2.10 Criminological Schools and Their Theories
Brandon Hamann
Each criminological school of theory produced its own renowned historical figures. They also produced their fair share of foundational theories that attempted to answer the questions of criminality: the who, what, when, where, how, and why of criminal behavior. This section will discuss some of those theories, but keep in mind that there are many more out there.
2.10.1 The Classical Theories
We begin with Thomas Hobbes. Remember he developed the concept of social contract, which theorized that humans were rational and had the capacity to consider the consequences of their actions. Social contract thinkers believed people would be willing to invest in laws if they believed those laws were created by the government to protect them (Fedorek, 2019). Social contract thinkers would also be willing to give up some of their own self-interests as long as everyone else did the same.
Building on Hobbes and other social contract thinkers at the time, humans were assumed to have free will. We can choose one action over another based on perceived benefits and possible consequences. Moreover, human beings are hedonistic. Hedonism is the assumption that people will seek maximum pleasure and avoid pain (punishment). Consequently, if we grant the assumptions of classical theory, we can hold people 100% responsible for their actions because it was a choice. These assumptions have been the basis for the American criminal justice system since its inception. Although theories may have changed the landscape of understanding criminal behavior and may have changed the philosophies of punishments over time, the criminal justice system has maintained the assumption that crime is a choice. Hence, we can hold offenders 100% responsible for their actions (Fedorek, 2019).
Cesare Beccaria was disgusted with how the courts treated the accused. He wanted the courts to apply a more fair and equal treatment to the convicted instead of the cruel and harsh sentencing practices of the time. This is where his concept of proportionality comes in – the punishment must fit the crime committed. Judges were the seat of power during the time of Beccaria, and many laws were made based on the decisions of those judges. Beccaria sought to change all of that, but the Catholic Church refused (Fedorek, 2019). He claimed the sole purpose of the law was to deter people from committing the crime. Deterrence can be accomplished if the punishment is certain, swift, and severe. These ideas may seem like common sense today, but they were considered radical at the time. Beccaria’s works would later influence many future criminologists in their development of theories such as Deterrence Theory and Rational Choice Theory.
2.10.2 Positivist Theories
Cesare Lombroso said that he could tell who a criminal was just by taking body measurements. Charles Darwin theorized that some humans were evolutionary throwbacks to lesser developed humans. There were even Biological Positivists who claimed that physical features were also a prediction of intelligence. A few decades after Lombroso’s theory, Charles Goring took Lombroso’s ideas about physical differences and added mental deficiencies too. In his book The English Convict (1913), Goring argued that physical abnormalities were also evidence of mental degradations and subject to scientific experimentation for proof (Goring, 1913). The focus on mental qualities led to a new kind of biological positivism – the Intelligence Era.
Alfred Binet – the inventor of the IQ test – advocated for the idea of intelligence as a fluid mechanic. His argument was that human intelligence was not static and that we could gain and lose intelligence as we got older and more experienced. Binet wanted to evaluate school-aged youths to determine who was intellectually competent and who was not. Unfortunately, H. H. Goddard, an American psychologist, disagreed and believed that intelligence was fixed and could not change. Goddard performed IQ tests on students and used the results to categorize them based on their perceived “intelligence.” Subsequently, those who underperformed were institutionalized, deported, or sterilized (Fedorek, 2019). Goddard’s work on intellectual sterilization would lead to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell (1927), which allowed for the continuation of a Virginia state law for the sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the health and safety of the patient and the welfare of society (Buck v. Bell 274 US 200 [1927], 2023).
Even after Lombroso, Goring, and Goddard, research into intelligence revealed that it was still as critical to criminality as race and social class in predicting behavior (Hirschi & Hindelang, 1977). This is because we measure and perceive intelligence based on our own perceptions and assumptions. How do we really measure intelligence? Is it general academic knowledge? Is someone “gifted” merely because they are academically so, or are there other considerations that could define the term? Is intelligence inherited? If a couple are having children and they are not mentally incapacitated, what does that mean for their children? What about the opposite? Does a mentally incapacitated individual mean that his/her offspring will be mentally deficient as well? There are also other questions, including those involving environmental influences on intelligence and cultural influences (Fedorek, 2019). Remember, Criminologists try to answer as many questions as possible.
That takes us then to criminal personalities. How do we explain sociopaths and psychopaths? In the section on Positivists, the Gluecks researched adolescent youths to determine if there was a relationship between personality types and criminal behavior. Their Individual Trait Theory pointed out that criminals differ from non-criminals on a number of biological and psychological traits. These traits cause crime in interaction with the social environment. But having the personality traits that are linked to criminal behavior does not necessarily mean that one is going to become a criminal. What is important is how many of these personality traits are present in a person (Fedorek, 2019). You could be sitting next to someone in your classroom who possesses some of the same personality characteristics of a sociopath and you would never know, or you may have them and not know it.
The point is biology and psychology do play a role in how we interact with our environment and how we react to the laws that attempt to regulate behavior. Our environment also influences our behavior both psychologically and biologically. It is all an extremely complex process that is very difficult to understand.
2.10.3 The Chicago Theories
The Chicago School of Criminology is still highly influential in the field of Criminology almost 100 years after its introduction. When it started in the 1920s, it relied on the foundations of Classical and Positivist theories and expanded on them to take criminological theoretical development to a new level. Burgess, Parks, and McKenzie had postulated on the urban dynamic as a living organism and the environment it produced being ripe for criminal behavior based on Burgess’s “Concentric Zone Model” (see Figure 2.8). As discussed in an earlier section, that model stated that criminal behavior was more likely within a “Zone of Transition” between the areas where people lived and worked.
Shaw and McKay, who were students of Park, discovered that within the zones of transition, there were properties that made them more likely to have higher rates of crime based on certain criteria. Their Social Disorganization Theory stated that crime in communities were caused because informal social controls broke down and criminal cultures emerged. They lack collective efficacy to fight crime and disorder. What does all of this mean? Informal social controls are those rules within a community that are unspoken: community pressures, neighborhood watches, religious groups, etc. These are the norms and values of a community that go beyond normal laws of a city/state/country. If a community does not do a good job of policing itself outside of the established laws, then it will have a higher risk of a criminal element and therefore a higher chance of criminality within its population. Collective Efficacy is the ability of that community to control the behavior of its population. If a community has low collective efficacy, then groups will splinter off that could potentially rebel against the majority and increase the risk of deviance within the community. Juveniles are especially susceptible to this type of activity as they will undoubtedly break off from the main group and form their own subcultural groups.
Once a criminal subculture is established within a community, it will attract like-minded individuals, and criminal behavior will increase within that community. This is the presumption of the Differential Association Theory, first theorized by Edwin Sutherland, another Chicago School Positivist. Sutherland theorized that criminal behavior would become chronic and repeated if it was reinforced through interactions with antisocial subcultures. To put it more simply, criminal behavior was a learned activity from interactions with individuals who had motives and directions that were conducive to criminal deviance. Much like we try to find groups that are akin to our likes and hobbies, the same can be said for those who are more closely relatable due to those types of deviant behaviors as well. If you were to take a few minutes and think about all the subgroups in your school, you could certainly categorize individuals into specific groups: Jocks, Preps, Goths, Emos, Geeks/Nerds, Wannabes, Druggies, etc. The same can be said for the criminal subcultural groups who are differential to the main group and are more prone to breaking the rules set forth by the norm, like the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, Yakuza, and the Triads, to name a few.
2.10.4 The Neoclassical Theories
This is where criminological theory really began to take off. The Classical, Positivist, and Chicago Schools laid down some great foundational works, and the Neoclassical theorists took off and ran with it. While the Classical theorists saw crime as a matter of the pursuit of self-interest in the absence of punishment, Positivists viewed crime as an adaptation of biological evolutions that could be measured through scientific experimentation. Chicagoists theorized crime as a manifestation of environmental influences, and the Neoclassical School argued that criminal behavior was specifically generated based on certain criteria and that at any given time, if the circumstances were right, crime would be highly indicative of that situation.
Taking Beccaria’s formulation of criminal behavior as a risk/reward action, Cornish and Clarke theorized that criminality was indeed a rational choice. Crime was seen as a choice that was influenced by its costs and benefits and was more likely to be deterred if its costs were raised. Information about the costs and benefits of crime could be obtained by direct experiences with punishment and avoidance, and indirectly by observing others who offended. Through years of observation and experimentation, it was later concluded that while criminal behavior could be considered a rational choice, most deviant behavior was situational and the perceptions of the risk of violation of the law failed to influence a person’s decision-making process but not their perception of the opportunity of the reward for the outcome of the criminal act (Piliavin, Gartner, Thornton, & Matsueda, 1986).
Remember, the Neoclassical School theorists decided to use the threat of punishment as a deterrent to crime rather than as a means to an end to crime. If a threat of punishment was severe enough to keep a crime from being committed, then a “rational” individual could theoretically make the choice to not commit that specific crime for fear of receiving a punishment that would not be in his/her/their “best interest.” But that raises another question: “What is an appropriately proportionate punishment for a specific crime that would influence a rational person to not want to commit it?”
Which then takes us into the Human Ecology portion of the Neoclassical Theories. If you recall, Human Ecology is the study of how the environment influences human behavior. It was first introduced to criminological theory by the Chicago School and later adapted by Felson and Cohen into their Routine Activity Theory, which states that changes in daily routines can affect crime rates. Think about what that means: as our technology has evolved and we have become more dependent on services to complete everyday tasks—banks, grocery stores, gas stations, clothing outlets, etc.—and as we as a society have begun to venture out into the great wide expanse of our world, we have also given ourselves up to the opportunity of unknowingly becoming the victims of crime. Our daily routines have increased our likelihood of being victims of such crimes as Armed Robbery, Carjacking, Purse Snatching, Kidnapping, Bank Robberies, Theft, Muggings, Assaults, and even Murder (Felson & Cohen, 1980). Our dependence on being out and about and our need for social interaction has also made us more prone to criminal activity to the point that more resources are being allocated to the public sector to try and ensure our safety now more than ever.
2.10.5 The Contemporary Theories
As we continue to build through the history of criminological theory development, we arrive at the Contemporary Section. The beauty of this particular part is that the theorists have the advantage of all of their forefathers’ works to guide them in their deliberations. Couple that with advancements in medical/biological sciences, psychological/social sciences, technological advancements in statistical analyses, and historical context that has now spanned multiple centuries, and there is now a recipe ripe with ingredients to build new theories. Within this period, many new and exciting theories of crime causation have been introduced and continue to try and answer the ultimate question: “Why do people commit crime?”
