1 Singapore Singapore Singapore Singapore

2 Canada Japan Taiwan Japan

3 Finland Estonia Japan Estonia

4 Ireland Taiwan South Korea Taiwan

5 Estonia Canada Switzerland Finland

6 South Korea Viet Nam Estonia Canada

7 Japan South Korea Canada Viet Nam

8 Norway New Zealand Netherlands South Korea

9 New Zealand Slovenia Finland New Zealand

10 Germany Australia Denmark Slovenia

Source:
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 2018. “PISA 2015 Results
in Focus,” https://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisa-2015-results-in-focus.pdf (retrieved 28
February 2018).

In Review
Learning Objectives
LO1 Describe how education was transformed from an elite
phenomenon to a mass phenomenon

Creating systems of education with enough resources to include all children was a social
change of breathtaking scope. Training in families had been decentralized, unorganized,
and uneven in quality. Religious training was never widely available and tended to set
people apart from the surrounding community. Replacing these forms of instruction with a
centralized and rationalized system created strong pressures toward uniformity and
standardization. Diversity among families, regions, and religious traditions gradually gave
way to homogenized indoctrination into a common culture.
The development of mass education was facilitated by the development of printing (which
made relatively inexpensive books widely available), the spread of Protestantism (which
expected Christians to read the scriptures for themselves), the rise of democracy (which led
to the demand for free education for all children), and, most importantly, industrialization
(which required a literate labour force with a good knowledge of basic math.)

LO2 Apply major sociological theories to the analysis of how

education promotes upward mobility, creates social
cohesion, and reinforces class, racial, and gender inequalities

Theories at a Glance Education

Theory Main Question Application

Functionalism How do social The view that the education system is responsible for sorting students
structures and the based on talent and effort is a central component of the functional
values underlying theory of education. The functional theory also stresses the training
them contribute to role of schools. That is, in schools, most people learn how to read,
social stability? write, count, calculate, and perform other tasks essential to the
workings of postmodern society. A third function of the education
system involves the socialization of the young. Schools teach the
young to view their country with pride, respect the law, think of
democracy as the best form of government, and value capitalism.
Finally, schools transmit culture from generation to generation,
fostering a common identity and social cohesion in the process.

Sorting, training, socializing, and transmitting culture are manifest

functions, or positive goals that schools accomplish intentionally.
Schools also perform certain latent, or unintended, functions. For
example, schools encourage the development of a separate youth
culture that often conflicts with parents’ values. Especially at the
college and university levels, educational institutions bring potential
mates together, thus serving as a “marriage market.” Schools perform
a useful custodial service by keeping children under surveillance for
much of the day and freeing parents to work in the paid labour force.
Finally, because they can encourage critical, independent thinking,
educational institutions sometimes become “schools of dissent” that
challenge authoritarian regimes and promote social change.

Conflict How does the From the conflict perspective, the chief problem with the functionalist
theory structure of view is that it exaggerates the degree to which schools sort students
inequality between by ability and thereby ensure that the most talented students
privileged groups eventually get the most rewarding jobs. Conflict theorists argue that,
seeking to maintain in fact, schools distribute the benefits of education unequally,
their advantages allocating most of the benefits to children from upper classes and
and subordinate higher-status racial and ethnic groups.
groups seeking to
increase theirs lead Five mechanisms allow the education system to help reproduce the
to conflict and often class system. First, some people do not attend university or college
to social change? because they feel they can’t afford it, even if they work part-time and
take advantage of student loans. Second, low-income parents are
more likely than are high-income parents to experience the kinds of
financial problems that can make marriage difficult and contribute to
 divorce. In turn, children from one-parent households are often unable
to rely on adults for tutoring, emotional support and encouragement,
supervision, and role modelling to the same degree as children from
two-parent households can. This puts children from one-parent
households at a disadvantage. The third mechanism linking class to
educational outcomes involves lack of cultural capital. High-income
parents are two-and-a-half times as likely as low-income parents to
have earned undergraduate degrees. This fact is important because
university education gives people cultural capital that they can
transmit to their children, thus improving their chance of financial
success. Fourth, IQ and other standardized tests are employed to sort
students by intelligence; test scores are used to channel them into
high-ability (“enriched”), middle-ability, and low-ability (“basic” or
“special education”) classrooms. The trouble is that IQ and other
standardized tests can measure only acquired proficiency in a given
cultural system. The quantity and quality of a person’s exposure to
whatever is counted as proper or correct plays a large role here. Fifth,
the Internet helps to turn class inequality into inequality of educational
attainment and achievement. The Internet is an increasingly important
source of ideas and information, and people with high income are
more likely to have easy access to the Internet than are people with
low income. The access gap is shrinking over time, but recent Web-
based developments (MOOCs and virtual classrooms) are helping to
ensure that class differences in educational attainment and
achievement persist.

