10
The Family as a Social Institution; SOCI 312
Spring, 2008 / Instructor: Dr. David AyersRoom: HAL 210 / Phone: 458-2010
TR 10:05—11:20 a.m. /
Office: HAL 300H
3 Credit Hours; Prerequisites: None / E-Mail: mailto:Dr. Ayers’ Office Hours: (Please note that as Dr. Ayers is an Assistant Dean, he often has meetings scheduled that interfere with his regular office times, sometimes on short notice. Thus, if it is critical for you to meet with him, schedule an appointment with him by e-mail, phone, or in person.)
Monday: 10:00-11:50 AM
Tuesday: 2:30-5:15 PM
Wednesday: 3:00-4:50 PM
Thursday: NONE
Friday: 10:00 AM-11:50 AM
Required Books to Be Purchased:
Anderson, Katherine, Don Browning and Brian Boyer (Eds.) Marriage: Just Another Piece of Paper? Eerdmans. 2002.
Primis Custom Reader for SOCI 312. McGraw Hill. 2006.
Library Reserve:
Hersch, Patricia. A Tribe Apart, “A Circle of Friends” and “Sex: Let’s Get It Out of the Way But Don’t Look At Me Naked.” Ballantine. 1998.
Robertson, Brian. Day Care Deception, “An Intolerable Truth” and “A Conspiracy of Silence.” Encounter. 2003.
Electronic Journal Article:
Platt, Michael, “The Myth of the Teenager,” Practical Homeschooling 2, 1993.
Description:
This class deals with modern American marriage and family structures, dynamics, and conditions. It covers a broad spectrum¾from courtship and mate selection, to marital dynamics, child-rearing and other aspects of family across the life-course of people, to how marriage and family life varies across social class, race & ethnicity, and religion, to current social controversies and problems such as domestic abuse, divorce and single-parents homes, same-sex marriage, the effects of day care on children, and so on. At every point, we will examine the relevant empirical facts and logical arguments for interpreting these facts, including competing and complementary theories. You must be prepared to deal with these facts and theories honestly and objectively—something that is often quite difficult considering the strong personal relevance of much of the material, and the powerful emotions that are often associated with our ideas and beliefs in these areas.
In spite of this “social science” approach, however, throughout this course we will emphasize the fact that marriage and family are not mere creations or byproduct of human societies. Marriage and family are institutions created by God and dear to His heart. They were created before the Fall, before formal government and laws, perhaps even before the Church. God has constructed us such that our own happiness and success, and the stability and peace of our society itself, is closely affected by our faithfulness to His calling, purpose, and design in our marriage and family life. And godly marriage and family life is under great attack at this time, on every level and front. Thus, while considering the empirical facts and competing theories about various areas of marriage and family studies rigorously and carefully, we will also be informed at every point by a Biblical viewpoint.
Course Objectives and Corresponding Assessments:
Course Objectives: / Achievement Assessed By:(1) To help you master the basic concepts, facts, and theories in the Sociology of Family. / (1) Many objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials.
(2) To learn what the major contemporary issues in marriage and family in the United States today are—in scholarly, political, and popular circles. / (2) Targeted essay exam items addressing lecture and readings; content graded in research report.
(3) To enable you to apply rigorous logic to thinking through the various facts, explanations and proposals about marriage and family which are being debated today in scholarly, political, and popular circles. / (3) Targeted essay exam items addressing lecture and readings; logic graded in research report.
(4) To teach you how to think through marriage and family facts, explanations, and proposals Biblically and morally, as well as sociologically. / (4) Grading of that portion of the research report in which the student defends their stance on a major family-related issue using moral/theological and empirical means.
(5) To help you learn to locate raw data and research studies available on marriage and family issues at all levels, and learn how to assess and analyze these. / (5) Overall grading of research report.
(6) To gain a greater understanding of marriage and family in different sectors of American society—across class, race, ethnicity, and family structure. / (6) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials.
