Social Inequality In The Montgomery Public Education System

Throughout decades, education inequality is still one of the most deliberate and controversial issues in the United States. Thus far, the privilege or right to receive education has not attained the level of equality throughout the nation. Poor districts obtain less educational funds while rich districts obtain more, which create an immense gap between the quality of schools in poor and rich areas. In other words, the education gap is the root of inequality in America. Inequality in education is linked to the major problems in the society. The need for studies to be done to find ways of overcoming these inequalities is very inevitable. The means of mitigating these inequalities are important for the entire world. This is something of great interest due to the fact that children need quality education which is a pillar for a guaranteed future. Generally speaking, the distinctions among races, genders, and classes in the society have caused the educational inequality in America.

According to Jean Anyon, schools in different social classes get different educations and get treated differently at school. How the children are taught will affect how they do in the future. The children who are in school now will be our leaders in the future, so we need to invest in our students. The Working Class students are taught that the process and following the rules is most important, not the answer. If we have government representatives, military leaders, and possibly presidents focusing on following the rules we will not be able to better our country. Children should be taught that they are valued and that their opinions matter, so that later in life they can continue to have confidence in their own ideas. Gaining this confidence starts in school. Anyon studied how the students are treated and taught at schools who are teaching to only one kind of social class. I believe that, most schools are a mix of at least two different social classes. In general, Affluent Professional and Executive Elite schools have students learn from thinking for themselves. On the other hand, Working Class and Middle Class students learn by the teacher thinking for the them. Most schools are a mix of these different teaching styles.

Outline and assess the view that the role of education system is to justify and reproduce social inequalities (50)

2. How would a conflict theorist explain the educational system in the United States? How would this differ from how a functionalist might see it?

Conflict Theory sees social life as a competition, and focuses on the distribution of resources, power and inequality. Unlike functionalist theory, conflict theory is better at explaining social change and weaker at explaining social stability. Conflict theory has been critiqued for its inability to explain social stability and incremental change. For example, a conflict theorist might ask, "Who benefits from the current higher educational system in the U.S.?” The response is for a conflict theorist accustomed to imbalanced amounts of wealth, is the wealthy. After all, higher education in the U.S. is not cheap. The education system frequently siphons through poorer individuals, not because they cannot contend academically, but rather that they cannot afford to their education, monetarily. For this reason the poor are unable to achieve higher education, they are generally also unable to gain higher paying jobs, and, therefore, they remain poor. This tehn becomes a vicious cycle of poverty.

Racial inequality persists in the current U.S. education system, despite nationwide efforts to promote the acceptance of students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Minority students, most notably African American and Latino, receive lower qualities of education compared to the Caucasian majority and are, as a result, at an indisputable disadvantage after primary and secondary education. According to a 2014 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, “students of color in public schools are punished more and receive less access than white students to experienced teachers” (Abdul-Jabbar 31). Higher suspension rates and an increased frequency of corporal punishment use, allowed in 19 states as of 2014 according to Business Insider (Adwar), for minority students are two disciplinary examples of underlying racial discrimination with the current U.S. education system. Economic repercussions of racial inequality in education have been proven to include wealth gaps, higher unemployment rates, and financial instability for minorities in later life. Due to the prominence of racial segregation within schools, it remains a controversial point of debate in modern-day society, resulting in attempts such as affirmative action to establish racial equality in education. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the United States Supreme Court declared affirmative action to be a justified policy in the

There are many controversies that American public education system does more harm than good. In “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto and “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, explains how school education destructively impacts us. Gatto states his experience as a public school teacher and why he “just can't-do it anymore”. He was tired how the schooling was programmed. He argues how school system are affecting students to be more like “childlike” citizens. Also, Anyon demonstrates her research on how there are many different kinds of education depending what “class” you were. She informs us that there is an inequality in “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work”. She tells us that this difference in

Socioeconomic status plays a key factor in the type of education a child receives today and ultimately functions to keep individuals in the class they are born into. Those who are part of the lower class receive the bare minimum in education with the end goal being blind obedience, while the upper class is educated in a way that encourages self-regulation, individual thought, and creativity. These vast differences in education are no mistake and are put in place for overall control.