Symbolic How do people Many teachers expect members of lower classes and some visible-
interactionism communicate to minority groups to do poorly in school. Rather than being treated as
make their social young people with good prospects, such students are often under
settings meaningful, suspicion of intellectual inferiority and often feel rejected by teachers,
thus helping to white middle-class classmates, and the curriculum. This expectation,
create their social sometimes called a stereotype threat, has a negative impact on the
circumstances? school performance.

Minority-group students often cluster together because they feel

alienated from dominant groups in their school or perhaps even from
the institution itself. Too often, such alienation turns into resentment
and defiance of authority. Many students from minority groups reject
academic achievement as a goal because they see it as a value of the
dominant culture. Discipline problems, ranging from apathy to
disruptive and illegal behaviour, can result.

The corollary of identifying your race or ethnicity with poor academic

performance is thinking of good academic performance as “selling
out” to the dominant culture. Consistent with this argument,
Indigenous and black students in Canada have higher-than-average
school dropout rates.

In contrast, research shows that challenging lower-class and minority

students, giving them emotional support and encouragement, giving
greater recognition in the curriculum to the accomplishments of the
groups from which they originate, creating an environment in which
they can relax and achieve—all of these strategies explode the self-
fulfilling prophecy and improve academic performance.

Feminism How do social Feminist theorists note that although women now constitute a majority
conventions of students in institutions of higher education, the gender gap narrows
maintain male considerably at the master’s level and reverses at the PhD level,
dominance and where men receive most degrees. Moreover, a disproportionately
female large number of men earn degrees in engineering, computer science,
 subordination, and dentistry, and specialized areas of medicine—all relatively high-paying
how do these fields, most requiring a strong math and science background. A
conventions get disproportionately large number of women earn PhDs in education,
overturned? English, foreign languages, and other relatively low-paying fields
requiring little background in math and science.

LO3 Analyze the corporatization of higher education

The corporatization of the university means the reshaping of the university on a business
model. In practice, corporatization involves consumers of higher education paying a larger
share of the cost of the services they enjoy and universities responding to market demand
for particular skills. Corporatization is a change from the way universities were organized
up until the 1980s, when they were more heavily subsidized by government, academic
personnel were freer to shape university priorities as they saw fit, and few instructors
were cost-cutting part-timers. Evidence of corporatization includes the rapid rise in the
cost of tuition since the 1990s, the decline of government funding, and the shift of
enrolment to fields for which there is relatively high demand and therefore relatively high
earnings.

It is likely significant that most of the criticism of corporatization comes from professors in
the social sciences, education, and the humanities, all fields that are either stagnating or
shrinking in terms of their relative share of the student body. Here, self-interest and
idealism appear to coincide. Professors in fields that are growing relatively slowly, if at all,
may be expressing both their sincere belief in the importance of humanistic, liberal arts
education and a desire to protect their jobs.

The corporatization of the university undoubtedly comes with risks, not the least of which
is excessive corporate influence on university policy. Critics play a useful role in keeping a
watchful eye on university governance. Paradoxically, however, it might make more sense
for universities to broaden outside influence rather than seeking to eliminate it. In
Denmark, umbrella organizations of universities, corporations, and unions consult
frequently. They decide on funding priorities that result in educating university students so
they can find interesting and well-paying jobs that the Danish economy needs. This
arrangement helps to keep Denmark’s per capita income higher than Canada’s, its
unemployment rate lower, and its people happier.

LO4 Assess attitudes toward the quality of schooling in canada

and compare the quality of canadian schools to those in
other countries

Adults Canadians are only moderately satisfied with their public schools, and
dissatisfaction seems to be growing. A substantial number of Canadians think that
educational standards are too low and require renewed emphasis on “the basics” of
language, math, and science. They worry that the Canadian school system lags behind that
of other countries, such as Japan and South Korea.

However, comparative analysis of the capabilities of 15-year-old students in reading, math,

and science show that the quality of Canadian education compares favourably with the
quality of education in 67 other countries. In standardized tests in these subjects in 2015,
Japanese students ranked second, South Korean students ranked eighth, and Canadian
students ranked sixth.

Multiple-Choice Questions
Questions marked with an asterisk* are higher-order questions on the Bloom taxonomy.
Answers to these questions are available in the appendix on page CR-51.

1. Which of the following is a latent function of schools?

socializing students

training students

providing a custodial service for parents

transmitting culture

*2. The following diagram illustrates a theory about the effect of colleges on social
mobility. Which theory does it illustrate?

functionalism

conflict theory

symbolic interactionism

feminism
3. Which of the following statements is NOT accurate?

Canada has the world’s lowest out-of-school rate for children of primary school
age.

Canada has the highest percentage of residents between the ages of 25 and 64
with a certificate, diploma, or degree from a college or university.

The earliest school systems were established in Upper Canada and the northern
United States about 1870.

Canada’s public school system is ranked the best in the world.

*4. The following graph illustrates a theory about the relationship between education
and income. Which theory, if any, does it illustrate?

functionalism

conflict theory

symbolic interactionism

none of the above