CH 13  EDUCATION AND RELIGION

 

 

EDUCATION: TRANSFERRING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS

I.  Education in Global Perspective

A.    A credential society is one in which employers use diplomas and degrees to determine job eligibility.

1.      The sheer size, urbanization, and consequent anonymity of U.S. society are major reasons for the requirement of credentials. Diplomas and degrees often serve as sorting devices for employers; because they don't know the individual personally, employers depend on schools to weed out the capable from the incapable.

2.      As technology and knowledge change, simple on-the-job training will not suffice; specific job skills must be mastered before an individual is able to do certain kinds of work.

B. Education in the Most Industrialized Nations: Japan

1.      Japanese education reflects a group-centered ethic. Grade school children work as a group, mastering the same skills and materials; cooperation and respect for elders (and those in positions of authority) are stressed.

2.      College admission procedures are based on test scores; only the top scorers are admitted, regardless of social class.

C.  Education in the Industrializing Nations: Russia

1.      After the Revolution of 1917, the government insisted that socialist values dominate education, seeing education as a means to undergird the new political system. Children were taught that capitalism was evil and communism was the salvation of the world.

2.      2.  Education at all levels was free. It was centralized, with all schools           following the same curriculum.   .

3.      Today, Russians are in the midst of "reinventing" education. Private, religious, and even foreign-run schools are operating, and students are encouraged to think for themselves.

4.      The primary difficulty facing the post-Soviet educational system is the rapid changes in values and world views that are underway in Russia.

D.  Education in the Least Industrialized Nations: Egypt

1.      Several centuries before the birth of Christ, Egypt was a world renowned center of learning. Primary areas of study were physics, astronomy, geometry, geography, mathematics, philosophy, and medicine. After defeat in war, education declined, never to rise to its former prominence.

2.      Today, education is free at all levels, including college; however, qualified teachers are few, classrooms are crowded, and education is highly limited. Children of the wealthy are still several times as likely to get a college education.

 

II.  The Functionalist Perspective: Providing Social Benefits

A.     A central position of functionalism is that when the parts of society are working properly, each contributes to the stability of society. For education, both manifest (intended) and latent (unintended but positive) functions can be identified.

B.     The functions of education include (1) teaching knowledge and skills; (2) cultural transmission of values (individualism, competition, and patriotism); (3) social integration (molding students into a more or less cohesive unit); and (4) gatekeeping (determining who will enter what occupations, through tracking and social placement).

 

C.     Schools have assumed many functions that were previously fulfilled by the family (e.g., child care and sex education).            .

 

III.  The Conflict Perspective: Perpetuating Social Inequality

A.     The educational system is a tool used by those in the controlling sector of society to maintain their dominance. Education reproduces the social class structure, as well as society's divisions of race-ethnicity.

1.     Regardless of ability, children of the wealthy are usually placed in college-bound tracks, and children of the poor are usually placed in vocational tracks. Whites are more likely to complete high school, go to college, and get a degree than are African Americans and Latinos. This shows the funneling effect of education.

2.      The education system helps to pass privilege (or lack thereof) across generations.

B.       The hidden curriculum is the set of unwritten rules of behavior and attitude (e.g., obedience to authority, conformity to cultural norms) that are taught in school in addition to the formal curriculum

C.     Conflict theorists criticize IQ (intelligence quotient) testing because these tests measure not only intelligence, but also culturally acquired knowledge. By focusing on these factors, IQ tests reflect a cultural bias that favors the middle class and discriminates against minority and lower-class students.

D.     Because public schools are financed largely by local property taxes, there are rich and poor school districts. Unequal funding stacks the deck against minorities and the poor.

 

IV.  The Symbolic Interaction Perspective: Fulfilling Teacher Expectations

A.     Symbolic interactionists study face-to-face interaction inside the classroom. They have found that expectations of teachers are especially significant in determining what students learn.

B.     The Rist research (participant observation in an African American grade school with an African American faculty) found that tracking begins with teachers' perceptions.

