Instructions: Read each descriptor (on education or prostitution) and record
an F for Functionalist Perspective, C for Conflict Perspective, or SI for Symbolic
Interactionist Perspective.
Regarding Education:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
_____ Focuses on classroom dynamics and the effect of self-concept on
grades and aspirations.
_____ Argues that education perpetuates social inequality and benefits
the dominant class at the expense of others.
_____ Education is crucial for promoting social solidarity and stability in
society.
_____ Functions to socialize, transmit culture, exert social control, and
bring about innovation.
_____ Access to quality education is closely related to social class.
_____ Education is a vehicle for reproducing existing class relationships.
_____ School legitimates and reinforces the social elites by engaging in specific practices that uphold the patterns of behavior
and the attitudes of the dominant class.
_____ Children with less cultural capital (social assets that include values, beliefs, attitudes and competencies in language and
culture) have fewer opportunities to succeed in school.
_____ Finds that when teachers expect a particular performance or growth, it occurs.
_____ Standardized tests that are used to group students by ability and assign them to classes often measure students’ cultural
capital rather than their natural intelligence or aptitude.
_____ Class-based factors affect which children are likely to be placed in high, middle or low tracking groups.
_____ Focuses on classroom communication patterns and educational practices, such as labeling, that affect students’ selfconcept and aspirations.
_____ Compares the individualism that is emphasized in American classrooms with collectivism in other countries.
_____ Tracking is one of the most obvious mechanisms through which students of color and those from low-income families
receive a diluted academic program, making it much more likely that they will fall even further behind their white, middle-class
counterparts.
_____ For students from dominant groups in society, the way they are treated and what they learn in school tend to enhance
their self-esteem and expectations that they will attain success.
_____ Limits their analysis of education to what they directly observe happening in the classroom.
_____ Focuses on how teacher expectations influence student performance, perceptions, and attitudes.
_____ Studies how placement of students in a class may affect performance.
_____ Focuses on how teachers form their expectations or how students may communicate subtle messages to teachers about
intelligence, skill and so forth.
_____ Explores the latent roles of education, such as meeting lifelong friends or mentors (teachers, coaches, etc.).
Regarding Prostitution:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
_____ Argues that since prostitutes are
overwhelmingly from lower classes, opportunity
has broken down for the disadvantaged.
_____ Studies the stabilizing or destabilizing
effect of prostitution on marriages.
_____ Argues that statistics regarding sexual
harassment and rape would likely increase if
prostitution was eradicated.
_____ Focuses on the labeling of people in such
a career and how prostitutes are treated by those who support them and
those that look down on the institution.
_____ Studies what kind of men seek out prostitutes.
_____ Some members from this theoretical approach might argue that
women should be able to choose whether or not they want to engage in
prostitution (so government regulation is a violation of their right to
privacy).
_____ Explores various labels associated with prostitution.