(7) To know more about normal processes of marriage and family life—courtship and mate selection, child-rearing, relationships between adult children and parents, early through late marriage, death and divorce, and so on. / (7) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials.
(8) To learn about the characteristics of, and explanations for, healthy versus unhealthy marriages and families. / (8) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials. For most students, this will also be addressed in significant ways in their research reports.
(9) To gain a historical and cross-cultural perspective on the modern American family. / (9) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials.
(10) To comprehend the reciprocal effects marriage & family, and other social institutions, have upon each other. / (10) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials.
(11) To know details about the key family problem areas of domestic abuse, sexual promiscuity, divorce, and illegitimacy, including sociological variation, causes, and interventions. / (11) Objective and essay items covering reading and in-class materials. For many students, at least one of these problem will also be addressed in significant ways in their research reports.
Methods of Instruction:
Classroom lectures and discussions, required reading, overheads, computer demos, and videos. I will provide “study questions” for all Primis and for the Robertson library reserve, and the Platt electronic journal, readings (these will not be needed for the Marriage: Just a Piece of Paper? readings, or for the Hersch library reserve reading). These questions will be used to create all exam questions dealing with these readings. They will be available on the college network at ED\Courses\Soci\312\Reading Questions.
Note that information presented in films, computer demos and overheads will all be required material, subject to testing in the same way as “regular” lecture content. Whenever I show a longer film (30 to 50 minutes), I will provide you with a set of questions that accompany it. You should try to answer the questions as you watch the film. This will help to guide your note taking during films, and make it more likely that you will take notes on each film on material that I regard as most important, and will test you on later. In fact, all test items from the longer films will be based upon these questions.
Accessing PowerPoint Presentations on the College Network:
Lectures in this class will often, though not always, be structured around PowerPoint multimedia presentations. When these are used, after the lectures, I will make a (usually “stripped-down”!) version of the PowerPoint presentation available on the college network for you students to review. Here is the address: ED\Courses\Soci\312\PowerPoint.
Assignments and Assessments:
Examinations:
There will be two regular examinations, and one cumulative final examination. The two regular exams will each be worth 20% of your final grade. The final examination will be worth 30% of your final grade. Thus, the total value of examinations in this course will be 70% of your final grade.
Regular Examinations:
Dates for these exams are as follows:
Exam #1: Thursday, February 28.
Exam #2: Thursday, April 10.
Each regular examination will consist of 35 multiple choice items, worth 2 points each, comprising a total of 70% of the exam, as well as 2 short essay questions worth 15 points each, comprising a total of 30% of the exam. Each exam will cover all assigned reading and lecture for the time period covered.
For the two 15-point short essays—one will address a Primis reading or (for exam #2 only) the Platt electronic journal reading, and one will deal with the lecture/in-class material. For each of these short essays, you will be allowed to choose one of two questions to answer. For the 35 2-point multiple choice items — 10 will deal with the Marriage: Just Another Piece of Paper? readings (and, for Exam #2 only, perhaps also the Hersch library reserve reading), and 25 will deal with the lecture/in-class content. (Of course, there will be some overlap — material tested that was covered in both the lecture and reading.) You are responsible on the exams for ALL assigned reading materials, whether or not they were explicitly covered in class, and for ALL content covered in class, whether or not they were dealt with in any assigned readings!
Final Examination:
The final examination will be on Tuesday, May 13 at 2:00 p.m. 2 hours will be given to complete it. THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO TAKING THE FINAL AT THE ASSIGNED DAY AND TIME except Dean’s Excuses or that you have 3 or more exams scheduled the same day.
The format for the final examination will be the same as for regular examinations—Multiple Choice and Short Essays—with choices given as to what to answer for each short essay question.
About 1/3 of the final exam—the “comprehensive” portion—will test course material covered up to the second regular exam. Material covered will include all of the lectures from this period, but none of the previous reading assignments.
