Tuesday 24 February 2009

Explain how education is an agent of secondary socialisation

Explain how education is an agent of secondary socialisation。
This view is concluded by Talcott Parson bulit on Durkheim's ideas that educational system acts as a bridge between the family and wider society. When we get education at school,we have to not only study but also try to communicate with other people and learn how to behave as a good person,by which we can develop value consenus and prepare for our lives when we get out to the society. What's more,as Parson said,there are two major values in modern society that we can learn in schools. First,individual achievement is always encouraged by teachers and get praise,high qualifications in return which is nearly the same case in the society. Therefore,this prepares young people to achieve well as individuals in the world of work. Secondly,equality of opportunity is also thought that can be transmitted by schools offering all pupils an equal chance of success.
Therefore,overall,we learn the knowledge,skill of working by the education and develop the consenus,get practice in the schools which help us to behave better in the society.

3 factors!

Three factors affect pupils’ educational achievement:
Cultural deprivation
Material deprivation
Cultural capital

Write notes on each and explain how they affect pupils' educational achievement

1.cultural deprivation
As its name indicates,cultural deprivation is a lack of culture includes norms,values,attitudes and skills that are necessary for success. It is regarded as one of the reasons of social class which affect the educational achievement by Douglas and Sugarman. I agree with this idea partly. Different social classes have different culture and values on the life. To working-class,most of them don't have enough money to support the family,therefore,the parents care more about jobs,food rather than education. Consequently,children will not be so encouraged to go to school and may think it is more important to worry about getting a part-time job first. However,this society is getting more and more advancing that an increasing number of people realise the importance of education. So,this idea about cultural deprivation is not so correct nowadays.

2.material deprivation
Material deprivation is seen as opposite view as cultural deprivation,which means a lack of money and things that money can buy. In my opinion,this point is of great importance. Among different social classes,the most obvious difference is the income and income is necessary and helpful to get good educational attainment. For instance,high income can provide children with many educational advantages--comfortable room with comfortable desks to work at and adequate reference books. Besides,costs of education are rising like the introduction of tuition fees which may push stress on the family. As a result,children in working-class may feel difficult to continue studying.

3.cultural capital
Cultural capital is defined as culture that can be converted into material rewards such as high salaries and living standards,which is just like "dominant culture" started by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in 1997 . To the children born in middle-class or upper-class families,their culture is closer to the culture of school that enables them to succeed easily. In addition,according to Bourdieu,the primary purpose of education is cultural and social reproduction which helps to spread thoughts of dominant culture and reproduce the class system.

Wednesday 18 February 2009

Do these policies produce equal opportunity for all pupils?

Do these policies produce equal opportunity for all pupils?
To anser this question,we had better know the present policies of education first.
Before 1870,working-class children were limited to elementary schools that run by charity and almost a third of of children could't go to school as Royle mentioned in 1997. Therefore,some policies began to be done to solve this problem that Education Act turned to the first. In 1870,Education Act provided state-run elementary schools for children from 5-11 years old with 9p a week to help those lower-class children. Then in 1944,Education Act continued to get on with new policies that aimed to give every pupil an equal chance to develope their abilities--the tripartite system. This system was made in terms of intelligence tests to divide children into 3 types of secondary schools--grammer schools,technical schools and secondary modern schools. But in reality,this system didn't provide equal opportunitie that grammer schools which teach talented pupils must have better teaching resources than secondary modern schools. Besides,as the children were classified too early at 11 years old, the tests can not prove their abilities correctly taht their futures might be destroyed and it would also affect their self-confidence. As for the most popular type of schools nowadays which were required by the Labour government in 1965--comprehensive schools,they indeed largely reduced the unfairness between classes,but many pupils were still divided into ability groups that a disproportionate number of working-class pupils were in the bottom sets. It is just like the other form of tripartite system and equal opportunities haven't been produced at all. Nextly,we should mention Conservative educational policies. The most important policy of them was made by the Education Reform Act as it established a national curriculum and system of testing. What's more? It established city technology colleges and grant maintained schools in order to give parents more choices as well. However,will parents have a real choice for their children? In fact,as Smith&Noble's result,middle-class parents are more possible to obtain good schools bacause they have more money to afford with their social and cultural capital whereas working-class parents don't have the same capacity and opportunity. In addition,i think although some students from low income or low class family can continue schools by scholarship that they don't need to pay the fees,the study condition and equipment,teaching resources of them are worse than students of middle-class family and so,it's still difficult for them to get equal chance to study as others. Lastly,there is also a kind of policy--Labour educational policy in 1997. Formulated by Tony Blair,it focused on the diversity of schools following the Conservatives policies to reflect students' talent and meet their demands. However, as we mentioned above,choices usually mean limited places and selection at popular schools and it will reduce the opportunities for working-class students.
To sum up,all these policies are made so as to extend education opportunities for all people like a word by Gorden Brown "The challenge this century is the global skills race and that is why we need to push ahead faster with our reforms to extend education chances for all" and it is true that the condition of unequal opportunity has been improved a lot. But the fact that middle-class gains stays the same. If we really want to solve this problem,the basic way is to reduce inequality in the society first.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

