Week 7 - Chapter 16: Education PDF

Education 16 What was the United States’ high school graduation rate in 2015? a 93 percent b 83 percent c 63 percent d 53 percent Turn the page for the correct answer. 519 I f you answered a, you would be very optimistic, but you would be incorrect. In 2015, just 83 percent of public high school students earned a high school diploma within four years of entering the ninth grade, so b is the correct response. Rates are even lower among blacks and Hispanics, who have graduation rates of just 75 and 78 percent, respec- tively, compared to 88 percent among whites and 90 percent among Asians (U.S. Depart- ment of Education, 2017). Our nation’s overall high school graduation rate trails behind that of most other wealthy Western nations. In 2014, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, South Korea, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and New Zealand all boasted rates at or above 90 percent (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2017). One of the key motivations behind increasing the high school graduation rate is to improve the life chances of young Americans. High school dropouts have much higher unemployment rates than other Americans and are particularly vulnerable during economic downturns. For example, during the recessionary year of 2011, high school dropouts suffered a 14.3 percent unemployment rate, compared to rates of 9.6 percent for high school graduates and just 4.3 percent for college graduates (Alliance for Excel- lent Education, 2011). In 2015, the median earnings of young adults with a college degree ($50,000) were 64 percent higher than that of young adults with just a high school diploma ($30,500) and twice as high as young adults without a high school diploma ($25,000) (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). These disparities accumulate dramatically dur- ing one’s working life: Over the course of his or her lifetime, a high school dropout earns an average of $331,000 less than a high school graduate (Carnevale, Rose, and Cheah, 2011). The costs of being a high school dropout transcend the individual and affect our nation as a whole. Some researchers have estimated that if the high school dropout rate were cut in half, the United States would save more than $7 billion a year in Medicaid spending (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2013). LEA R NING OBJECTIV ES 1 BASIC CONCEPTS Learn sociologists’ explanations for achievement gaps among different groups of students. 2 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF EDUCATION Understand the social functions of schooling. Learn three major sociological perspectives on the role of schooling in society. 3 RESEARCH ON EDUCATION TODAY Become familiar with the most important research on whether education reduces or perpetuates inequality. Learn the social and cultural influences on educational achievement. 4 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Learn about some of the current educational issues that concern sociologists, including the debate over the sources of IQ, the merits of homeschooling, and the benefits of international education. 520 CHAPTER 16Education Why do so many young Americans drop out of high school when the costs of doing so are so potentially devastating? One way to answer this question is by looking at national statistics: Students attending poor and underperforming schools, students with poor attendance and failing grades, students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and students who have very little interest or engagement in school are most likely to drop out (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2010). However, another way to understand the reasons young people drop out of school is to think about the personal experiences of one dropout. Christine is an 18-year-old Puerto Rican American who lives in the Bronx, New York. She is a bright young woman who for many years has dreamed of becoming a doctor. When she graduated from eighth grade, she was assigned to a notoriously dangerous, low- performing public high school called UPHS, about two miles away from her home. When Christine arrived at UPHS, she was pleased to learn that a new small school that part- nered with a local hospital had opened up in her city. The school was designed for students with an interest in the medical professions. Christine applied, but her counselor informed her that all slots for the new school had already been ﬁlled. The counselor explained to Christine that he would put her on the list for another small school about to open up for students interested in careers in law enforcement. Christine’s father died when she was nine and her mother suffered chronic and seri- ous medical problems, so Christine had no one to advocate for her. For two years, she attended classes and waited for the new small school to open. Christine enjoyed some of her classes but felt ambivalent about others. Some classes were overcrowded, and there was immense pressure on teachers to prepare students for state-mandated standard- ized tests. To make matters worse, several of Christine’s classmates were underpre- pared for high school–level work, and they often misbehaved and disrupted class. Not all teachers had the patience or the ability to deal with the difficult situation effectively. Christine also had to contend with the general disorder and violence in the school and the heavy police presence that had been added to the school in an effort to restore order. Like many of the students at UPHS, Christine came to view the heavy policing of stu- dents as another reason school was becoming less and less welcoming and enjoyable. Several times during that period, Christine’s mother was hospitalized, and Christine moved in with a foster mother who lived several miles from the school. She would meet with her counselor at school regularly to express her interest in a transfer. She believed she would do better in a school closer to where she was living and one that offered a more ﬂexible or accelerated program. She was beginning to fall behind with her course credits and wanted very much to graduate on time. At the beginning of her junior year, Christine ﬁnally transferred to a new school and was back living with her mother. Things were going well for a while, but she felt pressured to earn money because her mother was living on a ﬁxed income and had no spare money for her daughter. Christine worked at a supermarket for a while, and then at a restaurant. But the competing demands of school and paid work proved overwhelming. Unable to keep up the difficult pace, Christine ultimately dropped out of high school, although she vowed that she would eventually enter a GED (General Educational Development) program and earn her high school–equivalency degree. There are many aspects of Christine’s life that hurt her chance of high school graduation—including her family background, her neighborhood, the economy, and the structure and organization of her school. Children from poor homes often must take part-time jobs to support their families ﬁnancially, making it hard to ﬁnd time to study and excel in school. Parents who struggle with economic or health problems of their own Education521 often cannot help their children with their studies or advocate for their children when they face academic challenges. Changes in family structure, such as a parent’s divorce or even a major illness, often mean that a child must move to a new home and new school, which can be highly disruptive to one’s academic progress. Dangerous school systems are uninviting if not intimidating, leading many students to decide that being a high school dropout can’t be worse than risking physical violence at school. What happens to young people after they drop out? Some ﬂounder, engage in criminal activity, and spend time in prison. Others, such as Christine, try to ﬁnd their way—despite the daunting odds. Today, Christine works full-time in a supermarket. She was recruited to attend a proprietary (or for-proﬁt) school that offers training and credentials for a number of careers in the medical ﬁeld. Christine has given up on her dream of being a doctor and now has a new and shorter-term goal: a career in medical billing. Christine’s story touches on many of the issues of interest to sociologists of education today. Education is a social institution that teaches individuals how to be members of soci- ety. Through education, we become aware of the common characteristics we share with other members of society and gain at least some sort of knowledge about our society’s geo- graphical and political position in the world and its past history. The educational system both directly and indirectly exposes young people to the lessons they will need to learn to become players in other major social institutions, such as the economy and the family. In this chapter, we will provide a historical and theoretical overview of the sociology of education. We will also review cutting-edge research and investigate several puzzles that researchers continue to grapple with. In doing so, we will reveal the many complex and fascinating ways our lives are shaped by the social institution of education. T HE ANSWER I S B. 1 BASIC CONCEPTS Before we delve into complex theories of the ways that education shapes our everyday lives, we ﬁrst deﬁne several key concepts that are essential to our understanding of this major social institution. Achievement Gap: Components, Patterns, and Explanations One of the core concepts in the sociology of education is the notion of educational inequalities, or an achievement gap among different groups of students. What this gap means is that certain groups, such as African Americans and other minorities, have achieved lower scores on standardized tests and other measures of academic success (such as high school graduation rates and entrance into college) relative to their white counterparts. Sociologists have achievement gap Ċ Disparity on a number of sought to explain achievement gaps in a vari- educational measures between the performance ety of ways and highlight inﬂuences such as of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race, ethnicity, ability, and social background— or the educational and eco- socioeconomic status. nomic resources of one’s parents—as well as intelligence. 522 CHAPTER 16Education Sociologist Sean Reardon has done extensive research on the achievement gap, identifying its sources and how it has changed over time. