Education – Social Institutions (SOC)

00:00 Alright, let’s get in to Social Institutions.

00:04 What are we talking about when we’re talking about an institution.

00:07 and you’ve heard that term before but when you apply it to the social contacts 'cause a few key institutions have pop up.

00:13 So one is Education or any Educational Institution.

00:17 So a social institution is where knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, beliefs and habits are learned.

00:23 So in terms of the educational perspective we’re talking about universities, colleges, campuses even grade school.

00:29 This is where a lot of learning that we picked up happens.

00:34 Now, some of this is done in a fashion that we call in a hidden fashion using something called a Hidden Curriculum.

00:42 This is where we pass on not books smarts but we call it sort of life smarts and that’s we impart social information, behavior and norms outside of the regular curriculum.

00:53 So when you go to school, you’re not just learning about Math, Science, Arts, English, French all that stuff. You’re also learning well when do I speak? And how do I speak? And if I want to speak, do I put my hand up? And what should I wear? How do you interact with the opposite sex? How you operate, how do you communicate with your peers.

01:11 All these things that you end up learning fall under what we call our hidden curriculum.

01:17 Another phenomenon is the one who’s actually teaching us, our teacher tends to have a huge role in how we actually build our personality, interact within our social contacts and that’s through a process of something called Teacher Expectancy.

01:34 So the teacher tends to expect different things from different students.

01:37 And that may actually limit what they learn and the realization of their full potential is stunted or enhanced through inappropriate or appropriate categorization.

01:47 So in English, what do we saying, now think back to when you’re in school and your youngster. And you had all of you in your classroom.

01:54 they’re tended to be some categorization that happen based on either A some of the characteristics or behaviors that those kids did, or just some good old’ fashion discrimination and stereotyping.

02:04 So say for example there is a kid in the class who seem a little bit more buffer, taller or stronger than the rest. The teacher might categorize this kid as the bulkier stronger kid. So it’s probably good at sports and will have him do more physical activity and be have less expectation of the student when it comes to say expressive writing or in doing Math.

02:28 The flipside you might have again we’re going to discrimination and the stereotyped let’s say, an Asian student and the teacher assuming this kid has to be doing great in Math, they’re Asian and so on. You could stereotype and categorize the children.

02:43 Now, what the sense I’m doing is setting expectations for these children.

02:48 and it sometimes does not allow them to actually reach their full potential because they aren’t given the opportunity.

02:55 So maybe our little Asian friend is actually not that good at Math but is fantastic at playing certain sports. But the teacher never really picks the child to play the sport or do or focus on or challenge him to sport because he or she assume that the Asian child is going to be doing amazing in Math and our bulkier stronger friend, who we the teacher assume, is going to be great in sports is terrible in sports. But the teacher keeps saying, “No, no, no this is totally you, you can do this.” But that kid is actually fantastic in Math and isn’t able to reach that potential.

03:26 So, we also have something called Educational Segregation and Stratification.

03:31 And this is where we based on the way our societal norms are set up and through something that we’re going to come up with little label later on as well as something called socioeconomic status.

03:41 We can actually ourselves stratify how we receive education.

03:47 So funding is based on local tax contribution.

03:50 So depending on what neighborhood you live on, you pay your taxes, part of your taxes go to funding the school and the social services.

03:56 This is linked to your neighborhood.

03:57 If you live in an affluent neighborhood you are going to have more revenue generated from your taxes. And therefore, you have more money towards your schools.

04:04 Now, this is not the same you don’t have schools and lower income areas versus higher income areas but the quality of school and the quality of education, resources, teachers, amenities at these schools will be different.

04:16 So at the end of the day the education you’re getting in the lower income areas versus the higher income areas will be different.

04:22 So that is all driven by socioeconomic status and then as a result your kind of self-propagates that social stratification.

04:31 The poor kids going to the lower income schools are going to get a lower level of education which then furthers them and continues that whether they’re not getting a great job, they’re not going to get to an ivy league school versus the affluent areas great school, great teachers, great resources it therefore getting to better higher educational schools and get greater jobs and so on.

04:53 So it’s sort of this self-fulfilling prophecies, self-propagating social phenomenon based on socioeconomic status.