Violence among females is rising. Nowadays teenage girls are responsible for almost 40 crimes every day. Reasons of this violence is that more and more young people start drinking earlier and take drugs and they make them more aggessive and not stable emotionally. The most dangerous time are friday evenings as more young people are allowed to go out this day. This violence is one of the causes of closing gap between girls and boys. To stop this violence parents should be more careful and instead of forbidding their children go out, they should just try to understand them and be closer and try to get friends with them. In my opinion if our parents are our friends it can decrease the number of drinking teenagers.

divorced families

As we know divorce may bring a lot of unwanted consequences not only for the family but for the country whole as it can be a reason of decreased population, increased poverty and so on. So Government is interested in having low level of number of divorced families. It introduces different policies such as for example helping to find divorced women a job. For a lot of divorced mothers it can a big a problem but still even if the government helps them get employed it doesn't guarantee improving the situation as commonly those women will be employed in low paid job. Other policies might allow partners after divorce have insurance, like it is being in the US, or paying subsidies for the children in divorced families like in the UKand it is called endowment policy.All these policies are necessary because for some people divorce might change many things in their lives and only government can help them

Official statistics of Domestic Violence

Gender trends: Women make up 3/4 of the victims of homicide by an intimate partner. Actually, 33% of all women murdered (of course, only cases which are solved are included) are murdered by an intimate partner. Women make up about 85% of the victims of non-lethal domestic violence. In all, women are victims of intimate partner violence at a rate about 5 times that of males.  

Racial and Ethnic trends: Black women and men suffer from the highest rates of domestic violence. "Black females experienced domestic violence at a rate 35% higher than that of white females, and about 22 times the rate of women of other races. Black males experienced domestic violence at a rate about 62% higher than that of white males and about 22 times the rate of men of other races."  

Age trends: Domestic violence is most prominent among women aged 16 to 24.  

Economic Trends: Poorer women experience significantly more domestic violence than higher income women.  

Marital status: For both men and women, divorced or separated persons were subjected to the highest rates of intimate partner victimization, followed by never- married persons.  

Reporting to police: The rates at which individuals report domestic violence to police vary along racial and gender lines. Hispanic and black women report domestic violence at the highest rate (approximately 65% to 67% of abuse is reported). For white females, only about 50% of the abuse is reported.

Childhood has disappeared

There are many theories about childhood and one of them was suggested by Neil Postman. He argued that in western European countries childhood has disappeared. Of cource, we can't say that with a full confidence as we know that it can't disappear at all. But here is a talk about the reduction of a period of childhood in twenty first century. Recently before such achievements in developing technologies the boundary between adult world and childhood was seen very clear. But in the modern world 'the information and communications revolution at the turn of the twenty-first century has delivered the end of childhood' because now the distance between adults and children has changed by children's adoption of information and communication technologies that is now everything is accessible for children.

Why celibacy?

www.associatedcontent.com/article/51003/why_celibacy.html

"Celibacy is an unmarried person not engaging in sex, a person practicing abstinence. 

A vow of celibacy would eliminate the risks of venereal disease. For some, especially young teens, it would allow focusing energies on other matters such as careers, or social issues. Practicing celibacy would eliminate the numbers of unwanted pregnancies. 

Celibacy could be a means of preventing a hereditary condition or something like HIV from spreading. 

It has always been that sexual activity encouraged the belief that a person's worth, rather than being unconditional, depended on either his or her ability to be sexually desirable and to gain sexual fulfillment or, at the very least, to gain stable companionship. To achieve a deeper sense of meaning in life, individuals, with vows of celibacy, have chosen to remove themselves from the outside distractions of life, including sexual gratification. 

One of the goals of positive celibacy, is to find that deeper feeling of worthiness for self and others that is without any conditions, least of all sexual ones. Thus, above all, it is not to lead a celibate life that makes for a true monk or nun, but this ability to realize that the sexual desirability of self or others is not the true criterion of human worth. We are aware of this only when we can be totally at peace with our singleness. In fact, it might be said that we are only truly qualified to be partnered after we have realized this peace.

Studies support that there is a link between teenage sexual activity and emotional health. The findings show that when compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly less likely to be happy and more likely to feel depressed when compared to teens who are not sexually active, teenage boys and girls who are sexually active are significantly more likely to attempt suicide. Vows of celibacy would eliminate many of these problems. 

Taken a vow of celibacy would honor God because according to His word, we are to keep ourselves pure, until marriage. 

Celibacy may contribute to a greater peacefulness and spirituality. 