One of the most explosive new theories of crime causation to come out of the Contemporary School came from James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. In 1982, they both published an article that theorized that crime was a byproduct of the physical aesthetics of a community. The more a neighborhood took care of its surroundings—buildings, parks, public spaces, etc.—the less inclined it would be to attract the criminal element (panhandlers, vagrants, thieves, vandals, drunks, and rowdy teenagers). They theorized and observed that the reverse was also true: whenever a community experienced a downturn in its physical appearance, the crime rate increased. This “Broken Windows Theory”—where “serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked” (Wilson & Kelling, 1982, p. 4)—was adapted from the Social Disorganization Theory of Shaw and McKay and has influences of Differential Association Theory from Sutherland. The main argument for Wilson and Kelling is informal social control – the ability of a community to regulate its own inhabitants despite formal law enforcement regulations. Recall back to Social Disorganization Theory and the use of these informal social controls: neighborhood watches, church groups, close-knit neighborhoods, and so forth. The strength of a community and its “collective efficacy” in keeping the grass cut, the streets clean, the parks free of litter, the storefronts clean, the street corners free of vagrants, no prostitutes, no panhandlers, no drug use, no gangs, no broken windows—this is the hallmark of a safe neighborhood according to Wilson and Kelling.
Another key Contemporary Theory is Labeling Theory. This theory states that once a person is stigmatized by a label of “criminal,” it is extremely difficult to remove that label from their persona regardless of the measures they take. Labeling Theory has many uses outside of the criminological field. Think about it: How many times have you “labeled” someone based off of a perceived action of that individual? How many times has someone “labeled” you? Are you the embodiment of that label, or are you more than just the description of that label? What would you do to remove the label from your perceived description of you as a person? In the world of crime causation, Labeling Theory excludes people from normal social activities simply by means of their previous antisocial behavior. People who become labeled as criminals become hardened in that role and typically will fall deeper into that label to the point where they no longer can identify with any other personality trait other than that of “criminal.” In sociological terms, there are ascribed statuses and achieved statuses, those that are worked towards and those that are given. Labeling Theory can work in the same way.
Contemporary Theories have one major core theme that all the rest fail to take into consideration: gender. Every school of theoretical thought leading up to the Contemporary School has only observed and researched criminal behavior from the male point of view. It wasn’t until the 1970s when Dr. Freda Adler introduced the Feminist Theory of crime causation to the discussion of criminality that Criminology began to think of causation from an entirely new perspective. The Feminist Theory simply states that crime cannot be understood without thinking about the role that women have to play in its causation. Crime is shaped based on varying social experiences between men and women. Focusing solely on the male perspective of the crime experience (patriarchy) completely overshadows the experiences of the female perspective and leaves out the opportunity to understand the role women have in the social framework of deviance. Women are certainly capable of being criminals, however the circumstances that lead them to becoming deviant can be different for them than it is for men. Furthermore, the higher risks of victimization for women must also be taken into consideration when the issue of rehabilitation treatments are being prescribed through the justice system.
Taking the Feminist Theory a step further, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced her theory of Intersectionality, which posited that it was not enough that gender be considered with regards to criminal behavior, but also race and class. Criminal causation was a byproduct of discrimination and disadvantage created by systemic and institutionalized mechanisms meant to propel one dominant group over another. Prejudice, bias, and even racism were driving forces behind much of the causes of criminal behavior in many instances of non-majority groups, according to this theory. Criminologists needed to understand not only what it meant to be non-male, but also what it meant to be part of the non-majority group in order to fully grasp the inconsistency of opportunities in social experiences that could lead to a life of crime, according to the intersection of race, class, and gender.
And finally, the Contemporary School gave Criminologists the ability to take different theories of crime causation and marry them together in order to explain deviant behavior. Dr. Cullen initially developed this Integration Theory – the use of components of other theories to create new ones to explain crime – because trying to generalize behavior into one specific causation model was proving to be problematic. If we looked at a trend of criminal behavior over a long period of time, we could see that one theory could not quantitatively explain that trend completely by itself. However, using Dr. Cullen’s Integration Theory of Crime, criminologists could take multiple theories and use them interchangeably to fully grasp the phenomenon and more thoroughly explain the intricacies of crime causation within that specific occurrence.
Theory Exercise
Thinking about the different criminological theories you have read about in the previous sections, is there one that interests you the most? Are there more than one? Take a few minutes and write down a few main talking points about which theory or theories best describe your own personal experience with crime. Use as much personal information as you are comfortable with: family experience, personal experience, what you have read, what you have seen, etc. Then have someone list the different theories and how many times they are mentioned and tally them up.
Which one had the most mentions?
How many were able to integrate more than one theory into their listing?
the assumption that humans seek maximum pleasure and avoid pain.
criminals differ from non-criminals on a number of biological and psychological traits.
crime is caused in a community because of poor informal social control.
those rules that are outside normal laws.
the ability of a community to control the behavior of those within its population.
criminal behavior will become chronic and repeated if reinforced through interactions with antisocial subcultures.
crime is seen as a choice that is influenced by its costs and benefits—that is, by its “rationality.”
changes in daily routine can affect crime rates.
serious street crimes flourish in areas where disorderly behavior goes unchecked.
once a person is stigmatized by the label of “criminal” it is virtually impossible to remove that label from their persona regardless of the measures they take.
crime cannot be understood without considering the female perspective.
the connectivity of race, class, and gender on the causation of criminal behavior.
the use of components of other theories to create new ones to explain crime.


