Perspectives

Question 1

Describe ‘value consensus’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 1

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

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 2

What an ‘agency of socialization’? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 2

The significant individuals, groups, or institutions that influence our sense of self and the behaviors, norms, and values that help us function in society.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 3

Describe ‘social stability’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 3

Occurs when society is in a state of equilibrium i.e., there is no anomie, danger of a revolution, etc.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 4

Describe ‘social solidarity’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 4

=> Society’s individual members must feel themselves to be part of a single body or community.

=> Durkheim argues that society needs a sense of solidarity for, without it, social life and cooperation would be impossible because each individual would pursue their own selfish desires.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 5

How does the education system help to create a sense of social solidarity? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 5

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

=> E.g., Durkheim argues that the teaching of a country’s history instills in children a sense of a shared heritage and a commitment to the wider social group.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 6

Describe the ‘hidden curriculum’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 6

The unwritten rules, values, and normative patterns of behavior which students are expected to conform to and learn while in school.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 7

Describe a ‘society in miniature’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 7

=> A small-scale version of society as a whole that prepares young people for life in the wider adult society.

=> E.g., both in school and at work we have to cooperate with people who are neither family nor friends – teachers and pupils at school, colleagues and customers at work.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 8

Describe ‘specialist skills’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 8

=> Modern industrial economies have a complex division of labor, where the production of even a single item usually involves the cooperation of many different specialists.

=> This cooperation promotes social solidarity but, for it to be successful, each person must have the necessary specialist knowledge and skills to perform their role.

=> Durkheim argues that education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills that they need to play their part in the social division of labor.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 9

Describe ‘meritocracy’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 9

The idea that everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed; rewards and status are achieved by one’s own efforts rather than ascribed by their gender, class, or ethnic group.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 10

What is the difference between particularistic and universalistic values? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 10

Parsons:

Sees schools as important pieces of secondary socialization;

Argues schools increasingly take over from the family as children grow older;

Argues that they provide a bridge between particularistic values (rules that only apply to one particular child), and universalistic values (the same rules apply to everyone).

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 11

Describe ‘achieved’ and ‘ascribed’ status. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 11

=> Achieved status means that one’s status is earned through hard work, ability, and talent; there is equality of educational opportunity (inequality is legitimized; those who are successful deserve their success).

=> Ascribed status means that status is set by pre-determined characteristics (social class, gender, ethnicity) and is difficult/impossible to change.

=> In both school and wider society, a person’s status is largely achieved, not ascribed (according to Functionalists).

=> E.g., at work we gain promotion or get the sack on the strength of how good we are at our job, while at school we pass or fail through our own individual efforts.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 12

Describe ‘role allocation’? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 12

=> Davis and Moore.

=> The education system is a means of selecting or sifting people for different levels of the job market, ensuring the most talented and qualified individuals are allocated to the most important jobs.

=> Roles are allocated through streaming, tests, and exam results.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 13

Why do Davis and Moore argue that inequality is necessary? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 13

To ensure that the most important roles in society go to the most talented people.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 14

Describe ‘human capital’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 14

=> Workers’ skills.

=> Functionalists see the development of human capital through the expansion of schooling and higher education as necessary to provide a properly trained, qualified and flexible labor force to undertake the wide range of different jobs which arise from the specialized division of labor in a modern economy.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 15

Describe ‘division of labor’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 15

=> Occurs where production is broken down into many separate tasks.
=> Can raise output per person as people become proficient through constant repetition of a task.
=> aka ‘learning by doing’.

FUNCTIONALISM

Question 16

How can the Functionalist view of education be criticized?

Answer 16

1) There is evidence that equal opportunity in education does not exist. E.g., achievement is greatly influenced by class, gender, ethnicity, etc, rather than ability.
2) Instead of transmitting shared values of society as a whole, Marxists argue education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of a minority – the ruling class.
3) Interactionist, Wrong (1961) argues that functionalism has an ‘oversocialized view’ of people as mere puppets of society by wrongly implying that pupils passively accept all that they are taught and never reject the school’s values.
4) The New Right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work because state control of education discourages efficiency, competition, and choice.
5) The education system does not teach specialized skills adequately as Durkheim claims. E.g., the Wolf review of vocational education (2011) claims that high-quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 year-old’s are on courses that do not lead to higher education or good jobs.

