Family Names and Social Class: A Teaching Technique

A device for facilitating the teaching of stratification to Introductory Sociol students is presented. This device, called the Fam Names-SC Index, is a special case of a general technique whereby res instruments, modified for classroom use, are employed to demonstrate principles & stimulate student interest. Before any discussion of stratification, students are presented with a list of 6 fam names (Hawthorne, Goldberg, O'Brien, Svensen, Walczewski & Santospirito), & are instructed to place the fam's into 6 hierarchial classes given no additional information. When the data are returned to the students in cross-tabular form, it becomes immediately apparent that the rankings are not random & that the fam's emerge in a definite hierarchial order. Students are thus given an intuitive grasp of processes underlying stratification, & a good deal of interest & enthusiasm are generated for class discussion in which students attempt to explain the findings. Data are presented from a large number of past trials & it is argued that similar results can be expected in most introductory classes perhaps with some modification necessary to correct subcultural diff's in various student pop's. AA.