8. Other Accessibility Standards
WAI-ARIA: Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications
WAI-ARIA is perhaps the most significant web accessibility technology to come along since the introduction of WCAG 1.0. It allows developers of web applications or custom web interactivity to define specific roles, states, and properties for custom made interactions that assistive technologies are able to understand. Though WAI-ARIA is aimed primarily at developers, others should at least understand where and when it gets used.
WAI-ARIA is a W3C specification that defines a collection of attributes that can be used within HTML elements to add semantic information. For example, a developer may want to create a navigation menu, often using HTML list markup to structure the menu items and JavaScript to control which elements of the menu to display at any given time. Without using WAI-ARIA, such a menu may be accessible in the sense that an AT user could navigate through its elements and open menu items, but they will be announced by the AT as a collection of nested lists. By adding ARIA menu roles to these list elements, AT will announce them as parts of a menu, whether they are opened or closed, and whether they have submenus, and so on.
When auditing custom web interactivity, a screen reader like ChromeVox should be used to navigate through a tool or widget to determine whether WAI-ARIA has been used to add roles, states and properties to the feature. You can also examine the code using the Inspect tool in various browsers, to see what ARIA is being used to operate the tool and watch the ARIA update dynamically, as states and properties change. In audit reports, recommendations can be made to use ARIA to make elements more meaningful, thus more usable by AT users. Refer to Guideline 4.1.2 (Level A).
The full WAI-ARIA specification and WAI-ARIA authoring practices can be found on the W3C website. At least scan through these documents to familiarize yourself with their contents so you can refer back to them in your audits when making ARIA related recommendations.
Toolkit: Bookmark these two documents to add them to your tool kit.
WAI-ARIA in Action
The following is an HTML excerpt from a large main navigation menu that has been marked up with WAI-ARIA. The markup contains the basic ARIA attributes used to create an AT usable main menu. Read through the comments in the box below, and examine the markup it describes to develop your understanding of how WIA-ARIA is used.
Technical: An example of a main menu created with HTML unordered list markup.
The first line of markup below creates a container around the menu, gives it a role of navigation, is describe with the text in the menu_keys span element below referenced using aria-describedby, and is made keyboard focusable with tabindex="0"
. When accessed with a screen reader, it announces itself as navigation and describes to the user how to navigate through the menu.

  Main Menu: Use arrow keys to move left and right and up and down through menus
The menu itself is a basic nested unordered list. JavaScript injects the ARIA dynamically. The ULs are given a role of menubar, list items are given a role of menuitem. Where a nested list occurs ( which is a submenu) aria-haspopout is set to true to indicate to the screen reader that a submenu is present. The aria-activedescendant is set to the ID of the parent element of the submenu that currently has focus.

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To see the menu in action, view the following video. Listen closely to how the menu is announced by ChromeVox.
Video: WIA-ARIA Main Navigation
The menu in the video above uses the MooTools accessible dropdown menu scripts to inject the appropriate ARIA attributes when they are needed. Fortunately many of the common interactions, like menus, accordions, and tabpanels for instance, have open source scripts available to quickly add in the appropriate ARIA.
When to Use ARIA
Though ARIA is a necessity for developers who create custom interactivity for the Web, there are times when it should and should not be used.
Do use ARIA:
- When HTML is being used in a non-standard way (e.g., making a checkbox out of a div)
- When within page navigation is needed (use ARIA landmarks)
- When creating web widgets like sliders, datepickers, tooltips, tabpanels, accordions, etc.
Do not use ARIA:
- When there is a way to create the same interactivity with standard HTML
- When HTML is being used in a standard way (e.g., an HTML form does not need role=“form” added because it has that role by default)
Key ARIA Attributes
Technical: Here are some WAI-ARIA attributes that are used often and are relatively easy to understand.
aria-describedby
This attribute is very useful for adding instructions or descriptions of web elements for AT users. In the menu example above, aria-describedby is used to provide instructions on using the menu, in that case referencing a hidden span element containing a description of keyboard navigation.
It could also be used to provide extra information about a particular feature, such as describing the format for a password form field. If the password must include numbers, letters, and special characters, that text might be positioned after the password field in a span element and through its ID attribute, referenced using aria-describedby in the input element for the password field. With the example markup below, a screen reader would announce the label for the password field, followed by format for the password. Without referencing the format span element, this information may go unnoticed by AT users.
Password <input type="password" id="pass" aria-describedby="format">  must contain numbers, letters, and special characters
aria-live vs. alert role
The aria-live attribute, often referred to as a live region, must be used in places where information is dynamically updating on a page, without the page itself reloading. Otherwise AT users are unlikely to notice that changes are occurring. The aria-live attribute can be set to “polite,” as seen in the code snippet below, in which case a screen reader will wait until a break in the screen reader’s output to read the content. Or, aria-live can be set to “assertive” in which case a screen reader will interrupt whatever is being read to read the changes within the live region. Live regions are useful for things like news feeds (e.g., Twitter or news sites), live chat applications, social media streams, rotating banners or other kinds of auto-updating information.