"Examine the role of education in society and who benefits from it"

"Examine the role of education in society and who benefits from it"
As we all know,education has been more and more important in our life and to the whole society. It always stands for the high status,high income and high popularity.In fact,what role does the education play in the society and why we always see educated people as people with good personalities and responsibilities?
Let's discuss it from six perspectives!
Firstly,we can know Functionalist's idea of the role of education by analysing the French sociologist Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parson. According to Emile Durkheim's arguements,education can improve the social solidarity by teach people shared history og themelves to evoke and develope the similarities of common people and then,bind them together to stable the big society.In addition,in the industrial society,people have to learn specialised skills and knowledge to get jobs that can be done by educational system. But from Talcott Parson's opinion,he sees the education as a main agency of secondary socialisation that linked between the family and society. It helps students to know their abilities and allocate their roles.
Nextly,from Marxists' opinons,Louis Althusser thought the educational system has largely replaced for ideological control and the main role of education is transmitting the ideology. And the reduction in social inequality is posed in terms of what Bowles and Gintis said that education legitimates social inequality by broadcasting the myth that it offers everyone an equal chance.
AS for the Feminist perspectives,maintaining gender inequality is one of the main roles of education.
In the 1960s,social democratic perspectives on education grew up and have big influence on government educational policy.Education is seen as to bring benefits to society by producing economic growth.
From New Right's point of view,education can lead to a success in an increasingly competitive global market-place that motivates people to improve standards .
At last,in my opinon of the role of education,it teaches us lots kind of knowledge and specialised skills which helps us to get good jobs and earn money.Therefore,the first person that get benefits is the one who gets education. Then,people around this person can also get benefits that they can get financial support,feel proud or will have better living condition. Besides,as i refered in the third and sixth paragragh,the social solidarity and economy will be increased which is beneficial to the whole society and,that's why the government always calls for more people to get to education and even subsidises the people that can't afford the fees.

Monday 16 February 2009

the impact of current weather on Britain's economy

Examine the impact of current weather on Britain's economy.
Weather is a very essential factor that easily influences the British econoomy because of the changeable weather and instability. Therefore,in British history,weather always plays an important role in economy.In all,the weather can affect the economy in four ways.
In the first place,the supply of agriculture will be influenced by weather which results in decreasing the scale of sales.Dating back to the 1850s,during this period 1850 to 1913,the climate change had a big effect on the output and productivity which leads to long swings og agriculture sector and pattern of economic growth.
Secondly,the bad weather will partly have an effect on company's normal operations,such as reducing the productivity-the CEBR suggested that a 20% reduction in productivity would cost £900m.And due to the recession,the impact by weather became much more bigger that almost no company is immune to the cuurent weather.For example, there was large snow storm weeks before that nearly led to a loss of £1.2bn just on Monday and Tuesday that said by the Federation of Small Businesses.It was calculatedmade based on the assumption that 20pc of the workforce or 6.4m people were off work on Monday because of the weather conditions.
What's more? The transport can be easliy affected by external condition like roads and air-planes.It was reported that the 10 centimetres (four inches) of snow which coated London, Europe's financial capital, Monday virtually shut down air, rail and road links, forcing thousands of workers to stay at home in the worst storms in 18 years. In addition,London business leaders also said the estimated cost to the British capital alone could be as much as 48 million pounds ($69 million) in lost productivity that all flights in and out of Heathrow, a major international hub, were cancelled.
At last but the least,as a country that famous for the tourism,if the weather gets worse,few people will travel to Britain which may be harmful to the economy.
However, some companies will actually benefit that "consumers spend more on heating and on warm clothes and any damage from the bad weather from accidents, or structural damage leads to increased spending on repairs," said McWilliams

"Why do some pupils achieve more than others?"

