middle class white children bring with them to schools is “read” as talent or intelligence
The capital of students’ families
Middle class families have more economic capital, so their kids can have enriching experiences like music lessons, tutoring
Middle class families have social capital: their neighbors are on the school board and their values represented
They also have cultural capital: raise their children with the approved grammar and style
Tracking
Functionalist rationale: separating students by ability group benefits all students and society
Each group learns at a comfortable pace
Each group can be taught the skills most useful to students at that ability level
Conflict perspective: tracking as a route to reproducing social privilege in schools
Bourdieu’s perspective
Tracking is done not according to intelligence but according to cultural capital
Segregates by class/race
In the U.S. tracking segregates schools by race from within
Tracking, privilege and stigma
Students tracked highly are privileged in terms of resources granted, and in terms of psychological benefit of feeling smart
Students tracked lowly experience stigma
Learn to see themselves as stupid, doomed to failure, undeserving
The self-fulfilling prophecy
Students who have teachers who believe they will do well do in fact perform well
Rosenthal & Jacobson study: teachers told some students were identified by tests as “spurters”: at the end of the year these students had higher grades and tested higher on IQ tests
Popular myth about race and schools
Often reported in the media is the idea that African American children underperform in schools because of an oppositional culture in which academic success is degraded as “acting white”
The oppositional fallacy
Studies in fact show that Black and white elementary school students are equally likely to desire to do well and to equate school success with future success in life
Studies also show Black and white teens tend to tease high-achievers (“nerds”) while simultaneously desiring academic success
College stratification
Same issues of inequality in costs, cultural capital
Many more high-achieving students of color never enroll in college than white achievers
Explosive rise in tuitions has exacerbated this
Since records were started in 1978, tuition costs have increased by over 1200%--4 times the rate of inflation
Due to decrease in tax funds dedicated to public universities
Due to growth in layers of administration
Due to spending on “branding,” new sports facilities, and other noneducational expenses
Spending on direct educational expenses and instructor salaries, on the other hand, has not kept pace with inflation
My research on professional schools
Patterns of social stratification are replicated during professional schooling despite high qualifications of all admitted—why?
Conservative theory: inappropriate affirmative action
Liberal theory: widespread conspiracy to discriminate
Both are wrong
Success at professional schools
Understood by professional students and instructors as a cognitive issue
“smarts” + studying = success
In fact, two tasks to master: learn substance matter, and internalize an appropriate professional identity
The latter generally goes unrecognized
My findings
Students’ whose personal identities are consonant with their new professional role internalize a new professional identity smoothly and imperceptibly
Students’ whose personal identities conflict with the new professional role suffer identity dissonance
Example: Jasmine
Moral of the education story
For education to become the “great equalizer,” need two things:
Equalize the resources
Acknowledge and address the hidden curriculum that transforms certain sorts of social capital into economic wealth
