Sociology really is a bit of everything. It’s a well known and well regarded academic subject that has actually been around since the nineteenth century but became particularly popular and important in Great Britain from the 1950’s onwards. In a nutshell, it’s the study of society – of the people, places, ideas, beliefs and ways of life that make us all who we are today. So it’s the media, the family, the education system, the police, the criminal justice system, youth subcultures, politics, religion and so on and so on. As I said, everything around us.

Study Sociology and you’ll start to look at things in a very different way. I was watching the BBC news last night and they were talking about the recent murder in Hull where the victims boyfriend has been arrested on suspicion of killing her. No surprises there, to be honest. Sociological research all shows that we’re far more likely to be murdered by someone we know than by a deranged lunatic who leaps out at us from behind the bushes. In fact the time in our life when we’re most likely to be a murder victim is before our first birthday. See, I told you it’d make you think!

Another programme I saw on TV, SKY this time, was looking at the recent ‘chav’ phenomenon. What it is, how it came about, the meanings of all the clothes and labels and the values and beliefs of the ‘chavs’ themselves. Well this has been done in sociology for years – there’s some great work been completed on the mods and rockers, the hippies and the clubbers looking at exactly the same kind of things. Sociology is alive and well and wearing a burberry cap!

At Hornsea School we offer Sociology from KS4 onwards. You can achieve qualifications at GCSE, AS and A2 Level. If you want to find out more information and detail about the subject then read on . . . you never know what might happen!