 //updating content goes here

On the other hand, the role="alert"
attribute, often called an ARIA alert, is a special type of assertive live region, that should be used in places where feedback is being presented. If, for example, a required field in a form is left empty, and an error message is injected immediately below the field to indicate the error (like that in the code snippet below), these types of feedback messages are good candidates for ARIA alerts. Otherwise such messages may go unnoticed by AT users. Or, after successfully submitting a form to register, for instance, the message that appears on the page after submitting the form indicating the registration was successful, would also be a good candidate for an ARIA alert.

Username field cannot be empty.

roles and landmarks
ARIA provides a whole range of roles that can be used to assign a functional application to particular HTML elements. You have already been introduced to the the “alert” role, and the roles associated with a navigation menu.
There is a particular set of roles that are referred to as landmarks. These should be used carefully throughout a user interface to define regions throughout that UI. Screen readers are able to list these landmarks and users can jump to any one of them to navigate directly to a relevant area of a page.
Where landmarks are used, all areas of a page should be contained within a landmarked region. These regions, introduced back in Unit 2 (2.4.1 Provide Ways to Navigate), are presented again here:
Full list of landmark roles:
- banner: Associated with the header area of a page. There should only be one banner landmark per page.
- complementary: A section of content that complements the main content but also retains its meaning when separated from the main content. Often used with a region containing advertising or promo items aligned down the right side of the page. There can be multiple areas defined as complementary.
- contentinfo: Contains the content usually found in the footer of a page, like copyright and privacy statements. There should only be one contentinfo landmark per page.
- form: Contains form input elements that can be edited and submitted by the user. Multiple elements can have the form role.
- main: The main content of the page. There should only be one main landmark per page.
- navigation: A collection of navigation links used to navigate the site or page. There can be multiple elements with the role navigation.
- search: A search tool.
- application: Represents a unique functional unit, and keyboard commands are handled by the application rather than the browser or the assistive technology itself. An embedded movie player, a calendar widget, or other customized software embedded in web content are examples where the application role might be used. This role should be used sparingly as it can create some confusion for screen reader users when key commands begin working differently.
tabindex
Though the HTML tabindex
attribute has been around since HTML4, for use with specific HTML elements, with HTML5 it can be used with any element to add keyboard focus to elements that do not normally receive focus, using tabindex="0"
.
In the code for the menu above, you will notice tabindex in the opening div element. Normally divs do not receive keyboard focus. In the case of the menu, adding focus to the container div is needed for the description referred to by aria-describedby to be read. When the div receives focus, the screen reader will announce “Main Menu: Use arrow keys to move left and right and up and down through menus.”
aria-expanded
The aria-expanded
state is used for menus that have toggles to open and close submenus, and also to inform AT users whether a menu item has a submenu, and whether that submenu is open or not.
The following markup is from a side menu, with toggles to open and close sections of the menu. You will notice that aria-expanded is set to true, indicating to AT that a submenu is open following this element. If the submenu were closed, aria-expanded would be set to false, updated dynamically by the JavaScript that controls interactivity of the side menu.
 Archived Calendars
aria-label
When forms are formatted in a way that prevents the use of the HTML label element to explicitly associate a label with a form field, only then should aria-label be used to label the form element. If label can be used, it should be used instead of the ARIA version.
A good example of a case where aria-label might be used is on a search form. These forms usually do not include a label element.
<form> <input type="text" id="search" aria-label="Enter search terms" /> </form>
aria-labeledby
This attribute can be used with non-standard forms to associate a label or multiple labels with a form field. For example, you may have a data entry form laid out in a table, like that in the figure below, in which the content of the table header cells provides labels for multiple input fields.
Consider the following table, in which the content of the header cells provides labels for each form input field in the column below. In the markup that follows the figure, you can see how aria-labelledby has been used to assign the values in the header cells as labels for each form element.
| Name | Login | |
|---|---|---|
|
John Smith
|
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>|
jsmith
|
Figure: A table used to layout a data entry form.

 Name	 Email	 Login

 <input type="text" id="name" aria-labelledby="name_label"/>	 <input type="text" id="email" aria-labelledby="email_label"/>	 <input type="text" id="loginl" aria-labelledby="login_label"/>
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If there is the option to use the label element over using aria-labelledby, then label should be used. If both label and aria-labelledby are used on the same input element, aria-labelledby will override the label.


9.1 Overview of Muscle Tissues
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Describe the different types of muscle
- Explain contractibility and extensibility
Muscle is one of the four primary tissue types of the body. The body contains three types of muscle tissue: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle (Figure 9.1.1). All three muscle tissues have some properties in common; they all exhibit a quality called excitability as their plasma membranes can change their electrical states (from polarised to depolarised) and send an electrical wave called an action potential along the entire length of the membrane. While the nervous system can influence the excitability of cardiac and smooth muscle to some degree, skeletal muscle completely depends on signalling from the nervous system to work properly. On the other hand, both cardiac muscle and smooth muscle can respond to other stimuli, such as hormones and local stimuli.
The muscles all begin the actual process of contracting (shortening) when a protein called actin is pulled by a protein called myosin. This occurs in striated muscle (skeletal and cardiac) after specific binding sites on the actin have been exposed in response to the interaction between calcium ions (Ca2+) and proteins (troponin and tropomyosin) that “shield” the actin-binding sites. Ca2+ also is required for the contraction of smooth muscle, although its role is different: here Ca2+ activates enzymes, which in turn activate myosin heads. All muscles require adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to continue the process of contracting, and they all relax when the Ca2+ is removed and the actin-binding sites are re-shielded.
