Reflective Journal Chap. 4 & 8

September 29, 2012

In chapters four and eight, the book talked about crime and social control and problems in education. Overall the most interesting things we read about this week were probably that once a child gets labeled as a delinquent their tendency to actually commit crimes increases, I thought this was interesting because, from personal experience, courts try and make an example out of someone and give a child or teen a harsher sentence, but instead of helping the adolescent to not commit more crimes, they actually end up doing the opposite. So it’s surprising that even with that research courts would continue to hand out harsh sentences for smaller offenses. The other thing I found interesting was the amount of money that states need in order to fix up the schools, and that it’s mainly in neighborhoods that are poorer. I think it just always surprises me how little it seems people want to put into education but how they expect so much from it in return. I really enjoyed learning about schools that are “green”. I’ve heard of schools trying to do more for the environment, like recycling and the sort but I had not heard of schools that go to more extremes like solar panels and conserving water. I realize building schools like this is expensive to start with but with the amount of money they get back from it, that more schools would be willing to try and invest in greener schools. I feel as if in the chapter regarding crime and social control it would have been nice to see more stories and personal experiences that could possibly show the sociological theories at work. I would also like to have read more about what is being done to possibly have less people arrested for petty crimes and sent to corrections facilities that actually make them into more hardened criminals. The topic of education and not enough time and effort put into hits close to home because my mother has been an educator for over twenty five years and works at a school that teaches both English and Spanish. But because they aren’t a main stream school, they receive less funding and instead of being able to buy materials for their curriculum, they have to spend their own personal time translating everything made for other schools into Spanish so that they can use them. Also, the fact that parents complain about how large class sizes are, for her about 25 students,  but aren’t willing to somehow raise money or bills to help the schools lower class size numbers.