1.    After eight days-and without testing for ability-teachers divided the class into fast, average, and slow learners 'social class was the basis for the assignments.  

2.      Students from whom more was expected did the best; students in the slow group were ridiculed and disengaged themselves from classroom activities.

3.      The labels that were applied in kindergarten tended to follow the child through school.

C.     George Farkas found students who score the same on course matter may receive different grades; female get higher grades, as do Asian Americans. Some students signal that they are interested in what the teacher is teaching; teachers pick up these signals.      

 

V.  Problems in U.S. Education-and Their Solutions

1. A variety of factors have been identified as the major problems facing the U.S.

educational system today. These problems include the rising tide of mediocrity, grade inflation and how it relates to social promotion and functional illiteracy, and violence in schools.          

2. A number of solutions have been offered to address these problems, including creating a secure learning environment and establishing higher academic standards and expectations.

RELIGION: ESTABLISHING MEANING

VI. What Is Religion?

1. According to Durkheim, religion is the beliefs and practices separating the profane from the sacred, uniting adherents into a moral community.

1.      Sacred refers to aspects of life having to do with the supernatural that inspire awe, reference, deep respect, or deep fear.

2.      2.Profane refers to the ordinary aspects of everyday life.

3.      Durkheim found religion to be defined by three elements: (1) beliefs that some things are sacred (forbidden, set off from the profane), (2) practices (rituals) concerning things that are considered sacred, and (3) a moral community (a church) resulting from a group's beliefs and practices.

 

VII.  The Functionalist Perspective

1. Religion performs functions such as (1) answering questions about ultimate meaning (the purpose of life, why people suffer); (2) uniting believers into a community that shares values and perspectives; (3) providing guidelines for life; (4) controlling behavior; (5) providing support for the government; and (6) spearheading social change (on occasion, as in the case of the civil right movement in the 1960s).
2. War and religious persecution are dysfunctions of religion.

 

VIII. The Symbolic Interactionist Perspective

A.    Religions use symbols to provide identity and social solidarity for members. For members, these are not ordinary symbols, but sacred symbols evoking awe and reverence, which become a condensed way of communicating with others.

2. Rituals are ceremonies or repetitive practices that unite people into a moral community. Some are designed to create a feeling of closeness with God and unity with one another.

1.      Symbols, including rituals, develop from beliefs. A belief may be vague ("God is") or specific ("God wants us to prostrate ourselves and face Mecca five times each day").

2.      Religious beliefs include values and a cosmology (unified picture of the world).

3. Religious experience is a sudden awareness of the, supernatural or a feeling of coming into contact with God. Some Protestants use the term born again to describe people who have undergone a religious experience.

 

IX.  The Conflict Perspective

A.    Conflict theorists are highly critical of religion. Karl Marx called religion the "opium of the people" because he believed that the workers escape into religion. He argued that religion diverts the energies of the oppressed from changing their circumstances because believers focus on the happiness they will have in the coming world rather than on their suffering in this world.

2. Religious teachings and practices reflect a society's inequalities. Religion legitimates social inequality; it reflects the interests of those in power by teaching that the existing social arrangements of a society represent what God desires.

 

X.  Religion and the Spirit of Capitalism

A.     Observing that European countries industrializing under capitalism, Weber questioned why some societies embraced capitalism while others clung to traditional ways. He concluded that religion held the key to modernization (transformati6n of traditional societies into industrial societies).

 

 

B.     Weber concluded that:

1.      1. Religion (including a Calvinistic belief in predestination and the need for reassurance as to one's fate) is the key to the development of capitalism in Europe. .

2.      A change in religion (from Catholicism to Protestantism) led to a change in thought and behavior. The result was the Protestant ethic, a commitment to live a moral life and to work and be frugal.

3.      The spirit of capitalism (the desire to accumulate capital as a duty, as an end in itself), which resulted from this new ethic, was a radical departure from the past.

3. Today, the spirit of capitalism and the Protestant ethic are by no means limited to Protestants; they have become cultural traits that have spread throughout the world.