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, the achievement gap between the richest and poorest kids— those children living in households at the 10th and 90th percentile of the income distribution—increased dramatically. For children born in 2001, the class-based achievement gap is 30 to 40 percent larger than it was for children born in the 1970s. Today, the gap between rich and poor students is nearly twice as large as the well- documented black-white achievement gap (Reardon, 2011, 2012). Four explanations have been offered for the stark and growing socioeconomic gap in achievement (Reardon, 2012). First, middle- and upper-middle-class parents tend to invest more heavily in their children’s cognitive development—reading stories, playing word games, and consciously engaging their children in activities explicitly related to intellectual development—rather than in more basic needs such as health, nutrition, or safety. Sociologist Julia Wrigley’s analysis of parenting magazine articles throughout the twentieth century found that in recent decades, children’s cognitive development became a major concern of middle-class parents, who saw success in school as essential for later career success (Wrigley, 1989). Second, income inequality has increased starkly throughout the late twentieth century, as we learned in Chapter 8. Reardon (2012) argues that those with greater income can buy the goods and services needed to help their child thrive in school; thus, the beneﬁts accrued to the “haves” versus “ have-nots” have escalated. Third, income is related to a range of other social resources that enable parents to support their children’s intellectual development; parental education provides them with speciﬁc skills and knowledge that can help their children’s school performance. Income also is related to family structure, as we saw in Chapter 15. Coresidential married parents may have more time to engage their children in activities such as reading or writing (Reardon, 2012). Finally, residential segregation on the grounds of income has also increased throughout the late twentieth century. Richer families can afford homes in safer neighborhoods with higher-quality schools and more enrichment activities. As we will see later in this chapter, neighbor- hoods and schools can powerfully shape what, how, and how successfully children learn. Cognitive and Noncognitive Resources Student performance on standardized tests and intelligence may seem like simple concepts, but both are complex and potentially controversial. For years, psychologists, geneticists, statisticians, and others have debated whether there exists a single human capability that can be called intelligence, and if so, whether it rests on innately deter- mined differences. Intelligence is difficult to deﬁne because, as the term is usually employed, it covers qualities that may be unrelated to one another. We might suppose, for example, that the “purest” form of intelligence is the ability to solve abstract mathe- matical puzzles. However, people who are very good at such puzzles sometimes show low capabilities in other areas, such as history or art. Scholars today increasingly believe intelligence Ċ Level of intellectual ability, there are multiple forms of intelligence, includ- particularly as measured by IQ (intelligence quotient) tests. ing aptitudes in art, music, language, inter- personal relations, and spatial skills, to name emotional intelligence Ċ The ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of a few. Some scholars have also argued that oneself or others. emotional intelligence is just as important to Basic Concepts523 professional and personal success as is the more IQ (intelligence quotient) Ċ A score attained intellect-based types of intelligence (Gardner on tests of symbolic or reasoning abilities. and Hatch, 1989). Emotional intelligence is gen- erally deﬁned as the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself or others (Goleman, 1996). Because the concept of intelligence has proven so resistant to accepted deﬁnition, some psychologists have proposed (and many educators have by default accepted) that intelligence should simply be regarded as “what IQ (intelligence quotient) tests mea- sure.” Most IQ tests consist of a mixture of conceptual and computational problems. The tests are constructed so that the average score is 100 points: Anyone scoring below is thus labeled “ below-average intelligence,” and anyone scoring above is “above-average intelligence.” In spite of the fundamental difficulty in measuring intelligence, IQ tests are widely used in research studies and in schools and businesses. However, soci- ologists remain critical and wary of the CONCEPT CHECKS 3 concept. Researchers have found that IQ is powerfully affected by the socioeconomic resources of one’s parents, thus calling 1. Name at least three factors that contribute to high school dropout. into question the belief that intelligence is 2. What is the “achievement gap”? “innate” or “inborn” (Fischer et al., 1996). 3. Define and contrast different types of intelli- Later in this chapter, we will delve further gence. into the debates surrounding the meaning of, and inﬂuences on, intelligence. 2 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES OF EDUCATION When we think of education, we tend to see it from an individual perspective. We may think of our own reasons for attending college: to cultivate our intelligence, enjoy a fun and social “college experience,” or prepare for a career. We also tend to think of education as a means of upward mobility. But sociologists look beyond the individual student and his or her goals to connect these to the larger social functions of schools. We discuss three major sociological theories of the role schooling plays in the larger society: school- ing as a process of assimilation or acculturation; schooling as a credentialing mecha- nism; and schooling as a process of social, or cultural, reproduction. Assimilation The ﬁrst perspective, schooling as a process of assimilation, focuses on what might be called the “official” curriculum and looks at questions such as how learning a common language and the facts of a common history and geography creates a sense of “affinity” among members of society, which is something less than full consensus (Shils, 1972). The official curriculum promotes feelings of nationalism and is instrumental in the develop- ment of national societies, constituted of citizens from different regions who would then know the same history and speak a common language (Ramirez and Boli, 1987; Shils, 1972). In this approach, the content of education is particularly important in creating a common culture. For example, public schools historically have taught the children of immigrants 524 CHAPTER 16Education about “American” foods, holidays, legends, and heroes to help them (and their immi- grant parents) become fully steeped in our nation’s culture. But even children whose parents are part of the country’s dominant culture depend on the official curricu- lum to develop an image of themselves as Americans with a common history. Credentialism A second inﬂuential perspective is cre- dentialism. Adherents to this way of thinking place less emphasis on the con- tent of an official curriculum. They argue that the speciﬁc skills and information that students learn in the classroom are much less relevant to their later achieve- ments than the actual diploma. The primary social function of mass educa- tion derives from the need for degrees to determine one’s credentials for a job, even if the work involved has nothing to do with the education one has received (Col- lins, 1979). Over time, the practice of cre- Practices such as the Pledge of Allegiance help promote feel- dentialism results in demands for higher ings of nationalism among students. credentials, which require higher levels of educational attainment. Jobs that 30 years ago would have required a high school diploma, such as that of a sales represen- tative, now require a college degree. Since educational attainment is closely related to class position, credentialism reinforces the class structure within a society. Hidden Curriculum A third perspective, described as “critical” or Marxist, places the emphasis on social reproduction. In the context of education, social reproduction refers to the ways in which schools help perpetuate social and economic inequalities across the generations. A num- ber of sociologists have argued that the hidden curriculum is the mechanism through which social reproduction occurs. The hidden curriculum refers to the idea that stu- dents from different social class backgrounds are provided different types of education, in terms of both curricular materials and the kinds of interactions in which their teach- ers engage them. More speciﬁcally, the notion of the hidden curriculum suggests that the expansion of education was brought about by employers’ needs for certain personality characteristics in their workers—self-discipline, dependability, punctuality, obedience, and the like—which are all taught in schools. hidden curriculum Ċ Traits of behavior or attitudes that are learned at school but not In their classic study of social reproduction, included in the formal curriculum—for example, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) pro- gender differences. vide an example of how the hidden curriculum Sociological Theories of Education525 works. They argue that modern education is a response to the economic needs of indus- trial capitalism. Schools help provide the technical and social skills industrial enterprise requires, and they instill discipline and respect for authority in the labor force. Schools also socialize children to get along with one another. Being able to “play well with others” is, after all, an important characteristic of a good worker. Authority relations in school, which are hierarchical and place strong emphasis on obedience, directly parallel those dominating the workplace. The rewards and punish- ments held out in school also replicate those found in the world of work. Schools help motivate some individuals toward “achievement” and “success” while discouraging oth- ers, who ﬁnd their way into low-paying jobs. You might even have noticed this in your own high school, where students from wealthier backgrounds took college-prep courses, while their classmates from more disadvantaged backgrounds were tracked into voca- tional programs. A cruder way of putting this idea is that schools facilitate the ruling class’s need to exploit a docile or cooperative workforce. Here the emphasis is on the fact that much of what students learn in school has nothing directly to do with the formal content of les- sons. Schools, by the nature of the discipline and regimentation they entail, tend to teach students an uncritical acceptance of the existing social order. These lessons are not con- sciously taught; they are implicit in school procedures and organization. Thus, the hidden curriculum teaches children from underprivileged backgrounds that their role in life is “to know their place and to sit still with it” (Illich, 1983). Children spend long hours in school, and they learn a great deal more in the school context than is contained in the lessons they are actually taught. Children get an early taste of what the world of work will be like, learn- ing that they are expected to be punctual and to apply themselves diligently to the tasks that those in authority set for them. From this perspective, even if a student in a poor inner- city school learned very little in her classes, the basic training she received in arriving on time for class would end up serving her well as a worker at a fast-food restaurant. Such an analysis can be quite depressing, but it may be a realistic way of understanding the place of education in the lives of such people. Adherents to this perspective don’t completely dismiss the content of the official cur- riculum. They accept that the development of mass education has had many beneﬁcial consequences. Illiteracy rates are low compared with premodern times, and schooling provides access to learning experiences that are intrinsically self-fulﬁlling. Yet because education has expanded mainly as a response to economic needs, the school system falls far short of what enlightened reformers had hoped it would achieve. That is, according to this perspective, schooling has not become the “great equalizer”; rather, within the current economic and political system, schooling reproduces social-class stratiﬁcation. Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Capital Another seminal ﬁgure who wrote about education and reproduction is French soci- ologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argued that schools reproduce social-class inequality by rewarding certain cultural norms over others (1984, 1988). Bourdieu’s focus on the role of culture in the process of reproduction distinguished his theory from a strict Marxist analysis that focused on how schools mirrored and reproduced economic-class struc- tures. For this reason, he used the term cultural reproduction. In relation to his theory of cultural reproduction, Bourdieu argued that people could possess many kinds of capital 526 CHAPTER 16Education other than ﬁnancial capital. Speciﬁcally, he was concerned with the existence of what he called cultural capital Ċ The advantages that well-to-do parents usually provide their children. cultural capital. That is, his theory of cultural reproduction proposes that middle- and upper- class children come to schools with a certain kind of cultural capital—speech patterns, demeanors, tastes, and so on—that the school values, and thus rewards. Bourdieu argues that children from low-income or working- class homes do not possess these same cul- tural characteristics and thus are placed at a disadvantage in schools. Another important concept Bourdieu offers is the notion of habitus, which refers to a class-based set of dispositions, such as taste, language use, and demeanor. For Bourdieu, these dispositions are internalized unconsciously through social practices within one’s social group. Put simply, poor and working- class children are socialized into a particular habitus— one that is not valued within the school system. In arguing that working- class individuals are unconsciously socialized into a working- class cul- ture (and therefore are not likely to obtain the dispositions required for school success), Bourdieu, like Bowles and Gintis, ultimately proposes a theory of reproduction in which the cycle of domination seems unbreakable. These kinds of theories have been challenged by the notion of schools as contested spaces (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1985; Willis, 1977). It has been proposed that social repro- duction does not happen without struggle or opposition from oppressed groups. Written over 30 years ago but still important today, Paul Willis’s inﬂuential ethnographic study of working-class British youth known as “the lads” shows how working-class students exhibit an implicit understanding that schooling is not structured to beneﬁt their group (industrial factory workers) as a whole. The lads express their understanding that schooling is not designed to better their own conditions as members of the working class by embracing a working-class culture that valorizes manual labor and a counter-school culture. In doing so, they participate in the reproduction of their own class subordina- tion. Willis suggests that these insights demonstrate that working-class youth are not passive dupes in the process of reproduction. Willis also suggests that the emphasis on the lads being in control of their destiny points to possibilities for organized resistance. A number of subsequent studies of resistance in schooling in the United States (Foley, 1994; McLaren, 1985; McLeod, 1995; Solomon, 1992; Valenzuela, 1999) have expanded our understanding of schools as contested spaces. Let’s return for a moment to Christine’s story. What sociological theories might be rel- evant to her experience of schooling? Christine was very likely assimilated into a common American culture to some extent through her schooling experiences. She also attempted to gain credentials through the propri- etary school so she could enter a particular 3 profession. But perhaps a theory of repro- duction is most relevant to Christine’s CONCEPT CHECKS experience. What do you think Christine’s 1. Contrast credentialism and social-reproduction future will hold? How have school cur- perspectives on education. ricula, interactions with school personnel, 2. How does the hidden curriculum serve to per- and her own choices inﬂuenced that future? petuate social and economic inequalities? One thing is for sure: One’s educational 3. What did Pierre Bourdieu mean by “cultural path is often quite complicated and shaped capital”? by myriad inﬂuences. Sociological Theories of Education527 3 RESEARCH ON EDUCATION TODAY In the previous sections, we learned that the purpose and function of schooling have been viewed from a variety of perspectives. On the one hand, education has consistently been seen as a means of equalization. Access to universal education, it has been argued, could help reduce disparities in wealth and power. On the other hand, some theorists have argued that schools serve to perpetuate, or reproduce, inequalities. Are educational opportunities equal for everyone? Has education in fact proven to be a great equalizer? There is a vast amount of research that examines these questions. Next, we outline some of the important research related to educational equality and differential outcomes (when one group consistently outperforms another group in terms of educational achieve- ment). The concepts offered here help to frame recent debates surrounding education in the United States. We also report on recent studies that help us understand the develop- ment and proliferation of the Internet, and “digital gaps,” or disparities in its access and use. Macrosocial Influences on Student Outcomes: Do Schools and Neighborhoods Matter? Many of us believe that if we are intelligent and hardworking, and receive encouragement from our teachers, parents, and peers, we can succeed in school. This belief is true—to a point—but the types of schools we attend, the types of classes we take, and the experiences we have within those schools also may affect our lives. The notion that schools may mat- ter dates back to the classic studies of sociologist James Coleman in the 1960s. The ways that schools shape our daily lives both today and in our futures have been documented dramatically by author Jonathan Kozol. Yet a large and controversial body of research on school tracking emphasizes that even within a single school, one’s outcomes are power- fully shaped by the types of classes to which one is assigned. COLEMAN’S STUDY OF BETWEEN-SCHOOL EFFECTS IN AMERICAN EDUCATION The study of “ between-school effects,” or the ways students’ experiences at School A dif- fer from those at School B, has been the focus of sociological research for more than ﬁve decades. One of the classic investigations of educational inequality was undertaken in the United States in the 1960s. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 required the commissioner of education to prepare a report on educational inequalities resulting from differences in ethnic background, religion, and national origin. James Coleman, a sociologist, was appointed director of the research program. The outcome was a study based on one of the most extensive research projects ever carried out in sociology (Coleman et al., 1966). Information was collected on more than half a million pupils who were given a range of achievement tests assessing verbal and nonverbal abilities, reading levels, and math- ematical skills. Sixty thousand teachers also completed forms providing data for about 4,000 schools. The report found that a large majority of children went to schools that effectively segregated black students from white students. Almost 80 percent of schools attended by white students contained only 10 percent or fewer African American stu- dents. White and Asian American students scored higher on achievement tests than did blacks and other ethnic minority students. Coleman had supposed his results would also show that predominantly African American schools had worse facilities, larger classes, 528 CHAPTER 16Education and more inferior buildings than predominantly white schools. But, surprisingly, the results showed far fewer differences of this type than had been anticipated. Coleman, therefore, concluded that the material resources provided in schools made little difference to educational performance; the decisive inﬂuence was the children’s backgrounds. The report stated, “Inequalities imposed on children by their home, neigh- borhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school” (Coleman et al., 1966). However, some evidence suggested that students from deprived backgrounds who formed close friendships with those from more favorable circumstances were likely to be more successful educationally. Not long after Coleman’s study, Christopher Jencks and coworkers (1972) produced an equally celebrated work that reviewed empirical evidence accumulated on education and inequality up to the end of the 1960s. Jencks reaffirmed two of the earlier study’s con- clusions: First, educational and occupational attainment are governed mainly by family background and nonschool factors, and second, on their own, educational reforms can produce only minor effects on existing inequalities. Jencks’s work has been criticized on methodological grounds, but the study’s overall conclusions remain persuasive. Subse- quent research has tended to conﬁrm them. CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND Between 1988 and 1990, the journalist Jonathan Kozol studied schools in about 30 neigh- borhoods around the United States. He used no special logic in choosing the schools, except that he went where he happened to know teachers, principals, or ministers. What startled him most was the segregation within these schools and the inequalities among them. Kozol brought these terrible conditions to the attention of the American people in his books, including Savage Inequalities (1991) and Amazing Grace (1995). In his passionate opening chapter of Savage Inequalities, Kozol ﬁrst took readers to East St. Louis, Illinois, a