Fourth Edition
ANTHONY GIDDENS ● MITCHELL DUNEIER ● RICHARD P.APPELBAUM ● DEBORAH CARR
Chapter 12: Education and Religion
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The big issues
• Why is education so important as a social
institution?
• How are education and inequality
connected?
• How does sociology look at religion?
• What does religion look like around the
world today?
• What does it look like in the United States?
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The birth of modern education
• In pre-modern societies, formal education
was for the elite and the clergy.
• What existed for the masses was familybased learning.
• Mass education was nonexistent prior to
modernity, when educational systems first
appeared.
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Industry, nation, and schooling
•
•
•
•
Mass education was introduced as
industrialization spread.
Schools provided an appropriately
socialized and educated workforce.
More and more jobs required basic
academic skills.
The modern workforce had learn how to
learn as technologies were constantly
changing.
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Industry, nation, and schooling
• Specialization became increasingly
important, alongside a general education.
• As industry needs changed, educational
systems were occasionally left trying to
catch up. This still happens today.
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Sociological theories on education
• A great deal of variation exists in theoretical
approaches to education.
• Two of the major perspectives:
– Functionalist
– Conflict
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Literacy
• Literacy was relatively unimportant before the
Reformation and the rise of science.
• Alongside those changes came the printing
press, which helped in expanding literacy.
• Mass education systems were also a major
factor in increasing rates of literacy.
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Education in developing countries
• During the colonial era there were mixed
feelings about educating indigenous peoples.
• Eventually, local elites were educated.
• This choice backfired as the newly educated
elites led revolutionary movements.
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Education in developing countries
• Educational systems in the former colonies were
and have remained top-heavy, with stronger
higher education than the primary and secondary.
• This has led, in part, to today’s problem of “brain
drain” at the top and illiteracy at the bottom.
– 20.8% of those 15 and older in the developing world
are illiterate (UNESCO 2010).
• Local education programs are now being
promoted in many such nations.
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Education and inequality
•
•
•
Historically, education has been seen as a
primary means for promoting equality.
But research indicates this is often not the
case.
In fact, our current system of education
largely reproduces inequality.
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“Savage Inequalities”
• Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 book showed massive
inequalities in schools in the United States; for
example:
– East St. Louis, Ill.: poor, black, no resources
– Westchester County, N.Y.: wealthy, white, an
abundance of resources
• Critics have often focused on issues with
Kozol’s methodology.
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Educational Attainment in the U.S.
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census 2011k.
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Educational Attainment in the U.S.
The highest level of school reached by the population aged 18 years and older
NO HIGH SCHOOL
HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE
ASSOCIATES DEGREE
MASTERS DEGREE
SOME HIGH SCHOOL
SOME COLLEGE
BACHELORS DEGREE
OTHER ADVANCED DEGREE
2.4%
31.2%
5.6%
9.7%
17.5%
8.6%
21.4%
21.2%
3.3%
29.6%
15.9%
WHITE NON-HISPANIC
4.4%
35.2%
11.5%
BLACK
12.9%
2.8%
10.1% 1.1%
HISPANIC
9.4%
19.8%
6.5%
5.2%
13.3%
1.3%
6.4%
4.7%
20.4%
7.1%
9.1%
13.5%
32.3%
6.5%
ASIAN
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of the Census 2011k.
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“Between school effects”
• Earlier on (1966), James Coleman offered a
more systematic way of studying
educational inequality.
• He found that actual school facilities were
less different than expected.
• His conclusion: student background was
more important than school facilities or
resources.
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Tracking
• Tracking involves separating students into
different instructional groups, ostensibly
based on ability.
• Students and teachers internalize these
labels.
• Privileged children are more likely to be
placed in higher tracks, ultimately
reproducing inequality.
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Education reform
• Starting in the 1960s, desegregation and
busing were used to promote equality.
• Much disagreement remains over what needs
to happen to improve our system today:
– Vouchers
– Privatization
– Charter schools
– Home schooling
• A renewed focus on literacy is another mode
of reform.
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Why is religion so important?
• Religion is a “cultural system of commonly
shared beliefs and rituals that provides a
sense of meaning and purpose by creating
an idea of reality that is sacred, allencompassing, and supernatural.” (p. 377)
• Religion is also a cultural universal dating
back some 40,000 years.
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How sociologists approach religion
•
There are four broad themes being considered:
1. We are not concerned with the truth of religion.
2. Our focus is on the organization and
institutionalization of religion.
