Education- Topic 5 (Paper1)

Question 1

Explain what functionalists mean by ‘value consensus?

Answer 1

An agreement among society’s members about what values are important.

Question 2

What do functionalists aim to explain when studying education?

Answer 2

They seek to discover what functions it performs.

Question 3

Explain how education helps to create social solidarity

Answer 3

By transforming society’s culture- its shared beliefs and values from one generation to the next.

Question 4

How does school resemble a ‘society in miniature’?

Answer 4

Preparing us for life in wider society.

Question 5

According to Durkheim, why does education need to teach specialist skills?

Answer 5

People need the necessary specialist knowledge and skills to perform their role.

Question 6

What are particularistic standareds?

Answer 6

Rules that only given to a particular person.

Question 7

How does education act as a bridge between the family and wider society?

Answer 7

As they both operate on different principles, so children need to learn a new way of living so they can cope with the wider world.

Question 8

What is meritocracy?

Answer 8

Where everyone is given an equal opportunity, and individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.

Question 9

According to Davis and Moore, why is it important for role allocation to be meritocratic?

Answer 9

So, they focus on the relationship between education and social inequality.

Question 10

How does education achieve role allocation?

Answer 10

It acts as a proving ground for ability.

Question 11

Sate 4 criticisms of the functionalist perspective?

Answer 11

1) Education system doesn’t teach specialised skills.
2) Melvin Tumin criticises Davis and Moore for putting forward a circular argument.
3) The interactionist Dennis Wrong (1961) argues that functionalists have an ‘over-socialised’ view of people as more puppets of society.
4) Neoliberals and the New Right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work.

Question 12

Sate two characteristics of neoliberalism

Answer 12

1) The idea that the state must not dictate to individuals how to dispose of their own property and should not try to regulate a free-market economy.
2)They argue that the value of education lies in how well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace.

Question 13

For neoliberals, what is the value of education?

Answer 13

Lies in how it enables the county to compete in the global marketplace.
They claim that this can only be achieved if schools become more like businesses.
Empowering parents and pupils.

Question 14

Sate 3 similarities between New Right and functionalists’ views.

Answer 14

-Both believe that some people are naturally talented.
-Both favour an education system run on marketplace principles.
-They believe that education should socialise pupils into shared values.

Question 15

Identify one key difference between functionalism and The New Right.

Answer 15

New right doesn’t believe that the current system of education is achieving these goals.

Question 16

According to the New Right, what is the solution to the problems of state education?

Answer 16

Education market.

Question 17

Briefly outline Chubb and Moe’s proposed system for education.

Answer 17

Compared the achievement of 60,000 pupils from low-income families in 1,015 state and private schools in USA.
Data shows that pupils from low-income families do about 5% better in private schools than in state schools.
Voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice.

Question 18

According to the New Right, what are the 2 roles for the state in education?

Answer 18

The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete.
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.

Question 19

State 4 criticisms of the New Right perspective.

Answer 19

1) Marxists argue that education doesn’t impose a shared national culture, as the New Right claim but imposes the culture of dominant minority ruling class and deludes the culture of the working class and ethnic minorities.
2) There is a contradiction between the New Right’s support for parental choice on the one hand and the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum on all its schools on the other.
3) Critics argue that the real cause of low educational standards isn’t state control but social inequality and inadequate funding in state schools.
4) Gewihz (1995 and Ball (1994) both argue that competition between schools benefits the middle class who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools.

Question 20

According to Bowles and Gintis, what is the role of the education system?

Answer 20

Reproduces an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
Accept to work hard, low paid and they’ll be given orders.

Question 21

Outline the findings of theoir study.

Answer 21

Schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive complaint worker.
Pupils who showed independence and creativity given lower grades than students who showed obedience.
They conclude that education stunts and distorts students’ development and helps to produce a workforce that is obedient.

Question 22

Explain what Bowels and Gintis mean by the ‘myth of meritocracy’

Answer 22

Meritocracy doesn’t exist.
Their family and class background not their ability or educational achievement.

Question 23

Explain 3 ways in which schools mirrors work according to Bowels and Gintis.

Answer 23

Hierarchy of authority among teachers and between teachers and students- reflects- hierarchy of authority in the workplace.
Alienation through students’ lack of control over education-reflects-alienation through workers’ lack of control over production.
Extrinsic satisfaction e.g., from grades, rather than from interest in subjects studied- reflects- extrinsic satisfaction e.g., from pay, rather from doing the job itself.

Question 24

What are the characteristics of the lads’ counterculture?

Answer 24

A group of 12 working-class boys

Question 25

What are the similarities between counterculture and shop floor culture?

Answer 25

Both cultures see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior and effeminate.

Question 26

How does the counterculture pepare the lads for the work that capitaalism needs someone to perform?

Answer 26

Inferior in terms of the skill, pay and conditions- that capitalism need someone to perform.

Question 27

What are the differences between Fordist and post-Fordist production systems?

Answer 27

Fordist refers to the large-scale production of identical products whereas post-Fordist refers to the flexible specialisation of production in small batches.

Question 28

Why do postmodernists argue that post-Fordism needs a different type of education system that is described by the correspondence principle?

Answer 28

They argue that education now reproduces diversity not inequality.
Encourages self-motivation and creative.