4.1 Theorists Flashcards
Role of Education
Durkheim
Functionalist
Thought of education as a key role for socialisation. He stated that moral responsibilities need to be emphasised to internalise the norms and values of society.
History being taught helps develop loyalty to ones society and helps create a shared identity.
Durkheim
Functionalist
Argued that individualism in modern society undermines social solidarity; and leads to anomie.
Parsons
Functionalist
Stated that education acted as a form of secondary socialisation which bridges the gap between the particularistic values of family and the universal values of wider society, hence, enforcing meritocratic values.
Davis and Moore
Functionalist
Those who are most able and talented intellectually are allocated work roles that offer the highest rewards in terms of income, status and power.
the most functionally important roles must be filled by the most capable members of society.
Tumin
Critic of Functionalist
He questioned the idea that we can objectively measure functional importance. He argued that this is something we can only establish subjectively and that it represents an ideological justification for the functionalist analysis of education and its relationship to the economy.
This is a tautological argument. An important subject only has functional importance because it requires high academic qualifications. This demand for high academic qualification is proof of its functional importance to the economy.
Bowles and Gintis
Marxist
They argue that the structure and organisation of the workplace is is copied in the organisation of schools. Workplace inequalities are reflected and reproduced through the education system in several ways.
Bowles and Gintis
Marxist
The correspondence principle is maintained through all levels of the education system.
Education corresponds with employment as schooling prepares children to work in capitalist businesses.
This is however dated.
- Bowles and Gintis was a study in 1970s America - is this applicable to 21st century Britain?
Brown
Criticises correspondence principle, states that much work nowadays requires teamwork, rather than obedience of authority.
Reynolds
Criticises correspondence principle, he says that some subjects at school actually promote critical thinking - students are not just passive vessels.
Giroux
Neo Marxist
Giroux says the working class don’t passively accept everything they are taught.
Schools are sites of ideological struggle - they resist school discipline.
Bourdieu
Marxist
He said meritocracy is a myth. The education system works in favor of a ruling elite in various ways. Some involve the ability to pay for exclusive forms of education such as private schooling and tutoring, while others relate to educational practices such as streaming, where children of different abilities are taught separately.
Meritocracy is, however, a justifying myth for Bourdieu. the education system has the appearance of fairness, equality and merit, legitimising the way things are, when in fact it is the opposite, unfair, unequal and without merit.
Althusser
Marxist
Schools are an ideological state apparatus that involves social learning.
Teachers transform pupil consciousness by encouraging them to just accpet the realities of life; the workplace is unequal but also their likely future social positions.
Bates and Riseborough
They argued that a significant feature of contemporary forms of vocational education in the UK (new vocationalism) is that most white mc students follow the acdemic route into professional employment, while working class students are encouraged along the vocational route to lower paid, lower status work.
Bates and Riseborough
For them, the new vocationalism is about social control. it takes potentially difficult youth of the streets and subjects them to workplace discipline, lowers wages for all young people by funding some employers, and lowers unemployment figures.
Davies
He reports that new vocationalism schemes are akin to modern day slave labor that involves little or no training.
Young
Criticises Marxists stating that the idea that education functions to meet the needs of a ruling class is ‘left functionalism’.
Heath
Criticises Marxist approaches as they tend to reject all forms of vocational education because they encourage class based cultural reproduction.
She notes that by demanding equal opportunities, some forms of vocational education have helped women in areas of schooling and eventually work which were traditionally male areas.
Chitty
social democrat
Notes that implementing the social democratic theory which dictates the need to retrain and refocus the workforce in contemporary societies to address economic and social changes, involves seeing education as the the means through which industrial societies are transformed from low skill low wage economies to high wage high skill and technologically advanced economies.
Bowles and Gintis
Marxist critique of social democrats
social democrats see comprehensive education as the key to reducing economic ineuality. Bowles and Gintis argue that the reverse is true, economic inequality drives educational inequality.
1944 Butler Act
It was introduced by Labour after the 1942 Beveridge Report. It raised compulsory education to 14 and made education free for ALL.
The Butler Act introduced a tripartite system based on meritocracy.
The issues with Grammar school was:
* Only 20% went there (75 to sec moderns - failures).
* Girls got less spaces - patriarchal.
* Middle class dominated - working class failures lacked means and motivation to succeed.
1959 Crowther Report criticised it by saying it was wasting wc talent.
