Weak Women

Violence against women has existed for as long as we can remember. Forcible rape, date rape, murder, and violence in the home are all types of violence against women. Gender inequality often leads men to believe they are superior to women and there for they can act violently towards women if they please. This is why females are more likely to be victims of violence to men, rather than men being victims to women.

Forcible rape is an assault by a person involving sexual intercourse with another person without that person’s consent or if that person is incapable of giving consent because of his/her temporary or permanent metal or physical incapacity. Although rape rates have gone down over the years still 1 in 1000, 12 to 50 year old women is raped a year. Most abusers are familiar with their victims a most abusers are men. 7% of rapes come from a relative, 34% from someone known well, 24% from casual acquaintances, and 34% from strangers. A stranger commits only 1 in 3 rapes. Date rape is rape committed by the victim’s escort or an acquaintance. Date rape is extremely common in colleges and universities and is only reported about 5% of the time. Over a six-month study 1.7% of women enrolled in colleges and universities with more than 1000 students had been raped.

Murders, again are mostly always committed men. 89% of killers are men and when a woman is murdered 9 times out of 10 it is by a man. Violence in the home consists of three types of violence, that being spouse battering, marital rape, and incest. Women are the victims of this violence in most cases as well.

With all these violent crimes against women almost always is there attacker a man. Why is that? A symbolic interactionist may view this problem as cultural. Many cultures associate violence with strength and as strength is so valued in our society men will do anything to be “strong” despite what that means for women. This urge for strength starts at a young age when boys are bullied on the play ground for not fighting or being aggressive. They are called names like sissy, wimp, and girl because as men are “strong” in our society, women are “weak”. We need to break the connection with strength and violence in our society. In order to do so we need to change the image of men (strong and violent) in our schools, media, homes, and work place. We need to eliminate violent video games and have our shows and movies show friendly and happy interactions between men and women. As well as educate young people about this problem and create more severe consequences for students using violence especially boys using violence against girls in elementary, middle, and high schools around the U.S.

A functionalist might view this problem as functional for society because it creates jobs for many people. Shelters for battered women, support groups, and mental health doctors such as psychologists benefit greatly from violent crimes against women. When a woman is raped or beaten she turns to doctors and support groups to feel loved again. However, a functionalist might also view this problem as dysfunctional for society because if domestic violence occurs it causes and unstable environment for a child to grow up in. If the violence is ended by a divorce or a restraining order the father may lose all custody rights of his child. This also causes confusion and mental health problems for the underdeveloped minds of these children.

A conflict theorist would view this problem as being caused by the attention brought to the matter as well as society evolving and women having more power than ever. After being superior for so long men are angered by women getting a job over them or women having more power than them. They feel threatened and in turn want to show women that they are in fact better than them. Often times they do this by raping or hurting women. They think that if they are physically over powering women they show women that they are better. Men hope that this will cause women to back down and go back to “their place” in the household raising children.

Higher Education

Following the film on college grades and classes, I researched grade inflation so as to better understand it.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/the-history-of-college-grade-inflation/

As you can see from the illustration, A’s have drastically increased over the last 60 years. B’s have remained steady, for the most part. C’s have increased as well. While there is a decrease in D’s and F’s, it doesn’t seem as large a shift as the other grades.

Further research showed that private universities have the most grade inflation, even when compared to public schools that are “equally selective” in admissions.

“The authors don’t attribute steep grade inflation to higher-quality or harder-working students. In fact, one recent study found that students spend significantly less time studying today than they did in the past.”

However, to offer some perspective on this issue, I found a contrasting article.

http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gi.htm

They offer several explanation for an increase in grades.

“Even where grades are higher now as compared with then, that does not constitute proof that they are inflated. The burden rests with critics to demonstrate that those higher grades are undeserved, and one can cite any number of alternative explanations. Maybe students are turning in better assignments. Maybe instructors used to be too stingy with their marks and have become more reasonable. Maybe the concept of assessment itself has evolved, so that today it is more a means for allowing students to demonstrate what they know rather than for sorting them or "catching them out." (The real question, then, is why we spent so many years trying to make good students look bad.) Maybe students aren't forced to take as many courses outside their primary areas of interest in which they didn't fare as well. Maybe struggling students are now able to withdraw from a course before a poor grade appears on their transcripts. (Say what you will about that practice, it challenges the hypothesis that the grades students receive in the courses they complete are inflated.)

