Final exam study guide, covering material from Weeks 6-10.

The exam is scheduled for you to choose to take it either Saturday, June 9, or Monday, June 11.

Format: The exam is similar to the midterm; it has a combination of testing methods. There is 1) a section matching terms with definitions; 2) a section where you are asked to provide an example of terms (be careful – students often give a definition only – don’t do that!); 3) a section where you are asked to identify the best choice of a theoretical perspective for a scenario (I’ve attached a practice sheet for you to do).

There is also 4) a section of multiple choice questions - remember that multiple choice questions can have more than one right answer. Just read the question, look at your choices and think, “true or false." If it’s true, circle the letter. If it’s false, don’t circle it. Every question will have at least one right answer; for some questions, all the choices are correct. Partial points are given for every answer.

Example: There are many benefits to community college education, including: a. cheaper tuition for freshman and sophomore level courses b. free books for most classes c. being able to go to college while still living at home

The correct answers are a and c, so you would circle both of those, and leave b alone.

And finally, there is 5) a section for essay responses to four assigned questions (see below).

Terms: • All terms that are bolded in chapters 10, 12, 13, 14, 15 in The Big Picture.

• In addition, any terms that are bolded in the weekly overviews that I provided. For the unit on race (chapter 14), you also must make sure that you go back to previous reading for discussion about W.E.B. Dubois' "Color Line," "the Veil," and "twoness" because those terms are still relevant today. This is the explanation I provided in the Midterm study guide:

Students sometimes mistake “twoness” as following a set of rules in one situation and different set in a different situation (such as acting one way in church and a different way with friends). This is not twoness. Twoness comes from a survival strategy where being a member of a subordinated group is linked to certain behaviors that function to provide group membership and offers group support, but then having to learn how to also adopt the values and behaviors of the dominant group in order to get access to social rewards. The Veil refers to the ways in which members of dominant groups don't have to know what life is like for a minority group member - after all, their survival or social success is not dependent on that. So dominant group members can develop an idea of what life might be like or they can even ignore it altogether.

Key Concepts:

~ three theoretical perspectives – review my Explanations
~ how the "significance of social position" is a major theme in the chapters about education, social class, gender and race
~ how using sociological imagination allows us to better understand how society is structured in such a way that ascribed statuses sometimes provide more limitations (in the way of discrimination and structured inequality) and more opportunities (in the way of invisible privilege) than achieved statuses
~ how we are all part of society; as such, we are part of social problems and are part of the solutions

Important Information from the readings:

~ characteristics of social class system
~ how ideology supports class systems; how ideology supports caste systems
~ 4 types of stratification systems
~ understand how: ascription = caste; achieved = meritocracy
~ the difference between an open and closed system of stratification
~ how material resources, social resources and cultural resources differ in different social classes (how do you know whether a stranger is higher or lower class than you?)
~ examples of cultural capital for working class; for middle class; for the