Making a celibacy vow would also dispose of a whole load of worries on your mind. You won't even have to think about the worries of contraception, venereal disease, physical compatibility, impotence, frigidity, or whether your partner is good in bed, or sexual fidelity etc. People you talk to will know that you're not interested in them for their body. 

It has been noted, that there is no proof that celibacy is in any way damaging to one's health, and it is clear that many celibates lead long, happy lives. 

Celibacy should be recognized as a valid alternative sexual lifestyle."

After reading this article we can see many positives of being celibated, but still if one of the purposes of people's life is reproduction, which can not be achieved in such situation, can we be fully satisfied with our lives?

primitve societies and their modern counterparts

If we compare the way of treating children in non-industrial, primitive countries where worklife and family life was like the same and where families was very big including all the relatives with countries where family and work have a clear boundary, we can see many differences and all they are because of different values, norms, aims and very important- culture. As Ruth Benedict said in her work 'Patterns of culture': "If we are interested in cultural processes, the only way in which we can know the significance of the selected detail of behavior is against the background of the motives and emotions and values that are institutionalized in that culture". And to understand some maybe strange for us rules and values in culture we should learn it as a whole and try to accept and understand it. In some countries for example it is acceptable and common that children start working from their childhood as they should thinki about their future and help parents, in other countries girls in families already in childhood (8 and older) get married and if they don't want, there are rules which they can't break. While in their modern counterparts, children have less bad thoughts and don't think about different domestic problems, their childhood might be seen happier in comparison with primitive countries. While this opinion is not right, because in different countries people understand happiness and good life in different ways so i can't say  exactly that in modern societies children have better life.

Factors of symmetrical relationship

Main factors that determine symmetrical relationship between men and women is that their relations must be equal which means that they should share same interests, and aims in life. Their roles in the family also shouldn't be as men earn money and women are responsible for domestic duties. They should share duties and work. All these things can help maintain symmetrical relations as men and women will have the same rights in their relations. 

But in my opinion those factors which i noticed are not the same for everyone as different people have different views on such things. Factors of symmetrical relations depend on religions, social status and so on. For example if you are in working class, it usually happens that woman will be depended and her role will be to take care of child and be responsible for domestic duties. Also in Islam men and women usually have different rights and rules are very stricted.

(I wrote only my opinion without using any references thats why i am not sure if I am right.)

Feminists about domestic violence

Feminists made an analysis according to European, American and Canadian cultures. The most important contribution that has been made is that domestic violence that are usually occuring in families came from patriarchal structure where men dominated in relations. And still unequality between genders happens very often. Men are tend to demand domestic labour from their wives and behave possesively towards their partners.

Feminists' view of housework

If we see feminists' point of wies to the housework, most of them say that housework makes sexes be unequal. As housework is unpaid but it is still a work it gives men power over women. marxist feminists argue that housework is a sort of social reproduction and thereby it should be paid. Unpaid housework is a sexual division of labour to productive and reproductive work which allows capitaists make more profit and exploit women's unpaid labour. 

But the problem is how to divide housework between leisure and real work? If we talk for example about childcare it can't be considered only as a work because one of the women's instincts is bearing their children. Since market doesn't have a detailed criterion to distinguish work from non work, it is impossible to calculate how much women should be paid for their housework and thereby there will be still unequality.

One of the solution that had been done was giving all the housework to specialists, such as nurses, maids and so on and pay wages them. Others argued that as people, mostly women, spend a lot of time by taking care after children and old people all the time they spend on it must be compensated.

Elizabeth Bott

Elizabeth Bott continued developing the last stage in her study "Family and social network". SDhe argued that the segregation in the roles between wife and husband varies with the connection with social network. After interviews with 20 London families she developed the idead of two conjugal roles: joint and segregated. Class plaied a very important factor in determining the type of roles. She said that joint conjugal roles are more typical in middle class families, when wife and husband have the same interests, they share all the duties and tasks, dispersed social network. While segregated conjugal role is more typical in working class families, when husband and wife have different tasks and duties ( more common when husband is earning money for the family while wife is responsible for domestic duties) and also they have separated interests; those who know family, knows each other

