A Child Left Behind: Sociological Perspective

A Child Left Behind: Sociological Perspective

Why was Paige held back in the third grade, not once, but twice? If you ask Paige, she would say it’s her teacher’s fault. They didn’t like her. If you ask Paige’s teachers, they would say it’s her failing math scores and “repeated problems with discipline”. According to Paige’s mother, it was Chicago’s failing school system or possibly because she hadn’t spent as much time reading to Paige when she was younger. In the expert opinion of Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University, “around the country, social promotion has really morphed from an educational issue into a political issue.” So therefore the problem has become political. Sociologists, in trying to understand and formulate an answer to this question, look at the larger, macro-sociological and historical context of this situation in terms of its impact and consequences for the individual, micro-sociological level. A sociological analysis attempts to make the link between incidents in the lives of individuals and large social forces. According to Mills, we must try to answer three questions in order to formulate an appropriate explanation for the retention rates in our school system. These questions are: What is the structure of this society as a whole? Where does this society stand in human history? What varieties of men and women now prevail in this society and in this period?

First, in looking at the structure of our society today, we see stratification at all levels. Politically, socially, economically and educationally our society is divided into classes with an uneven distribution of awards to the classes holding the most power. Within each class position there exist norms to govern our social roles and behavior. Coming from the South Side of Chicago, Paige’s motivation to achieve is a direct reflection of the social class she was raised in. Although currently Ms. Bonds, Paige’s mother, is very worried about her child’s educational achievement she herself left high school before graduation. Because of this she is in a lower educational class than mothers who have attained a Bachelors Degree or even a high school diploma. In addition, being in a lower economic class, Ms. Bonds had to do what many mothers in such a situation have to do to maintain their families, work all the time. This put Paige at a disadvantage when compared to kids her age that had parents who worked a 9am-5pm well-paying job. According to Ms. Bonds, she “didn’t always have enough time for Paige.” If Paige were to have shown great achievement in her courses this would have been an example of upward mobility in which the daughter attained an upward change of position in society. However, according to the cultural theory of ethnic mobility, “human beings are shaped by their cultures, and most people obey the norms most of the time.”

Drawing from “The sociological imagination” article and looking at where the American society stands today in the course of human history, can possibly help to explain some of the problems that Paige and her family faces. Society is continuous. The deprivation of education from the forefathers of African Americans led to a decreased interest in achieving higher education for the later generations. These generations were either skeptical of American higher education and saw it as a plot to brainwash the Black man or some just did not see the value of it and placed more emphasis on labor. Today African-Americans are trying to turn around some of the negative ideologies that have existed, however, the history of slavery and racism in America has left an indelible mark on this racial class. In this way we see the continuity of society and societal norms.