A muscle can return to its original length when relaxed due to a quality of muscle tissue called elasticity. It can recoil back to its original length due to elastic fibres. Muscle tissue also has the quality of extensibility; it can stretch or extend. Contractility allows muscle tissue to pull on its attachment points and shorten with force.
Differences among the three muscle types include the microscopic organisation of their contractile proteins—actin and myosin. The actin and myosin proteins are arranged very regularly in the cytoplasm of individual muscle cells (referred to as fibres) in both skeletal muscle and cardiac muscle, which creates a pattern, or stripes, called striations. The striations are visible with a light microscope under high magnification (see Figure 9.1.1). Skeletal muscle fibres are multinucleated structures that compose the skeletal muscle. Cardiac muscle fibres each have one to two nuclei and are physically and electrically connected to each other so that the entire heart contracts as one unit (called a syncytium).
Because the actin and myosin are not arranged in such regular fashion in smooth muscle, the cytoplasm of a smooth muscle fibre (which has only a single nucleus) has a uniform, nonstriated appearance (resulting in the name smooth muscle). However, the less organised appearance of smooth muscle should not be interpreted as less efficient. Smooth muscle in the walls of arteries is a critical component that regulates blood pressure necessary to push blood through the circulatory system; and smooth muscle in the skin, visceral organs, and internal passageways is essential for moving all materials through the body.
Section Review
Muscle is the tissue in animals that allows for active movement of the body or materials within the body. There are three types of muscle tissue: skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle, and smooth muscle. Most of the body’s skeletal muscle produces movement by acting on the skeleton. Cardiac muscle is found in the wall of the heart and pumps blood through the circulatory system.
Smooth muscle is found in the skin, where it is associated with hair follicles; it also is found in the walls of internal organs, blood vessels and internal passageways, where it assists in moving materials.
Review Questions
Critical Thinking Question
Click the drop down below to review the terms learned from this chapter.


16 Antecedent Clarity
We’ve already defined an antecedent as the noun (or phrase) that a pronoun is replacing. The phrase “antecedent clarity” simply means that is should be clear who or what the pronoun is referring to. In other words, readers should be able to understand the sentence the first time they read it—not the third, forth, or tenth. In this page, we’ll look at some examples of common mistakes that can cause confusion, as well as ways to fix each sentence.
Let’s take a look at our first sentence:
Rafael told Matt to stop eating his cereal.
When you first read this sentence, is it clear if the cereal Rafael’s or Matt’s? Is it clear when you read the sentence again? Not really, no. Since both Rafael and Matt are singular, third person, and masculine, it’s impossible to tell whose cereal is being eaten (at least from this sentence).
How would you best revise this sentence? Type your ideas in the text frame below, and then look at the suggested revisions.
[practice-area rows=”4″][/practice-area]
Show Possible Revisions
Let’s assume the cereal is Rafael’s:
- Rafael told Matt to stop eating Rafael’s cereal.
- Matt was eating Rafael’s cereal. Rafael told him to stop it.
What if the cereal is Matt’s?:
- Rafael told Matt to stop eating Matt’s cereal.
- Matt was eating his own cereal when Rafael told him to stop.
These aren’t the only ways to revise the sentence. However, each of these new sentences has made it clear whose cereal it is.
Were those revisions what you expected them to be?
Let’s take a look at another example:
Zuly was really excited to try French cuisine on her semester abroad in Europe. They make all sorts of delicious things.
When you read this example, is it apparent who the pronoun they is referring to? You may guess that they is referring to the French—which is probably correct. However, this is not actually stated, which means that there isn’t actually an antecedent. Since every pronoun needs an antecedent, the example needs to be revised to include one.
How would you best revise this sentence? Type your ideas in the text frame below, and then look at the suggested revisions.
[practice-area rows=”4″][/practice-area]
Show Possible Revisions
Let’s assume that is is the French who make great cuisine:
- Zuly was really excited to try French cuisine on her semester abroad in Europe. The French make all sorts of delicious things.
- Zuly was really excited to try the cuisine in France on her semester abroad in Europe. The French make all sorts of delicious things.
- Zuly was really excited to try French cuisine on her semester abroad in Europe. The people there make all sorts of delicious things.
- One of the things Zuly was really excited about on her semester abroad in Europe was trying French cuisine. It comprises all sorts of delicious things.
As you write, keep these two things in mind:
- Make sure your pronouns always have an antecedent.
- Make sure that it is clear what their antecedents are.
Practice
Use the context clues to figure out which pronoun to use to complete the sentences. Select the response from the list that best completes the sentence.
- Alex and Jordan went for a bike ride and stopped for lunch. When the waiter came, (Jordan / he / she) knew what she wanted to order but (Alex / he / she) did not.
- Because (Jordan / she) loves cheese, (Jordan / she) ordered a slice of pizza.
Show Answer
- Alex and Jordan went for a bike ride and stopped for lunch. When the waiter came, Jordan knew what she wanted to order but Alex did not. (We cannot use a pronoun until we know the person. In this case, repeat the name. Note the she gives us the clue that Jordan is female.)
- Because Jordan loves cheese, she ordered a slice of pizza. (Mention noun before using the pronoun.)
