¶ … society without families, the basic needs of people in that society would have to be addressed by the State or whatever authority or system of government is in place. Children would be cared for by administrators put in place by the governing authority, whether chosen on a local scale -- by the community -- or at a much larger centralized level. Training and values would be instilled through state-run education systems, and the child's need for love and care would have to be fulfilled through surrogacy, with peers and/or guardians put in place to provide the emotional and cognitive stimuli associated with love/care. Parents would meet the needs of their growing children by supplying them with basic necessities (food, shelter, clothing) but would have no say in education, love, affection, interaction, etc. -- normal actions associated with family life. The types of adults that this society would create would probably be similar to the types of adults that we see all around us today.
The Holts are a family who are supposedly egalitarian but who do not evenly divide the housework among themselves; he sticks to the garage, car and dog; she the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. He has the better portion, according to the Times, she the worse. This is a rich case study because it shows how people subvert the egalitarian ideal. Their myth of equality was developed together by their willingness to pretend to be equal while actually doing different duties.
The second shift is the duty that is performed when the work day ends -- it is the household work. It developed once both man and woman started going to work outside the home. Gender impacts marriage and family by causing traditional roles to be re-examined in the light of changes in the way gender is viewed. Roles that vary by gender are the ones that stem from work, the home, child rearing, mechanics, etc., and this occurs because of a natural disposition in the way men and
Polygamy and gay marriage and having children outside marriage may be related in the sense that they have all been viewed negatively in the past.
Part 2 Questions:
America is not doing very well when it comes to education. The East is doing much better and performs much better in the maths and sciences, scoring far ahead of American students. What I might do differently is examine the importance on values that the East places in their society and reflect and cultivate those same values in
American society so as to help give the foundational/societal support that is needed for students to succeed in education.
The major problems faced by the U.S. teachers and students are 1) too much standardization and not enough
freedom for teachers to teach what they want how they want; 2) too much focus on political correctness, which keeps students from forming opinions and perspectives of their own, or adopting and defending challenging positions; and 3) too little time given to scholasticism and the study of the classics, aka the humanities. To change these I would end standardized curriculums and focus on hiring teachers who know their chosen subjects well and are not afraid to teach against PC values and to challenge perspectives; and I would encourage students to study the
humanities because this helps to establish a basis for
personal growth. Issues of
poverty, gender-gap and
stratification are secondary in my opinion and can only really be addressed once society itself begins to accept more responsibility on a local scale.
Factors that impact the schools in the video are ideals and expectations that are placed on the students and faculty. Race is also an issue when one minority is subjugated by a majority. A
sociological theory that describes the video from this perspective might be
Critical Theory, which deconstructs media to analyze the objectives…
