Education and the New Right Flashcards
What is the New Right?
This is a ideology that falls on the far right side of the political spectrum, and is in turn more political and conservative. They have four main views on society: - Economy is important - Competition is important - Money is important - Parents should have a say in education
How far do they agree with functionalism?
They agree on the idea of value consensus, imparting shared values through socialisation, meritocracy, inequality being fair and capitalism being important. They also believe in the idea of education being a vital institution.
Why do they differ to functionalists?
Sees society similarly to functionalists, but differ because they are more political than sociological; they are concerned with how the government uses policies and laws to change society by removing state ownership and interference in institutions.
What are their perspectives on education?
Similar perspectives to functionalists - however, they think the contemporary state education system fails to perform the role required of it due to centralized state control and policies that look to standardize and improve equality.
They argue that for education to be properly meritocratic as Davis and Moore envisioned, it needs to be more competitive and less collaborative and fair, pointing to the idea of participation awards as stunting drive and ambition to achieve in today’s society. The New Right believes competition is necessary for schools, both internally and externally, and that it is important to socialize pupils with the skills to prosper in a market economy.
The competition would also drive up educational standards as schools have to compete and improve in order to attract enrollment through impressive results.
The New Right’s views on education cont.
Chubb and Moe - the reason private schools in the USA perform better than those in the public sector is due to the private schools being answerable to paying parents and so they act like a business; investors (parents) expect profit (results) so the schools perform well to meet the expectation.
This is called parentocracy, which the New Right believe we need more of.
Through parentocracy, the values of the parents not the government are passed on.
The New Right’s views on education pt3
They agree education should impart shared values and but are concerned on how it happens in practice, as they argue in the 1960’s and 70’s schools were dominated by local education authorities that might have different values that differ from the value consensus.
E.g. concerned that children educated by local education authorities that had left-wing councils may not teach a patriotic curriculum and therefore pass on the correct values or they may teach radical ideas such as gender and sexual orientation that do not reflect the views of the parents
If education can be reorganised into a parentocratic system such as offering a voucher and spend system where the parents could set the value consensus and not by politicians too far away from the mainstream or their opinions.
Evaluation of the New Right ideas - criticism
- The problem with excessive competition in education is that losers are children; everyone wants to win, but most will lose, and this can be very damaging
- Fee paying schools do well for many reasons, not necessarily because of paying customers - it is impossible to ignore factors such as selection, economic capital and cultural capital which all affect educational achievement.
- They argue against state interference, but government legislation on education has come from ‘new right’ or right aligning politicians
