Chapter 14

Education & Health Care

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Purposes of EducationFunctionalist views of education

1. Socialization

2. Occupational training

3. Social control or the regulation of deviant behavior.

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History of Education in the U.S.

• Compulsory education came into law in all states in 1900, except a few in the South.

• racial discrimination in the West and South.

• Today: 90% of those under 35 years old - a high school diploma.

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Social issues• In 1960, the US. ranked #1 in math and reading.• In 2008, the U.S. ranked #19.

• American 12th graders rank 19th out of 21 industrialized countries in mathematics achievement and 16th out of 21 nations in science.

• Since 1983, over 10 million Americans have reached the 12th grade without having learned to read at a basic level.

• Over 20 million have reached their senior year unable to do basic math. • Almost 25 million have reached 12th grade not knowing the essentials of

U.S. history.

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Quality of Teachers • Only 38% of U.S. public school teachers majored in an

academic subject in college. • 40% of public high school science teachers have neither an

undergraduate major nor minor in their main teaching field• 34% of public high school math teachers did not major or

minor in math or related fields.• Only one in five teachers feels well prepared to teach to high

academic standards.

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Japanese Students at a “juku” Cram Seminar

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True or False? A higher degree is the key to Higher pay?

Does your Class of Origin Affects Your Educational Achievement?

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Conflict Perspective • Education produces inequality.

• Credentials are a device used to discriminate in hiring practices; no credential = no job.

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***Genetics & Education: The Bell Shaped Curve Debate

• 70% genetic ??

• 30% environmental ??

Based on studies of identical twins

Symbolic InteractionWhy do some students perform better than

others?

• Teacher expectancy effect (what the teacher expects from a student creates the actual behavior).

• the self-fulfilling prophecy

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True or False

1. Teachers pay less attention to girls and women.2. Females earn higher grades throughout both high school

and college. 3. Female students consistently receive lower scores on SAT

and AP exams than do their male counterparts. *in 2001 females averaged 35 points lower than males on

the Math section of SAT, and 3 points lower on the Verbal section.

4. Black teachers tend to interact more with White students than with Black students.

5. Women are often excluded from inclusion in textbooks and/or they are stereotyped in books.

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Harriet Jacobs (1813-1897) an American writer, who escaped from slavery and became an abolitionist

speaker and reformer.Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) an American novelist, travel writer and journalist, considered to be one of the

greatest war correspondents of the 20th century.Margaret Chung (1889-1959) the first known American-born Chinese female physician. As part of her efforts to

support the allied forces, she "adopted" over one thousand "sons," most of whom were white American military men.

Angelina and Sarah Grimke (1792-1873; 1805-1879) educators and writers who were early advocates of abolitionism and women's

rights.

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Tracking Effect

• Tracking (separating students in groups based on some cognitive ability measurement) has been practiced in over half of all elementary schools in the U.S. since approximately 1940.

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Tracking Effect(continued)

• Researchers are finding that heterogeneous (mixed) classrooms improves everyone’s success.

• students in high ability track groups benefit from tracking, while those in low track groups do not.

• Teachers often assign minority students and female students, regardless of test scores, into the lower ability groupings.

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Discussion Questions

• Do you believe that education is a means to economic success?

• How does education create and improve opportunity, or is it simply a credential (passport) that is used when hiring someone for a job?

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No Child Left Behind

This program required:

• restructuring secondary education

• replacement of teachers on the basis of their schools’ mean test scores

• repeated administration of both verbal and math standardized tests

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No Child Left Behind(continued)

• This program failed to accomplish its objective.

– The gap in test scores widened on both verbal and mathematics, in the period when the program was in effect (2001-2008).

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***Measurement Debates

• Three major criticisms regarding reducing a person’s potential to a number and then using number to determine a person’s cognitive ability:

1. Tests measure a limited range of abilities (quantitative or verbal aptitude) and ignores other areas such as creativity.

2. Tests are culturally and gender biased.

3. The SAT does not predict school performance very well, even for Whites.

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Quiz Questions

• True or False:

1. Minority students born into a middle class family are as likely to complete high school and college as White students born into a middle class family.

2. Teacher expectancy effect influences boy minority students but has no effect on girl majority students.

3. Early tracking has more negative than positive consequences.

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***Class ActivityGenetics vs. Environment

• Separate the class into two teams.

– Each team take a different position on the Bell shaped curve argument discussed in Chapter 14 (Genetics & Education: The Bell Shaped Curve Debate).

– Using the facts presented in the text, hold a class debate as to whether environment or genetics is more important in determining school performance.

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Health Care Issues

Health, Diversity, & Social Inequality

• Health care is unequally distributed by race/ethnicity, social class, and gender.

• Health care is unequally distributed throughout the U.S.

• Parents in inner cities and in rural areas are poorly informed about how to care for themselves, the elderly, and their children.

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Regional Differences in Health Care

• In rural medical shortage areas (RMSA), there are fewer than 1 doctor per 2,000 people.

• 65 million people live in RMSA

• As of 2001, 16,585 primary care physicians were needed in these sections of the country.

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Race, Gender, Class & Health Care• Life expectancy of women is higher than that of men.• The higher the social class, the fewer the diseases, the lower the

social class, the higher the % of persons with health problems.• Life expectancy is lower for those in the lower socio-economic

classes than those in the upper classes.• Life expectancy is affected by race

• Asians: life expectancy 84.9 years

• Asian-American women living in Bergen County, NJ, enjoy the greatest life expectancy in the US, at 91 years. American Indians in

South Dakota have the worst, at 58 years.

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• Black women get more cancer, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes than Whites in the same age group. Three times as many Black women die during pregnancy and in childbirth than White women

• The death rate (mortality) from breast cancer is higher for Black women though fewer Black women get this disease than Whites.

• Infant mortality rates are high for Hispanics, Latinos and Native Americans.

• 17 million low-income family children lack access to dental care.

WHY?

Sociological reasons for inequality in life expectancy

• Culture• Social Class• Availability of emergency room• Health insurance• Access to health care facility• Lack of health education• Pollution, poor living conditions• Language problem• Stress (financial)

The Health Care Crisis in America

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Illness & Culture

Definitions of sickness and health are culturally relative and they vary in different time periods.

ex 1. thinness

1900s – 1940s : poverty & hunger

1950s: positive value

Today: Anorexia nervosayoung White women (middle-class, two-parent family)

vs. black, Hispanic, lesbians

Ex. 2. ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

ex 3. Obesity in the U.S.

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Obesity & Cultural Problem- officially recognized disease (2004)

– 33% of American adults are obese.

– over 300,000 adult obesity-related deaths each year.

– The childhood obesity rate has doubled in children 2-6 and tripled for children aged 6-11 in the last 30 years.

• Obesity & American food culture

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Discussion Questions

• What do you think are the positives and negatives of a universal health care system in this country?

– Do the positives or the negatives outweigh the other?

– Who will and who won’t benefit from a universal health plan, and why?

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Universal Health Care Debate

• 48 million uninsured Americans will have new, affordable insurance options

• Tax credits for up to 29 million individuals to help pay for health insurance• 5.6 million people with pre-existing conditions will no longer be denied

insurance • 500,000 families saved from bankruptcy in just one year

Tax cuts for up to 3.5 million small businesses to help pay for employee coverage (62% of all bankruptcies)

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