Chapter 13

Question 1

adolescent status system

Answer 1

A classification system in which participation in some activities results in popularity, respect, acceptance, and praise, and participation in other activities results in isolation, ridicule, exclusion, disdain, and disrespect

Question 2

credential society

Answer 2

A situation in which employers use educational credentials as screening devices for sorting through a pool of largely anonymous applicants.

Question 3

cultural capital

Answer 3

Nonmaterial resources, including the kinds of knowledge, social skills, and aesthetic tastes acquired through daily experiences and activities.

Question 4

education

Answer 4

In the broadest sense, the experiences that train, discipline, and shape the mental and physical potentials of the maturing person.

Question 5

formal curriculum

Answer 5

The essential content of the various academic subjects—mathematics, science, English, reading, physical education, and so on.

Question 6

formal education

Answer 6

A purposeful, planned effort to impart specific skills or information.

Question 7

habitus

Answer 7

The mental filter through which people view and understand the social world and their place in it. The habitus even affects how people physically hold themselves and move about the world.

Question 8

hidden curriculum

Answer 8

The lessons conveyed by the teaching method, type of assignments, tests (multiple-choice versus essay), tone of the teacher’s voice, attitudes of classmates toward school, and the frequency of teacher absences.

Question 9

illiteracy

Answer 9

The inability to understand and use a symbol system whether the symbol system is based on letters, numbers, or some other type of symbol.

Question 10

informal education

Answer 10

Education that occurs in a spontaneous, unplanned way.

Question 11

knowledge economy

Answer 11

An economy driven by information- and data-intensive activities that have the dual effect of accelerating the pace of obsolescence and innovation.

Question 12

schooling

Answer 12

A program of formal, systematic instruction that takes place primarily in classrooms even as digital, online, and virtual instructions are on the rise.

Question 13

self-fulfilling prophecy

Answer 13

A concept that begins with a false definition of a situation. The false definition is assumed to be accurate, however, and people behave as if it were true. In the end, the misguided behavior produces responses that confirm the false definition (Merton 1957).

Question 14

social reproduction

Answer 14

The social structures and activities that have the intended or unintended effect of transmitting inequalities from one generation to the next.