Young and Wilmott's theory

According to Young's and Wilmott's study there are four different stages of the Symmetrical Family. The first stage is pre-Industrial Family. It is the first and th most undeveloped kinf of familis when they were as units of production. Everyone in the family worked together in agriculture. Workplace and home weren't separated. Second stage is The early Industrial Family. Members of families are now work to earn money. Home and workplace are separated. There was a tend in making good relations with different relatives. Women are now more responsible for different domestic duties whereas men’s purpose is to earn money for the family. This stage happens more often in working class. The reasons of appearing next stage are that women became more independent and most of them employed. Families become more independent and nuclear and less children in the family which gives an opportunity to women to get jobs. And so the next stage is called Symmetrical Family as there is an economic and social equality between men and women, husband and wife now share their ideas and experience between each other. And the last stage was predicted by Wilmott and Young in the extension of the theory 'Principle of Stratified Diffusion'. Upper class will set trends of family life. And so bottom classes will take as example lives of directors, managers. According to this theory, life will become more work-centred rather than home centred. Husbands will spend more time at work and their entertainment will also be connected with worklife while wives will be responsible for domestic duties.

Talcott Parsons

Talcott Parsons in the last century developed the model of nuclear family from functionalists' point of view. He was talking about gender roles in the family and how they differ.He said  that women's role in the family is that they should take sare of other members of the family and also strenghten relations among them whereas men should have an instrumental role in the family such as earning money for it. He also said that as if many actions are tend to be expected it can help to avoid conflicts.

 As i understand the science 'Sociology' it is a study of behaviour and interaction of people. It helps us to answer questions such as reasons of behaving of different social groups, some stereotyps, socialization and ets.  I think this science is very important and basic sociology has to know everyone of us. I haven't tried studying this subject before and thats why i am interested in it and want to know if it is that science that i would like to continue studying in future

Cultural Capital

In early 1960s french sociologist Pierre Bourdieu developed his concept of cultural capital where he said that not only economis factors but also cultural habits and status of the families play an important role in school success. He compared and found similar things in economic and cultural capital and he asserted that 'cultural habits and disproportions comprise a resource capable of generating profit.'

In Bourdieu's opinion cultural capital exists in three forms. It is a skill that can not be separated from it's holder, objects themselves may functiona s a form of cultural capital and also cultural capital exists in an 'institutionalized form'.

Hovewer there are many differences between cultural and economis capital. Cultural capital is considered to be an 'unborn talent'. And because schools transform inherited capital into 'scholastic cultural capital', it is supposed to be an individual achievement.

Also it is mentioned that cultural capital has an impact in sociology. As Bourdieu thinks classes are differentiated 'from one another in terms of the overall volume of capital' or by the ration of economic and cultural capital. Bourdieu indicated that each class has a uniwue range of tastes and it depends on its cultural and economic capital. Those who richer in economic capital for example are tend to be less interested in cultural capital. And these differences of taste Bourdieu termed 'symbolic capital'.

I love pineapples (doesn't relate to the subject i study)

The pineapple is the most famous and economically important member of the Pineapple family (Bromeliaceae). It is the only bromeliad with edible fruit. The family is almost exclusively from the New World, with over 2000 species besides the pineapple native to the tropical Americas. One additional species is from Africa. The pineapple, however, can now be found in all tropical regions. Portuguese explorers carried it around the world in the 16th century. The Chinese were cultivating it by 1640, but it was only introduced to Hawaii in 1813. Hawaii started exporting canned pineapples in 1892 and James Dole started his plantation there in 1900. 

In contrast to most of its Bromeliad relatives, the pineapple is terrestrial. It grows best in a mineral soil medium. Bromeliads typically are epiphytic (growing upon other plants) and do not require a mineral soil but do best living on bark or humus in the crotches of tree branches. 

While most everyone is familiar with the pineapple fruit, many do not know what kind of plant produces it. Pineapple plants are perennials growing from a thick crown close to the soil surface. They reach a height of 4 feet with numerous stiff 3-foot long leaves often armed with sharp edges.  


The pineapple “fruit” is not really a fruit at all but is a mass of individual berries fused to the central stalk. This is why the “fruit” has leaves on top. They are actually the continued growth of the stalk beyond where the berries are attached. 

Pineapples are not grown from seed. The important commercial cultivars such as ‘Smooth Cayenne’ from Hawaii and ‘Red Spanish’ from the West Indies are self-sterile – the inconspicuous flowers are not capable of fertilizing their own eggs. Unless different cultivars are grown near each other (an unlikely occurrence in commercial plantations), the resulting fruits are seedless (parthenocarpic). Pineapples are readily reproduced by vegetative propagation, using crowns, slips, or suckers. The crown is the vegetative shoot on top of the fruit, and new plants take 2 years to produce fruit. Slips are side shoots from just below the fruit. Plants from slips take 20 months to produce fruit. Suckers are side shoots that develop from the main stem at ground level, and take 17 months to produce fruit.  

