Chapter 9 Review Questions

Answer: Davies and Guppy believe we live in a schooled society because they believe that schooling and education have fundamentally changed in modern society. The first reason to explain their concept is the increase in modern schooling as more individuals are enrolling in post-secondary education than ever before. The second reason is that schooling has become increasingly integral to modern life and has offered increased economic opportunities for those who acquire a higher education both for the individual and their society’s economic productivity. Finally, Davies and Guppy note how the forms and functions of education are increasing and diversifying, offering an education on new topics such as environmental responsibility that are a sign of modern times.

Answer: Formally, curriculums are understood as the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Marx believed that ideas that support the ruling capitalist class were disseminated in this formal curriculum made up of subjects such as English and math, but he also believed that ideas that support the capitalist ruling class were disseminated by what he called the hidden curriculum. This curriculum, according to Marx, consisted of lessons that were not normally a part of the formal curriculum but schools still unintentionally taught them to students, lessons such as obedience and conformity with authority.     

Answer: The first major function of the education system according to some sociologists is socialization, which Durkheim believed provided individuals with training for life in broader society, socializing them into the mainstream. The second major function sociologists believed education served for society was the function of selection. According to Max Weber, this function served through bureaucratic means to select individuals for social positions by sorting them through a reward-based educational system that eventually confers status and prestige upon them depending on their education levels. The third major function of the education system is referred to as legitimation, a function in which a society’s education system is seen as legitimizing certain kinds of knowledge through its formal curriculum and what Marx referred to as the hidden curriculum, or the unintended lessons of the education system. 

Answer: According to Statistics Canada, high-income Canadians are more likely than low-income Canadians to attend higher education and earn degrees. The main reasons for this statistical relationship are different expectations, differential association, and differential preparation. Different expectations refer to the notion that parents in low-income families may have different expectations and values than high-income families. Differential association refers to how children from low-income backgrounds are less likely to have role models who were high achievers in school or who attended university or college and can guide them through the process to attend higher education. Differential preparation is the third and final reason cited for the statistically lower educational outcomes observed in the performance of students from low-income families. This refers to how students from high-income families likely had more opportunities for university or college preparation including tutoring, educational trips, and available books and newspapers, all of which potentially improves their academic performance in comparison to students from low-income families.

Answer: One reason that education can perpetuate social inequality is because of cultural and social capital, but they are two different types of capital. Cultural capital refers to the non-economic social assets that promote social mobility. Cultural capital is essentially comprised of the behaviours, knowledge, and values that indicate your social class. Social capital, on the other hand, refers to the collective value of all one’s social networks. It depends on who you know and the “norms of reciprocity” that develop between people who know each other. Having wide social networks can help us foster trust among people, provide resources and information, and lead to cooperation.