SOCIO EXAM #2. Flashcards
(25 cards)
Accumulative Advantage
Describes how being offered one opportunity (such as getting advanced placement in a class) can accumulate into other advantages (such as a scholarship, special programs, etc). In the book Outliers Malcolm Gladwell also refers to this as “The Matthew Effect.”
Talent
Defined as the person’s ability that is inherent, inborn, or naturally occurring. A talent is said to be a special ability to do something without prior experience, study, or tutelage. It is often classified or compared to an instinct or a certain flair for doing something without extra effort and almost perfect in execution
Skill
Is an ability that is learned and practiced for a period of time. A skill is an acquired or obtained ability which is often the result of constant performance and improvement on a particular task or behavior.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Sociologist Robert Merton’s definition of the self-fulfilling prophecy (used in Outliers) is, “A false definition which, in the beginning, evokes a new behavior which makes the original false conception true.”
Individual Merit
Describes the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially so as to deserve praise or reward. Having the skills and qualities that institutions like schools or employers reward.
Myth of Meritocracy
Americans think that top schools and high-status jobs go to the hardest-working and smartest people. But in reality, it’s often wealthy white people or Asian Americans from certain backgrounds who get these positions because they’re raised with the right values and connections
Outlier
A person or thing differing from all other members of a particular group or set. For example, to say someone is an outlier in terms of success, then they are extraordinarily successful
Demographic Luck
Describes how certain generations are “born at the right time” (or the wrong time) in terms of certain opportunities being available for them to take advantage of. Examples: Bill Gates (and other multi-millionaires from the computer industry), born in 1955, was entering adulthood at the first time in history that teenager could have accumulated hours of time on a computer.
Qualitative Differentiation
This describes how mastery of a complex skill requires to practice different types of techniques and constant changing of one’s performance routines to improve, rather than sheer quantity of practice for improvement. According to Dan Chambliss, elite swimmers, vary their practice routine and make small improvements in technique over practice sessions.
Longitudinal Study
Involves studying the same subjects (people) over an extended period of time. For example, Lewis Terman’s study on high IQ children (discussed in Outliers) and their outcomes as adults was a longitudinal study.
Meritocracy
The idea of a meritocracy is that those individuals who are most talented, intelligent and who worked the hardest should rise up the social hierarchy and occupy decision-making positions based on their hard work and talents.
Affirmative Action
An action or policy that “favors” those groups who normally face discrimination, especially used in realms of employment and education.
Social Reproduction Theory
This type of conflict theory asks why most people tend to remain at the same class level as their parents, and particularly focused on the role that schools play in leveling aspirations or else helping students feel entitled to better jobs, education, etc. Social reproduction is the opposite of class mobility.
Class culture
A number of sociologists have observed that the upper-, middle- and working-class exhibit different cultures, comprised of experiences, relationships, and the development of “lifestyles” which not only set particular ‘choices’ and ‘decisions’ at particular times, but also structure how these ‘choices’ come about and are defined in the first place.
Practical Intelligence
Practical intelligence refers to knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect. It knowing how to do something, how to read a situation. Commonly referred to as “social skills.”
Social Capital
Social capital refers to the ways that people can use their social connections to gain knowledge, access to things they need, and other benefits
Socialization
The process whereby people learn to conform to norms, a process that makes possible an enduring society and the transmission of culture between generations
Accomplishment of Natural Growth
Kids were socialized according to the accomplishment of natural growth where parents assumed it was entirely the school’s job to educate their children. Children are raised to be obedient to adults and follow orders (rather than reasoning or negotiating with them), and are exposed to less reading and vocabulary words. Rather than play on organized sports teams, working-class kids informally play together in creative, invented games. Wendy Driver from the Annette Lareau reading
Concerted Cultivation
Middle-class kids are socialized in a style called “concerted cultivation,” where parents reason with children, read to them and teach them vocabulary words, and expose them to cultural experiences like visiting museums. Organized activities like dance lessons or sports are likely
Directives
Directives are orders or instructions meant to get other people to do something. In Social reproduction theory, it’s been observed that working- and lower-class kids are more likely to receive directives than requests
Sense of Entitlement
One meaning is simply the knowledge that one has the right to something. The other meaning implies that one is inherently deserving of special privileges or treatment
Leveled Aspirations/Sense of Constraint
This describes how working-class kids adjust their expectations for success to their lesser class status. Annette Lareau discusses this as an “emerging sense of constraint” in the article on Unequal Childhoods
Tracking
This describes a practice in many public schools where students of the same age are placed in a different set of classes that one another based on their supposed academic abilities
Gifted, IB VS regular classes
Culture
The way of life of an entire group including the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material objects that are passed from one generation to the next
