Sociology 100a Chapter 14 Education, Health, and Medicine

A social institution through which society provides its members with important knowledge, including basic fact, job skills, and cultural norms and values.

• formal institution under the direction of specially trained teachers

Technologically simple countries rely on families to teach their children; technologically complex societies rely on teachers to pass on specialized knowledge

• school and ideas are constantly changing

They put a diverse population into one society sharing norms and values

Schooling increases meritocracy by rewarding talent and hard work regardless of social backgrounds and provides a path to upward mobility

• it provides child-care for many families, it occupies thousands of younger people in their twenties, it brings people together of a marriageable age, they provide a career resource

Overlooks problems that occur in the education system and how schooling helps reproduce class structure in each generation

The study of how health and disease are distributed throughout the society