Sociology 1201: Worksheet--"People Like Us: Anderson High School"

1. What is the basis for status at Anderson High School?

2. How do the kids at the top of the status system feel about their position? How do they feel about the people who aren't included in their group?

3. How do people who aren't part of the top group feel about the Anderson status system?

4. Compare and contrast your high school with Anderson High School? In other words, what were the similarities and what are the differences?

Sociology 1201: Groups--"People Like Us: Anderson High School"

1. The narrator says: "In every town, big or small, there's a place where social divisions are cast at an early age, where people struggle with questions of what they can achieve in life, where the running drama of who's in and who's out is performed on da daily basis. It's the high school." Is that the way people in your group experienced high school?

2. What is it that determines the relative prestige and power of different cliques at Anderson High School? How do you become part of the most prestigious clique?

3. Does it seem to you fair that parents' social class creates so much advantage for their children--at school or in life? Can you think of any way to equalize life chances or at least move in that direction?

4.What do you suppose makes the difference between high schools like Anderson and those that have some other system of power and privilege, or in which cliques are not so dominant. . Be sure to consider the range of high schools attended by people in your group.

5. Do you see the social stratification system at Anderson as a reflection of race and ethnic discrimination? Social class discrimination? Do you believe that the people with formal power in the school system--school board, school superintendent, priincipal, etc. should accept this system of social stratification as inevitable? If not, how could they intervene?