Key Theorists Flashcards

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1
Q

Emile Durkheim

Functionalist

A
  • Education is the bridge between family and wider society.
  • Schools should condition children to think in terms of meritocratic achievement - work hard for your successes.
  • Education leads to value consensus: a general agreement about basic values in society.
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2
Q

Talcott Parsons

Functionalist

A
  • School functions as one of the institutions that meet the needs of society.
  • Schools should emphasise the moral responsibilities that members of society should have towards each other.
  • A shared identity is crucial to social harmony so, for example, subjects like History should help develop a loyalty towards ones own society.
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3
Q

Davis + Moore

Functionalist

A
  • Education serves the purpose of allocating people to the most appropriate job for their talents - role allocation.
  • Some jobs are more important than others and education helps to identify the best people for these roles - we need to be accepting of that as it for the greater good.
  • The examination system is useful as it encourages competition and hard work and closely links to a reward system of high pay for jobs with more specialist skills.
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4
Q

Althusser

Marxist

A
  • Education is an ideological state apparatus - one that benefits the “haves” and not the “have nots” in society.
  • The main function of the education system is to legitimise, maintain and reproduce class inequalities in wealth and power.
  • The education system transmits capitalist (ruling class) values by presenting them to people as common values.
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5
Q

Bourdieu

Marxist

A
  • The education system tricks the working class into thinking and accepting that their failure and limited social mobility are justified.
  • The education system values a culture of upper and middle class people and it is this culture that is presented as having greater value and worthy of investment.
  • Cultural attributes of the working class are rejected by a system defined the Middle Class - who therefore succeed as a default, not because of their effort.
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6
Q

Bowles + Gintis

Marxist

A
  • Education is controlled by Capitalists and serves their interests.
  • Schooling is used to prepare students for work in Capitalist businesses.
  • A docile, obedient and hardworking workforce is prepared through a hidden curriculum of hidden and informal messages transmitted by the way school is organised.
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7
Q

Willis

Marxist

A
  • Working class pupils don’t passively accept all that they are taught.
  • Schools are the site of ideological struggles - where Classes, Genders and Races are all striving to gain the education they think they deserve.
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8
Q

Giroux

Neo-Marxist

A
  • The curriculum/hidden curriculum is not always accepted - the traditional Marxist view of passivity is incorrect.
  • Rebellion / rejection of this system still ends up reproducing class inequality.
  • Both Functionalism and Marxism exaggerate conformity in education.
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9
Q

Halsey + Floud

A
  • Education has the potential to be, but is not automatically, meritocratic.
  • Comprehensives mean that Middle-Class pupils cannot gain an advantage by going to selective state schools.
  • Some places in Higher Education can be reserved for students of Working Class background.
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10
Q

Chubb + Moe

New Right

A
  • State Education is unresponsive to the needs of parents and pupils and therefore has lower standards.
  • Private education is more dynamic as there is a need to “please customers”.
  • These ideas have been used to by New-Right minded politicians when justifying the “marketisation” of schools in the UK.
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11
Q

Usher, Bryant, + Johnson

A
  • Adult education routes are typical of a postmodern society - where this a blurring of the lines between different areas of life and different greater choice and variety.
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12
Q

Haralambos + Holborn

A
  • There is actually a large degree of centralisation within the education system - best evidenced by the introduction of a National Curriculum in the 1980s.
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