Question 17

How does Marx describe society? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 17

As a two-class system:

 The bourgeoisie are the minority class; they are the employers who own the means of production (land, factories, machinery, offices).

 The proletariat are forced to sell their labor power to the capitalists since they own no means of production of their own and so have no other source of income. As a result, work under capitalism is poorly paid, alienating, unsatisfying, and something over which workers have no real control.

=> Marx argued that this created the potential for class conflict, and believed that ultimately, the proletariat would unite to overthrow the bourgeoisie, creating a classless, equal society.

MARXISM

Question 18

How do Marxists see the education system?

Answer 18

=> Primarily as a means of social control, encouraging young people to be conformists, to accept their social position, and not to do anything to upset the current patterns of inequality in power, wealth, and income.

=> They emphasize the way the education system reproduces existing social class inequalities, passing them on from one generation to the next.

=> It does this by giving the impression that those who fail in education do so because of their lack of ability and effort, and have only themselves to blame. This encourages people to accept positions they find themselves in after schooling, even though it has disadvantages arising from social class background that can create inequalities in educational success.

Question 19

What does Althusser argue about the state? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 19

Argues that the state consists of two apparatuses:

• The repressive state apparatus – maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it. The RSAs include the police, courts, and army. When necessary, they use physical coercion (force) to repress the working class.
• The ideological state apparatus – maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs. The ISAs include the education system, the media, and religion.

MARXISM

Question 20

What does Althusser argue the bourgeoisie must do to prevent the proletariat from rebelling against their exploitation? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 20

They must win their hearts by persuading them to accept the ruling class ideology. Althusser argues that the most powerful Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) is the education system which:

 ‘Reproduces’ class inequality by transmitting it from one generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working-class pupils in turn.

 ‘Legitimates’ class inequality by producing ideologies (Sets of ideas and beliefs) that persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position in society. If they accept these ideas, they are less likely to challenge or threaten capitalism.

MARXISM

Question 21

What do Bowles and Gintis argue about capitalism? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 21

=> It requires a workforce with the kind of attitudes, behavior, and personality type suited to their role as alienated and exploited workers willing to accept hard work, low pay, and orders from above.

=> They suggest the role of the education system in capitalist society is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.

MARXISM

Question 22

What did Bowles and Gintis conclude from their study? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 22

=> Study of 237 New York high school students

=> Schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs.

=> They do not believe that education fosters personal development. Instead, it stuns and distorts student’s development.

MARXISM

Question 23

Describe the ‘Correspondence Principle’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 23

=> Bowles and Gintis.

=> There are close parallels between schooling and work in a capitalist society.

=> Both schools and workplaces are hierarchies, with headteachers or bosses at the top making decisions and giving orders, and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying.

MARXISM

Question 24

How do Bowles and Gintis view the ‘hidden curriculum’?

Answer 24

=> The correspondence principle operates through the ‘hidden curriculum’ – all the ‘lessons’ that are learned in school without being directly taught.

=> E.g., pupils being accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition, working for rewards, and so on.

MARXISM

Question 25

Describe the ‘myth of meritocracy’. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 25

Bowles and Gintis argue the education system helps to prevent w/c from rebelling against the system legitimating class inequalities through the use of a ‘myth of meritocracy’ that:

 Helps to maintain, justify and explain the system of social inequality and the class structure in capitalist society.
 Helps people to come to terms with their own position in it.
 Therefore helps to reduce discontent and opposition to inequality.

=> Education and the job market are not meritocratic, rather, social class background, ethnicity, and gender are the main factors related to success or failure. It is seen as a kind of confidence trick, hiding the fact that it maintains and reproduces the existing pattern of social inequality between generations by confirming individuals’ social class origin as their destination

=> It serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes, making it seem that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition at school, thereby persuading the w/c to accept inequality as legitimate, and making it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism.