 

XI.  Types of Religious Groups

1. A cult is a new religion with few followers, whose teachings and practices put it at odds with the dominant culture and religion.

1.      All religions began as cults. Cults often emerge with the appearance of a charismatic leader (exerting extraordinary appeal to a group of followers).

2.      Each cult meets with rejection from society. The cult's message is seen as a threat to the dominant culture.

2. A sect is larger than a cult but still feels substantial hostility from and toward society. If a sect grows, its members tend to become respectable in society, and the sect is changed into a church.
3. A church is a large, highly organized religious group with formal, sedate services and less emphasis on personal conversion. The religious group is highly bureaucratized (including national and international offices that give directions to local congregations). Most new members come from within the church, from children born to existing members, rather than from outside recruitment.
4. An ecclesia is a religious group that is so integrated into the dominant culture that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other leaves off.  The government and religion work together to shape the society. There is no recruitment of members, for citizenship makes everyone a member. The majority of people in the society belong in name only.
5. Although religions began as cults, not all varieties of a religion have done so. A denomination-a "brand name" within a religion (e.g., Methodist)--begins as a splinter group. On occasion, a large group within a church may disagree on some of the church's teachings (but not its major message) and break away to form its own organization.

 

XII.  Religion in the United States

A.    Characteristics of membership in U.S. churches:

1.      1 Membership is highest in the South and Midwest and not much lower in the East.

2.      Each religious group draws members from all social classes, although some are more likely to draw members from the top of the social class system and others from the bottom. The most top-heavy are Episcopalians and Jews; the most bottom-heavy are the Baptists and Evangelicals.

3.      All major religious groups in the United States draw from various racial and ethnic groups; however, people of Hispanic or Irish descent are likely to be Roman Catholics and those of Greek origin to belong to the Greek Orthodox Church; African Americans are likely to be Protestants. Worship services tend to be highly segregated along racial lines.

4.      Membership rate increases steadily with age.

2. Characteristics of religious groups

1.      There is a diversity of religious groups; there is no state church and no ecclesia, and no single denomination dominates.

2.      The many religions compete with one another for members.

3.      Today, there is a fundamentalist revival because mainstream churches fail to meet the basic religious needs of large numbers of people.

4.      The electronic church, in which televangelists reach millions of viewers and raise millions of dollars, has grown. Recently, the electronic church has moved to the Internet. Some feel that the Internet may fundamentally change our ideas about God.

3. The history of U.S. churches is marked by secularization and the splintering of religious groups.

1.                 Initially, the founders of religious sects felt alienated from the general cultures, their values and lower social class position setting them apart. As time passes, the members of the group become successful, acquiring more education, becoming middle class, and growing more respectable. They no longer feel alienated from the dominant culture. There is an attempt to harmonize religious beliefs with the new cultural orientation. This process is the secularization of religion, of shifting the focus from religious matters to affairs of this world.

2.                 Those who have not achieved worldly success feel betrayed and break away to form a new sect.

 

XIII.  The Future of Religion

A.    Science cannot answer questions about four concerns that many people have the existence of God, the purpose of life, morality, and the existence of an afterlife.

1.    Neither science nor political systems can replace religion, and religion will last as long as humanity lasts.

 

CH. 14  POPULATION IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

 

I.  A Planet with No Space to Enjoy Life?

A.    Demography is the study of the size, cOD;1position, growth, and distribution of populations.

2. Thomas Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) stating the Malthus theorem: Population grows geometrically while food supply increases arithmetically; thus, if births go unchecked, population will eventually outstrip food supply.
3. New Malthusians believe that Malthus was correct. The world's population is following an exponential growth curve (on which numbers increase in extraordinary proportions): 1800, one billion; 1930, two billion; 1960, three billion; 1975, four billion; 1987, five billion; and 1999, six billion.
4. Anti-Malthusians believe that people do not blindly reproduce until there is no room left.
   1. They cite three stages of the demographic transition in Europe as an example: Stage 1, a fairly stable population (high birth rates offset by high death rates); Stage 2, "population explosion" (high birth rates and low death rates); and Stage 3, population stability (low birth rates and low death rates).
   2. They assert that this transition will happen in the Least Industrialized Nations, which are currently in the second stage.
5. Who is Correct?