Let’s try a more complicated paragraph:
- Edward is a year older than his brother Alphonse. When (he / Edward) graduated high school, he took a gap year so that (he / Edward) could travel and study sciences not offered at the local college. (He / Alphonse) was so jealous that (he / Alphonse) also took a gap year when he graduated.
Show Answer
- Edward is a year older than his brother Alphonse. When Edward graduated high school, he took a gap year so that he could travel and study sciences not offered at the local college. Alphonse was so jealous that he also took a gap year when he graduated.


151 Rebuilding Europe
30.1: Rebuilding Europe
30.1.1: Reparations
The victorious Allies of WWI imposed harsh reparations on Germany, which were both economically and psychologically damaging. Historians have long argued over the extent to which the reparations led to Germany’s severe economic depression in the interwar period.
Learning Objective
Defend and critique the decision to demand high reparations from Germany after the war
Key Points
- One of the most contentious decisions at the Paris Peace Conference was the question of war reparations, payments intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war.
- Most of the war’s major battles occurred in France, and the French countryside was heavily damaged in the fighting, leading French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau to push for harsh reparations from Germany to rebuild France.
- Both the British and American representatives at the Conference (David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson) opposed these harsh reparations, believing they would create economic instability in Europe overall, but in the end the Conference decided that Germany was to pay 132 billion gold marks (USD $33 billion) in reparations, a decision that angered the Germans and was a source of resentment for decades to come.
- Because of the lack of reparation payments by Germany, France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce payments, causing an international crisis that resulted in the implementation of the Dawes Plan in 1924. This raised money from other nations to help Germany pay and shifted the payment plan.
- Again, Germany was unable to pay and the plan was revised again with a reduced sum and more lenient plan.
- With the collapse of the German economy in 1931, reparations were suspended for a year and in 1932 during the Lausanne Conference they were cancelled altogether.
- Between 1919 and 1932, Germany paid fewer than 21 billion marks in reparations.
Key Terms
- Young Plan
- A program for settling German reparations debts after World War I, written in 1929 and formally adopted in 1930. After the Dawes Plan was put into operation in 1924, it became apparent that Germany would not willingly meet the annual payments over an indefinite period of time. This new plan reduced further payments by about 20 percent.
- indemnities
- An obligation by a person to provide compensation for a particular loss suffered by another person.
- reparations
- Payments intended to cover damage or injury inflicted during a war. Generally, the term refers to money or goods changing hands, but not to the annexation of land.
World War I reparations were imposed upon the Central Powers during the Paris Peace Conference following their defeat in the First World War by the Allied and Associate Powers. Each defeated power was required to make payments in either cash or kind. Because of the financial situation Austria, Hungary, and Turkey found themselves in after the war, few to no reparations were paid and the requirements were cancelled. Bulgaria paid only a fraction of what was required before its reparations were reduced and then cancelled. Historian Ruth Henig argues that the German requirement to pay reparations was the “chief battleground of the post-war era” and “the focus of the power struggle between France and Germany over whether the Versailles Treaty was to be enforced or revised.”
The Treaty of Versailles and the 1921 London Schedule of Payments required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (USD $33 billion) in reparations to cover civilian damage caused during the war. This figure was divided into three categories of bonds: A, B, and C. Of these, Germany was only required to pay towards ‘A’ and ‘B’ bonds totaling 50 billion marks (USD $12.5 billion). The remaining ‘C’ bonds, which Germany did not have to pay, were designed to deceive the Anglo-French public into believing Germany was being heavily fined and punished for the war.
Because of the lack of reparation payments by Germany, France occupied the Ruhr in 1923 to enforce payments, causing an international crisis that resulted in the implementation of the Dawes Plan in 1924. This plan outlined a new payment method and raised international loans to help Germany to meet her reparation commitments. In the first year following the implementation of the plan, Germany would have to pay 1 billion marks. This would rise to 2.5 billion marks per year by the fifth year of the plan. A Reparations Agency was established with Allied representatives to organize the payment of reparations. Despite this, by 1928 Germany called for a new payment plan, resulting in the Young Plan that established the German reparation requirements at 112 billion marks (USD $26.3 billion) and created a schedule of payments that would see Germany complete payments by 1988. With the collapse of the German economy in 1931, reparations were suspended for a year and in 1932 during the Lausanne Conference they were cancelled altogether. Between 1919 and 1932, Germany paid fewer than 21 billion marks in reparations.
The German people saw reparations as a national humiliation; the German Government worked to undermine the validity of the Treaty of Versailles and the requirement to pay. British economist John Maynard Keynes called the treaty a Carthaginian peace that would economically destroy Germany. His arguments had a profound effect on historians, politicians, and the public. Despite Keynes’ arguments and those by later historians supporting or reinforcing Keynes’ views, the consensus of contemporary historians is that reparations were not as intolerable as the Germans or Keynes had suggested and were within Germany’s capacity to pay had there been the political will to do so.
Background
Most of the war’s major battles occurred in France, substantially damaging the French countryside. Furthermore, in 1918 during the German retreat, German troops devastated France’s most industrialized region in the north-east (Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin). Extensive looting took place as German forces removed whatever material they could use and destroyed the rest. Hundreds of mines were destroyed along with railways, bridges, and entire villages. Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau was determined, for these reasons, that any just peace required Germany to pay reparations for the damage it had caused. Clemenceau viewed reparations as a way of weakening Germany to ensure it could never threaten France again. Reparations would also go towards the reconstruction costs in other countries, including Belgium, which was also directly affected by the war.
