Part 2 Directions: As an exercise, think about social stratification and its significance and consequences, using a form of "str
atification experience" with which you are all familiar….education.
Social Stratification in the Classroom
Carefully read the following:
"At some point in their school life, every student suffers an examination - a test of what you know (or, more likely what you don't know or didn't bother to study because "they're never going to ask me a question on that")...Studying for exams is bad enough, but far worse is the feeling of barely-repressed doom when the teacher, in full view of your classmates, looks at you and utters a disapproving "tut-tut" as they hand you back your sadly-thin answer paper.
It's at this point that your heart begins to beat louder and louder until your chest is pounding like the scene in "Alien" when the creature bursts out of it's victim's chest... With mounting trepidation, you lift your resigned eyes to look at the thick red mark burning it's way from the page into your heart and then you realize, with a crushing finality, that there is, after all your hopes and prayers, no God in His heaven (because if there were He would surely have answered those prayers and turned your sad scrawl into a perfectly presented, perfectly correct, set of answers). Until this awful moment of truth, all students are created equal; until this fatal confirmation of your inadequacy, you could stand tall(ish) with the rest because, whatever anyone else may have suspected, there was no proof. But now there is proof, in the black and white (or, in reality, the green and mauve because you had to borrow a pen from someone) and red of the paper that has frozen in your hand...
If this initial confirmation of your worthlessness was not enough, the torture continues when your “friends” start to pester you for your score and the world resounds to the scornful "beat you, beat her" mantra of a classroom full of scared students. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you hear the words,
"And your exam results shall follow you all the rest of your days", and while you try not to think about it as you smile that unconvincing smile through the pain and the Herculean effort involved in stopping your face crumpling into tears, it's true. They do."
Identify the following elements:
From the above passage, it's possible to identify the various aspects of stratification that we identified earlier. See if you can identify the following elements and provide brief examples to support your identification:
1. Social differentiation -
2. Hierarchy -
3. Inequality -
4. Power -
5. Ideology -