MARXISM

Question 26

What does Willis’ (1997) study show? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 26

Studied the counter-school subculture of ‘the lads’ – a group of 12 working-class boys – as they make the transition from school to work. They:

 Formed a distinct counter-culture opposed to the school;
 Were critical of the conformist boys who they call the ‘ear’oles’;
 Conducted acts of deviance as ways of resisting the school;
 Rejected the idea that school was meritocratic;
 Reject the idea that schools are meritocratic and instead flout their rules and values e.g. smoking, drinking, disrupting classes, and playing truant;

=> Used participant observation and unstructured interviews (Interactionist approaches) to focus on the meanings pupils give to their situation and how these enable them to resist brainwashing.

MARXISM

Question 27

What does Willis note about the similarities between anti-school counter-culture and shop floor culture of male manual workers? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 27

=> Both see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior and effeminate.

=> Young, w/c males are not forced/persuaded by the school to leave/look for manual jobs.

=> They actively reject school through the counter school culture and willingly enter male semi-skilled and unskilled work the minute they leave school.

MARXISM

Question 28

What is meant by a ‘habitus’? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 28

=> A cultural framework or set of ideas that differ between classes, containing ideas about what counts as good and bad taste, good books, newspapers, TV programs, etc.

=> It is picked up through socialization in the family.

=> The dominant class has the power to impose its own habitus in the education system, so what counts as educational knowledge is not the culture of society as a whole but that of the dominant social class.

=> Those who come from better-off middle and upper-class backgrounds have more access to the culture of the dominant class.

MARXISM

Question 29

What does Bourdieu regard as a key role of the education system? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 29

=> To legitimize class inequalities and reproducing the class structure.

=> The bourgeoisie achieves this by imposing their own habitus within the education system.

=> Argues that the middle-class has greater cultural capital (access to the culture of the dominant class), and therefore suggests that the education system is based on the possession of cultural capital, and access to the habitus or culture of the dominant class.

Question 30

How can the Marxist view of education be criticized?

Answer 30

=> Marxist viewpoint is very deterministic (assumes that pupils have no free will and passively accept brainwashing); this view fails to explain why pupils ever reject the school’s values.

=> Critics argue that Willis’ account of the ‘lads’ romanticizes them, portraying them as working-class heroes despite their anti-social behavior and sexist attitudes. His study is also small-scale (only 12 boys in one school) and is unlikely to be representative of other pupils’ experiences. It would therefore be risky to generalize his findings.

=> Modernists, Morrow and Torres argue society is now more diverse, seeing non-class inequalities such as ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, as equally important. They argue that sociologists must explain how education reproduces and legitimates all forms of inequality, not just class, and how the different forms of inequality are interrelated.

=> Feminist, McDonald argues Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact that schools reproduce not only capitalism but patriarchy too.

=> [Post-Fordism]

Question 31

What is Neoliberalism? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 31

=> An economic doctrine that has had a major influence on education policy.

=> Neoliberals argue that the state should not provide services such as education, health, and welfare. Their ideas have influenced all governments since 1979 whether Conservative, Labour, or Coalition.

=> Based on the idea that governments should encourage competition, privatize state-run businesses and deregulate markets.

=> Neoliberals argue that the value of education lies in how well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace.

THE NEW RIGHT

Question 32

Describe the New Right view. To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 32

=> A conservative political view that incorporates neoliberal economic ideas.

=> The state cannot meet people’s needs and people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market.

=> They support the marketization of education.

THE NEW RIGHT

Question 33

How are New Right and Functionalist views similar?

Answer 33

Both share the view that:

 Some people are naturally more talented than others.

 They prefer an education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition, and one that serves the needs of the economy by preparing young people to work.

 They believe that education should socialize pupils into shared values, such as competition, and instill a sense of national identity.

Question 34

What is the key difference between Functionalist and New Right views?

Answer 34

New Right does not believe that the current education system is achieving the goals that both themselves and Functionalists believe it should be meeting (because it is run by the state).

Question 35

Why do New Right criticize the state? What does this mean?

Answer 35

=> It takes a ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs.