Each plant that is propagated produces one fruit at the top of its stem. This high quality fruit is called the “plant” crop. After the fruit is harvested, several suckers develop and one year later produce the “ratoon” crop. The fruits are smaller and of lesser quality. A second ratoon crop can develop after the first crop is harvested. After that, the field is dug up and replanted. 

Pineapple fruit quality is at its best only if the fruit matures on the plant. They do not become sweeter if harvested earlier since there are no starch reserves to be converted to sugar. The sugar content must come from the rest of the plant. 

Pineapples are 15% sugar along with malic and citric acids. In areas near where it is grown, a pineapple wine is fermented. It does not store well so it is rarely seen outside of the tropics. Pineapples also contain bromelain, a protein digesting and milk-clotting enzyme similar to pepsin. Bromelain is used commercially to tenderize meat and chill-proof beer. The bromelain may account for the belief that pineapples are good for our digestion. 

Getting a field of pineapples to produce a crop simultaneously (to avoid repeated, labor intensive harvests) has always been a problem. Months could pass before a plant next to a fruiting one comes into flower. During the early 20th century, pineapple growers found that fields where smudge pots had been used to prevent frost damage flowered and fruited uniformly. By the 1930’s it was known that ethylene (a by-product of combustion) was responsible for the uniform flowering, and that similar compounds such as acetylene or the plant hormone auxin could do the same. Shortly thereafter the practice of dropping a few granules of calcium carbide onto the growing point of pineapple plants developed. Calcium carbide reacts with water to yield acetylene. Today, the ethylene releasing compound ethephon is sprayed onto pineapple plants to promote uniform flowering. 

The cultivation of pineapples has become an exact science. For best fruit quality the plant has specific environmental requirements such as mineral rich soil that is moist but well drained, low humidity, full sunlight, and temperatures that do not get below 32F or above 90oF. This environment can be found in many tropical countries, and the pineapple industry is significant in Thailand, the Philippines, United States (Hawaii), Mexico, Ivory Coast, South Africa, Malaysia, Kenya, Taiwan, Australia, and other countries. Interesting enough, prior to 1950 Hawaii produced 70% of the world’s pineapples. Increasing production costs and foreign competition has reduced Hawaii’s market share to less than 30%. Still, Hawaii produces 500,000 tons of pineapples each year. 

Besides its use as a food, the pineapple fruit has a long history of symbolism that persists today. When first cultivated in European greenhouses in the 17th century, it was used only by the wealthy to adorn banquet tables. It became a status symbol of the social elite. During the Napoleonic Wars, English caricaturists used the fruit to symbolize high living and opulence. European colonists carried the pineapple symbol back to the Americas to represent “friendship” and as an image of “welcome”.

http://faculty.ucc.edu/biology-ombrello/pow/pineapple.htm

Research report

This report is about research which is made to evaluate social changes in family life from the early 20 century till new twenty first century. It was found that families during the last fifty years continue to be central importance of the life of individuals. Also research investigates that in families now there is a reduction of rules to govern behaviour and increasing importance of negotiating among family members.

As it is said, 'the research aimed to investigate the impact of structural and cultural change on kin relations' and it based on a research made by Rosser and Harris 'The family and social change'. 

The research is aimed to investigate reasons of changes in family life and roles of members: why there is an increase in economic activity among women and how does the full time employment of younger women affect family.

Analysis shows that in researched areas there is a decline of nuclear family and the classic extended families consisting of three generations are also in decline. One of the reasons of that is that there is a decline in strenght of sibling relations. And relations are now based on relations between daughters and mothers and fathers and sons. And even if the contact between mothers and daughters has fallen it is still very big. But as there is an increase in full time employment among women, it reduces their frequency of contact with kin but increases their need to support childcare. Also employment increases gender equality which is very important in relations between genders. 

It is written that the enormous growth in employment opportunities for women leads to higher rates 'of female labour participation'.

All these changes are because of increased individualism among people. 'Families are made up of people who are increasingly individuated and as a result family life is made up of the unscripted choices negotiated by family members between one another'

Educational differences between girls and boys

" Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.

For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.

"Our findings -- which suggest that language processing is more sensory in boys and more abstract in girls -- could have major implications for teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex classrooms," said Douglas D. Burman, research associate in Northwestern's Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers measured brain activity in 31 boys and in 31 girls aged 9 to 15 as they performed spelling and writing language tasks.