1.    There is no question that the Least Industrialized Nations are in Stage 2, but there is a question about when they will reach Stage 3. Death rates have dropped, but birth rates remain high.

2. Leaders of the Most Industrialized Nations, fearing that these growing nations would upset the international balance of power, used the United Nations to spearhead global efforts to reduce world population growth.
3. The population of the Least Industrialized Nations is still increasing, but at a slower rate. To the New Malthusians, the catastrophe is still coming; to the Anti-Malthusians, this is a sign that the Least Industrialized Nations are approaching Stage 3.
4. The Anti-Malthusians argue that the world's problem will be not a population explosion but population shrinkage (a country's population becomes smaller because births and immigration cannot replace those who die and emigrate), as has occurred in Europe.
5. Some Anti-Malthusians even predict a "demographic free fall": After peaking at about 8 or 9 billion, the world's population will begin to grow smaller. '

6.    Only the future will prove the accuracy of either side's projections.

6. Why are people starving? Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone?

1.    Anti-Malthusians note that the amoU1}t of food that is produced per person in the world has increased; famines are not the result of too little food production but result from the global misdistribution of existing food.

2. The New Malthusians counter that the world's population continues to grow and the earth may not be able to continue to produce sufficient food.
3. Recently, famines have been concentrated in Africa. However, these famines are not caused by too many people living on too little land. Rather, these famines are due to outmoded farming techniques and ongoing political instability that disrupt harvests, and food distribution.

 

II.  Population Growth

A.    There are different reasons why people in the Least Industrialized Nations have so many children.

1.    Parenthood is a significant status. For women, motherhood is the most exalted status a woman can achieve-the more children, the higher the status. For men, their manhood is proven if they father many children (especially male children),

2. The community supports this view, awarding or withholding status; since children are considered to be a sign of God's blessing, couples are expected to have many children.
3. Children are considered to be economic assets (the parents rely on the children to take care of them in their old age).
4. The conflict perspective stresses the domination of females by males in all spheres of life, including reproduction. Male dominance includes fathering many children as a means of achieving status in the community.
1. Demographers use population pyramids (graphic representations of a population, divided into age and sex) to illustrate a country's population dynamics (e.g., Mexico's population-doubling rate is only 30 years)

1.      Different population growth rates have different implications. Countries with slow growth rates have fewer people on which to spend their resources, while countries with rapid growth rates have to cope with increased numbers of people among whom to share resources.

2.      A declining standard of living may result in political instability followed by severe repression by the government.

3. Estimated population growth is based on three demographic variables.

1.      Fertility, measured by the fertility rate (the number of children an average woman bears), is sometimes confused with fecundity (the number of children a woman theoretically can bear). To compute a country's fertility rate, demographers use crude birth rate (the annual number of births per 1,000 people).

2.       Mortality is measured by the crude death rate (the number of deaths per 1,000 people.

3.      Migration is measured by the net migration rate (the difference between the number of immigrants moving in and emigrants moving out per 1,000 population). Push factors make people want to leave where they are living (e.g., poverty, persecution, lack of economic opportunity); pull factors attract people (e.g., opportunities for higher wages or better jobs in the new locale). The flow of migration is from the Least Industrialized Nations to the industrialized countries, the United States being the world's number one choice of immigrants.

4. Demographers often encounter problems in forecasting population growth.

1.      The growth rate equals births minus death, plus net migration.

2.      Social factors-wars, economic booms and busts, plagues, and famines-push death and birth rates up and down.

3.      The primary factor that influences a country's growth rate is its rate of industrialization; in every country that industrializes, the growth rate declines. New economic opportunities open up, but having and raising children also become more expensive.

4.      Because of the difficulties in forecasting population growth, demographers formulate several predictions simultaneously, each depending on different assumptions.

