Roles of Education Flashcards

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1
Q

What view of education do Functionalists have?

A
  • Structural, consensus view.

- Believe education is there to benefit everyone.

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2
Q

More specifically, what do Functionalists believe about education?
Give at least three examples.

A

At least three from the following:

  • It acts as an agent of secondary socialisation.
  • It should be used to benefit both the individual and wider society.
  • It is a meritocratic system.
  • Should encourage children into a sense of social solidarity.
  • Some students are naturally more academically successful than others.

The main roles of education are:

  • To promote social solidarity
  • To teach norms and values
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3
Q

When were the New Right popular?

A

During the 1970s and 1980s

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4
Q

What are the similarities between New Right and Functionalist views of education?

A

They both believe:

  • Some people are naturally more talented than others.
  • Education is run on meritocratic principles and equal opportunity.
  • Education should be designed to serve the needs of the economy by preparing pupils for work.
  • Education should socialise pupils into shared norms and values and install a national identity.
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5
Q

What do the New Right believe about education?

A
  • The current system isn’t achieving the goals of freedom as it is state run.
  • Education is run on the politicians own personal view of what makes the best education system.
  • State schools are unresponsive and insufficient.
  • Schools are not answerable to their customers - they have less money and poor results, which results in pupil underachievement, a less efficient workforce, and a poor economy.
  • We should not have a ‘once size fits all’ approach to education.
  • The education system needs to introduce a free market, in order to give more freedom.
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6
Q

What are the evaluation points for New Right ideas?

A
  • Free market principles only benefit the middle class.
  • The real cause of educational underachievement, is not state schools, and instead is due to inequality in wider society.
  • Contradictory policy - parents have chosen to a degree, but the state are still in control due to the national curriculum.
  • Marxists believe education imposes the culture of capitalism.
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7
Q

Who do Marxists believe education benefits?

A
  • The ruling class

- Capitalism - serves the needs of capitalism.

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8
Q

Why do Marxists want to move to a communist society?

A

So society can break free from false class conciousness.

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9
Q

What do Marxists believe to be the main role of education?

A
  • To reproduce class inequality.

- To reproduce an ideal capitalist workforce.

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10
Q

What do Marxists believe the ideal capitalist workforce is?

A

People with the attitudes, behaviour and personality traits that will accept that:

  • They have to work hard for low pay.
  • They are being exploited.
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11
Q

What do Marxists believe about the meritocratic schooling system?

A

It is a myth

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12
Q

What do Marxists believe happens to the proletariat?

A

They are exploited to reduce the chances of a rebellion.

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13
Q

What do Marxists see to be the relationship between school and work?

A

There is a close link between school and work, and this is caused by the following:

  • The hidden curriculum (things that pupils learn without being taught, such as manners.
  • The inequality of power between people (hierarchy)
  • Alienating conditions (the idea that you don’t always get to interact with the people you want to)
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14
Q

What are some evaluation points for Marxist ideas?

A
  • Postmodernists argue that Bowles and Gintis fail to look at the different jobs and what skills/workforce they require.
  • McRobbie (Feminist) argues that Marxist theories are gender bias (support men).
  • Morrow and Torres believe that Marxist ideas ignore diversity and inequality outside of education (such as not being able to access the books and resources needed to succeed in education - material deprivation)
  • MacDonald (1880) argues that Marxists ignore the fact that schools reproduce patriarchy as well as capitalism.
  • Marxists acknowledge we have an ethnocentric curriculum which focusses only on one culture.
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