city that was 98 percent black, had no regular trash collection, and had few jobs. Three- quarters of its residents were living on welfare at the time. City residents were forced to use their backyards as garbage dumps, which attracted a plague of ﬂies and rats during the hot summer months. One resident told Kozol about “rats as big as puppies” that lived in his mother’s yard. City residents also contended with fumes from two major chemical plants in the city. Another public health problem resulted from raw sewage, which regularly backed up into people’s homes. East St. Louis had some of the sickest children in the United States, with extremely high rates of infant death, asthma, and poor nutrition and extremely low rates of immunization. Only 55 percent of the children had been fully immunized for polio, diphtheria, measles, and whooping cough. Among the city’s other social problems were crime, dilapidated housing, poor health care, and lack of education. Kozol showed how the problems of the city often spilled over into the schools—in this case, literally. Over the course of two weeks, raw sewage backed up into the school on three occasions, each time requiring the evacuation of students and the cancellation of classes. Kozol documented other problems, which he argued stemmed from inadequate and disparate funding. Teachers often had to hold classes without chalk or paper. One teacher commented, “Our problems are severe. I don’t even know where to begin. I have no materials with the exception of a single textbook given to each child. If I bring in anything else—books or tapes or magazines—I bring it in myself. The high school has no VCRs. They are such a crucial tool. So many good things run on public television. I can’t make use of anything I see unless I unhook my VCR and bring it into school. Research on Education Today529 The AV equipment in the school is so old that we are pressured not to use it.” Comments from students reﬂected the same concerns. “I don’t go to physics class, because my lab has no equipment,” one student said. Another added, “The typewriters in my typing class don’t work.” Only 55 percent of the students in this high school ultimately graduate, about one-third of whom go on to college. Kozol also wrote about the other end of the inequality spectrum, taking readers into a wealthy suburban school in Westchester County, outside New York City. This school had 96 computers for the 546 students. Most students studied a foreign language for four or five years. Two-thirds of the senior class were enrolled in an advanced place- ment (AP) class. Kozol visited an AP class to ask students about their perceptions of inequalities within the educational system. Students at this school were well aware of the economic advantages that they enjoyed at both home and school. In regard to their views about less-privileged students, the general consensus was that equal spending among schools was a worthy goal, but it would probably make little difference because poor students lacked motivation and would fail because of other problems. These stu- dents also realized that equalizing spending could have adverse effects on their school. As one student said, “If you equalize the money, someone’s got to be short- changed. I don’t doubt that [poor] children are getting a bad deal. But do we want everyone to get a mediocre education?” More than two decades later, Kozol went back and revisited the neighborhoods and children he studied to ﬁnd out what had happened to them. His portraits are often depress- ing, with many of the children growing up to be troubled adults. Their lives often were derailed by alcohol abuse, unwanted pregnancies, murders, prison time, and even death by suicide. Yet Kozol did ﬁnd that a handful of the students succeeded despite the odds. Most of these resilient children had been fortunate to have especially devoted parents, support from their religious community, or a serendipitous scholarship opportunity. As Kozol noted, “These children had unusual advantages: someone intervened in every case.” For example, one young girl named Pineapple, who Kozol met when she was a kindergart- ner, went on to graduate college and become a social worker. Pineapple had attended a school that Kozol described as “almost always in a state of chaos because so many teach- ers did not stay for long.” A local minister helped her get scholarships to private schools. The daughter of Spanish-speaking immigrants, Pineapple had to work hard to overcome deﬁcits in reading, writing, and basic study skills, but she and her older sister both went on to become the ﬁrst in their family to ﬁnish high school and attend college (Kozol, 2012). While the personal tales of Pineapple and her sister are inspiring, Kozol’s analyses reveal that very little has improved in the past two decades. For example, there remain vast disparities in educational spending in largely black and Latino central cities versus largely white well-to- do suburbs. He reported that in 2002–2003, New York City spent $11,627 on each public school child, while in Nassau County, the towns of Manhasset and Great Neck spent $22,311 and $19,705, respectively. These patterns weren’t limited to the New York area but rather were found throughout the United States. Because school funding tends to come from local property taxes, wealthier areas generate more fund- ing for schools, while poorer neighborhoods with few lavish private homes have far less money for schools. As with his earlier studies of East St. Louis, Kozol visited schools that were just a few miles apart geographically but that offered vastly different educational opportunities. While suburban white schools would offer advanced math, literature, and an array of arts electives, the nearby primarily black school would offer classes like hair- dressing, typing, and auto shop. Ten years later, the situation hadn’t changed: In 2013, 530 CHAPTER 16Education the Chicago Ridge School District, where two-thirds of students come from low-income families, spent $9,794 per child. Less than an hour north, in a wealthy Chicago suburb, the Rondout District spent $28,639 per student (Turner et al., 2016). Kozol’s poignant journalistic account of educational inequality has become part of our nation’s conventional wisdom on the subject of educational inequality. But many sociologists have argued that although Kozol’s book (1991) is a moving portrait, it pro- vides an inaccurate and incomplete view of educational inequality. Why would Kozol’s research not be compelling? There are several reasons, including the unsystematic way he chose the schools he studied. Other sociologists have proposed a variety of theories and identiﬁed myriad factors contributing to inequality and differential outcomes. TRACKING AND WITHIN- SCHOOL EFFECTS Kozol’s work vividly revealed the vast disparities between schools found in wealthy ver- sus impoverished school districts. Yet sociologists are also interested in inequalities even within a single school. The practice of tracking, also known as ability grouping—dividing students into groups that receive different instruction on the basis of assumed similari- ties in ability or attainment—is common in American schools. In some schools, students are tracked only for certain subjects—in others, for all subjects. Sociologists have long believed that tracking is entirely negative in its effects and that its use partly explains why schooling seems to have little effect on existing social inequalities, since being placed in a particular track labels a student as either able or otherwise. As we have seen in the case of labeling and deviance, once attached, such labels are hard to break away from. Children from more privileged backgrounds, in which academic work is encouraged, are likely to ﬁnd themselves in the higher tracks early on—and by and large stay there. A now-classic study by Jeannie Oakes (1985) examined tracking in 25 junior and senior high schools, both large and small and in both urban and rural areas. She concentrated on differences within schools rather than between them. She found that although several schools claimed they did not track students, virtually all of them had mechanisms for sorting students into groups that seemed to be alike in ability and achievement, to make teaching easier. In other words, they employed tracking but did not choose to use the term tracking. Even where tracking existed only in this informal fashion, Oakes found strong labels developing—“high ability,” “low-achieving,” “slow,” “average,” and so on. Individual students in these groups came to be deﬁned by teachers, other students, and themselves in terms of such labels. A student in a “ high-achieving” group was considered a high- achieving person—smart and quick. Pupils in a “ low-achieving” group came to be seen as slow, below average—or, in more colloquial terms, as “dummies.” What was the effect of tracking on students in the low group? A subsequent study by Oakes (1990) found that these students received a poorer education in terms of the quality of the courses, teachers, and textbooks made available to them. Moreover, the negative effect of tracking affected mostly African American, Latino, and poor students. The usual reason given for tracking is that bright children learn more quickly and effectively in a group of others who are equally able and that clever students are held back if placed in mixed groups. Surveying the evidence, Oakes attempted to show that these assumptions are wrong. The results of later research investigations are not wholly consis- tracking Ċ Dividing students into groups that tent, but a path-breaking study by sociologist receive different instruction on the basis of Adam Gamoran and his colleagues (1995) con- assumed similarities in ability or attainment. cluded that Oakes was partially correct in her Research on Education Today531 arguments. They agreed with Oakes’s conclusions that tracking reinforces previously existing inequalities for average or poor students but countered her argument by assert- ing that tracking does have positive beneﬁts for “advanced” students. The debate about the effects of tracking is sure to continue as scholars analyze more data. SCHOOL DISCIPLINE In the past two decades, scholars and educators have been increasingly interested in another aspect of school culture that may affect student outcomes: school discipline. Some sociologists have noted that there has been a shift in school discipline toward more punitive policies that mirror current trends in our nation’s criminal justice sys- tem. Moreover, this shift has been most acute among schools located in poor areas and attended largely by members of ethnic minority groups. One of the major changes in school discipline came in 1995, when Congress amended the Gun-Free School Zones Act. This act, and subsequent federal mandates, established a “zero-tolerance” policy for weapons and drugs in schools. Zero tolerance was initially meant to address school violence by