The bottom line: No one has ever demonstrated that students today get A's for the same work that used to receive B's or C's. We simply do not have the data to support such a claim.”

While grades may be rising, it seems there is very little to support the idea of “inflation”.

“Brown: 9.3%

Columbia: 9%

Cornell: 18%

Dartmouth: 11.5%

Harvard: 6.9%

Penn: 14.2%”

-http://collegeapps.about.com/b/2010/04/04/ivy-league-acceptance-rates-for-2010.htm

These are the acceptance rates for applicants to ivy league schools.

With so few people being accepted, it makes sense that grades would be higher. While students may not be “smarter,” they may be better at taking tests and dealing with stress, leading to higher grades.

If grades are being raised unjustly, further research needs to be done to determine a solution

Blog post 5

Sammi Branch

11/26/11

How Functional is the Family?

The major point that functionalists make to explain why family is universal is that is a way for humans to survive in a functioning society. Functionalists say that family fulfills the six basic needs of people in society. The family, as a structure, promotes economic production, socialization of children, recreation, sexual control, care to the weak, old, or sick, and reproduction. I agree that the family satisfies these needs in a positive and effective way, but I would also argue that family as an institution could be the reason for some of these needs in the first place. That the family is a way to survive in society but also that the family as an institution might have created the society in which family is necessary for functional survival.

If the world had not been made up of families, and if from the beginning of human life there had been more of an “every man for himself” attitude, these needs might not be necessary to function today. This is why I wonder if family actually created these needs to be fulfilled but now that family life is so ingrained into humanity it is also the only thing that can fulfill them. At this point, it seems like it is too late to be able to figure out which came first, the needs or the structure. Is it human nature to want to take care of weak people? Or to socialize children? This fact that living in society is also so ingrained into our lives that it seems like “human nature” also complicates these questions. If we didn’t live in such structured societies there might not be anything to socialize our children into.

At this point it seems more valuable to study families and how they work, since the functions mentioned before have to be met in modern society. Also, a world that was based on complete individualism seems like it could lead to cannibalism and conflict fairly easily. That brings up the question: are the world’s forms of society and family natural reactions to human life? Clearly, the institution of family today performs functions necessary to survive in society, but it gets convoluted and confusing when we dig deeper and try to disentangle family and society to figure out which came first. Family supports society and functioning well in society, but family may have created these needs in the first place. Functionalists explain family as a necessary institution to fulfill societal needs, but it is interesting to think even further back and try to figure out why these needs are even needs to begin with. 

Divorce and Remarriage

Divorce and remarriage seem to play a large part in the family life topic. However, is the divorce rate really as high as some make it seem? Let's start by looking at the actual divorce rate in the U.S. The author of our sociology book (Henslin) states that the statistics used today to measure the divorce rate are not the correct ones - they tell us that the divorce rate is almost 50% per year. Here, people are comparing the number of marriages and divorces in the same year, which is not a true indicating factor. The true divorce rate in the U.S. is less than 2% per year... not quite as high, right? But, while this does seem much lower, this percentage still equals about 1 million divorces per year. So, what is causing this problem in couples? What factors tend to lead to divorce more often than others and what factors can reduce the probability of getting divorced?

To illustrate these examples, I will use my parents and what I know about their marriage as an example. In my last blog post, I used my parents as an example of things that worked for them in their marriage. However, they did still end up getting divorced after many years of struggling with different parts of the marriage. Their relationship had most all of the elements listed in the book (Figure 16.3) that have been found to reduce the chance of divorce. For example, both of my parents went to college, neither of their parents were divorced, they were both over 25 when they got married, they waited to have kids longer than 7 months after being married, and their annual income was over $50,000. All of these factors potentially help reduce the stress on the marriage because of the lack of negative influence from family and also having the feeling of financial security. However, these are just a few of the many factors that can help reduce the chance, and obviously they don't always "work".

My parents divorced when I was about 7 years old and, quite honestly, I didn't really understand what was going on. I think what made it easy for me is that I was close to both of parents. Henslin says that this makes for the best adjustment with the children. My sister and I also experienced little conflict and our routines stayed consistent. We both still felt loved by both of our parents. Henslin talks shortly about the absent father and serial fatherhood, which is a pattern of parenting in which a father, after divorce, reduces contact with his own children, serves as a father to the children of the woman he marries/lives with, then ignores these children too after moving in with or marrying another woman. My father was not like this at all. I saw him every week, multiple times a week. Statistics actually say that only about one-sixth of children who live apart from their fathers see them as often as every week. The fact that we saw him multiple times a week made this much easier for us. Also, he was not remarried until I was about 15 years old (8 years later).