=> The local consumers who use the schools – pupils, parents, and employers – have no say in how they operate.

=> State-led education is unresponsive and breeds inefficiency.

=> Schools that waste money or get poor results are not answerable to their consumers

=> This means standards of achievement for pupils are lower, the workforce is less qualified, and the economy is less prosperous.

Question 36

What do New Right argue is the solution to how the state operates the education system? Why?

Answer 36

=> The marketization of education and the creation of an ‘education market’.

=> This will bring competition between schools and the laws of supply and demand will empower the consumers, bringing greater diversity, choice, and efficiency to schools and increasing their ability to meet the needs of pupils, parents and employers.

Question 37

What do Chubb and Moe argue? To which perspective does this belong?

Answer 37

=> An education system controlled by state and local authorities is not the best means of achieving these aims, as it imposes a single type of school regardless of the wishes and needs of parents or local communities.

=> There should be a free market in education, with a range of different types of independently managed schools and colleges, run like private businesses, tailored to, answerable to and shaped by the wishes and needs of local communities of parents and students.

Question 37

What do Chubb and Moe argue? To which perspective does this view belong?

Answer 37

=> An education system controlled by state and local authorities is not the best means of achieving these aims, as it imposes a single type of school regardless of the wishes and needs of parents or local communities.

=> There should be a free market in education, with a range of different types of independently managed schools and colleges, run like private businesses, tailored to, answerable to, and shaped by the wishes and needs of local communities of parents and students.

THE NEW RIGHT

Question 38

Why do Chubb and Moe argue that state funded education in the US has failed? To which perspective does this view belong?

Answer 38

=> It has not created equal opportunity and has failed the needs of disadvantaged groups.

=> It is inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed by the economy.

=> Private schools deliver higher quality education because, unlike state schools, they are answerable to paying consumers – the parents.

Question 39

On what do Chubb and Moe base their arguments?

Answer 39

=> They base their arguments on a comparison of achievements of 60,000 pupils from low-income families in 1,015 state and private high schools, together with the findings of a parent survey and case studies of ‘failing’ schools apparently being ‘turned around’.

=> Their evidence shows that pupils from low-income families consistently do about 5% better in private than in state schools.

Question 40

Why do the New Right see education as operating much like supermarkets?

Answer 40

Supermarkets are forced to provide cheaper, higher-quality products in order to compete with each other for customers; this is much like how the New Right sees marketization operating, with schools competing with one another to attract customers.

Question 41

What will competition between students/funding and a free choice of schools for parents/students lead to according to Chubb and Moe? To which perspective does this view belong?

Answer 41

=> A more efficient education that delivers better value for the taxpayer who funds education.

=> Benefits for both the taxpayer and the consumers of education, such as higher quality education and educational standards, and a more skilled and qualified workforce.

Question 42

According to the New Right, what would the two roles of the state be in an education system that is marketized/privatized?

Answer 42

=> The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete. For example, by publishing OFSTED inspection reports and league tables of schools’ exam results, the state gives parents information with which to make a more informed choice between schools.

=> The state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture. For example, by imposing a single National Curriculum, it seeks to guarantee that schools socialize pupils into a single cultural heritage.

Question 43

What does the New Right argue about education and national identity?

Answer 43

=> Education should affirm the national identity.

=> Britain’s positive role in world history and British literature, should both be taught.

=> Christian acts of worship should be included in each school day since Christianity is the prominent religion in Britain.

=> Aim is to integrate pupils into a single set of traditions and cultural values. New Right opposes multicultural education for this reason as it reflects the cultures of the different minority groups in Britain.

Question 44

Why do the New Right oppose multicultural education?

Answer 44

Their aim is to integrate pupils into a single set of traditions and cultural values; therefore, they oppose multicultural education as it reflects the cultures of the different minority groups in Britain.

Question 45

How can the New Right view of education be criticized?

Answer 45

=> Gerwitz and Ball both argue the competition between schools benefits the middle class, who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools.

=> Critics argue that the real cause of low educational standards is not state control but social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools.

=> Marxists argue that education does not impose a shared national culture, as the New Right argues, but imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class.

=> 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.