Peering Through the Holes in American School Systems
Mid Term Assignment for SOC 3500: SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION taught by Dr. Chrys Ingraham
Directions were as followed: Address all the issues listed below in the development of a philosophy of education as fully and succinctly as possible in AN ESSAY OF 4-8 PAGES IN LENGTH, typed, double-spaced, 12 point. Provide citations and evidence from the course materials to support your answer. This exam asks you to practice thinking sociologically AND to demonstrate that you have attended to all the reading assignments and coursework . The better you demonstrate both things, the higher your grade!
Tips: Read the questions carefully. Outline your answer before you start writing.
Course materials: All readings and videos plus class lectures
Using ALL of the above resources, write a philosophy of education. Answer the following questions using evidence from the course materials:
What is the purpose of education?
What is the role of an educator?
How do functions and processes feature within this philosophy of education?
How is the wide diversity of students reached?
Define the community of learners?
How does the informal system and the hidden curriculum operate in your philosophy?
What is the role of the environment in this philosophy of education?
Peering Through the Holes in American School Systems
The purpose of education in the empire of the United States, is to offer the American Dream as a reward for assimilation. Although everyone is expected to pull themselves up by their bootstraps at any cost, this process prepares enrolled students for the competitive world by indoctrinating and commoditizing their individuality. Based on meritocracy, every opportunistic can take a crack at success. Regardless of discriminatory distinctions and injustices, prosperity in this country is dependent upon how industrialist and innovative the entrepreneur ventures into capitalism and privatization. With a speck of luck and relentless optimism, anyone, can turn their life around for the better and create an objectified legacy. Those who disagree with this rhetoric, conflict the governing self-interests of leading global corporations, consumerism, and imperialism. Ironically, this antagonism absolutely progresses the modern collective consciousness by contextualizing the relations between individual conscious being and their societal eras. Ideological struggles are theoretical counterbalances to and because of each other, thereby, self-identity takes form in the misrecognitions and recognitions of other conscious beings. This principal process edifies all human activity through the constructed mediums of language acquisitions and ascribed meaning.
Therefore, an educator is a reflective framework by which human subjects learn to publicly practice their selfhood through developmental phases of socialization. Educators are conceptual extensions of historical narratives, mediated between the future generations and retrogrades of lived experiences. But how many students are taught that they could live fulfilling and fortunate lives? The factual contrast between inequalities and privileges against the material conditionings and social positionings, are not only embodied by agents of institutions, but teach the realities of life in America. The stereotypes assumed within educational roles perpetuate notions of "success" and "failure" by ranking members of education on scales of quantitative success. According to the 2015 State of New York's Failing Schools Report, "Of the 178 schools, 77 have been failing for a decade. More than 250,000 students have passed through these 77 schools in the past ten years. That represents 250,000 students who did not have access to the high quality public education that they deserved. Moreover, we are failing the kids who need us most. Ninety-three percent of students in failing schools are students of color and 82 percent of these students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch." (The State of New York's Failing Schools Report, 2015, p. 8) Although counterpoising archetypes of failure and success are needed in order to compare the current statures of academic institutions for future funding and enrollment, they further factualized systemic and discriminatory injustices in America, by increasing the price of human failure in the public education system.
Rather than identifying, recognizing, and maturing every being according to their aspirations, they are coerced into a lifetime of conformity at early ages regarding their predetermined purpose. When health insurance, paid time off, time off, sick leaves, maternity leaves, student loan debt assistance programs, mental health resources, flexible work schedules, professional development, social incentives, promotions, and increased wages are considered job benefits, these advantages decide a marketplace disillusioned by freedom of choice and desire for those who do not have the privileges of safety nets to catch them if they fail to succeed. The corporation of public education in America mass produces conflicted, underprepared, disinterested, exhausted, passionless, and compliant subjects indebted, faulted, and enslaved to the faults of mobilized conformity within the sufferings of social stratification. Oppositely, these results reverse when education increases in universalism, moderated funding, and adaptability. The language acquired and ascribed meanings within the polarizing array of American school systems, are limited to regurgitations of memorizations as a form of standardized assessments. The inapplicable curriculums are disconnected from lived experiences of the underprivileged who are forced to inflate certificates, diplomas, and degrees with surplus. In different circumstances, conscious beings may take advantage of these exposures to confront ideological battles with the literacy to comprehend, articulate, and resolve perplexities in relation to their realities and cultivated self-certainties. But ordinarily, education on microlevels teach inconsistent truths and maintain class structures akin to contradictions of macrolevel politics.