mandating suspension or expulsion for possession of drugs or weapons in school. However, as it was implemented nationwide, it was expanded to include a broad range of misbehavior. Critics of the policy argue that it has led to unnecessary police intervention in schools and has increased racial bias. For example, data from the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (2014) show that while black students represent only 16 percent of total enrollment, they account for 27 percent of students referred to law enforcement and 31 percent of students subjected to a school- related arrest. Activists and educators opposed to zero tolerance have coined the term school-to-prison pipeline as a way of emphasizing the negative impact of the policy. Disciplinary practices in schools, it has been argued, also appear to be inﬂuenced by media representations and negative images of black and Latino youth. Ann Arnett Fergu- son’s ethnographic study of middle school children (2000), for example, shows how insti- tutional discourses (such as the use of prison metaphors), the subjective views of teachers, and the treatment black boys receive in school inﬂuence the ways in which black boys see themselves—that is, as criminally oriented. Other researchers have noted that punitive school-discipline policies appear to be, in part, a response to low performance in inner-city schools populated by low-income, minority students. Based on ethnographic research in an urban school, Kathleen Nolan and Jean Anyon (2004) theorize that, within our current economy, criminalizing school discipline policies are a means to manage an economically and educationally marginal- ized group. They also contend that when students embrace an oppositional culture, they may no longer be participating in the reproduction of their status as manual laborers, as Paul Willis argued (1977). Instead, as misbehavior comes to be managed by the police in schools, students may be participating in the reproduction of themselves as “crimi- nalized subjects,” or as individuals who will spend a lifetime entangled in one way or another (incarceration, parole, probation) in the criminal justice system. Cultural and Social-Psychological Influences on Student Outcomes Sociologists are not only interested in the ways schools and socioeconomic factors affect children’s educational backgrounds; some are interested also in the ways cultural and psychological factors affect children’s educational opportunities and outcomes. These explanations are typically invoked to explain race and gender differences in 532 CHAPTER 16Education A police officer walks a search and narcotics dog through the halls of a school in Indianapolis. Opponents of punitive school discipline policies claim they create a school-to-prison pipeline. students’ academic outcomes. In general, these theories propose that ethnic minorities and women are more likely than whites and men to be socialized in a way that may disad- vantage them in education (and in the workplace). Although race and gender disparities in many important educational outcomes have narrowed over the past half century, a number of gaps persist; sociologists are intent on ﬁguring out why. RACE AND THE “ACTING WHITE” THESIS As we saw in this chapter’s opening, black and Latino students lag behind white and Asian students in their rates of graduating high school. Yet even at younger ages, an achievement gap has been documented. For example, analyses by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in 2009 and 2011 showed that black and Hispanic stu- dents trailed their white peers by an average of more than 20 test- score points on the standardized math and reading assessments in the fourth and eighth grades, a differ- ence of about two grade levels. These gaps persisted even though the score differentials between black and white students narrowed between 1992 and 2007 in fourth- grade math and reading and eighth- grade math (NCES, 2009, 2011). There are also signifi- cant racial gaps in SAT scores: In 2015, the average scores on the math section for blacks (428) and Hispanics (457) were significantly lower than the average score of whites (534) (Reeves and Halikias, 2017). In attempting to explain these declining yet persistent racial achievement gaps in educa- tion, anthropologists John Ogbu and Signithia “acting white” thesis Ċ The thesis that black students do not aspire to or strive to get good Fordham (1986) proposed the “acting white” grades because it is perceived as “acting white.” thesis. Based on ethnographic research of Research on Education Today533 the educational experiences of black students, Ogbu and Fordham concluded that the achievement gap can be partially explained by black students’ reluctance to embrace school norms, which black students associate with white culture. In subsequent years, however, a number of researchers have challenged the “acting white thesis.” For example, Roslyn Mickelson’s research (1990) on the achievement attitudes of African American students revealed that students held both abstract and concrete attitudes toward schooling. Their abstract attitudes were consistent with mainstream attitudes that placed a high value on education and the attainment of academic credentials for future success. However, these students also held concrete anti-achievement attitudes based on their experiences in school and their perception that they had few options in terms of entrance into higher education or lucrative careers even if they were to obtain a high school diploma. More recently, sociologist Prudence Carter’s study (2005) of the experiences of high school students in New York City revealed that black and Latino students overwhelmingly believe in the importance of school and the need for educational credentials. Carter notes that black and Latino students’ academic and social experiences are heterogeneous, and the most successful students are not necessarily the ones who assimilate to white, main- stream speech patterns, styles, and tastes. Instead, students whom she calls cultural navigators—those who draw from resources from both their home culture and the main- stream culture—tend to be highly successful in school. Ultimately, Carter argues, schools must promote intercultural communication and understanding to mitigate unequal aca- demic outcomes. GENDER AND ACHIEVEMENT For many years, girls performed better on average than boys on standardized tests until they reached the middle years of secondary education. They then fell behind: Boys did bet- ter than girls, particularly in math and science. However, in recent years, we have seen a convergence and, in some cases, a reversal in the gender gap (College Board, 2016). In 2016, boys and girls scored roughly the same on the critical reading section of the SAT, while boys outpaced girls by 30 points on math (524 versus 494), and girls slightly outpaced boys on the writing component of the test (487 versus 475). Moreover, girls are more likely than boys to attend a four-year college immediately following high school graduation, and this gap is particularly pronounced among African Americans. For example, in 2015, 46 percent of girls who completed high school enrolled in a four-year school compared to 42 percent of boys (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). Since the mid-1990s, a higher proportion of women than men have graduated four-year colleges each year (Pollard, 2011). Given this evidence, most scholars concur that today’s gender gap places girls ahead of abstract and concrete attitudes Ċ Abstract boys. Sociologists have attempted to explain the attitudes are ideas that are consistent with reversal in the gender gap in a variety of ways. mainstream societal views, while concrete Some have argued that girls are doing better in attitudes are ideas that are based on actual experience. schools today because the new service economy cultural navigators Ċ People who draw from has created more opportunities for women, both their home culture and mainstream culture while factory jobs, traditionally a male terrain, to create an attitude that allows them to succeed. have decreased in number because of new tech- gender gap Ċ The differences between women nologies and the relocation of manufacturing and men, especially as reflected in social, political, industries to developing countries. Other stud- intellectual, cultural, or economic attainments or attitudes. ies focus on the achievements made within the women’s movement and its effect on women’s 534 CHAPTER 16Education self- esteem and expectations. Another impor- tant impact of the women’s movement is that stereotype threat Ċ The idea that when African American students believe they are being judged teachers have become more aware of gender not as individuals but as members of a negatively discrimination in the classroom and have stereotyped social group, they will do worse on taken steps to avoid gender stereotyping. Many tests. teachers now incorporate learning materials stereotype promise Ċ A phenomenon where being viewed through the lens of a positive that are free of gender bias, and they encourage stereotype may lead one to perform in such girls to explore traditionally “male” subjects. a way that confirms the positive stereotype, Some sociologists today are wary of all the thereby enhancing performance. attention directed at underachieving boys. They contend that, although girls have forged ahead, they are still less likely than boys to choose subjects in school that lead to careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In 2015, women accounted for 31 percent of degrees in STEM ﬁelds (U.S. Department of Education, 2016b). Boys pull away from girls by about age 11 in science and continue to outperform girls through college. And women continue to be disadvan- taged in the job market despite the fact that they are entering college at higher rates than young men. The question of “Who fares worse, boys or girls?” will continue to challenge social scientists and educators in future generations as they strive to develop programs and policies to enhance gender equity. STEREOTYPE THREAT Differential outcomes between white students and minority students and between girls and boys have also been explained in social psychological terms. Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson’s inﬂuential work (Steele and Aronson, 1995, 2004) on stereotype threat suggests that when African American students (or female students) believe they are being judged not as individuals but as members of a negatively stereotyped social group, they will do worse on tests. Conversely, students who believe they are judged as members of a positively stereotyped group have been found to do better on tests. Soci- ologist Jennifer Lee refers to this as stereotype promise, a phenomenon she detected among Asian American students. The Chinese American and Vietnamese American stu- dents she tracked talked about how their teachers assumed that they were smart, hard- working achievers. These perceptions affected the way their teachers treated them, the grades they received, and their chances of securing slots in their schools’ most competi- tive programs, like AP classes (Lee and Zhou, 2014). Public Policy Influences on Student Outcomes We have described the ways that macrosocial factors such as social class and school organization, as well as microsocial processes such as stereotype threat and stereotype promise, may account for educational inequalities. However, a third set of factors also has a powerful inﬂuence on student outcomes: public policies. EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES Sociological research has played a major role in reforming the educational system. These reforms, in turn, have had a powerful impact on the lives of children who are affected by such policies. The object of James Coleman’s research, commissioned as part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was not solely academic; it was undertaken to influ- ence policy—and it succeeded. On the basis of the act, the courts decided that segregated Research on Education Today535 schools violated the rights of minority pupils. But rather than attacking the origins of educational inequalities directly, as Christopher Jencks’s later work suggested was necessary, the courts decided that the schools in each district should achieve a similar racial balance. Thus began the practice of busing students to other schools. Busing provoked a great deal of opposition, particularly from parents and children in white areas, and led to episodes of violence at the gates of schools where the children were bused in from other neighborhoods. White children paraded with placards read- ing, “We don’t want them!” Still, busing met with a good deal of success, reducing levels of school segregation quite steeply, particularly in the South. But busing also produced a number of unintended consequences. Some white parents reacted to busing either by putting their children into private schools or moving to mainly white suburbs where bus- ing wasn’t practiced. As a result, in the cities, some schools are virtually as segregated as the old schools had been in the past. Busing, however, was only one factor prompting the “white ﬂight” to the suburbs. Whites also left as a reaction to urban decay: to escape city crowding, housing problems, and rising crime rates. One important target of educational policy today is improving levels of functional literacy. Literacy is more than the ability to read and write; literacy is also the ability to process complex information in our increasingly technology-focused society. The National Center for Education Statistics breaks literacy into three components: prose literacy, document literacy, and quantitative literacy. Prose literacy means that a person can look at a short piece of text to get a small piece of uncomplicated information. Document lit- eracy refers to a person’s ability to locate and use information in forms, schedules, charts, graphs, and other informational tables. Quantitative literacy is the ability to do simple addition. In the United States today, only 13 percent of the population is proﬁcient in these three areas (Kutner et al., 2007). Of course, the United States is a country of immigrants, who, when they arrive, may not be able to read and write, and who may also have trouble with English. But this doesn’t explain why the United States has higher levels of functional illiteracy than most other industrial countries; many functionally illiterate people are not recent immigrants at all. What is to be done? Some educators have argued that the most important change that needs to be made is to improve the quality of teaching, either by increasing teachers’ pay or introducing performance-related pay scales, with higher salaries going to the teach- ers who are most effective in the classroom. Others have proposed giving schools more control over their budgets (a reform that Britain has implemented). The idea is that more responsibility for, and control over, budgeting decisions will create a greater drive to improve the school. Further proposals include the re-funding of federal programs such as Head Start to ensure healthy early-child development and thus save millions of dollars in later costs. Others have called for the privatization of public education, a proposal that has gained numerous supporters in recent years, including President Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. EDUCATION POLICY TODAY Education has long been a political battleground. In the 1960s, some politicians, educa- tors, and community activists pushed for greater equality and universal access to educa- tion through such initiatives as bilingual education programs, multicultural education, open admissions to college, the establishment of ethnic studies programs on campuses, and more equitable funding schemes. Such initiatives were seen as supporting civil rights and equality. Educational policies in the twenty-ﬁrst century have similarly 536 CHAPTER 16Education intended to provide quality education for all children and to close the achievement gap. However, scholars disagree about how successful recent policies have been in meeting this goal. The most significant piece of federal legislation influencing education in the past two decades is the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act enacted by Congress in 2001 and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. NCLB reautho- rized the 1965 Elementary and Second- ary Education Act but also expanded it by implementing a host of policies meant Programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have to improve academic outcomes for all been criticized for relying too heavily on standardized testing, children and close the achievement gap. which encourages teachers to “teach to the test.” Indeed, NCLB is the most expansive and comprehensive piece of legislation passed since 1965, addressing virtually every aspect of education—including, for example, testing, school choice, teacher qual- ity, the education of English language learners, military recruitment in schools, and school discipline. At the top of its agenda is instituting standardized testing as a means of measuring students’ academic performance. The act also provides a strong push for school choice—that is, in the spirit of competition, parents are to be given choices about where to send their children to school. Low-performing schools, at risk of los- ing students, thus jeopardize their funding and risk being closed. Another significant implication of NCLB is that, for the first time since 1968, states are not required to offer non-English- speaking students bilingual education. Instead, the act emphasizes learning English over using students’ native language and favors English- only program models. NCLB also provides support for a zero-tolerance approach to school discipline that was first mandated in the 1990 Gun-Free School Zone Act. The NCLB has been widely criticized because teachers must “teach to the test.” Critics have argued that the emphasis on standardized testing—that is, where all students in a state take the same test under the same conditions—as the means of assessment encour- ages teachers to teach a narrow set of skills that will increase students’ test performance, rather than help them acquire an in-depth understanding of important concepts and skills (Hursh, 2007). Others have condemned the program as a punitive model of school reform (i.e., teachers and principals at underperforming schools risk job loss) and note that achievement gaps have not changed and that the policy neglects the important fact that the broader socioeconomic context affects school functioning. In 2012, recognizing that NCLB may not be effective for all school systems, President Barack Obama granted waivers from NCLB requirements to 32 states, allowing them to develop their own standards and exempting them from the 2014 targets set by the law. In exchange for that ﬂexibility, those states “have agreed to raise standards, improve accountabil- ity, and undertake essential reforms to improve standardized testing Ċ A situation in which all students take the same test under the same teacher effectiveness,” the White House said conditions. in a statement. The Obama administration Research on Education Today537 also implemented its own program, called Race to the Top, a competitive grant program designed to spur innovation and reform in K-12 education. The program rewards states that demonstrate improvements in student outcomes, including closing achievement gaps, increasing graduation rates, and better preparing students for college. States competing for the more than $4 billion in grant money had to outline plans for developing and adopt- ing common standards and assessments; building data systems that track student growth; recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers and administrators; and improving the lowest-achieving schools. Like NCLB, however, Race to the Top has been roundly criticized for relying too heavily on high-stakes testing and also failing to address the true causes of low student achieve- ment, namely poverty and lack of opportunity. Teachers’ unions and educators have also complained that the tests are an inaccurate way to measure teachers, and that such mea- sures haven’t worked in the past. Political conservatives say that Race to the Top imposes federal control on state schools. Critics say that high-stakes testing is unreliable, that charter schools weaken public education, or that the federal government should not inﬂuence local schools (Dillon, 2010). The crisis in American schools won’t be solved in the short term, and it won’t be solved by educational reforms alone, no matter how expansive. In fact, a 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that schools identiﬁed for improvement were disproportionately urban, high-poverty schools, and that “school poverty and district size better predicted existing improvement status than the improvement strategies under- taken by the schools.” A further unintended consequence of the current emphasis on testing is that schools have narrowed their course offerings to focus much more heavily on tested subject areas while cutting time in science, social studies, music, art, and physical education (McMurrer, 2007). The lesson of sociological research is that inequalities and barriers in educational opportunity reﬂect wider social divisions and tensions. While the United States remains racked by racial tensions, and the polarization between decaying cities and affluent sub- urbs persists, the crisis in the school system is likely to prove difficult to turn around. Jean Anyon’s (2006) analysis of how political and economic forces inﬂuence schooling helps clarify these challenges. Anyon argues that not until educational reform is linked to more sweeping economic reforms, such as job creation and training programs and corporate tax reform, will