 

III. The Development of Cities

1. A city is a place in which a large number of people are permanently based and do not produce their own food.

1.     Small cities with massive defensive walls existed as far back as 10,000years ago; cities on a larger scale originated about 3500 B.C. as a result of the development of more efficient agriculture and of a surplus.

2. The Industrial Revolution drew people to cities to work.
3. Today, urbanization means not only that more people live in cities, but also that cities are larger; about 300 of the world's cities contain at least one million people.
1. Urbanization is the process by which an increasing proportion of a population lives in cities. There are specific characteristics of cities, such as size and anonymity, that give them their unique urban flavor.

1.      Metropolis refers to cities that grow so large that they exert influence over a region; the central city and surrounding smaller cities and suburbs are connected economically, politically, and socially.

2. Megalopolis refers to an overlapping area consisting of at least two metropolises and their suburbs, connected economically, socially, and sometimes politically.

3. In 1790, only about 5 percent of Americans lived in cities; by 1920, 50 percent of the U.S. population lived in urban areas; today, between 75 and 80 percent of Americans live in urban areas.

1.      The U.S. Census Bureau divided the country into 284 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)-a central city of at least 50,000 people and the urbanized counties that are linked to it.

2.      About three in five Americans live in just fifty or so MSAs.

3.      As Americans migrate in search of work and better lifestyles, distinct patterns appear. Urban growth today is fastest in the West and South, while urban decline is highest in the Northeast.

4.      As Americans migrate and businesses move to serve them, edge cities (a clustering of service facilities and residential areas near highway intersections) have developed. .

5.      Gentrification, the movement of middle-class people into rundown areas of a city, is another major U.S. urban pattern.

4. Robert Park coined the term human ecology to describe how people adapt to their environment (also known as urban ecology); human ecologists have constructed three models that attempt to explain urban growth patterns.

1.      Ernest W. Burgess proposed the concentric zone model, which views the city as a series of zones emanating from its center, each characterized by a different group of people and activity: Zone 1--central business district; Zone 2-in transition with deteriorating housing and rooming houses; Zone 3-area to which thrifty workers have moved to escape the zone in transition yet maintain access to work; Zone 4--more expensive apartments, single-family dwellings, and exclusive areas where the wealthy live; and Zone 5--commuter zone consisting of suburban areas or cities that have developed around rapid transit routes.

2. The sector model sees urban zones as wedge-shaped sectors radiating out from the center. A zone might contain a sector of working-class housing, another sector of expensive housing, a third of businesses, and so on, all competing with one another for the same land. In an invasion­ succession cycle, when poor immigrants move into a city, they settle in the lowest-rent area available and, as their numbers grow, begin to encroach on adjacent areas. As the poor move closer to the middle class, the middle class leaves, expanding the sector of lower-cost housing.
3. The multiple-nuclei model views the city as having multiple centers or nuclei, each of which focuses on a specialized activity (e.g., retail districts, automobile dealers).
4. More recently, the peripheral model was developed to reflect the impact of radial highways on the movement of people and services away from the central city to the city's periphery, or outskirts.
5. Cities are complex, and no single model that has yet been developed does justice to this complexity. The models do not make allowances for the extent to which elites influence the development of cities; the models also fall short when it comes to explaining urbanization in the Least Industrialized Nations.

 

IV. City Life

A.   People care about what happens to each other and depend upon one a For some people, cities provide a sense of community-a feeling that nother. For others, the city is alienating.

B.     Louis Wirth argued that the city undermines kinship and neighborhood, which are the traditional bases of social control and social solidarity.

1.    Urban dwellers live in anonymity, their lives marked by segmented and superficial encounters that make them grow aloof from one another and indifferent to other people's problems.

2. This is similar to the idea that Gemeinschaft (a sense of community that comes from everyone knowing everyone else) disappears as a country industrializes, and Gesellschaft (a society characterized by secondary, impersonal relationships which result in alienation) replaces it.

C.     Herbert Gans uses the term urban village to refer to an area of the city that people know well and in which they live, work, shop, and play.

D.     Gans identified five types of people who live in the city.

1.       Cosmopolites-intellectuals and professionals, students, writers, and artists who live in the inner city to be near its conveniences and cultural benefits.

