Role of Education

Question 1

Durkheim (F)

Answer 1

• Two main functions of education: creating social solidarity and specialist skills.
  1. Social solidarity: Society needs social solidarity because without it there would be co-operation because everyone would pursue their selfish needs.
• Education creates social solidarity by transmitting society’s SHARED CULTURE (beliefs, values and history)
• Also acts as ‘Society in Miniature’: prepares us for wider society (co-operation with those who are not friends)
  2. Specialist skills: Modern economies use complex division of labour, education teaches individuals specialist skills needed to play their part.

Question 2

Sociologists:

1. Functionalist
2. New Right
3. Marxist

Answer 2

F: Durkheim, Parsons, Davis and Moore
NR: Chubb and Moe
M: Althusser, Willis, Bowles and Gintis

Question 3

Parsons

Answer 3

• Education as focal socialising agency that acts as bridge between family and wider society.
• Bridge is needed because of different principles.
• Family: child is judged by particularistic standards and status is ascribed
• School and wider society: Universalisic standards and status is achieved

Question 4

Davis and Moore

Answer 4

• See education as a device for selection and ROLE ALLOCATION. (focus on relationship between education and social inequality.
• Inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles are filled by the most talented people.
• Education acts as a proving ground for ability which ‘sifts and sorts’ them according to ability.

Question 5

Evaluation of the functionalist perspective

Answer 5

• Marxists argue education only transmits ideology of ruling class not shared values.
• New Right: state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work.
• (interactionist) Wrong: functionalists have an ‘over-socialised view’ of people as mete puppets.

Question 6

New Right approach to education system

Answer 6

• Argue that state provision of education has failed because of its ‘one size fits all’ approach.
• Local consumers have no say so schools are unresponsive and inefficient.
• Lower standards of achievement for pupils -> less qualified workforce -> less prosperous economy.
• New Right’s solution is marketisation of education, promoting competition with bring diversity, choice and efficiency to schools.

Question 7

Chubb and Moe: Why has state education failed in the US?

Answer 7

1. Not created equal opportunity and has failed needs of disadvantaged groups.
2. Inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed by the economy.
3. Private schools deliver higher quality education because unlike state schools, they are answerable to paying consumers.
   - 60,000 pupils from low-income families in 1,015 state and private high schools, pupils consistently do 5% better at private.

Question 8

New Right: Two roles for state

Answer 8

1. Impose a framework on schools within which they have to compete. By publishing Ofsted, state provides information.
2. Schools transmit a shared culture through national curriculum.

Question 9

Evaluation of New Right

Answer 9

• Gerwitz argues that competition between schools benefits middle class (cultural and economic capital)
• Real cause of low educational standards is inadequate funding.
• Marxists: education does not have shared culture

Question 10

Althusser: ideological state apparatus

Answer 10

• Repressive state: maintain rule of bourgeoisie through force or threat of it (police, courts and army)
• Ideological state: maintain rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling peoples values and beliefs (religion , media education)

Question 11

Althusser: functions of education

Answer 11

1. Reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation.
2. Legitimises class inequality through ideology

Question 12

Bowles and Gintis: Role of Education

Answer 12

• Capitalism requires a workforce vulnerable to exploitation through acceptance of hard work, low pay and orders from above.
• This is the role of education is a capitalist society.
• ROE: Reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.

Question 13

Bowles and Gintis Study

Answer 13

• Of 237 NY high schools

- Those showing sings of obedience tended to gain high grades whilst those who showed independence did not.

Question 14

Correspondence Principle

Answer 14

• Bowles and Gintis argue that there are parallels between school and work in the form of hierarchy.
• They call this the ‘correspondence principle’
• This operates through the hidden curriculum (lessons that are learnt in school but not directly taught)

Question 15

Myth of Meritocracy

Answer 15

• B and G argue that the ‘myth’ of equal opportunity and rewards being based on hard work is a myth.
• This legitimises inequality and strengthens capitalism

Question 16

Bowles and Gintis: Summary

Answer 16

1. Role of Education: Obedient workforce accepting inequality as inevitable.
2. Study of 237 New York High Schools.
3. Correspondence Principle and hidden curriculum
4. Myth of Meritocracy

Question 17

Willis

Answer 17

• Shows pupils can resist attempts to indoctrinate them
• Willis notes similarity between anti-school counter-culture and shop floor culture.
• Through boredom, find ways of amusing themselves and such acts guarantee unskilled jobs.

Question 18

Willis’ Study

Answer 18

• Studied a group of 12 working-class boys
• They are scornful of of conformists
• Rebelled against school by smoking, drinking and disrupting classes
• Saw meritocracy as a ‘con’
• Saw manual work as superior and intellectual work as effeminate.

Question 19

Evaluation of Marxist approaches

Answer 19

• Postmodernist argues that in today’s post-Fordist economy, a very different kind of labour force is required so education reproduces diversity, not inequality.