Social Institution: Education

Even though people say that you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, everyday is a learning experience and your never too old to learn something new. Education is something that you can never have enough of. There is always something new and improved for people to learn about. Especially with the way technology is developing these days. Even though education is just one of the several social institutions, I think that it is very important. Family however is more important but it seemed that several students were already working on papers having to do with family.

In the textbook Sociology chapter one talks about three sociological theories: functionalist, conflict, and interactionism. All three sociological theories have something to do with each social institution. Functionalist perspective is a sociological approach that emphasizes the way of which the parts of a society are structured to maintain its stability (Schaefer, 24). Functionalist applies to the education sociological institution by teaching knowledge and skills, cultural transmission, social control, and some agents of structured change. All of these are important in making sure that education is structured to maintain its stability. The conflict perspective is a sociological approach that assumes that social behavior is best understood in terms of tension between groups over power or the allocation of resources, including housing, money, access to services, and political representation (Schaefer, 24). Conflict applies to the education sociological institution by reproducing social order, using hidden curriculum, intolerance and inequality, credentialism, and status. Using hidden curriculum refers to standards of behavior that are deemed proper y society and are taught subtly in schools (Schaefer, 315). Status refers to standardized testing, tracking, public/private, gender, class, and role. And then there is the interactionism perspective. Interactionism perspective is a sociological approach that generalizes about everyday forms of social interaction in order to explain society as a whole (Schaefer, 24).