schools improve. Global Perspectives: Education and Literacy in the Developing World You have already learned about vast educational inequalities in the United States. However, from a global perspective, another disparity is of tremendous concern: cross- national disparities in literacy. Without literacy, schooling cannot proceed; it is the “baseline” of education. We take it for granted in the West that the majority of people are literate, but this is only a recent development in Western history, and in previous times, no more than a tiny proportion of the population had any literacy skills. Today, roughly 15 percent of the world population over the age of 15, or 758 million persons, is illiterate—two-thirds of whom are women (UNESCO, 2017c). However, younger generations are faring better than their parents; youth literacy rates in nearly every region of the world are higher than adult literacy rates—although these gen- erational gaps vary widely by region. Youth literacy rates refer to persons ages 15 to 24, 538 CHAPTER 16Education while adult literacy rates apply to the population age 15 and older. Worldwide, the lowest literacy rates are observed in sub-Saharan Africa (65 percent of adults and 75 percent of youth) and in South and West Asia (70 percent of adults and 87 percent of youth). How- ever, even within regions, there is great heterogeneity; for example, adult literacy rates range from just 30 percent in Guinea to 95 percent in Equatorial Guinea. By contrast, East Asia, Central Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe enjoy literacy rates of nearly 100 percent (UNESCO, 2017b). What accounts for these marked gaps in global literacy rates? Sociologists believe that these patterns are best understood in a historical perspective and reﬂect enduring consequences of colonialism. During the period of colonialism, governments regarded education with some trepidation. Until the twentieth century, most colonial govern- ments believed indigenous populations were too primitive to be worth educating. Later, education was seen as a way of making local elites responsive to European interests and ways of life. But, to some extent, the result was to spark discontent and rebellion. The majority of those who led anticolonial and nationalist movements were educated elites who had attended schools or colleges in Europe; they were able to compare ﬁrsthand the democratic institutions of the European countries with the absence of democracy in their lands of origin. The education that the colonizers introduced usually pertained to Europe, not the colonial areas themselves. Educated Africans in the British colonies knew about the kings and queens of England and read Shakespeare and Milton, but they knew next to nothing about their own countries’ histories or past cultural achievements. Policies of educational reform since the end of colonialism have not completely altered the situa- tion, even today. Partly as a result of the legacy of colonial education, which was not directed toward the majority of the population, the educational system in many developing countries is top-heavy: Higher education is disproportionately developed relative to primary and secondary education. The result is a correspondingly overqualiﬁed group who, having attended colleges and universities, cannot ﬁnd white- collar or professional jobs. Given the low level of industrial development, most of the better-paid positions are in govern- ment, and there are not enough of those to go around. In recent years, some developing countries, recognizing the shortcomings of the curri- cula inherited from colonialism, have tried to redirect their educational programs toward the rural poor in an effort to raise literacy rates. They have had limited success because usually there is insufficient funding to pay for the scale of the necessary innovations. As a result, countries such as India have begun programs of self-help education. Communi- ties draw on existing resources without creating demands for high levels of ﬁnance. Those who can read and write and who perhaps possess job skills are encouraged to take others on as apprentices, whom they coach in their spare time. The Impact of the Media and Educational Technology on Everyday Life While we spend hours a day using technology for fun and for socializing, technol- ogy also has shaped where, how, and with whom we learn. The spread of information technology looks set to influence education in several different ways, humans with machines in some types of work. New technologies are already affecting the nature of work, replacing humans with machines in some types of work. The sheer pace of Research on Education Today539 technological change is creating a much more rapid turnover of jobs than once was the case. Education can no longer be regarded as a stage of preparation before an indi- vidual enters work. As technology changes, necessary skills change, and even if edu- cation is seen from a purely vocational point of view—as providing skills relevant to work—most observers agree that people will need lifelong exposure to education in the future. TECHNOLOGIES OF EDUCATION The rise of education in its modern sense was connected with several other major changes in the nineteenth century. One was the development of the school. One might naively think that there was a demand for education and that schools and universities were set up to meet that demand. But that was not how things happened. Schools arose, as Michel Foucault (1975) has shown, as part of the administrative apparatus of the modern state. The hidden curriculum was about discipline and the control of children. A second inﬂuence was the development of printing and the arrival of “book culture.” The mass distribution of books, newspapers, and other printed media was as distinctive a feature of the development of industrial society as were machines and factories. Educa- tion developed to provide skills of literacy and computation, giving people access to the world of printed media. Nothing is more characteristic of the school than the schoolbook or textbook. As in many other areas of contemporary social life, markets and information technol- ogy are major inﬂuences on educational change. The commercializing and marketizing of education also reﬂect such pressures. Schools are being reengineered to resemble business corporations. Many of those likely to enter the education ﬁeld will be organizations whose relation to schooling was previously marginal or nonexistent. These include cable companies, software houses, telecommunication groups, ﬁlmmakers, and equipment suppliers. Their inﬂuence will not be limited to schools or universities. They are already forming part of what has been called “edutainment”—a sort of parallel education industry linked to the software industry in general and to museums, science parks, and heritage areas. EDUCATION AND THE TECHNOLOGY GAP Whether these new technologies will have the radical implications for education that some claim is still an open question. Critics have pointed out that, even if they do have major effects, these technologies may act to reinforce educational inequalities. Information poverty might be added to the material deprivations that currently have such an effect on schooling. The sheer pace of technological change and the demand of employers for computer-literate workers may mean that those who are technologically competent “leapfrog” over people who have little experience with computers. Some already fear the emergence of a “computer underclass” within Western soci- eties. Although developed countries have the highest levels of computer and Internet usage in the world, there are stark inequalities in computer use within those societ- ies. Many schools and colleges are suffering from underfunding and long-standing neglect; information poverty Ċ The state of people who have little or no access to information even if these institutions become beneficiaries technology, such as computers. of schemes that distribute secondhand com- puter hardware to schools, they must gain the 540 CHAPTER 16Education technical expertise and ability to teach infor- mation technology skills to pupils. Because the cyberspace Ċ Electronic networks of interaction between individuals at different market for computer specialists is so strong, computer terminals. many schools are struggling to attract and keep information-technology teachers, who can earn far greater incomes in the private sector. Yet the technology gap within Western societies appears minor when compared with the digital divide separating Western classrooms from their counterparts in the devel- oping world. As the global economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based, there is a real danger that poorer countries will become even more marginalized because of the gap between the information rich and the information poor. Internet access has become a new line of demarcation between the rich and the poor. Information-technology enthusiasts argue that computers need not result in greater national and global inequalities—that their very strength lies in their ability to draw people together and to open up new opportunities. Schools in Asia and Africa that lack textbooks and quali- ﬁed teachers can beneﬁt from the Internet, it is claimed. Distance-learning programs and collaboration with colleagues overseas could be the key to overcoming poverty and disadvantage. When technology is put in the hands of smart, creative people, they argue, the potential is limitless. Technology can be breathtaking and can open important doors, but there is no such thing as an easy “ techno-ﬁx.” Underdeveloped regions that struggle with mass illiteracy and lack telephone lines and electricity need an improved educational infrastructure before they can truly beneﬁt from distance-learning programs. The Internet cannot be substituted for direct contact between teachers and pupils under these conditions. LIFELONG LEARNING New technologies and the rise of the knowledge economy are transforming traditional ideas about work and education. Training and the attainment of qualiﬁcations now occur throughout people’s lives, rather than just early in life. Mid-career professionals are choos- ing to update their skills through continuing-education programs and online courses. Many employers now allow workers to participate in on-the-job training as a way of enhancing loyalty and improving the company’s skill base. As our society continues to transform, the traditional beliefs and institutions that underpin it are also undergoing change. The idea of education—implying the structured transmission of knowledge within a formal institution—is giving way to a broader notion of learning that takes place in diverse settings. The shift from education to learning is not an inconsequential one. Learners are active, curious social actors who can derive insights from a multiplicity of sources, not just within an institutional setting. An emphasis on learning acknowledges