"Why do some pupils achieve more than others?"
Why do some pupils achieve more than others? It is also a question that i want to ask.As a student,educational attainment which can be seen through exam scores is very important to me.When i was in the school,i would find that some students studied very hard but not with high scores whilst some could easily get high attainment with few efforts. Maybe i think,we can analyse from two perspectives.
From macro-perspective,considering the world,there are countless people from different ethnicity,from different class and gender.These three factors-class,ethnicity and gender make a difference to educational attainment-the educational qualifications and grades students achieve.Generally speaking,the higher your social class,the higher attainment you will get with Chinese ethnic
group you are in,and that girls always do better than boys.Therefore,we can first talk about the social class of people.
In reality,the point that class influences educational attainment has been proved over the last 50 years by sociological research and government statistics. During the 1960s,sociologist claimed thay the low attainment of many working-class pupils caused by a lack of something-one is material deprivation,the other is cultural deprivation. Material deprivation means a lack of money and the things that money can buy.Imagine that you are born in a high class,the high income of your family can provide adequate study resource,study facility and comfortable condition for you to get on well with your study. However,as for the children in low class as poor family,some of them may have to go out for part-time jobs that they can't concentrate on their study well.Besides,the costs of education pull children in working-class to leave school.With the longer education and the abolition
of student grants,many young people with working-class backgrouds feel it difficult to afford the fee although grants are available for minority of low income families.When it comes to cultural deprivation,this theory stands for a lack of certain norm, values,skills and attitudes which are necessary for educational success.Parents of working-class families are always less-educated and busy with
jobs to earn money that the children receive little encouragement and correct values of society.Therefore,they can't get assess to study and learn how to be a worthy man.What's more,home and school should be considered as well. Firstly,the Home and the School, entitled by J.M.B.Douglas in 1964 claimed that middle-class children receive more attention and support from their parents that can encourage the
children to study.In addition,teachers in the school will care more for the high class students and always give opportunities to them.
Secondly,ethnicity is also a factor to affect students' attainment although it is three times less than the effect of calss.Among them, the most significant reasons i think are cultural factors and discrimination.To some degree,ethnic groups have their own values,norms and life styles which are distinctive to each ethnic group.For example,according to an Afican-Caribbean writer-Tony Sewell(1997),the low attainment of Afican-Caribbean boys insecondary schools are attributed to the culture that most of the boys are raised in lone-parent families by mothers.
Because of a lack of male role model of a father figure,the Black will possibly be opposite to the authorities of teachers and rejections of academic attainment.The other thing to refer is that the discrimination still exists in the world that white people are better than others.This concept can affect the schools and the society and even the peer groups that will give stress to students of other ethnic groups.
For instance,in terms of a comprhensive school called Jayleigh,a greater proportion of White puplils entered for GCSEs than Asian pupils and
higher marks are needed for Asian pupils if they want to get to top schools.
The last but not least fator-gender that girls do better than boys are dueing to changes in attitudes towards marriage,work and education.
In terms of th comparison by Sue Sharpe between attitudes of working-calss girls in the 1970s and 1990s,girls are tend to be more confident,independent and ambitious.Maybe it is also because of the "bedroom culture"that girls prefer staying at home to study while boys are likely to go to pubs to spend their time.
From micro-perspective,when we observe our friends and classmates,we can find that people who are hardworking are more likely to get high scores although minority is depends on their intelligence.Therefore,I believe that no matter which class,ethnic group or gender you are,if you always spare no effort to concentrate on your study,you will possible to attain your goals.

Sunday 15 February 2009

Comment on my blogs

1.Population
Population has been one of the most important problems in the world because of a big gap between two different types of countries--like Indian with an rapid increasing number of people and Intaly with a falling number of people.In my opinion,it is mainly caused by unawareness of sexually relationship and a lack of reproductive health services.But in fact,the sexual education is good or not is still being discussed.

2.Meeting and mating
Nowadays, a change in technology,people's values and thoughts appeal more and more people to choose their mate themselves.Then,some new ways of meeting and choosing spouses appear like through the internet.However,does it mean that they are all correct and better than before? Anyway,we should still be serious with making mew friends and choosing our mates.Besides,some poor parts in the world still have arranged marriages and remain extremely popular and impossible to disappear.

3. Sex and Procreation
Because of a lack of sex education and advanced technology,sex problems in teenagers are becoming more and more serious in the society.A kind of voice that" sex and procreation will become increasingly separate" is also popular.Can you imagine what our future generation will be? In addition,there are some researchs about human cloning and cyber-sex which i think will have negative influence the relationship between peole and people.

4.Family
Family form are changing a lot all over the world that family diversity is an obvious charcater.Although an increasing people can now choose their own life and families,the family values are seen to be disappearing and it is what i worries about.

Wednesday 11 February 2009

social laws and policies

Exam social laws and policies that influence family and household.

