The Case For Teaching High School Sociology

The Value of Sociology

In my opinion, sociology encompasses the best of what high schools call social studies.   It is relevant to students' lives.  It helps them to have a better understanding of who they are as people and it helps the understand their peers.  Students find the discipline timely and interesting.  As a social science, it addresses some of the most valuable lessons from that department, such as: cultural awareness and understanding global society, understanding stereotypes and prejudice and how to not discriminate, how to make sense of data, create a claim with evidence and be a critical thinker, how to understand people who are not like you and how to avoid outgroup homogeneity, especially in gender and race.

You might also make the case for sociology in a number of other ways:

1.  Sociology providesvaluable STEM training in the form of social science.  Students who may avoid math and science learn scientific method, the importance and different types of research, and statistics.  Additionally, for students who might gravitate to traditional STEM classes, sociology provides a practical and interpersonal class that those students might benefit from.  There has been a real emphasis on STEM lately and sociology can be a great part of that. The National Science Foundation endorses sociology as a STEM discipline.

2.  There is much emphasis on Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and sociology provides wonderful opportunity to directly address SEL lessons in the classroom.  I use sociology to talk about how culture, families, schools, media and peers affect how we think about ourselves.  For example, some topics we learn about are how we are shaped to accept (or not) our own bodies and body image, how males are socialized to see violence as a way of demonstrating masculinity and the risks that entails, and how students develop a mindset about their own abilities.  These socialization messages all affect students personally.

3.  There has been a national emphasis on "civics" in high school and sociology helps address this.  In a pluralistic democracy, sociology provides understanding for different groups.  It also addresses which groups have power and how they use it and sustain.  Sociology also addresses social change and social movements.  It can also be an examination of policy.  This is especially valuable to schools looking to create more inquiry-based learning which is the direction that social studies has been evolving toward. The Brookings Institute provides ways that civics should be incorporated into high school classes, many of which fit neatly into sociology classes.  This is part of the C3 Framework by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS).  The C3 Framework contains a connection to sociology in the appendix. 

4.  On a very practical level, sociology has remained free from the suffocating constraintsof the College Board.  This has allowed dual credit sociology programs to grow with partnerships from local (and not-so-local) colleges.  Students can earn college credit without having to take a national test.  Myriad research shows the benefits of students earning college credit in high school.  Sociology is a terrific vehicle to do that.  Indiana U and Loyola U Chicago are just a couple of examples of universities working with local schools to provide these benefits.  Here is an explanation of benefits from The Public School Review:

Dual-enrollment programs have been linked to higher high school graduation rates and increase the likelihood that students will enroll in an institution of higher education.


In addition, students who completed dual-enrollment programs in high school tended to have higher cumulative GPAs during their first three years in college. These benefits held true both for the high-achieving students and students from other subsets. Advantages were also seen in the population of male and low-income students, two subsets that often struggle academically in high school and beyond. The study urged states to continue expanding dual-enrollment opportunities to students across the board, particularly those that do not typically see themselves as college-bound.

5.  For school districts that are concerned with subject matter and curriculum, the ASA has created National Standards for High School to guide school districts about what a sociology curriculum should look like. These standards are available on the ASA website along with other resources.

6.  Finally, sociology is so broad that it is easily applicable to the interest of varying student populations.  With local school districts having very different student demographics, sociology can be a discipline that appeals to very different populations such as minority groups, schools with urban or rural issues, immigrant groups, etc...  Sociology can also be applied to demographics that are seeking preparation for pre-med (sociology is on the MCAT), data and programming (from Stanford and also Medium), business operations and management, business and marketing, criminal justice, public policy.

Dollar Street - Qualitative data from countries around the world

HW:  Read Social Time in reading packet.

Today:  Qualitative cross-cultural analysis of culture

Using existing data, you will conduct a qualitative analysis of culture.

First, examine the data on the Dollar Street is a website from Gapminder that compiles pictures from around the world.  You can sort the data by income, country or by the category such as bedrooms, or toothbrushes.

https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/matrix?thing=Families&countries=World&regions=World&zoom=4&row=1&lowIncome=26&highIncome=15000&lang=en

Second, create a claim that is supported by data.  Choose what you want to look for.  List ideas in your notes packet.

Choose what families to look at.  Who do you want to look at?

What do you find?  List evidence in your notes packet.

What conclusion can you draw?  In other words, based on your evidence, what claim can you make?

What might the material culture reveal about the non-material culture?

