Role and Function of Education Flashcards
What do functionalists argue the role and function of education is?
Teach us shared norms and values creating value consensus.
To prepare us for the workplace through meritocracy.
What does Durkehim say about education?
- Education creates social solidarity by welding us into a united whole through the teaching of a shared history. This develops a sense of commitment for children to the social group as they are part of something larger than themselves.
- Rules should be strictly enforced for kids to learn self-discipline
- Education teaches us skills for the specialised division of labour, people have specialised jobs which require specific skills and knowledge.
What does Parsons say about education?
- Within primary socialisation we are treated in terms of particularistic standards but in wider society we are judged on universalistic standards that are applied to all.
- In school our achievement is measured by performance in examinations, where we compete on equal terms
- Thus school teaches individuals the system is meritocratic and instills the value of achievement and the value of equality of opportunity.
What do Davis and Moore say about education?
- Link education system to social stratification
- Role allocation takes place where the education system sorts, sifts and grades individuals in terms of their abilities
- Rewards the most talented with high qualifications so they can go enter the most functionally important jobs.
How can the functionalist view of education be evaluated?
- Education is ethnocentric, focus on a British culture barely recognising others, makes students isolated
- Bowles and Gintis argue ‘myth of meritocracy’
- Interactionists challenge the idea we passively accept school values, some pupils reject them
- Feminists argue school passes patriarchal values
- Collins says skills needed for work aren’t taught in school.
What does Althusser say about education?
- The reproduction of labour power is essential for the ruling class to survive and prosper. This involves the reproduction of skills for an efficient labour force and the reproduction of ruling class ideology and socialisation workers.
- This creates a submissive and obedient workforce
- Education acts as an ideological state apparatus by transmitting ruling class ideology which creates a false class consciousness, maintaining the working class in their subordinate position.
What do Marxists argue the role and function of education is?
To transmit ruling class ideologies.
What do Bowles and Gintis say about education?
Their correspondence principle argues there is a correspondence between the social relations of the classroom and workplace, which is done by the hidden curriculum:
- submission to authority in school and work
- students are motivated by extrinsic rewards such as examination success and at work they are motivated by wages not work itself, which creates alienation.
- This creates a hard working, obedient workforce as required by capitalism.
They argue there is a ‘myth of meritocracy’ as educational attainment is related to family background rather than talent.
What do Neo-marxists like Willis say about education
- Counters Bowles and Gintis as he believed wc pupils can resist attempts to indoctrinate them
- In his ‘Learning to Labour Study’ he observed 12 working class boys labelled the ‘lads’ who had their own counter-school culture which opposed school values and conformist students (earoles)
- They showed little interest in academic work and displayed a strong hegemonic type masculinity
- The lads behaviour in school mirrored the behaviour they adopted in their work life later, the ‘shop floor’ of local factories
- The counter school culture helped prepare them for the monotony of the work they would do later, they adopted similar distractions in the workplace.
Ironically the lads resistance to education through anti-school subcultures means they are destined for unskilled work and low wages.
What do feminists argue the role and function of education is?
Education is an agent of secondary socialisation that helps reinforce patriarchy.
What does Skelton say about education?
The hidden curriculum is responsible for perpetuating gender differences in subject choices
What does Kelly say about education?
Until the introduction of the national curriculum, science was seen as a masculine subject as science subjects were packaged for boys with textbooks having few girls portrayed in them. This meant that girls were less likely to take science at A-Level.
What do Heaton and Lawson say about education.
The hidden curriculum operates in 5 ways:
- Textbooks and reading books where women are portrayed as dependent on men
- Boys colonise space around computers and teachers fail to intervene
- Teachers expectations were boys are asked to move furniture and boys are told to wash up
- Patriarchal curriculum
- Lack of positive role models.
How can we evaluate the feminist perspective on education?
- Liberal feminists would argue Equality Act 2000 and the Sex Discrimination Act promotes gender equality in education
- Programmes like GIST and WISE support girls in STEM fields
- Girls outperform boys across the key stages
To refute this
- Girls still fail to enter top jobs/break the glass ceiling, showing how there are issues of equality in the workplace
- Girls are subject to sexual bullying in school
- Gender pay gap still exists
What do the New Right argue the role of education is?
The education should operate on the same principles as markets for goods and services.
Parents should make choices about education, schools will respond to what ‘consumers’ want and resources will go to the most successful, this creates competition and thus raises standards.