The other two-thirds of the exam will test course material covered after Exam #2. The second part of the exam will be like a regular exam, covering all required reading assigned during this period, as well as the lecture content.
The final examination will consist of 70 multiple choice items worth 1 point each, and 2 short essay questions worth 15 points each. The short essay questions will come from the material covered after Exam #2. One will cover lecture/in-class materials, and the other will deal with a Primis or library reserve reading. For each of these essays — you will always be allowed to choose one of two questions to answer.
35 of the 1-point multiple choice items will be drawn from the lecture/in-class materials covered by the first 2 exams, and 35 will be drawn from materials covered after Exam #2. The latter 35 items will be divided as on the regular exams, with 10 coming from any Marriage: Just Another Piece of Paper? readings and 25 coming from lecture/in-class materials.
Reading Quizzes:
There will be 12 short quizzes scheduled throughout the semester. Each quiz will cover recently assigned readings. Each will be announced the class period before the quiz is given (or earlier), and will consist of multiple choice and/or true/false items. About ten minutes will be given to complete them. Students arriving late will not be given extra time. Of the 12 quiz grades, the lowest 2 will be dropped. The average of the 10 highest quizzes will be worth 15% of your final grade.
Research Report:
The research report is worth 15% of your final grade. It ought to have a separate cover page, and must be a minimum of 6, and a maximum of 8, pages long. DO THIS DOUBLE-SPACED. This length does not include the cover page. Margins are to be 1” wide all around. Use a 12 point font; nothing larger or smaller. Provide page numbers in the upper or lower center of the pages. Page “1” should be the first page of text, not the cover page. Correctly use, and cite, at least 8 sources other than reading materials required for this course. These sources should NOT consist mainly of short magazine or newspaper articles (!), but should mostly be fairly serious publications. Sound content from the Internet (journals on line, research papers on credible sites, etc.) are fine. You may use endnotes or in-text citations but do not use footnotes. Use the American Sociological Association citation format, briefly but clearly described here: http://www.asanet.org/page.ww?section=Sociology+Depts&name=Quick+Style+Guide
In the report, you should focus on a sociological controversy in one of the following areas: (a) whether or not children raised by two parents who both work full-time outside the home are at a disadvantage relative to those raised in two-parent families where one parent generally stays at home; (b) whether or not children in divorced homes are generally better off if their mother has primary custody of them; (c) whether or not children or women in single-parent or step-parent situations are more likely to experience abuse than those in homes led by two married, natural parents; (d) whether or not abstinence-based sex education has positive effects or not; (e) whether or not society should make divorce harder for people to obtain; (f) whether or not the U.S. Constitution should be amended to restrict marriage to one man/one woman unions; (g) whether or not, all other things being equal, children raised by homosexual couples are worse off than those raised by two, opposite sex, natural parents; (h) whether or not marriage and/or the family in America is “declining”; (i) whether or not spanking is necessarily harmful to children, or potentially helpful as a training device.
Identify at least two clear sides of a clear debate about one of these issues. Critically evaluate both sides of the debate relying on empirical facts, logic, and moral argument. Your title should be in the form of a question, which your paper will then answer. For example, in handling issue “b” above, you might pose this question: “In divorce cases, should judges normally give children’s mothers primary custody of them, or should they be as likely to give primary custody to the fathers as to the mothers.” Or this one: “In divorce cases, should judges normally give mothers primary custody of the children, or should they try, where feasible, to give both parents equal custody of the children?”
The best grades will be given to papers that fit all the basic requirements stated above, are (a) well written (overall organization, paragraph and sentence structure, grammar, spelling); (b) present good argumentation based on solid data, logical analysis, and moral persuasion; (c) comply with the above technical requirements (that is, length, margins, title page, page numbers, sources, etc.); (d) address the subject matter required; (e) be well (especially narrowly) focused; (f) be succinct—packing good, precise information into the short length allowed without being wandering, loose or redundant; and (g) be original and interesting. Also – and this is very important – that (h) the two sides you identify are fairly and accurately presented.