Socioeconomic status pervades the fundamentals of both individual and collectivized consciousness in America's materialism. Referring to politizane's infographic video illustrating the distribution of wealth in America titled Wealth Inequality in America, the current and ideal perception Americans hold in comparison to their economic reality is deplorable. During the 2010's, America's 1% "owns nearly a quarter of the national income" with "half of the country's stock, bonds, and mutual funds" making what "the average worker needs to work more than a month to earn what the CEO makes in one hour" (politizane, 00:01:33 - 00:06:10). In this regard, lower socioeconomic classes are indistinguishable from one another despite specialization and scarcity of productive forces. And yet, solidarity within the majority shared wealth inequality, does not prevail the dogma of capitalism's survival of the fittest found beneath the surface level consciousness of most Americans. Nevertheless, the penetrating essence of collectivized consciousness related to capitalistic and socialist ideologies clash at the forefront of those who are most cognitively vulnerable. The language utilized to associate what is conceptually considered significant, configures the types of progress the future generations of societies strive towards.
Viewed in this manner, the organizational boundaries in education sustain an asymmetrical culture consisting of contradicting values. The issues within American school systems, although addressed, remain largely neglected and taboo due to social conservatism in the types of subjects permitted and the manners in which they are taught. They are confined to the fixated expectations for academic efficiencies. Like the emperor's new clothes, the illusion of function can be peered through, but the fabrics of hegemony enables individuals to construct an identity adorned with costly credentials and superfluous status. However, the quality of education and wisdom ultimately appear foolish to those who are not swindled by symbolic gestures of learning. Such as Pierre Bourdieu's social reproductive theory, adult figures who experience similar hardships within systematic forms of oppression, embody remnants of the authoritative temperaments they were once subjected to when they are finally positioned within higher degrees of power. Throughout the significant developmental stages of growing beings, flaws of departmentalized entities become deeply internalized through reproductive practices of subjection.
To understand the vulnerability of others as a prerequisite of learning, is to further relatedness to anything other than self. A socially emotional pedagogy augments intersectionality while alleviating existential alienation of all participants in life. If beings within differing positions of power empathetically recognize each other with intentions to harmonize conscientious reciprocations, networks can become both intrinsically and humanely sophisticated. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit characterizes the self-identity as the form of misrecognitions and recognitions of other conscious beings. Representation within recognition is crucial to the betterment of interpersonal interactionism. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, "Research has shown that having a teacher of the same race/ethnicity can have positive impacts on a student's attitudes, motivation, and achievement and minority teachers may have more positive expectations for minority students' achievement than nonminority teachers." (NCES, 2019) The importance of representation, therefore, models the belief in another instead of dismissing the potential of a learner. Dispiriting and fixated assumptions are learned behaviors of conservative pains fearing their own inferiority to others. For in as much as each is responsible, each contributes to the atmospheric attitudes shared. As Mahatma Gandhi graciously alluded to, individuals who are unaware of their power to embody the change they wish to see in the world, contribute to the hurt of civilized society. Consequently, there always exists an opportune moment to evolve the prospects of impacts by virtue of scholarship and healing.
Although the traits of self which remain cannot be changed, how these are socially constructed can be. One cannot change their place of birth; however, gender roles, race, and ethnicities are not fixated realities but contrived perceptions with historical heritage. The ways in which these words are contextualized can be reproduced or repurposed. Applicably, this representative warfare traces the current contradictory internalizations back to whether materialism precedes metaphysics. It connects the threads of hegemony to Abrahamic monotheism, the Doctrine of Discovery, and historical exonerations. A community of learners devotes themselves to exploring the origins of governing dogmas, sincerely deliberating how these beliefs prevail in the current era, and mature life experiences with new founded insight to ameliorate applicable reconditionings. Antagonism absolutely progresses the modern collective consciousness by contextualizing the relations between individual conscious being and their societal eras. If differences cannot be reconceptualized, new founded knowledge is prevented from evolving in lack of resoluteness.
Openness and willingness to show weakness at the risk of one's belief of self, is how vulnerability defines itself through embodiment. In 2017, Brene Browns's Daring Classrooms presented vulnerability as the power of courage to stake respect and belongingness for the sake of virtue. She described volatile environment's ability to inflict alienating traumas, making vulnerability its casualty and privilege those who preserve it at the expense of others' belief of their self-identity through humiliation, secrecy, and silence. Inspired by her words, open-mindedness is consistently needed to learn anything beyond what is internalized as truth. The potential to forever shape the identity of self exists conditionally. Resilience and opportunity encourages the authentication and worth of self through empathy and perceptive taking. We must respect the value of every human subject, for in each, there endures unconditional lessons to be learned.
Citations
Politizane (Director). (2012, November 20). Wealth inequality in America [Video file]. Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Spotlight A: Characteristics of Public School Teachers by Race/Ethnicity. (2019, February). Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/spotlight_a.asp.
SXSWEDU (Director). (2017, April 07). Brené Brown | Daring Classrooms | SXSWedu 2017 [Video file]. Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVD8YRgA-ck
United States, Andrew M. Cuomo. (n.d.). The State of New York's Failing Schools 2015 Report. Retrieved March 30, 2021, from https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/governor.ny.gov/files/atoms/files/NYSFailingSchoolsReport.pdf