Deck 14: Education, Health, and Medicine

Question 1

The Japanese place great importance on achievement test scores in college admissions than is the case in the United States.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Social-conflict theory supports the policy of tracking to give all students instruction geared to their abilities.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Most private schools in the United States are "prep schools" that typically enroll children of well-to-do families.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

What is taught in schools around the world reflects local cultures.

Question 5

In the world today, about two-thirds of young people reach secondary school.

Question 6

The extent of schooling in a society is closely tied to its level of economic development.

Question 7

A larger share of young people graduate from high school in Japan than in the United States.

Question 8

If school officials consider some children to be gifted, teachers may treat them accordingly and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Question 9

James Coleman concluded that the only factor needed to improve schooling was increased school funding.

Question 10

Jonathan Kozol characterizes the differences in funding of schools between rich and poor communities and the use of tracking as "savage inequalities" of U.S.education.

Question 11

Education is the social institution providing members of a society with important knowledge.

Question 12

In India, a smaller share of boys than girls reach secondary school.

Question 13

Following a social-conflict approach, schooling in the United States helps to eliminate social inequality.

Question 14

Schooling in the United States favors theoretical learning over practical learning.

Question 15

Children in the United States spend only about 13 percent of their waking hours in school.

Question 16

One latent function of schooling is establishing social relationships and networks.

Question 17

Because the United States is so rich, almost 90 percent of students attend private schools.

Question 18

Historically, the poorest people in every society have been the most likely to go to school, so that they could learn what they needed to know to earn a living.

Question 19

In the United States, schooling is an important path to upward social mobility.

Question 20

About half of U.S.adults are now college graduates.

Question 21

On average, completing a college degree adds about $50,000 to a person's lifetime earnings.

Question 22

Most people who do not complete their schooling have parents who also did not receive much schooling.

Question 23

Community colleges enroll 41 percent of all undergraduates in the United States.

Question 24

Research shows that, in the typical college classroom, most students are active participants who speak up.

Question 25

Regardless of the level of a school's funding, some students benefit from more "cultural capital" than others.

Question 26

There has been significant grade inflation during the last several decades.

Question 27

The concept "functionally illiteracy" refers to people who leave school before graduating.

Question 28

The dropout rate is higher for young people from rich families who have many opportunities to succeed without going to school.

Question 29

Dropping out of school greatly reduces a person's chance to earn a good income.

Question 30

Supporters of the school-choice movement argue that competition is the best way to encourage the public school system to improve education.

Question 31

Currently, there is a surplus of teachers in the United States.

Question 32

Theodore Sizer maintains that, in order to do their job well, U.S.schools need to be large and bureaucratic.

Question 33

African Americans have a lower rate of completing high school than Hispanic Americans.

Question 34

Rather than schools creating violence, in most cases violence spills into schools from the surrounding society.

Question 35

In the United States, African Americans are less likely than Hispanics to drop out of high school.

Question 36

Families with high incomes are much more likely to send their children to college than families with low incomes.

Question 37

Currently, 7.1 percent of people between sixteen and twenty-four years of age have dropped out of school.

Question 38

From a social-conflict perspective, schooling in the United States transforms social privilege into personal merit.

Question 39

Today's colleges provide opportunities for not only young people but also adults seeking new careers as well as personal enrichment.

Question 40

Only about 3 percent of U.S.young people are home schooled.

Question 41

In the United States, people with higher incomes have a more positive assessment of their personal health than people with low incomes.

Question 42

About 20 percent of U.S.adults are overweight.

Question 43

"Type A personalities," which are linked to masculinity, are harmful to human health.

Question 44

Because of so many auto accidents, death rates among young people are much higher than they were a century ago.

Question 45

In the United States, the infant mortality rate among low-income children is about the same as the rate for the children of the wealthy.

Question 46

In much of the world, illness and poverty form a vicious circle, with each increasing the other.

Question 47

Diseases such as heart disease and cancer are the leading killers in low-income nations.

Question 48

Cultural patterns define what is or is not healthy.

Question 49

From a sociological point of view, societies define "health" so that being healthy is sometimes a matter of having the same diseases as one's neighbors.

Question 50

Eating disorders are related to how our society defines success and attractiveness among women.

Question 51

Industrialization gradually led to dramatic improvements in human health.

Question 52

The World Health Organization claims more than half of all humanity suffers from illness caused by poverty.

Question 53

People with more money to spend are more likely to become obese.

Question 54

Social epidemiology is the study of how health and disease are distributed throughout a society's population.

Question 55

As examples of changing conceptions of health and illness, fifty years ago, few people in the United States understood the dangers of cigarette smoking or excessive sun exposure.

Question 56

AIDS kills more people in the United States each year than various diseases caused by cigarette smoking.

Question 57

Genital herpes is a curable sexually transmitted disease.

Question 58

Over the course of the last century, an important health trend in the United States has been a rising death rate from infectious diseases.

Question 59

Social inequality affects a society's patterns of health.

Question 60

As a result of cigarette smoking, some 440,000 people in the United States die prematurely every year.

Question 61

About one month after being infected, most people with HIV begin to display symptoms.

Question 62

Advances in human genetics hold out promise to prevent disease but also raise ethical issues about how this technology should be used.

Question 63

The world region with the highest rate of HIV infection is the Middle East.

Question 64

Education is the social institution by which society provides people with important knowledge, including

A) job skills.
B) basic facts and information.
C) cultural norms and values.
D) All of these responses are correct.

Question 65

The U.S.health care system is one example of the model called socialized medicine.

Question 66

Talcott Parsons developed the concept of the "sick role."

Question 67

Today's advanced medical technology has made the definition of death much clearer.

Question 68

One criticism of the social-conflict analysis is that it minimizes the improvements in health care brought about by scientific medicine.

Question 69

About half of all physicians in the United States are women.

Question 70

Active euthanasia refers to using a physician's services to bring about a patient's death.

Question 71

Holistic medicine seeks to change the focus of medical practice from treating symptoms of disease to preventing disease and promoting health.

Question 72

The role of government in providing medical care is greater in the United States than in other high-income nations.

Question 73

In low-income nations, most education is a matter of

A) formal schooling and then college.
B) what parents and other community members teach their children.
C) what children can teach themselves.
D) teaching by religious leaders.

Question 74

Social definitions have little to do with the reality of health and illness these are simply medical conditions involving human biology.

Question 75

Heterosexual sex cannot transmit AIDS.

Question 76

Gonorrhea and syphilis can be cured with penicillin.

Question 77

The fact that, historically, schooling has been mostly for elites is evident in the fact that the word "school" has the same root as the Greek word for

A) "learning."
B) "wisdom."
C) "leisure."
D) "elder."

Question 78

The acceptance of the scientific model of medicine in the United States was symbolized by the founding of the American Medical Association in 1847.

Question 79

Social-conflict analysis claims the profit motive enhances the quality of medical care in the United States.

Question 80

Parsons claimed that, to qualify for the sick role, a person must want to become healthy and act in ways to restore health.