British Prime Minister David Lloyd George opposed harsh reparations, arguing for a smaller sum that was less damaging to the German economy so that Germany could remain a viable economic power and trading partner. He also argued that reparations should include war pensions for disabled veterans and allowances for war widows, which would reserve a larger share of the reparations for the British Empire. Woodrow Wilson opposed these positions and was adamant that no indemnity should be imposed upon Germany.
The Paris Peace Conference opened on January 18, 1919, aiming to establish a lasting peace between the Allied and Central Powers. Demanding compensation from the defeated party was a common feature of peace treaties. However, the financial terms of treaties signed during the peace conference were labelled reparations to distinguish them from punitive settlements usually known as indemnities, intended for reconstruction and compensating families bereaved by the war. The opening article of the reparation section of the Treaty of Versailles, Article 231, served as a legal basis for the following articles, which obliged Germany to pay compensation and limited German responsibility to civilian damages. The same article, with the signatory’s name changed, was also included in the treaties signed by Germany’s allies.
Did Reparations Ruin the German Economy?
Erik Goldstein wrote that in 1921, the payment of reparations caused a crisis and that the occupation of the Ruhr had a disastrous effect on the German economy, resulting in the German Government printing more money as the currency collapsed. Hyperinflation began and printing presses worked overtime to print Reichsbank notes; by November 1923 one U.S. dollar was worth 4.2 trillion marks. Geoff Harcourt writes that Keynes’ arguments that reparations would lead to German economic collapse have been adopted “by historians of almost all political persuasions” and have influenced the way historians and the public “see the unfolding events in Germany and the decades between Versailles and the outbreak of the Second World War.”
But not all historians agree. According to Detlev Peukert, the financial problems that arose in the early 1920s were a result of post-war loans and the way Germany funded its war effort, not reparations. During World War I, Germany did not raise taxes or create new ones to pay for wartime expenses. Rather, loans were taken out, placing Germany in an economically precarious position as more money entered circulation, destroying the link between paper money and the gold reserve maintained before the war. With its defeat, Germany could not impose reparations and pay off war debts, which were now colossal.
Niall Ferguson partially supports this analysis. He says that had reparations not been imposed, Germany would still have had significant problems caused by the need to pay war debts and the demands of voters for more social services. Ferguson also says that these problems were aggravated by a trade deficit and a weak exchange rate for the mark during 1920. Afterwards, as the value of the mark rose, inflation became a problem. None of these effects, he says, were the result of reparations.
Several historians take the middle ground between condemning reparations and supporting the argument that they were not a complete burden upon Germany. Detlev Peukert states, “Reparations did not, in fact, bleed the German economy” as had been feared; however, the “psychological effects of reparations were extremely serious, as was the strain that the vicious circle of credits and reparations placed the international financial system.”
Attributions
- Reparations
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“World War I reparations.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
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“A_view_of_the_ruins_of_Avocourt,_situated_just_behind_the_American_trenches_before_the_Allied_drive_of_September_26…_-_NARA_-_530763.tif.jpg.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations#/media/File:A_view_of_the_ruins_of_Avocourt,_situated_just_behind_the_American_trenches_before_the_Allied_drive_of_September_26…_-_NARA_-_530763.tif. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Teaching Difference in early Education Class (2022)
Brandi Renis
Inequity in Early Childhood has been studied for quite some time and even lead to the creation of what we now know as Head Start programs. These programs aim to provide high-quality child care experiences for children in poverty with the goal of preparing children for elementary school and beyond. There are studies that show the differences in the lives of children who have had access versus those who did not.
Children, without high-quality childcare experiences, are more likely to get pregnant earlier, go to prison more often and have more difficulty academically throughout their lives. The privilege of mostly the wealthy being able to access high-quality care in children’s foundational years of development supports the cycle of inequity. Children in wealthy families will have stronger brain development, social experiences, access to better learning environments and high-quality teachers whereas many children who do not have access are more likely to continue the cycle of generational poverty. This leads to the differences in socioeconomic status being maintained over generations.
https://givingcompass.org/article/inequality-starts-early-disparities-in-early-childhood-development


Chapter 1
Chapter 1 Plot
Plot structure is the order of events that happen in a story. It is like a map that shows how the story starts, builds up, reaches a big moment, and then winds down to an ending. Most stories follow a basic plot structure with five main parts:
- Beginning – The beginning introduces us to the main character, the setting (where and when the story takes place), and sometimes the main problem or challenge.
- Rising Action – In this part, things start getting more complicated. The main character faces challenges, and we learn more about the characters and the story. The tension or excitement in the story builds up.
- Climax – The climax is the high point of the story. It’s usually the most exciting part, where the main character faces the biggest challenge or decision. This moment is often a turning point in the story.
- Falling Action – After the climax, things start to wind down. The main character deals with the results of their actions, and we start to see how the story might end.
- Resolution – This is the ending of the story. The problem is resolved, or the main character has learned something important. We see how things have changed since the beginning of the story.
Knowing the parts of a plot structure helps us understand how stories are built. It also helps us see the journey the characters take from beginning to end.
You have just read the beginning of The Way It Works. How many questions can you answer correctly about the plot so far?
Exercise