The tasks were delivered in two sensory modalities -- visual and auditory. When visually presented, the children read certain words without hearing them. Presented in an auditory mode, they heard words aloud but did not see them.

Using a complex statistical model, the researchers accounted for differences associated with age, gender, type of linguistic judgment, performance accuracy and the method -- written or spoken -- in which words were presented.

The researchers found that girls still showed significantly greater activation in language areas of the brain than boys. The information in the tasks got through to girls' language areas of the brain -- areas associated with abstract thinking through language. And their performance accuracy correlated with the degree of activation in some of these language areas.

To their astonishment, however, this was not at all the case for boys. In boys, accurate performance depended -- when reading words -- on how hard visual areas of the brain worked. In hearing words, boys' performance depended on how hard auditory areas of the brain worked.

If that pattern extends to language processing that occurs in the classroom, it could inform teaching and testing methods.

Given boys' sensory approach, boys might be more effectively evaluated on knowledge gained from lectures via oral tests and on knowledge gained by reading via written tests. For girls, whose language processing appears more abstract in approach, these different testing methods would appear unnecessary.

"One possibility is that boys have some kind of bottleneck in their sensory processes that can hold up visual or auditory information and keep it from being fed into the language areas of the brain," Burman said. This could result simply from girls developing faster than boys, in which case the differences between the sexes might disappear by adulthood.

Or, an alternative explanation is that boys create visual and auditory associations such that meanings associated with a word are brought to mind simply from seeing or hearing the word."


(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303120346.htm)

Formal and Informal education

As i understand it  formal education is a studying at school and informal education is what you learn by your own.  There is some comparisons of these types of education: http://enhancinged.wgbh.org/started/what/formal.html

Differences between functionalists and marxists.

Functionalists:

• Education provides a society with 'division of labour' which means that schools will help to identify who you will be in a future
• Education socialises children with society's shared norms and values. The process of socialisation moves children away from the particularistic values of their home life towards the universalistic values of society
• The 'hidden curriculum'  helps to integrate future citizens into society's by 'teaching' and reinforcing them with society's norms and values 
• Education helps provide the means for people to make themselves upwardly mobile. Therefore if you make the effort you will be rewarded - meritocracy.  This process legitimizes social inequalities as functionalists believe everyone has the opportunity to get a qualifications. Education is a level playing field - if you fail to achieve at school it is nobody's fault but your own - meritocracy.

Marxists:

• Social class - Education helps meet the needs of society by dividing it into distinct  social - classes the rulling (bosses) and working class (workers)
• For Marxists, the role of education is considered in terms of the idea that there is always a basic “conflict of interest” in Capitalist society. The most-fundamental conflict is between Capital (the owners of the means of production) and Labour (people who sell their labour power in exchange for money). Marxists try to relate all other forms of conflict (gender, age, racial, etc.) to the economic sphere.
   
  Marxists are mainly concerned with analysing the way education involves the transmission of ideas and beliefs about the nature of the social world. The reason for this is that education is a process that enables a ruling class to reproduce its domination of other social classes. It does this by trying to socialise children with ideas that legitimise the nature of society “as it is”; that is, a society in which there are fundamental inequalities of wealth, income, power and status. 
   
   The concept used to express this idea is that of structured inequality (inequality that stems from the nature of relationships within Capitalist societies). Inequality is structural in origin because it is fundamental to the economic system.
  A ruling class, if it is to continue in power, must ensure it reproduces itself over time. People have to be socialised into accepting the basic ideas of Capitalism. 

(http://www.slideshare.net/sociologytwynham/marxist-functionalist-differences-presentation)

League tables at school

There are some negatives of league tables at school. Actually in my opinion there is only few positives such as competition among school which MIGHT lead to a better results, and help for a parents to choose the right place for their children.

The Case Against Reporting Individual School Results
Reporting the literacy and numeracy outcomes of individual schools, providing public
comparisons of school results and ranking schools in league tables of school results:
• provides misleading and inaccurate information to parents about school
performance;
• punishes, humiliates and demoralises students, teachers and schools;
• leads to greater inequities in schooling and social segregation of schools;
• biases teaching priorities;
• promotes competition about image and diverts efforts and resources from
effective school improvement;
• discourages collaboration between schools and discourages parents from seeing
themselves as partners in schooling; and
• does not lead to better quality schools.

To find whole article, link this: http://www.schoolparents.canberra.net.au/League%20Tables%20Exec%20Summary.pdf

Also try this site to find out more information about league tables =)): http://sos.freeforums.org/labor-backs-school-league-tables-t42.html