Research project on the sociological perspectives

“ There is over a 95 percent probability that Earth’s current warming trend has been caused by human activity since the mid-20th century.” Across the world people are experiencing the effects of this warm-up from, ice on lakes breaking up earlier, to rising sea levels. In recent, climate change has grabbed the attention of people across the globe as being a major issue, including me. That’s why global warming is social issue number one of this paper. The second Social issue I’m going to use is, education in America. “ 30 years ago, America was the leader in quantity and quality of high school diplomas. Today, our nation is ranked 36th in the world.” By now it should be clear that these two issues pose real problems for, not only our country, but the world, which is why I’ve chosen them to apply to the three contemporary sociological perspectives.

Functionalism says that society is a system of different, but related parts, depending on each other to ensure survival. With rising population, product demand is at an all-time high, causing unnatural agriculture practices to be implemented along with atmosphere damaging industrialization. Quality of life may be better because of these technological advancements, but the repercussions such as, pollution, fewer natural recourses, and waste, cannot be ignored, in-turn creating jobs for people to help resolve these problems. Paul Ehrlich believes addressing all contributing factors at once is the only way to have a meaningful impact when addressing the state of the environment, which would possibly have catastrophic outcomes as well. Education is a vital part of a society’s progression. Socializing is a function of education that teaches kids norms, values, and skills of our culture that society recommends them having. Social placement, another function of education, helps divide children as able students or less able students. Some latent functions of education include, child care, creating friendships, and help keep unemployment rates down.

Conflict theory believes we are in constant conflict over limited resources and the only reason society is held together is because of domination and power. Capitalism is the primary source of conflict in determining whether we should pollute our world or not. Because of competing powers, we may never see the day when we resolve the, should we save the earth or worry more about our pockets debate. J. Clarence Davies believes the capitalist system encourages pollution because they look at air and water as free resources and not what the long term affects could be.

As I mentioned earlier, children are separated into learning abilities of either able or less able. Children in upper- and middle-class families tend to be put into “ able” classes while children from families of poverty or minorities are put into “ less able” classes. Conflict theorist believe that this contributes to the continuation of social inequality, as it gives kids in the “ less able” classes the belief that they possess little to no academic ability. Symbolic interaction theory examines how people interact with one another through communication, sharing beliefs, ideologies, and values through symbols.

Environmental sociologists often note without hesitation that society views the well-being of our environment as important and a problem. This perspective allows us to see how important these issues are to the public, and what they believe to be the important. Symbolic interaction studies all divisions of school; from the class room, the playground, and the extra-curriculars helping us understand the connection between early development and its effects on later society. For example, girls tend to play cooperative games during recess while boys generally play competitive games, increasing the likelihood of them taking on stereotypical gender-roles. Students that a teacher labeled smart, received more attention, is called on more to answer questions, and is praised more when answering correctly. Children respond to the positive feedback and become more interested, resulting in them learning more. A good example of this can be found in a study conducted by, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968). In this study sociologist instructed the teachers which children were smarter, even though the children were picked randomly, at end-of-the-year testing, the children that were labeled as smart scored higher reinforcing that labeling kids as “ able” and “ less able” does have an effect and is a bad idea. It’s easy to see why these two social issues rank among the top issues for many people around the world. Climate change will have an everlasting impression on the place we call home and while it’s no easy feat, something drastic needs to be done about how we treat our environment. It could be argued that better education for all students would help get us closer to fixing a multitude of our problems, ultimately moving humanity forward.

These are just two social issues among many that have monumental impacts on our society, out of many. While knowing the facts of an issue is important, the real question is what will you do with the information? Continue to sit idly by as we watch our world deteriorate a day at a time? Or will you be on the side of history that gets to say, “ I helped save us.”?