An additional contributing factor in making divorce easier for children is when the parents still have the "continuities" of their marriage. For example, my dad was still the "handyman" around our house. If something needed to be fixed, he came over and helped my mom fix it. They still got along very well (or at least they put on a pretty good show). Because of this, I didn't see any problem with the fact that my dad lived somewhere else. To this day, our holiday dinners and gatherings are all at my father's parents house and my mom goes with us every single time. The whole family still feels like a family, and it has made my sister and I much more comfortable with the concept of divorce than we ever would have been if the end of their marriage had a negative impact on our childhood.

College Education: Are students “beating the system"?

Getting a college education is a value that is emphasized in America. From the time an American child reaches the sixth grade, they are taught that the key to success in life is to do well in high school so that they can get accepted to the best possible college. They are taught that if they get into a great college and get their college degree, any type of job they desire in the field of their choice will be there waiting for them. After getting their dream job, they will be able to buy any car and house they desire, start their own family, and live the American dream. Now days, a high school diploma just isn’t enough. College is an absolute necessity in order for people to stay in the middle class.

Last week in class, we had the chance to watch a video on Education. The video focused on a couple different Universities, and the expectations that are placed on students at each institution. One question that kept coming up in the video was, are teachers being “easier” on their students, so that they can get good grades and graduate? According to the video, there are some universities that say that their teachers are easier on their students than others. There were a few statistics that were given in this video that I thought were interesting. One in four college students don’t make it to their sophomore year. Why is this? Well, according to the video, if freshman students walk into college and fail their classes, there is a huge chance that that student will give up, throw in the towel, and give up on college and an education. However, this is a huge disadvantage to universities, because they are losing money. Universities need their students to graduate in order to make money. Having one in every four students drop out of college is a huge loss for these educational institutions. So the question how do we lower the number of students to drop out arises. What do you think? What can be done to prevent students from dropping out of college? Well, one idea would be to have the professors be “easier” on the students, so that they can get good grades, and have the confidence to continue and graduate from college. Is this idea a good one though? Is it better for students to pass the class with the bare minimum? Should there be more expected from students?

When professors and teachers are easier on their students, the students quickly learn how to pass the class by doing the least amount of work. In other words, the student learns how to “beat the system”. This means that students understand that they don’t have to study as much, or don’t have to do as much homework as they usually do, but they can still pass the class with a decent grade. There are also students that work hard, and that put in a lot of time studying and understanding the material, but they are getting the same grade as the students that are “beating the system”. Is this fair? Is it fair for the students that are working hard for their education? Are these students being cheated? What do you think? In my opinion, they are. How is it fair that the students who are putting in hours upon hours studying are getting the same grades as the students who are putting forth the bare minimum? Something needs to change.

I think that going to college and getting a higher education is a privilege. Students need to understand that getting a college education is not meant to be easy, its hard work that pays off in the end. I think that educational institutions are doing their students a huge disfavor by expecting less from them just so that they can have a higher number of students graduate. So how do these universities increase the number of students graduating without lowering the expectations for their students? In my opinion they need to keep their expectations high for their students, because that is how they are going to grow and learn. In the beginning, I think that the number of students dropping is going to stay the same if not increase, but over time those numbers will rise, because people are going to realize that they need a college education to live the life that they want to. They will learn how to study and work hard for their education. If they want it bad enough, they will put in the effort it takes to graduate.

Another thing that caught my attention during the video was the difference between a professor and a teacher. Do you think there is a difference between the two? According to the video there is. A professor is someone who “professes” things. They don’t really care about the success of their students. They don’t have a lot of one-on-one interaction with their students, instead they have a teacher’s assistant (TA) teach the students the things that they don’t understand. On the other hand a teacher is someone who cares about their students, and wants them to progress and succeed. Their office is open to students who need extra help, they have a desire to help their students, and they will do whatever they can in order for their students to succeed. I think that there needs to be more teachers than professors in the college scene. You might argue that there is no way a professor with 200 kids in their class to be able to help every student that needs help. A solution to this problem would be to lower class sizes. There are a variety of different solutions to this problem. Professors need to make themselves teachers. If they were to care about the success of their students, I think that the number of students dropping out of college would decrease, and in the end the college or university would continue to make money.

