What recommendations can you give to educators regarding the sociological foundations of education?

Let us start by differentiating between informal education (the natural ability of the brain to gather experience and data into meaningful patterns) and those “formal” education instruments designed and implemented by organizational structures, from the parent/family organization to the state-designed and operated “public school systems” to the private institutions under someone’s jurisdiction (for example, religious schools, expensive boarding schools, business-run learning institutions, and colleges). These latter types are socially-driven from several directions.

First, the “controlling...

Let us start by differentiating between informal education (the natural ability of the brain to gather experience and data into meaningful patterns) and those “formal” education instruments designed and implemented by organizational structures, from the parent/family organization to the state-designed and operated “public school systems” to the private institutions under someone’s jurisdiction (for example, religious schools, expensive boarding schools, business-run learning institutions, and colleges). These latter types are socially-driven from several directions.

First, the “controlling body” has an agenda, simply put, to perpetuate itself and its “world." For example, a public grade school in the South will slant its History courses, its political courses, even its scientific courses toward the perpetuation of Southern culture; even its language “rules” will differ from, say, a New England public school.  A Christian school will base all of its education on Christian principles.

Secondly, the grading or scoring of the education will have a sociological bias, based on that society’s measurements.

Thirdly, the employment opportunities, a very important social aspect of formal education, will depend on the sociological atmosphere. A teacher, then, must be careful about separating those sociological aspects from “pure” education – mathematics, for example, is virtually free of social pressure (other than its importance in that society). History, on the other hand, is very susceptible to the teacher’s and the society’s bias.

But the most pressing issue is the value of an education in society.  It's the teacher's responsibility to stress the value of an education to his/her students.