Education: Functionalism & Marxism Flashcards
What is Durkheim’s general argument about the role of the education system?
-according to the functionalist Durkheim, there are two main functions that a society’s education system has, which benefits individuals and society itself. These are to promote social solidarity and teaching specialist skills.
Elaborate on Durkheim’s idea that schools promote social solidarity.
-schools are meant to create within us an awareness of our national culture and promote social solidarity by transmitting society’s shared norms and values.
-subjects such as History and PSHE achieve this aim well.
-by socialising pupils in a shared value system, they leave school fully equipped to fit well into society.
-pupils learn the importance of punctuality, attendance and an appropriate work ethic through the hidden curriculum. This again helps to strengthen social solidarity and also prepares pupils well for their future work roles.
What is a contemporary example to support social solidarity?
-In November 2014, a BBC news headline showed that current Ofsted inspection guidelines states that schools must be seen to actively and positively promote core British values, including mutual respect, tolerance and celebration of diversity.
-This is partly a response to problems that Britain currently faces from terrorist organisations. In 2015, three British school girls from a school in London fled to Syria in order to become Islamic brides. This sent shockwaves through society and showed how the education system had clearly failed to ensure that all pupils feel part of the British society, highlighting that Durkheim’s ideas on social solidarity are relevant today.
What is an evaluation against social solidarity?
-If schools are ethnocentric places, Durkheim can’t be easily right.
-Research into ethnic differences in educational achievement points out that there is a real problem in schools making sure that all students, regardless of their ethnicity, truly fit in and feel welcome. This casts doubt on the extent to which Durkheim’s research can be relied on.
Elaborate on Durkheim’s idea that the education system teaches specialist skills.
-schools prepare individuals for work by teaching them specific occupational skills needed in the social division of labour e.g. science has a direct link to becoming a doctor. This links well to the availability of vocational education in today’s education system.
-BTEC’s for example, often have clear and specific links to jobs and particular industries.
-Furthermore, The introduction of T-Levels from 2020 is seen to be one way of encouraging students to consider this more practical route without feeling as though they are taking courses that are ‘second best’.
What is an evaluation for functionalism?
-Is functionalism outdated in meeting the need of employers?
-Arguably, the education system encourages and promotes individuality and competition, rather than social solidarity. Modern employers, after all, often demand that schools encourage students to be individuals, to ‘think outside the box’ and to innovate.
-This appears to stand in contrast to Durkheim’s views, where education is seen to create a community of students who share common values, views and behaviours.
What is Parson’s theory on the role of the education system?
FUNCTIONALIST
-Parsons saw the classroom as a microcosm (miniature representation) of society. Schools help to build upon the socialisation taking place in the family, in order to ensure that pupils are fully prepared for their place in wider society.
-Education therefore serves as a ‘bridge’ between the family and society.
-In the family, for example, there are values and expectations about children’s behaviour that are particular to that family. Parsons calls this particularistic standards. Furthermore, a person’s status in their family is ascribed from birth. However, in wider society, everybody is expected to follow the same rules and expectations- e.g. the law. Parsons calls this universalistic standards. In wider society, people achieve status through their hard work and efforts.
-Schools prepare young people to achieve their status in the adult world regardless of sex,race and social class. At the same time, schools promote the value of achievement. Young people are rewarded for academic achievement with good examinations results. In this way, the educational system reflects the wider society and socialises young people for their adult roles.
What are some evaluations for Parsons’ idea?
-Is Parsons too idealistic? Critics of Parsons point out that he fails to consider how huge numbers of students pass through the education system ill-prepared to take their place in society, and having failed to embrace the ‘universalistic standards’ expected of them. For example, some students form anti-school subcultures that continue to share particularistic standards, thus rejecting the universalistic values that schools are modelled on and promote to students.
-Does education really ‘bridge’ the family and society? Once having left school, there is clear evidence that high crime rates in society, terrorism and conflict show that the education system hasn’t been particularly successful in achieving its aims. The ‘bridge’ between the family and wider society is, therefore shaky.
What is Davis and Moore’s theory?
-FUNCTIONALIST
-Davis and Moore argue that the education system performs a role allocation function. It is built upon principles of fairness, equal opportunity and healthy competition.
-In this way, schools are meritocratic and that regardless of a pupils starting point in life, success can be achieved with determination and hard work
-The most talented students ‘win through’ to secure the highest grades and thus the best-paid jobs. Those who put less effort in, and those who are less naturally intelligent, go on to secure lower grades and lower-skilled, low-paid jobs.
-This is considered to be essential in meeting society’s needs. The education system does, however, provide everybody with an equal chance to make a success of themselves.
What is an evaluation for Davis and Moore’s explanation?
-Critics of Davis and Moore claim that their ideas lack firm evidence. Marxists, in particular, point out that the odds of bright, academic, working class students are much reduced in terms of achieving the highest grades compared to their middle-class peers. There is a myth of meritocracy, in their view.
What is Althusser’s view on education system?
-MARXIST
-Althusser claims that education has an ideological function.
-Capitalism uses the education system as a ‘tool’ with which to control people’s hearts and minds. It is, therefore, an ideological state apparatus (a form of equipment with which the government can use to control people’s ideas, thoughts and ‘win them over’ to capitalist ways of thinking) Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting capitalist values from one generation to the next. It also legitimates inequality by producing ideologies that convince people that inequality is inevitable and normal; and that the education system is fair to all. Althusser believes that the education system disadvantages the working class.
What is Bowles and Gintis’ view on the education system?
-MARXIST: the correspondence principle
-Bowles and Gintis used questionnaire to study 237 New York High School students about their experiences of education.-They agree with functionalists that schools prepare pupils to take up positions in the workplace. In this way there is a close connection between school and work.
-They believe that role allocation is unfair in the way it systematically advantages middle class students. It is through the hidden curriculum that schools especially prepare working class pupils for working class jobs and working class life.
-According to Bowles and Gintis, the education system transmits a myth that it is fair, meritocratic and offers all pupils equal opportunities to succeed. In reality, however, it is middle class pupils who get the best experiences at school, and they go on to get the higher-paid, high-status jobs.
-working-class pupils, in contrast, are fed a lie that school is their opportunity to success. In reality, they are destined for low grades, low-paid jobs and a life of exploitations by their future bosses.
What are the four ways that Bowles and Gintis’ believe the hidden curriculum helps to prepare working class students for working class jobs?
-acceptance of hierarchy:at schools, pupils quickly learn that they must respect those in authority. This mirrors the workplace, where employees automatically accept their authority of their employer without questioning this. This allows bosses to exploit their staff.
-subservience:in learning to be subservient, pupils are trained in schools to accept what they are told, and not to overly question the knowledge that they are taught. Bowles and Gintis refer to this as the ‘jug and mug principle’: teachers ‘pour’ knowledge into empty vessels (pupils), who are taught to uncritically accept what they are told. This mirrors the workplace in that employers expect their staff to be subservient to them, to do as they are told and follow the ‘company line’.
-fragmentation:pupils experience subjects that are very different to each other. Knowledge is ‘compartmentalised’. When at work, employees will usually work in a particular department; they have specialised knowledge of just the department they work in. Only the boss understands how the entire organisation works, just as only the headteacher in a school does.
-motivation by external reward:learning is not something usually people enjoy. The successful exam grade is used as a motivator to comply with rules, work hard and succeed. This mirrors the workplace, where employees turn up each day, work hard and seek promotion where possible in return for a pay cheque. Their dependency on pay, money ‘traps’ staff into following orders and turning up each day to do as they are told.
What are three evaluations of Bowles and Gintis?
-Bowles and Gintis actually didn’t spend that much time in schools. In relying on survey data, Bowles and Gintis are accused of not overly spending time in schools to see for sure exactly how the hidden curriculum works.
-The impact of the formal curriculum is ignored. Bowles and Gintis are accused of ignoring how schools prioritise the content taught across subjects, and the skills required to excel in exams. This undermines the claim that the main function of schools is to manipulate the hidden curriculum in such a way as to ensure that working class pupils fail/underachieve and go on to take up low-paid, low-skilled work.
-Not all pupils passively conform to school rules.
-As studies of anti-school subcultures show, there are many pupils who resist the values of the education system. Challenges idea that schools merely produce a passive, obedient workforce.
What is Paul Willis’ argument?
-Willis’ research involved observations of 12 working class boys (‘lads’). He challenged Bowles and Gintis for the simple relationship they assumed exists between schools and the workplace.
-The ‘lads’ in Willis’ research actively resisted school in every way. The counter-culture they held included values which opposed everything the education system prioritises.
-The lads were rude, defiant, dismissive of hard work and failed to prepare for their exams. The values of the counter-culture at school has thus transferred to the shop-floor culture at work.
-capitalism strongly benefitted from the ‘lads’ failure, despite them feeling that they were in control of their destiny. Capitalism needs people to underachieve and take up low-paid, low-skilled jobs after all. The relationship is not as simple as Bowles + Gintis make out.