In recent years,governments have cared more about families which leads to a lot of policies that influence family and household.
The major point is about the nuclear family that the New right comes down firmly on this nuclear family side and it is considered as the best type of family.Therefore,some policies aim at encouraging nuclear families and discouraging family diversity. As Saunder said,"explicitly favour married parenthood over all other choices for raising children" and married couples should have special legal
rights and safeguards.Then,we can see some policies about encouraging nuclear families,which can be classified as Conservative policy and Labour policy.In the first place,the Green Paper 1998"supporting families" suggests that marriage is the best.In addition, Divorce laws require counselling cooling-off period in order to encourage couples to save their marriage.When it comes to Labour policy,it is
milder than those of Conservatives that its attempt is to support both marriage and nuclear family and provide help for other forms of families. For example,there are two programmes about it-Labour's New Deal schemes and the Sure Start programme.The former one is designed to help people find paid employment,especially to those lone mothers while the latter is to provide health and support services for low
income families with young children.However,some policies don't in favour of normal families.As we all know,nowadays some countries allow the same sex to get married and lower age of consent for homosexual relationship that change the type of family obviously.
As for some policies for children,they will affect the size and components of family.There is a division between countries that in some
countries,governments set prohibitation to prevent people having so many children and advocate free contraception while on the other hand,
some governments have the legislation of abortion,give subsidy to those who give birth to more children and provide IVF programmes supported
by NHS.
In a conclusion,government policies and laws aim at catering all people and adjusting situations. Although it is very difficult to implement
and decide,such policies and laws should not only cover tranditional family but also diversity of family.

Tuesday 10 February 2009

marriage remains a patriarchal institution

Assess the view that marriage remains a patriarchal institution.

What is the family? As the American anthropologist George Peter Murdock said,families share the same household,work together and to some extent,they share the same domestic tasks and income. Besides,symmetrical family,which came in 1973 announced by Michael Young and Peter Willmott that the roles of husband and wife were becoming more and more similar. However,it didn't come true in fact in a lot of societies.
According to Ann Oakley's research conducted in the early 1970s with interviews of 40 women,we can see a clear division of domestic labour that women still play a major role in housework,childrencare and spend more time than men.As a result,most
working wives have a dual burden that referred by Allan and Crow. Next,as for the emotion work which includes love,understanding,attention in maintaining relationships,a study by Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden also shows that men showes little awareness of their shortcoming and are always arrogant.In addition,we should concentrate on the family finances.If we observe our old generation like grandparents carefully,we easily find that grandfathers are always dominant by asking grandmothers to do this or that and control the money.This kind of situation is proved by Carolyn Vogler and Jan Pahl that whatever money management system was,men tended to get more money.At last,what i want to say is about the power in the family.We can just take an example from decision-making.Based on a study by Stephen Edgell,decisions made by female were always less important than male's.
Therefore,we can know that patriarcal families have been existing for a long time that it is not easy to change and are common in alot of societies.Although this dominant situation has got better now,with an increasing number of wives choose to be independent by getting jobs,more husbands help to do the housework, and even alpha earners appear, marriages remain a patriarchal institution still exist in some places.All i want to say is that female and wives should change,confirm their attitudes and be confident.I believe that the symmetrical relationship will come into reality soon!

Sunday 1 February 2009

feral youths

Feral youths,which is becoming a serious problem that attacks the society with the increasing number of crimes by youths.You can see from: http://youthviolence.edschool.virginia.edu/violence-in-schools/national-statistics.html It comes from the yob culture that is made up of a lot of teenagers,the majority of whom are still studying in the school.
In order to solve this problem,we should first see the reasons that cause this problem. In my opinion,we can regard it from two aspects--material and mental.The society now provide so many things regardless of they're good or not.For instance,alcohol,drug and tobacco.For that juvenile don't have enough knowledge to distinguish and avoid them,these harmful products are easy to affect the juvenile and make them get lost in these kind of things.http://www.soundvision.com/Info/teens/stat.asp The other reason should attribute to their parents and schools.Nowadays, parents concentrate more on their career that leads to the ignorence to their children.Instead,they give them much money which may be spent on the alcohol or drugs.Also, parental conflicts and divorces might affect the children that they may divert the angers to other innocent people.
After discussing the reasons,we now can get some methods to tackle problems of feral youths.A judge that called Ian Trigger has warned that an obsession with rights had created a society "bedevilled by feral youth".Therefore,regulation and legislation must be done first to stop the feral youths as possible as they can compulsively.For example, the government can increase tax on the demerit goods to reduce the consumption; the street security should be improved; admission of people in nightclub should be restricted. Secondly,parents need to pay more attention to their children.And schools should also be encouraged to improve discipline and provide some mentally assistance. Moreover,we need national service to deal with these problems all over the world and support some poor families.
As a whole,to coping with feral youths problems,the whole society should combine together to help the teenagers.It is time for the public not to criticise the police but support them so that wild youths like you are brought to justice.