Here is a ted talk explaining the website:

https://www.ted.com/talks/anna_rosling_ronnlund_see_how_the_rest_of_the_world_lives_organized_by_income?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2018-01-20&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button

When finished, please take this exit poll.

A cross-cultural qualitative study of Babies

Today, we watched the 2010 documentary, Babies.  Here is the guide that I handed out.


Building off our last lesson, we saw that:

• Culture is made up of material and non-material culture.
• The components of non-material culture include: norms, language, symbols and values.
• These components shape individuals in ways they don’t notice, especially their opportunities and obstacles (life chances).
• Cultural components that remain steady over time can create stability and continuity within a culture.

As you watch the documentary Babies, use your sociological imagination to think about how individuals might be shaped by the culture they are born into. To explore this, we will do a qualitative study of sorts by exploring the culture that babies are born into and how culture shapes a baby from the moment they are born. Fortunately, the data has been collected for us already. We will use the data gathered from the 2010 documentary Babies as an existing source to do a cross-cultural study of how babies are affected by their nurture.




About the documentary Babies (2010):
From the producer,

The adventure of a lifetime begins...Directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Balm`es, from an original idea by producer Alain Chabat, Babies simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from birth to first steps. The children are, respectively, in order of on-screen introduction: Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia; Bayarjargal, who resides with his family in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan; and Hattie, who resides with her family in the United States, in San Francisco.  Re-defining the nonfiction art form, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all. 

The movie is rated PG, however, there are scenes of babies breastfeeding. If you have an issue with this, please let me know.
Babies and their birth country:
Ponijao Namibia
Bayarjargal Mongolia
Mari Japan
Hattie United States

As you watch, look for:
Cultural universals (cultural components found all over the world). If all humans exhibit these, they might be considered human nature.

Cultural differences. What are the ways that these babies are influenced differently by their culture (socialization)? These differences if they are external and socially constructed by society, they are considered human nurture.

TEST DAY - Unit 2

Let's get some 4s!

• Please use Test to cover scantrons.
• Use your Just Mercy book for the short answer.  You do not have to cite specific pages, but you must use details from the text to support your answer.
• Do not use electronic devices until after the period is over.

Just Mercy Chapters 2-3; Research

How does the lesson of Bryan’s grandma in “getting close” make him a more sociologically mindful person?

Getting close as research?

Page 37- a real issue similar to Sandra Bland

Here is a video from an Ohio Walmart where John Crawford III was holding a bb gun that he picked up off the shelf at Walmart.  It should be noted that Ohio allows citizens to walk around with firearms.  It should also be noted that this was a toy bb gun.  Someone in the store called police and they arrived on the scene and shot the man in less than 30 seconds.  There was no indictment.  See the story from the Washington Post here.



Also:
Here is another incident from South Carolina where an officer tells a man to get his driver's license and when the man reaches into his car to get it, the officer shoots him.  The man then asks, "why did you shoot me?"

Tamir Rice was a 12-year old boy who was killed by police.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/nov/26/cleveland-video-tamir-rice-shooting-police

Charles Kinsey, a social worker was trying to help his autistic patient when he was shot by police. 
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-hung-north-miami-officer-who-shot-unarmed-caretaker-autistic-n983926
These events are all examples of events similar to the one Stevenson describes on page 37.  How can you relate these events to status and group membership?

How does Bryan’s status and group membership affect his treatment?

How are Bryan’s thoughts about the incident an example of microsociology?

How are Bryan’s concerns about policing an example of macrosociology?

How can the policing be analyzed from a micro and macrosociological perspective?

What are the qualitative and quantitative ways that you can analyze the death row?

What are the macro and microsociological evidence that capital punishment is unjust? 

How is this chapter an example of ingroup-outgroup dynamics?

How is this chapter an example of stereotypes and categories?

Here is Bryan Stevenson describing these dynamics:

For more sociological info. and additional research on police stops and race, three sociology professors published about this in Contexts magazine.  Rory Kramer and Brianna Remster are in the department of sociology and criminology Villanova University. Kramer studies the physical and social boundaries between races in the U.S., and Remster studies inequality, crime, and formal social control and Camille Z. Charles is in the departments of sociology and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies U.S. racial attitudes.  SHS students can click here to access the article.

The authors use NYPD data that was ordered by a judge to be made public.  The data show that even when controlling for crime rates and other info like age and behavior, blacks are more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to experience force.