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IN BRIEF : FUNCTIONALISTS VIEW ON EDUCATION

Functionalists believe that education performs essential functions for society which maintain solidarity and help with value consensus and teach people to be functioning members of society

DURKHEIM VIEWS ON EDUCATION

SOCIAL SOLIDARITY

SPECIALIST SKILLS

SOCIAL SOLIDARITY

• Society needs a sense of community, individuals want to be part of something bigger , education helps provide that

• Helps secondary socialisation, transmits culture, values , shared beliefs and ideologies from one generation to the other to help integrate individuals into society

• School acts as a ‘miniature society’

• Formal & informal curriculum teach people to be positive members of society E.g. don’t be late, dress smartly, etc…

• Education can help give a sense of identity E.g. teaching a child the history of their country allows them to have a shared heritage and identify with it, as well as a commitment to a wider social group

SPECIALIST SKILLS

• Durkheim argues that modern industrial economies have a complex division of labour, the production of a single item requires work from multiple specialists

• E.g. iPhone is made up of design, technology, coding, engineering, etc

• Therefore, the education system teaches people specialist knowledge and skills that they need to play their part in the division of labour

• E.g. vocational education

EVALUATION OF DURKHEIM’S VIEWS ON EDUCATION

Wolf review of vocational education found that the education system doesn’t teach specialist skills adequately

High quality apprenticeships are rare and up to 1/3 of 16+ year olds are on a course that doesn’t directly lead to higher education or a job

PARSONS VIEWS ON EDUCATION

MERITOCRACY

• School is a ‘focal socialising agency’ in society, acts as a bridge between family and modern society

• Parsons see’s education as preparing us for the move from family to wider society as both school and society are based upon meritocratic principles

• The bridge between family and society is necessary, as family treats you with ‘particularistic’ rules (rules that apply particularly to you as an individual rather than just anybody), on the other hand, school and wider society judge us by the same universal standards, norms and values.

• In both schools and society, status is achieved not ascribed - meritocracy

• In a meritocracy, everyone has equal opportunities and can achieve rewards through their own personal efforts & ability

EVALUATION OF PARSON’S VIEW OF EDUCATION

Ample evidence suggests that equal opportunity in education does not exist

E.g. Educational achievement can be influenced by class, gender, ethnicity, age, etc… rather than individual ability.

DAVIS AND MOORE - EDUCATION

• Inequality is necessary to make sure that the most important roles in society are fitted to those who are most talented and qualified for it.

• Education acts as a ‘proving ground’, it ‘sifts and sorts’ us (like a sieve) according to our capabilities (E.g. sets), the most able gain the highest qualifications (E.g. doctorates, phd, etc…), which in turn give them entry into the highest level sought out positions (E.g. doctors, CEO’s, etc…)

Peter Blau and Otis Duncan (1978) - Human Capital

• They argue that a meritocratic education system does this best, since it enables each person to be allocated to the job best suited to their abilities.

• They argue that a modern economy depends for its prosperity on using its human capital = its workers skills.

• This will make most effective use of their talents and maximise their productivity.

EVALUATION OF DAVIS & MOORE’S VIEW ON EDUCATION

Davis and Moores argument is circular

Important jobs = highly rewarded jobs. Highly rewarded jobs = important jobs.

FURTHER EVALUATIONS OF FUNCTIONALIST VIEWS OF EDUCATION

Marxists : Education only transmits the values and ideologies of the ruling class, thus making it an ideological status apparatus which weaponises its power to make the proletariat accept their lower position in society

Interactionists : Dennis Wrong says that functionalists have an ‘over socialised’ view of people as mere puppets of society- they assume that pupils passively accept everything they are taught at school and don’t question or reject the schools values.

Neoliberals & the New Right : The state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work

NEW RIGHT VIEWS ON EDUCATION- MARKETISATION

PROBLEM

State education systems take a ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs.

Local consumers (pupils, parents, employers, etc…) have no say

State schools are therefore unresponsive and inefficient

Means lower standards of achievement for pupils, less qualified workforce and thus a less prosperous economy

SOLUTION

Marketisation of education - creating an ‘education market’

They believe that competition between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools ability to meet the needs of pupils, parents and employers

EVALUATION of NR marketisation

Getwitz and Ball argue that competition between schools benefits the middle class as they can use their cultural and economic capital to access more desirable schools

Critics argue that the real cause of low education standards is not state control but rather social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools.