As a college student, I have attended a variety of colleges and universities. As a freshman, I attended Snow College. It’s a little JV school in central Utah. I loved it there because I had teachers versus professors. My teachers at Snow cared about me, and they wanted me to succeed. They always had office hours open where I was able to meet with them about questions that I had while learning the material. My class sizes were small, which made it easier for me to ask questions in class, and have more one-on-one time with my teachers. After I finished my time at Snow College, I attended Brigham Young University. My experience at BYU was completely different from my experience at Snow. I had around 300 students in my classes, and my professors could care less about the grade I was getting, or if I was understanding the material. I saw the class TA more than I saw my professor in some of my classes. I only attended BYU for one semester, because I felt like it didn’t matter what grades I was getting, because no one cared. I expected more from my professors to help me succeed in my classes. I then transferred to Westminster College. Westminster is a liberal arts school, meaning that there is more one-on-one time for the students to meet with their teachers. My grades are the highest they have ever been here. Out of the three schools I have attended, Westminster is by far my favorite. Not only because I get a lot of one-one-one time with my teachers, but because they expect a lot from me, and because I have high expectations, my grades are high. They don’t lower their expectations for me just so that I will get good grades. They are hard on me, but they also help me through the things that I don’t understand. I am growing and gaining a better education because they are hard on me, and because they expect a lot from me.

I think this is the key to successful education. Educational institutions need to push their students, not lower their expectations. College was not meant to be easy, it was meant to push you, so that you would learn and grow. If colleges and universities would have more one-on-one interaction with their students, I think that you would see an increase on the number of students graduating with good grades, and a good education.

Marriage and Conflict Theory

Marriage is the ritual that a society performs that symbolically places two (or more) people into a domestic partnership. Many cultures have marriage, though its definition varies. Like all institutions, the three sociological perspectives can help us understand marriage and its role in society. Functionalism describes the functions of marriage, which include socialization of children, economic production, and sexual control. Symbolic interactionism describes the roles that both men and women play in marriage, and how the general meaning of marriage affects the relationship. Conflict theory looks at the conflicts that arise in a marriage, especially focusing on the power struggle between men and women. This was the main focus of an article written by Joan K. Monin and Margaret S. Clark titled “Why Do Men Benefit More from Marriage Than Do Women? Thinking More Broadly About Interpersonal Processes That Occur Within and Outside of Marriage.”

The paper presents evidence for why men have more control in a marriage. The article specifically argues that “...men benefit more than women from marriage because men suffer less than women from marital conflict....” The explanation for this affect is cited as three things “...the greater social support that husbands may gain from their wives than vice versa...,” “...women's stronger push for health regulatory and prevention behaviors...”, and “...the reduction of daily hassles for men due to wives' provision of more household maintenance....” So, men generally get more benefits from marriage than women. This disparity is the cornerstone of conflict theory, which would place men in the power-class, and women in a lesser-class. These roles, however, are changing. As we discussed in class, because of the recession, the ratio of men to women in the workplace has started to shift. This is a very interesting movement, and has many implications for our society. So, if we were to see more women than men in the workplace, would it be likely that we see women benefit more from marriage than men? And if so, would this cause a power shift in the institution of marriage?

Sources:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l77wxm5744gv0151/fulltext.pdf

Functionalism and College.

What is functionalism? This is a system of society that looks at the various parts of something. It then looks at the parts to see of they are functioning properly. When all parts are functioning properly, it will contribute to the balance of society.

I am now going to talk about college and whether or not it is functional. I am going to look at the functionality from the perspective of the college as well as the perspective of the student.

From the college's perspective, they have a certain quota to hit with the number of students they enroll. Each student is required to pay a set tuition in order to attend the school. Since all students that enroll must pay their tuition, as long as the school either keeps tuition costs low, or "like-ability" of the school high, the students will continue to enroll.

From the perspective of the student, the students attend college in order to obtain a degree so that one day, they can get the job they desire. The students realize that tuition rates can be high and sometimes absurd, but feel that it is worth their final outcome of graduation with a degree.

Are the colleges making the subject matter less difficult to retain a higher percentage of the student body? On some occasions I would tend to think so. This benefits the college from a profit standpoint, benefits the student on the "easiness factor" but also hurts the student because they may not be challenged enough.

So who is college really functional for? Well, it is functional for the college in terms of profits, functional for the student because they will have an easier time graduating, but at the same time it is not functional for the student because they are not being challenged as much as they should be. This will hurt them in the future when they need to recall the information they learned in college, but cannot remember because they were not required to in order to pass.