3. We often see religions as unifying but also see
where they can lead to conflicts.
4. Religiosity is explained by social, rather than
psychical or spiritual, factors.
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Classical theories of religion
• Durkheim was interested in the social functions of
religion:
– Provides shared sacred beliefs and practices
– Provides shared moral order and social unity
• Weber studied religion as part of major social change:
– Saw a connection between Protestantism and
capitalism
– Saw Eastern religions as oriented differently
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Classical theories of religion
• Marx, drawing upon the German philosopher
Feuerbach, saw religion as ideology that
reinforced inequality:
– Religion as the “opiate of the masses”
– Religion as self-alienation
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Contemporary theories of religion
• Scholars in more recent years have done their
research in religiously plural societies.
• Religious pluralism and secular culture
threaten certain social functions of religion.
• Secularization of some sort is now accepted by
most sociologists.
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How are religions organized?
• Churches
• Sects
• Denominations
• Cults/New religious movements
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Globalization and religion
• Religious nationalist movements have
gained traction as a reaction to Western
encroachment.
• Religious nationalism is frequently
connected to global violence.
• Catholic liberation theology arose in the
Southern hemisphere.
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Religion in the United States
• Despite declines in religious identification,
Americans remain believers at high rates.
• The decline in identification with some religious
group:
1990: 90%  2008: <80%
• The biggest decline was among Christians, while the
most growth was in those with no religious
identification.
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Figure 12.2 Religious Affiliation (percentage of
U.S. population)
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Rise of conservative Protestantism
• Recent research has shown that more than half
of Protestants describe themselves as “born
again.”
• The increase in conservative Protestantism
affects all Americans.
• There has been a decline in liberal and
moderate Protestantism at the same time as the
growth in more conservative denominations.
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Gallup on global religion
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Religion and socioeconomic status
• Socioeconomic status varies by religious
group membership.
– Jews and liberal Protestants have the highest
SES, then moderate Protestants and Catholics,
followed by conservative and black Protestants.
• Jews are most likely to be Democrats,
conservative Protestants to be Republicans.
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Chapter 12: Education and Religion
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Clicker Questions
1. Why have formal educational systems been slow to develop in
low-income nations?
a. For most of the colonial period, the colonial government
regarded the indigenous population of these countries as too
primitive to educate.
b. The focus has been on developing primary and secondary
education for the elite.
c. Funds to pay for the innovations needed to educate the rural
and urban poor come from multinational corporations, whose
efforts began only in the late 1980s.
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Clicker Questions
2. What was the main conclusion of the landmark studies of
educational inequality carried out in the 1960s by James
Coleman, and later replicated by Christopher Jencks?
a. Educational and occupational attainment are governed mainly
by family background and nonschool factors.
b. Outside of the poorest areas, black schools are often as well
funded as white schools.
c. Reform of the educational system is essentially useless without
reform of society.
d. Intelligence is largely a product not of heredity but of the
environment and, in particular, the actions of parents.
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Clicker Questions
3. One main reason for the rise of large educational systems was
the process of
a. medical innovation.
b. agricultural expansion.
c. industrialization.
d. technological innovation.
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Clicker Questions
4. How do sociologists define the term religion?
a. events that absorb the public imagination and generate a good deal of
communal activity (in the way of marketing campaigns, television
specials, and e-mail) a long time after they actually happened, such as
Elvis, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., the Beatles, Star Wars,
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Oprah,
South Park, and so on
b. a cultural system of commonly shared beliefs and rituals that provide a
sense of ultimate meaning and purpose by creating an idea of reality
that is sacred, all-encompassing, and supernatural
c. a search for inner fulfillment
d. any organization that meets in a church and is led by priests or ministers
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Clicker Questions
5. Linking strongly held religious convictions with beliefs about a
people’s social and political destiny is
a. religious economy.
b. religious nationalism.
c. civil religion.
d. ethical religions.
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Clicker Questions
6. Which major sociological thinker made the distinction between
“the sacred” (objects such as crosses, bibles, and jewelry that
have a direct spiritual connection to the divine) and “the
profane” (the ordinary objects of everyday life, such as chairs,
tables, and sinks)?
a. Marx
b. Durkheim
c. Weber
d. Foucault
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Clicker Questions
7. The classical theories of religion argued that the key
problem facing religions in the modern world is
a. animism.
b. new forms of mass communication.
c. monotheistic religions.
d. secularization.
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