NR - CONSUMER CHOICE in the USA

Chubb & Moe : argue that state run education failed in the USA because:

• It failed the needs of disadvantaged pupils, didn’t create equal opportunities - private schools have better education as they are answerable to the consumer

• Doesn’t provide pupils with the necessary skills for the economy

• They compared 60k students from poor families in 1015 state schools and private schools, found that private school kids did 5% better than state school kids

• They propose a system where each family gets given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice

• This would force schools to become more responsive to parents wishes, since the vouchers would be the schools main source of income

• These principals are already at work in the private education sector

CHUBB & MOE EVALUATION

There is a contradiction, the new right supports parental choice, but the state imposes a compulsory national curriculum in all schools

NEW RIGHT VIEWS ON EDUCATION : TWO ROLES FOR THE STATE

Firstly , the state imposed a framework on schools they must complete

E.g. by publishing Ofsted inspection reports and league tables of schools’ exam results, the state gives parents information with which to make a more informed choice between schools

Secondly, the state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture

By imposing a single National Curriculum, it seeks to guarantee that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage

TWO ROLES OF THE STATE NR EVALUATION

MARXISTS : Education doesn’t impose a single shared culture but rather the culture of the dominant ruling class, devaluing the culture of the working class and other minorities

MARXIST VIEW ON EDUCATION : ISA

Althusser : The ideological state apparatuses maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people ideas, values and beliefs.

ISA’s include religion, the media and the education system.

The education system is the most important ISA. It performs two functions :

• Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of WC pupils in turn

• Education legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause. The function of ideology is to persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and they deserve their position in society. If they accept that they are less likely to rebel.

ISA MARXIST EVALUATION

Evidence that pupils don’t necessarily accept values - deterministic - e.g Willis the Lads

MARXISM ON EDUCATION : STUDY OF CAPITALIST AMERICA

Bowles and Gintis : study of 237 New York high school students

• Schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker

• E.g. students who showed independence and creativity tended to gain low grades, while those who showed characteristics linked to obedience and discipline tended to gain high grades

• Schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs

MARXISTS ON EDUCATION : CORRESPONDENCE PRINCIPLE & THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM

Bowles & Gintis

• The Correspondence Principle and The Hidden Curriculum (B&G)

  • Close parallels between schooling and work in capitalist society

  • E.g. both schools and workplaces are hierarchies

  • Operates through the hidden curriculum - the ‘lessons’ that are learnt in school without being directly taught

  • E.g. through the everyday workings of school, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition, working for extrinsic rewards and so on

  • In this way, schooling prepares WC pupils got their role as the exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation

  • Cohen argues that youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers not genuine job skills but rather the attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labour force. Lowers their aspirations so they will accept low paid work.

EVALUATION : MARXISTS BOWLES AND GINTIS

• Today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists

• Postmodernists argue that education now reproduces diversity, not inequality

MARXISM ON EDUCATION : MYTH OF MERITOCRACY

Bowles & Gintis

• B and G describe the education system as ‘a giant myth-making machine’

• Unlike functionalists such as Parsons, B and G argue that there is a ‘myth of meritocracy’ within the education system - evidence shows that the main factor determining whether or not someone has a high income is their family and class background, not their ability or educational achievement

• Justifies inequality and poverty, blaming the individual rather than capitalism - plays an important part in reconciling workers to their exploited position, making them less likely to rebel against the system

MYTH OF MERITOCRACY MARXIST EVALUATION

Marxists disagree with one another about how reproduction and legitimation take place - B and G take a deterministic view, a view that fails to explain why many pupils reject the school’s values

MARXISM ON EDUCATION : LEARNING TO LABOUR ‘THE LADS’

WILLIS

• Using participant observation and unstructured interviews studied the counter-school culture of ‘the lads’ - a group of 12 WC boys, as they make the transition from school to work

• Willis notes the similarity between the lads’ anti-school counter-culture and the shopfloor culture of male manual workers

• The lads’ counter-culture if resistance to school helps them to slot into the very jobs - inferior in terms of skill, pay and conditions - that capitalism needs someone to perform

• E.g. having been accustomed to boredom and to finding ways of amusing themselves in school, they don’t expect satisfaction from work and are good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour

• Their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualifications

MARXISM ‘THE LADS’ EVALUATION

• Willis romanticises his account of the ‘lads’, portraying them as WC heroes despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes

• Small sample size, unrepresentative and would be risky to generalise his findings

• MacDonald argues schools also reproduce the patriarchy

• McRobbie argues females are largely absent from Willis’ study

MARXISM FURTHER EVALUATIONS

Critical modernists such as Morris and Torres criticise Marxists for taking a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignored all other kinds