2.081mwf School as a Socialization Agent in the U.S.

 School as a Socialization Agent in the U.S.

School is mandated in the U.S. until age 16 and most students attend until 18.  And while enrolled in school, students are there for approximately 8 hours per day for 12 years of their lives.  And although it took the quarantine to realize it, schools are, in fact, very influential and in many ways more than simply learning.

Brainstorm the functions that schools serve both society and students.  One way to help you think about this is by thinking about the Covid quarantine and all the ways that you or your families were affected by not having normal school.  List as many functions of school as you can. Schools are important in many ways to society.  Some of their functions are to teach lessons; the most obvious being to teach reading, writing, math, history and science.  These manifest lessons are explicit ways that schools influence students.  However, schools also influence students in more subtle, implicit ways, or latent lessons.  

What Latent Lessons Schools Teach

Liberal Values?
Schools have been criticized for latently teaching students progressive values since at least 1974.   Three sociologists wanted to research if teachers indoctrinated their students with "liberal" values and what values those were.  Brint, Contreras and Matthews (2001) observed elementary school teachers and they coded the messages that teachers relayed to students.  They observed over 1000 interactions between teachers and students.

Google Form for this lesson

1. Individually Take a guess - brainstorm what you think the messages were that teachers relayed to students most frequently?

DO NOT SCROLL FORWARD UNTIL AFTER ANSWERING #2

Sociologists Brint, Contreras and Matthews observed elementary school teachers and they coded the messages that teachers relayed to students. They observed over 1000 interactions between teachers and students.

They found that the most common references that teachers reinforced to students were:

• Be orderly.
• Work hard.
• Show respect and consideration.
• Participate.
• Be in charge of yourself.
• Cooperate.
• Justice/fairness.
• Responsibility.
• Self-control.

2.  How many of these did you guess in #2? List the messages that you guessed in #2 that were the same as those above.

3. Now, using the list above, decide what % each of those references were out of 100%.  (The total should add up to 100.)

[ANSWER #3 and 4 BEFORE MOVING FORWARD]

Here are the actual totals:

4.  Choose one of the following research articles (A-D).  Was this true in your experience or at your school?

 

A.  College and Latent Political Attitudes

Campbell and Horowitz (2016) studied whether liberal values were a product of higher education.  They focused on civil liberties, gender egalitarianism and political party affiliation.  They found that college seems to affect the belief in civil liberties and gender egalitarianism but that political party affiliation was more likely influenced by family background.

Tamkinaut Rauf's 2021 research, How College Makes Liberals (or Conservatives)

 finds that,

Empirical research largely dismisses such claims [

that colleges may be sites of liberal “indoctrination”]

, showing that political influence in college operates not through institutional characteristics but peers (Dey 1997; Hanson et al. 2012; Milem 1998).Results from hierarchical multinomial logistic regressions suggest that identity transitions were driven by both the political composition of peer networks and influences outside the educational institution, such as family and prior socialization.

Extra: 

From Current Affairs (2018), The Stereotypes about Free Speech and College Students Are False

B.  This 2017 research by Elizabeth Lawrence examines the connection between college education and healthier lifestyle behaviors.  Here is her abstract:

Do you think that Lawrence's research is an example of manifest or latent lessons?  Why or why not?

C.  School Extracurriculars, Identity and Academic Success

Andrew Guest and Barbara Schneider from University of Chicago published in Sociology of Education (2003) about the importance of extracurriculars and how they shape students' identities differently depending on the type of school the students attend.   Here is a summary from the discussion section:

Are these findings true for your high school experience?  What specific ways?

D.  School Culture Affects How Students Think About Themselves as Students and How to Be Successful

Lisa Nunn researched how school cultures shape the students that attend each school.  Her findings are published in her book, Defining Student Success.  Read a preview from Google books here, and from Rutgers University Press, also available through JSTOR here.  And there is a detailed review of Nunn's work from LUC's Dr. Judson Everitt, available on JSTOR here or from U of Chicago Press here.

Dr. Everitt's review shows that Nunn finds three different types of schools (Alternative, Comprehensive and Elite) that affect students' views of themselves as learners:

“Alternative High,” “Comprehensive High,” and “Elite Charter” each have distinct organizational structures and practices that cultivate unique school- level cultural meanings about success. 

 

Alternative High operates on a non-traditional school model intended to improve the prospects of low-income students by both helping them fulfill college entrance requirements and pre- paring them for the working world in their areas of interest. The local cultural wisdom at Alternative High promotes what Nunn calls a “success- through-effort” perspective among students, in which students define success as achievable entirely through effort with little dependence on intelligence. 

Comprehensive High is a more traditional high school that serves a large and ethnoracially diverse student body, and promotes a perspective that combines elements of “success-through-effort” with what Nunn calls “success-through- intelligence.” Effort is necessary but not sufficient for success, according to this school’s culture; one must also possess an innate intelligence that enables understanding of academic material. 

Elite Charter is a high-performing, college-preparatory charter school serving a predominantly affluent student body where students are focused almost exclusively on academic performance that will earn them entrance to elite colleges. Here, intelligence is viewed as the foundation of success, and the “success-through-effort” element is modified into the idea of “initiative,” through which outstanding students can demonstrate their “passion” for learning.

Was your high school one of these three types?  Do you think that your high school affected how the students thought of themselves as students (aka their sense of self)?  

For more on Sociology and Education/School checkout SOCL 245: