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.