Inequality in Education

If we look at the history of education we can clearly see that there is a pattern and continues to be a pattern of inequality built into the institution of education. Historically education was for men, whites, and the wealthy. First the inequality in education was a gender issue, then a race issue, and now it is a social class issue (still noting that gender, race, and social class oftentimes are closely related). (Image courtesy of nuttakit/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Theoretical Perspectives

Structural Functionalism
From a functionalist perspective education acts to socialize individuals, transmit culture, is a means of social control, and socially places individuals. Other functions of education (latent functions) are gatekeeping and sorting children.

Conflict Theory
From a conflict perspective education perpetuates inequalities as it is unequally distributed to individuals in our society. Children are sorted (in our country by social class), are tracked (college bound or vocational tracks), and in essence inherit life opportunities in terms of their educational opportunities. We have a major problem with unequal funding in this country as you will see with one of the schools you will be reading about in our reader this week.

Symbolic Interactionism
From an interactionist perspective we see that key interactions occurring throughout our socialization have an impact on our education, educational experiences, and our futures. Our self-concepts are greatly affected by our educational experiences. A major portion of this theory focuses on interactions within the classroom (interactions between students, between students and teachers, etc.). Children are oftentimes labeled (due to early educational performance) and those labels follow them throughout their educational careers. Historically minority students were designated “learning disabled” in what amounted to be no more than being an ESL student, having an accent, and having different learning styles. Today children in the lower classes are often labeled and treated differently by teachers and other educational professionals. Teacher expectations of students differ and in turn act as the self-fulfilling prophecy (the students become the expectation). It is noted that most of the time this is a subconscious effort by the teachers and not the intention.

Social Problems in Education
Upward social mobility is difficult as we saw in our section on poverty. We see the pattern of social reproduction (passing social and economic inequalities on from one generation to the next). Since our society emphasizes educational degrees and diplomas and that children are often tracked we see the same individuals receiving substandard education and in turn the same groups of individuals with less educational success. Illiteracy and social promotion (being promoted to the next educational level without having successfully completed the previous requirements) is also a social problem, with the same individuals affected. Educational success (graduating high school, going to college, and completing college) is directly related to social class in our country. We see that race is still an issue as African Americans and Latinos are more likely to be in the lower socio-economic statuses and in turn are less likely to complete high school, go to college, and if they do go to college they are less likely to graduate.

SOLUTIONS
It has been noted in previous sections that increasing education is the solution to many of the social problems our country faces today but as we can see in education there lies some major social problems.

Brown vs. The Board of Education:

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html

Coleman and “Busing”:

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/950330/coleman.shtml

http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,917827,00.html

Do you think “busing” could have worked if carried out in a different manner? What was the major downfall with this “solution”? Are there any successful programs today similar to the idea of “busing”?

SCHOOL VOUCHERS:

http://www.schoolchoices.org/roo/vouchers.htm

http://www.nea.org/vouchers/index.html

ARTICLE:
Govt’s training vouchers ‘a positive response’
Thursday, 12/10/2006
Rural training bodies have given the Federal Government’s plans to give training vouchers to school drop-outs a cautious welcome.
Prime Minister John Howard says people over 25, who did not complete Year 12, will be able to use the $3,000 vouchers to pay for vocational courses in TAFEs, federal colleges and private institutions.
The chairman of the Rural Training Council of Australia, Peter Griffin, says the plan would go some way towards easing rural skills shortages.
“It’s a very positive response. The skills shortage is a complex issue through rural and regional Australia,” he said.
“There’s no one fix because as well as a skills shortage there’s a people shortage, so it is very important that we focus not only on entry level.”

What do you think about the different types of voucher programs?

HARLEM CHILDREN’S ZONE:

http://www.hcz.org/

http://www.hcz.org/project/mission.html

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