Week 13 · Readings & resources

Week 13 — Readings & Resources

Introduction to Sociology Free sample edition

Your primary reading is Chapter 13 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.

How to use this page

This page has 11 items (5 readings and 6 videos). Allow 68–84 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more practice, or take the quick path below.

Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.

Pick-one quick path (18–21 min total)

① What is school for, and who gains from how it sorts?

Chapter 13, Section “Ask what school is for: manifest and latent functions” · Session 1, Segment 1, “The jobs schools do and the critiques of them” · Remember: a manifest function is intended and a latent function is not, and the conflict view asks who gains from the way a school sorts.

Education In Society: Crash Course Sociology #40 — CrashCourse — a fast tour of schooling as a social institution, with manifest and latent functions and the way teachers' expectations can shape outcomes. Its figures come from an earlier year, so keep the chapter's definitions as your reference. This builds on Week 12's work with social institutions. (video, 12 min) (captions: creator)
Bowles and Gintis on Education — tutor2u — a short explainer of the correspondence principle, the claim that school routines mirror the workplace; it is made for exam revision, so treat it as one conflict account rather than the final word. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
Education pays — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — a federal chart of earnings and unemployment by the highest level of schooling completed. Read it with the credentialism question in mind: does the chart show what a degree teaches, or what it signals? It shows an association, not a cause. (reading, 3–6 min)

② How do advantage and expectations travel through a classroom?

Chapter 13, Section “Follow advantage through the school door: social reproduction” · Session 1, Segment 2, “Cultural capital, correspondence, and expectations” · Remember: social reproduction is a pattern across many students, and a self-fulfilling prophecy works through everyday interaction in one room.

Cultural Capital — Sociology Live! — a short talk on Bourdieu's idea that the knowledge, tastes, and ways of speaking learned at home can pay off at school. Use it while working through the Week-13 module overview. (video, 5 min) (captions: automatic)
Young Adult Educational and Employment Outcomes by Family Socioeconomic Status — National Center for Education Statistics — a federal indicator that follows students who began high school in 2009 and compares where young adults from different family backgrounds ended up a few years after high school. Read the definition of socioeconomic status first, then ask whether each comparison is a correlation or a cause. (reading, 8–12 min)
Teachers' expectations help students to work harder, but can also reduce enjoyment and confidence — The Conversation — two researchers describe a classroom study of teacher pressure and student effort; notice how carefully the findings are stated, and compare that care with the way the classic classroom study is often retold. (reading, 4–6 min)

③ How do sociologists read religion and its numbers?

Chapter 13, Section “Hear three classic voices on religion” · Session 2, Segment 3, “Classic voices, types of groups, and the nones” · Remember: Durkheim studied what religion does for a group, Weber argued an affinity rather than a cause, and the opium line is Marx's.

Religion: Crash Course Sociology #39 — CrashCourse — the sacred and the profane, and how the functionalist and conflict perspectives read religion's role in a society. Its survey figures come from an earlier round, so use the chapter's 2023–24 figures for this course. (video, 11 min) (captions: creator)
Max Weber's The Spirit of Capitalism — Sociologylearners — a three-minute narrated explainer of Weber's argument that an ethic of disciplined work in certain Protestant traditions shaped the spirit of modern capitalism, with a short look at rationalization. It calls that ethic a catalyst, so listen for whether it describes a cause or a fit between ideas, and hold it to the chapter's word, affinity. (video, 3 min) (captions: automatic)
Types of Religious Organisation — tutor2u — a revision explainer that sorts churches, denominations, sects, and newer movements; check its labels against the chapter's four types, which are a model, not a description of every group. (video, 6 min) (captions: automatic)
Who are religious 'nones' in the US, and how are they defined? — Pew Research Center — a short page on how the survey sorts people who report no religion into atheists, agnostics, and those who say nothing in particular. Read it to see why the nones are not one group of nonbelievers. (reading, 3–6 min)

Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)

Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off — Pew Research Center — the report behind this week's religious-landscape figures; read the overview and the trend charts, and skip the detailed methods unless you want them. (reading, 8–12 min)

Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.

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