2.      Singles-young, unmarried people who come seeking jobs and entertainment.

3.      Ethnic villagers-people who live in tightly knit neighborhoods that resemble villages and small towns, united by race and social class.

4.      The deprived-the very poor, the emotionally disturbed, and the handicapped who live in neighborhoods more like urban jungles than urban villages.

5.  The trapped-consisting of four subtypes: those who cannot afford to move when their neighborhood is invaded by another ethnic group; downwardly mobile people who have fallen from a higher social class; elderly people who have drifted into the slums because they are not wanted elsewhere and are powerless to prevent their downward slide; and alcoholics or drug addicts.

E.      Sociologists have analyzed how urban dwellers build community in the city.

1.      City people create a sense of intimacy for themselves by personalizing their shopping (by frequenting the same stores and restaurants, people become recognized as "regulars").

2.      Spectator sports also engender community identification.

F.      Urban dwellers are careful to protect themselves from the unwanted intrusions of strangers.

1.      They follow a norm of noninvolvement-such as using a newspaper or a Walkman to indicate inaccessibility for interaction-to avoid encounters with people they do not know.

2.      The more bystanders there are to an incident, the less likely people are to help because people's sense of responsibility becomes diffused. The norm of noninvolvement and the diffusion of responsibility may help urban dwellers to get through everyday city life, but they are dysfunctional because people do not provide assistance to others.

 

V.  Urban Problems and Social Policy

A.    Suburbanization-the movement from the city to the suburbs-has had a profound effect on U.S. cities.

1.     People have moved for over 100 years to towns next to the cities in which they worked; today, the speed and extent to which people have left the city are new.

2. Central cities have lost residents, businesses, and jobs, causing the cities' tax base (which supports essential city services and schools) to shrink; the people who are left behind are those with limited financial means.
3. According to William Wilson, the term ghetto reflects a social transformation; groups represented in these areas today are more socially isolated than were those who lived in these communities in the past.

4.  Suburbanites prefer the city to keep its problems to itself and fight movements to share suburbia's revenues with the city. However, the time may come when suburbanites will have to pay for their attitudes toward the city.      .

2. By the 1940s, the movement to suburbs began to undermine the cities' tax base, a problem that accelerated as huge numbers of poor rural migrants moved into northern cities.

1.      As the tax base eroded, services declined, buildings deteriorated, and banks began redlining (drawing a line on a map around problem areas and refusing to make loans to the people who live and work in these areas). This disinvestment pushed these areas into further decline.

2.      The development of a global market has led to deindustrialization. Manufacturing firms have relocated from the inner city to areas where production costs are lower. The inner-city economies have not been able to provide alternative employment for poor residents, thereby locking them out of the economy.

3. A new trend has emerged: the rural rebound. Beginning in the 1970s, people began to move out of the cities and suburbs into rural areas.

1.     During the 1990s, seven out of ten rural counties grew in population, and little farming towns were making a comeback.

2. The push factors include fears of urban crime and violence, while the pull factors are safety, lower costs of living, recreation, and more space.
3. Facilitating this movement have been improvements in transportation and communications.

4. Social policy usually takes one of two forms.

1.     Urban renewal involves tearing down and rebuilding the buildings in an area. As a result of urban renewal, the areas residents can no longer afford to live in the area and are displaced to adjacent areas.

2.     Enterprise zones are economic incentives to encourage businesses to move into the area. Most business, however, refuse to move into high-­crime areas.

3. If U.S. cities are to change, 'they must become top agenda items of the U.S. government, with adequate resources in terms of money and human talents focused on overcoming urban woes.
4. William Flanagan suggests three guiding principles for working out specific solutions to urban problems: (1) Regional and national planning is necessary; (2) growth needs to be chan'1eled in such a way that makes city living attractive; and (3) social policy must be evaluated by the effects  on people.  Finally, unless the root causes of urban problems – housing, education, and jobs – are addressed, solutions will serve only as Band-Aids that cover the real problems.