Summary
Educationis a powerful social force in our lives, whether obtained informally through our experiences, or formally through schooling. Education not only influences socialization of individuals, but also their skills and competencies to perform in society.
Key problems in the U.S. educational system as it now stands include low quality at all levels in terms of what students emerge having learned, with U.S. students embodying particularly woeful competencies compared to their peers internationally in basic knowledge of civics, in science, in engineering, or even basic literacy and thinking skills – so much so that graduates of American schools and universities are ill-equipped to fill even jobs in manufacturing. Standardized test scores have actually declined over the recent span of years and grade inflation is rampant.
Structural-functional theorists point to the role of education in enhancing society’s stability – by its socializing of the young, its integrating society’s members by providing them common experiences, its transmitting knowledge, its uncovering new knowledge and acting as a means of “placement” of society members into the stratification system. As education performs these tasks for society, the argument goes, society itself is then better able to cohere and survive. Social-conflict theory criticizes educational institutions for their propensity to simply reproduce the already-existing hierarchies of sex, race and especially social class in the focal society’s stratification system. Symbolic-interactionists are most concerned about how labels, particularly those imposed by the system itself and representatives of the system, impact performance – such as in the “Pygmalion in the Classroom” case of the self-fulfilling prophecy about gifted students as well as in the messages of the so-called “hidden curriculum” of any educational venue.
Recent trends in U.S. education (perhaps some in response to problems therein) include charter schools, home-schooling, the voucher system, and distance learning.