that skills and knowledge can be gained through all types of encounters—with friends and neighbors, at seminars and museums, in conver- sations at the local coffee shop, via the Internet and other media, and so forth. The shift in emphasis toward lifelong learning can already be seen within schools themselves, where there is a growing number of opportunities for pupils to learn outside the conﬁnes of the classroom. The boundaries between schools and the outside world are breaking down, not only via cyberspace, but in the physical world as well. “Service learn- ing,” for example, has become a mainstay of many American secondary schools. As part of their graduation requirements, pupils devote a certain amount of time to volunteer Research on Education Today541 work in the community. Partnerships with local businesses have also become com- monplace in the United States, fostering interaction and mentor relationships between adult professionals and pupils. Lifelong learning should and must play a role in the move toward a knowledge 3 society. Not only is learning essential to CONCEPT CHECKS a well-trained, motivated workforce, but it should also be seen in relation to wider 1. How do Coleman’s findings differ from the human values. Learning is both a means results of Kozol’s research? Whose theory, in your opinion, can better explain race and and an end to the development of a well- class gaps in educational achievement? rounded and autonomous self-education 2. What effect does tracking have on academic in the service of self-development and achievement? self-understanding. There is nothing 3. Explain two theories that sociologists have utopian in this idea; indeed, it reﬂects the developed to account for the ways that cultural and psychological factors affect educational humanistic ideals of education developed outcomes. by educational philosophers. An example 4. What are the goals of No Child Left Behind already in existence is lifelong-learning and Race to the Top? What are criticisms of programs for the elderly, which provide these policies? retired people with the opportunity to edu- 5. What are some of the reasons there are high rates of illiteracy in developing nations? cate themselves as they choose, developing whatever interests they care to follow. 4 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS As you have learned in this chapter, the sociological study of education and the media is a rapidly evolving ﬁeld. With each new technological development or the implemen- tation of a new public policy, new issues and challenges arise. Sociologists continue to grapple with important questions about the media and education, and answers to these questions are often challenging and contested. We focus here on three “unanswered” questions: Is intelligence shaped by genes or the environment? Is homeschooling a sub- stitute for formal education? And who beneﬁts from international education? Is Intelligence Shaped by Genes or Environment? What social or biological factors shape how “intelligent” we are? This question has been at the center of hotly contested debates for nearly ﬁve decades. Understanding the sources of IQ is an important goal for educational researchers, because scores on IQ tests correlate highly with academic performance (which is not surprising, given that IQ tests were originally developed to predict success in school). They therefore also correlate closely with social, economic, and ethnic differences because these are associated with variations in levels of educational attainment. Another reason scholars are interested in factors that shape IQ is because answers to this question may help remedy the achieve- ment gap we learned about earlier in this chapter. White students score better, on aver- age, than African Americans or members of other disadvantaged minorities. An article published by Arthur Jensen in 1969 caused a furor by attributing IQ differences between blacks and whites in part to genetic variations (see also Jensen, 1979). Most sociologists argue that such attributions are incomplete and misleading. 542 CHAPTER 16Education Later, Richard J. Herrnstein, a psychologist, and Charles Murray, a sociologist, reopened the debate about IQ in a controversial way. They argued in their book The Bell Curve (1994) that the accumulated evidence linking IQ to genetic inheritance was now overwhelming. The signiﬁcant differences in intelligence among various racial and ethnic groups, they said, must in part be explained in terms of heredity. According to Herrnstein and Murray, the available evidence strongly indicated that some ethnic groups on average had higher IQs than other groups. Asian Americans, particularly Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans, on average possessed higher IQs than whites, although the dif- ference was not large. The average IQs of Asians and whites, however, were substantially higher than those of blacks. Summarizing the ﬁndings of 156 studies, Herrnstein and Murray found an average difference of 16 IQ points between these two racial groups. The authors argued that such differences in inherited intelligence contributed in an important way to social divisions in American society. The smarter an individual is, the greater the chance he or she will rise in the social scale. Those at the top are there partly because they are smarter than the rest of the population—from which it follows that those at the bottom remain there because, on average, they are not as smart. Herrnstein and Murray’s claim created a great deal of controversy and raised the ire and indignation of countless liberals, social scientists, and members of the African American community. Although Herrnstein and Murray’s claims may be seen as racist and reprehensible, are these sufficient reasons to attack their work? Or are their conclu- sions based on faulty social research? The answer to both questions is a resounding yes. A team of sociologists at the University of California at Berkeley later reanalyzed much of the data that Herrnstein and Murray had based their conclusions on and came up with quite different ﬁndings. In the original analysis, Herrnstein and Murray analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY), a survey of more than 10,000 young Americans who were interviewed multiple times over a period of more than a decade. As part of this study, subjects were given the Armed Forces Qualifying Test (AFQT), a short test that assesses IQ. Herrnstein and Murray then conducted statistical analyses, which used the AFQT score to predict a variety of outcomes. They concluded that having a high IQ was the best predictor of later economic success and that low IQ was the best predictor of poverty later in life. The Berkeley sociologists, in their 1996 book Inequality by Design (Fischer et al., 1996), countered that the AFQT does not necessarily measure intelligence, but only how much a person has learned in school. Moreover, they found that intelligence is only one factor among several that predict how well people do in life. Social factors, including education, gender, community conditions, marital status, current economic conditions, and (perhaps most important) parents’ socioeconomic status, better predict one’s occupational and economic success. In the original analysis, Herrnstein and Murray measured parents’ socioeconomic status by taking an average of mother’s education, father’s education, father’s occupation, and family income. The Berkeley sociologists recognized that each of these four factors matters differently in predicting a child’s occupational outcomes and thus weighted the four components differently. Their analysis showed that the effects of socioeconomic background on a young adult’s risk of later poverty were substantially greater than Her- rnstein and Murray originally found. The Berkeley sociologists also recognized that IQ is closely associated with one’s level of education. They reanalyzed the NLSY data, tak- ing into consideration the individual’s level of education, and found that Herrnstein and Murray had drastically overestimated the effects of IQ on a person’s later achievements. Unanswered Questions543 The relationship between race and intelligence is also best explained by social rather than biological causes, according to the Berkeley sociologists. All societies have oppressed ethnic groups. Low status, often coupled with discrimination and mistreat- ment, leads to socioeconomic deprivation, group segregation, and a stigma of inferiority. The combination of these forces often prevents racial minorities from obtaining a quality education, and, consequently, their scores on standardized intelligence tests are lower. The average lower IQ score of African Americans in the United States is remarkably similar to that of deprived ethnic minorities in other countries—such as the “untouch- ables” in India (who are at the very bottom of the caste system), the Maori in New Zealand, and the burakumin of Japan. Children in these groups score an average of 10 to 15 IQ points below children belonging to the ethnic majority. The burakumin—descendants of people who in the eighteenth century, as a result of local wars, were dispossessed from their land and became outcasts and vagrants—are a particularly interesting example. They are not in any way physically distinct from other Japanese, although they have suffered from prejudice and discrimination for centuries. In this case, the difference in average IQ results cannot derive from genetic variations because there are no genetic differences between them and the majority population; yet the IQ difference is as thoroughly ﬁxed as that between blacks and whites. Burakumin children in the United States, where they are treated like other Japanese, do as well on IQ tests as other Japanese children. Such observations strongly suggest that the IQ variations between African Ameri- cans and whites in the United States result from social and cultural differences. This conclusion receives further support from a comparative study of 14 nations (including the United States) showing that average IQ scores have risen substantially over the past half-century for the population as a whole (Coleman, 1987). IQ tests are regularly updated. When old and new versions of the tests are given to the same group of people, they score signiﬁcantly higher on the old tests. Present- day children taking IQ tests from the 1930s outscored 1930s groups by an average of 15 points—just the kind of average difference that currently separates blacks and whites. Children today are not innately superior in intelligence to their parents or grandparents; the shift presumably derives from increasing prosperity and social advantages. The average social and economic gap between whites and African Americans is at least as great as that between the differ- ent generations and is sufficient to explain the variation in IQ scores. Although genetic variations between individua

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