Among the objectives Chapter 12 seeks to achieve are these:
Students should be able to assess the validity of the assumption that differences in children's success in school are largely due to differences in children's native capacity for learning.
This chapter should help students examine variables that might affect student learning, and analyze how and to what degree race, ethnicity, social class, and gender play important roles.
Another aim is to evaluate the assertion that students should be "treated as individuals" without regard to gender or cultural background, and to discuss how important gender and cultural background are in shaping individual identity.
Students should be able to discuss how the political-economic context of schooling influences learning outcomes from one generation to the next.
Students should be able to discuss specific points of similarity and difference between today's struggle with cultural diversity and educational equity, and the struggle of the Progressive era.
Finally, students should understand how the dimensions of social and economic inequality in this chapter are related to inequalities in schooling experiences, and discuss whether cultural deficit theory adequately explains these differences.