Conflict theory is the second major school of thought in sociology. It is a macro-level type of approach to understand social interactions in social life, just like functionalism. A difference in conflict theory is that our society is viewed as always being in a constant struggle, unlike functionalism which theorizes that our society is stable. Conflict theory is a paradigm that sees social conflict as the basis of society and social change, and emphasizes a materialist view of society, a critical view of the status quo, and a dynamic model of historical change. Some sociologists may believe that if these tensions, stresses, and struggles never existed in our society people may be more driven to achieve greatness in education, or simply more motivated to set higher goals. Just like functionalism, the conflict theory viewed society on a macro sociological level, but the individual person in our society are having their lives shaped by the economy, control and power. The conflict perspective's main idea is that there are opposing interests

People are told that getting an education will make them successful in life. That is not the case. Jean Anyon conducted a study on the four different schools in different social-class. In the article “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” Jean Anyon states, “In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The teacher rarely explains why the work is being assigned and how it might connect to other assignments” (2). Students are not taught to think for themselves. They are taught to follow their parent’s footsteps into the work force as very low skilled workers. Compared to the students in the capitalist class where they are taught to use their own knowledge and reason to solve problems. The students in the executive elite schools are given a better chance in succeeding in life.

According to the conflict theory on social stratification, those in the upper levels of a stratification structure hold a monopoly over the community's or society's desirables and the use of their monopoly to dominate others. In "Imagine a County", it reads about the US school systems that are rigged in favor of the already-privleged, with the lower caste children tracked by race and income into deficient and demoralizing classrooms. Public schools budgets are determined by property taxes, allowing the higher income districts to spend more money than the lower income districts. When talking about conflict theory, there are the bourgeoisie and the proletariats, which in this instance are the wealthy and the less fortunate. The wealthy schools are packed with well stocked libraries, and the poor schools are lucky to have up to date books. This not only causes conflict between the two "classes", but a high level of inequality as well. These elements of this society tend to contribute to the instability and inequality of this society.

Here in the United States education is modeled after our capitalist society which means education holds the interest of industrialization and its image. For example we separate stints into subjects for specific job or career. Through sociology's functionalism and conflict theory and symbolic interactionism people can see how the United States education system functions.

Conflict theory on education is that education offers status on people. Likewise, those educational systems typically deny disadvantaged students from getting the same instructive like other.

train people with knowledge of information in a fast growing capitalist society. Making the people knowledgeable enough, to apply skills learned from school into the capitalist order. The second reason why education was mandated was because many different races and social background would provide fittings of the varied economic opportunity in society. Creating equal opportunity in education would then give many varied cultures an opportunity to choose roles in life. Jefferson’s two-track educational system also followed the same method of mapping out the lives of people in a capitalist society. The two-track system separated the lower social class as the proletarians, while the learned as the bourgeois. The separation between the laborers and the owners is a perfect example of the social conflict paradigm. There is a division between two different categories of social status. The owners have more power therefore they command what goes on in the society. The laborers have little or any control in the capitalist society. Today’s society still rests on a capitalist order; it will continue to do so because they have the economic

Education is an important structure in society that shapes the most important years of your life, and therefore many theorists have ideas about what is wrong with education, what is right, and what needs to change or develop. Education is confined a lot by social control and social reproduction. Social control is a concept that refers to how social systems control the way we feel, think, behave, and even how we should present ourselves. These can appear openly, shown as rules and laws, or they could be not openly acknowledged and just appear as the “common” thing to do. Social reproduction is the reproduction of inequalities throughout generation-to-generation, one way education does this is how it supplies “wealthy” schools more and “poor” schools less. Michael Apple and Maxine Greene both define Social reproductions and Social Control. Throughout this text, I will explain the theories of Greene and Apple, as well as comparing and contrasting them against one another while applying some of my own experiences of education.