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11.1 Understand how the educational process is related to socialization, employment, and income.

Video Link: The Functionalist View of Education in the United States 
Description: The video presents an elementary overview of the role of education in the United States from a functionalist perspective.

Audio Link: Boosting Education for Babies And Their Parents 
Description: Harlem Children's Zone has a program called The Baby College, which is geared towards expectant parents and parents with children under the age of three. It aims to educate parents and children in impoverished neighborhoods and provides young children with educational materials to support early learning.

Audio Link: How Small Government Can Help Fix Economic Inequality 
Description: Senator Marco Rubio discusses his idea of how to make education more affordable and his plans to increase opportunities for economic mobility for America’s low-income population.

Web Resource: The Federal Education Law Makeover 
Description: The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, is a federal education law, which may get a makeover in Congress in 2015. The most recent major modifications were applied in 2001 as part of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act.

11.2 Describe inequality in education, its sources, and its effects. 

Video Link: The Rising Costs and Financial Competition in Higher Education 
Description: The video discusses the growing cost of college and the rise of student debt, causing some students to never graduate because of the overwhelming expense. In the video, Jeffrey Brown talks to filmmaker Andrew Rossi about his documentary The Ivory Tower.

Video Link: Learn More about the Ivory Tower Documentary and its Focus on Exploding Tuition Costs 
Description: Filmmaker Andrew Rossi discusses how the educational system in the United States has become a big business, which has negatively impacted upward mobility.

Audio Link: Reimagine Education for the 2030s 
Description: The AltSchool is a for-profit micro-school founded by a former Google engineer. The school blends a traditional Montessori education (a style of teaching that emphasizes play and hands-on learning) with high-tech tools. A group of engineers are working with teachers on building and testing a software platform to be used in the school’s classrooms.

Web Resource: Social Inequality and Educational Disadvantage 
Description: The goal of the Russell Sage Foundation is to improve social inequality in the United States. The project featured in the website, sponsored by the foundation, focuses on the educational performance of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as how the differences in educational experiences between wealthy and poor students can negatively affect society in the future.

11.3 Compare the educational system in United States to those in other countries

Video Link: The High School Experience around the World 
Description: Amanda Ripley discusses why countries such as Poland, Finland and South Korea have higher academic achievement than students from the United States.

Audio Link: German Schools Beckon Americans Seeking Affordable Degrees 
Description: The audio discusses the benefits of having a free college education for all of its citizens and the effect it would have on the country’s economy and learners.

Web Resource: Global Grade: How Do American Students Compare? 
Description: The article compares the academic performance of students in the United States to students from 57 other countries. The researchers explain why the academic performance of American students ranges near the middle of the group when compared to the highest performing students in Finland.

Web Resource: The Commercialization of Education in China 
Description: The article discusses a new trend in China: the commercialization of education due to its rapid economic growth.

11.4 Define the major components of religion.

Video Link: Five Major World Religions 
Description: It's perfectly human to grapple with questions, like 'Where do we come from?' and 'How do I live a life of meaning?' These existential questions are central to the five major world religions -- and that's not all that connects these faiths. John Bellaimey explains the intertwined histories and cultures of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.

Video Link:  Classic Theories of Religion 
Description: The lecture given by Dr. Dale Tuggy clarifies Emile Durkheim’s theories on religion and how religion has developed into a complex social phenomenon.

Audio Link: A Conflict between Religion and Science among Hawaiian Natives 
Description: In Hawaii, a conflict is growing over the future of a mountaintop, Mauna Kea.

Activists consider the construction of a telescope on the island of Hawaii to be a desecration of their sacred land, since one of the many Hawaiian gods said to reside in the mountain.

Web Resource: Religious Symbolism and Iconography 
Description: The article explains how religious symbols and art (through the use of colors, gestures, shapes) provide a means to transfer the essential beliefs of a religion to its followers. These images are recognized by religious devotees and associated with beliefs and experiences.

11.5 Explain and provide examples of secularization

Video Link: Religion and its Role in Society: A Secular Perspective 
Description: R.Dawkins , C.Hitchens and R. Scruton debate what religion is and its role in society. The video also provides an objective and subjective approach to understanding religion from a secular point of view.

Audio Link: The First Freedom Seder 
Description: Arthur Waskow, who has worked for the peace and civil rights movements in the United States, illustrates the similarities between the biblical story where the enslaved ancient Hebrews were freed from Pharaoh’s service, and the struggles African Americans have faced throughout the civil rights movement to achieve freedom from racist laws and oppression. The first “Freedom Seder” was celebrated on April 4, 1969, however the idea was born one year prior on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

Audio Link:  Lebanese Couples Fight for Civil Marriage 
Description: The audio discusses the problem a couple of mixed faith faced when they decided to get married in a country that is ruled by 18 different religious organizations, where each one has its own rules and regulations which controls every aspect of an individual’s life. The couple discusses their struggle to have a civil, rather than religious, marriage ceremony in Lebanon, even though the country is ruled by a secular regime.

Web Resource: Broadening the Debate on Religion and Secularism 
Description: The website publishes interdisciplinary essays on religion, secularism, and the public sphere. It is used as a forum for ongoing discussions among leading thinkers from the social sciences and humanities.

11.6 Identify different types of religious organizations

Video Link:  New Religious Movements and Groups 
Description: Professor Andrea Diem-Lane illustrates how new religious movements have developed. She explains the differences between sects, cults, and established religious organizations and describes how they each influence each other.

Audio Link: The Origins of the American Republic: Christian or Heretical? 
Description: America was not founded as a Christian nation claims historian Matthew Stewart. He discusses his book Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic with NPR. In it, he explains the role of God in a secular society and how the Church and religion used to be the only way for individuals to fully participate in society.

Web Resource: Did Corporate America Invent Christian America? 
Description: The article explains the way religious organizations and capitalism are intricately intertwined in American society and have worked to benefit each other. Reverend James W. Fifield Jr. has proposed an idea at the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers that Christianity and capitalism should also be political companions as they can benefit each other.

11.7 Describe the relationship between globalization and the world’s major religions

Video Link: Religion and The Faithful: Seeking The Apocalypse 
Description: Based on the article published in The Atlantic, "What ISIS Really Wants," CNN’s Peter Bergen, a national security analyst, tries to explain ISIS’s agenda, whether they are a religious organization, and how to combat religious extremists.

Audio Link: German Protesters Express Their 'Defensive Nationalism' 
Description: Josef Joffe is a publisher at the German weekly Die Zeit. He discusses a large demonstration that occurred in Dresden, Germany against what the protesters call the "Islamization" of the West. In recent years, Germany has been experiencing demographic changes in their population as more migrants and asylum seekers are settling in Germany. Not all Germans are happy about the change.

Web Resource: What ISIS Really Wants 
Description: The Atlantic magazine has published an article discussing ISIS and its goals. The reporter, Graeme Wood, states the reasons for why ISIS should be considered a religious group. Wood also discusses how globalization has helped spread and disseminate ISIS’s ideology, which allows them to recruit followers from around the world.

Web Resource: The World's Most and Least Religious Places 
Description: The WIN/Gallup International organization carried out a global survey, which asked responders if they were religious believers or atheist. After surveying 64,000 people in 65 countries, they found that 63 percent of the respondents declared themselves as religious, while only 11 percent declared themselves as atheists. The article shows an interactive map displaying the countries where the survey was taken and how many people in each country responded to the survey.