SOCI-1015EL Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Egerton Ryerson, Compulsory Education, Schecter Guitar Research
16 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SOCI 1015
February 27, 2018
Education
•Education as a Social Institution
•Institution of education is an enduring set of ideas about education and how it can be used
to accomplish societal goals
•one of the most important institutions in society due to it’s influence on socialization,
status, social order, and economic productivity
•powerful told for promoting ideas among impressionable youth, provide skills, modify
behaviours
•motor of social acceptability and social mobility
•TED TALK VIDEO - brookline Massachusetts // survivor’s remorse // why should a good
education be exclusive to rich kids?
•she is a teacher for a school w mostly all black kids
•she went to a high quality education, but her neighbourhood friends did not
•she became a teacher and her class had no resources
•she eventually signed up for a website that gave her resources
•The Rise of Public Education in Canada
•before the industrial revolution, there was little interest in educating the masses
•the industrial revolution demanded a more disciplined, trainable, and literate workforce
•Consequently, industrialization and public education became interdependent
•As early as 1846, education was seen as a way of achieving economic modernization
•education reformer Egerton Ryerson promoted the idea of a universal, compulsory, and
free school system
•education upheld social order and maintained social control by subverting potential social
conflict animosity from Irish catholic immigrants
•Equation as a tool of assimilation
•Schecter (1977) argued that compulsory, state-run public education is based on
centralization and uniformity
•Legitimizes and supports social inequality
•Instrument of social control of the merging working class
•What’s wrong with the state running school?
•higher, wealthier areas will have better funding
•Wealthier people can control the politics of schools
•Provincial school boards were set up to run the large systems of “normal” schools
•enforced codes of discipline
•Enacted hierarchal authority relations
•Malacrida (2015) examined how compulsory education is used to enforce social
subordination
•education ranks and sorts children to the detriment of those considered inferior
•Truancy laws
•tests an curriculums that standardize expectations of educational success
•“health” testing conducted via medical and physiological examinations
•Post-war expansions and the Human Capital Thesis
•Economic expansion after WWII required an increasingly educated workforce
•expansion of post-secondary education
•Human capital thesis: industrial societies incest in schools to enhance the knowledge and
skills of their workers
•used to justify low income among marginalized groups, which attributed to low human
capital
•Since the 1970’s, government funding for post-secondary has been declining and
corporate sponsorship is increasing
•Models of public Education in Canada
•The Assimilation Model
•Historically, education in Canada has been based on a monocultural model that
emphasized assimilation into the dominant culture
•Ex) focus on english literature
•english canada was perceived as a white protestant nation and newcomers were
expected to assimilate to fit in
•this model fails to recognize racial bas and discrimination within and outside the school
system
•Multicultural Education
•Multiculturalism was officially implemented by the Canadian federal government in
1971
•preserve and promote cultural diversity
•Remove the barriers that denied certain groups full participation within Canadian
society
•study and celebrate the different lifestyles, traditions and histories of diverse cultures
•Three fundamental assumptions of multicultural education
•learning about one’s culture will improve educational achievement
•learning about one’s culture will promote equality of opportunity
•learning about one’s culture will reduce prejudice and discrimination
•Simplistic focus on the “exotic” aspects of different cultures, which overlooks
foundational values and the complexities of different cultures
•Anti-racism and Anti-oppression Education
•emerged in the 1980’s
•Recognizes that racial inequality exists and that racism is systematic with Canada
•seeks to expose and eliminate the institutional and individual barrier to equity
•seeks to change institutional policies and practices
•seeks to change individual attitudes and behaviours reproducing inequalities
•seeks to create a classroom environment that will:
•expose stereotypes and racist ideas
•Critically examine sources of information
•provide alternative and missing information
•equip students to looks critically at the accuracy of the information they receive
•Explore the reasons for the continued unequal social status of different groupings
•The Hidden Curriculum
•Defined as the unstated, unofficial goals of the education system
•Robert Merton’s structural functionalist theory helps us understand the hidden
curriculum as performing latent functions of teaching societal normals
•Ex) the value of work, need to respect authority, the efficient use of one’s time
•Conflict theorists might argue that the hidden curriculum is reforming a latent
dysfunction
•Ex) reproduces the class system by hindering social mobility
•Cultural Reproduction Theory
•Oakes (2005) examined “tracking” of students
•Different students are ranked according to different levels of aptitude and projected
outcomes
