The Role of Education in Society

Question 1

Explain what functionalists mean by ‘value consensus’.

Answer 1

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

Question 2

What do functionalists aim to explain when studying education?

Answer 2

What function education performs in society. What does it do to help meet society’s needs?

Question 3

According to Durkeim, explain how education helps to create social solidarity.

Answer 3

Solidarity is when individual members of society must feel as part of a single ‘body’ or a community.
It transmits our shared values and beliefs from one generation to the next.

Question 4

How does school resemble a ‘society in miniature’?

Answer 4

School also acts as ‘society in miniature’, preparing its students for wider society. Both in school and at work we have to interact with others according to an impersonal set of rules that apply to everyone.

Question 5

According to Durkheim, why does education need to teach specialist skills?

Answer 5

Most industrial economies have a complex division of labour, where the production of even a single item usually involves the cooperation of many different specialists. Durkheim argues that education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills that they need to play their part in the social division of labour.

Question 6

According to Parsons, what are particularistic standards?

Answer 6

Rules that only to a particular child. Similarly, in the family, the child’s status is ascribed. For example, an elder son and a younger daughter may be given different rights or duties because of differences of age and sex.

Question 7

According to Parsons, how does education act as a bridge between the family and wider society?

Answer 7

Both school and wider society judge us all by the same universalistic and impersonal standards. For example, in society, the same laws apply to everyone. Similarly, in school, each pupil is judged against the same standards.

Question 8

What is meritocracy?

Answer 8

When everyone is given an equal opportunity, and individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.

Question 9

According to Davis and Moore, why is it important for role allocation to be meritocratic?

Answer 9

They argue that inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people. For example, it would be inefficient and dangerous to have less able people performing roles such as a surgeon or an airline pilot.

Question 10

How does education achieve meritocracy?

Answer 10

It acts as a proving ground for ability. Put simply, education is where individuals show what they can do. It ‘sifts and sorts’ us according to our ability. The most able gain the highest qualifications, which then gives them entry to the most important and highly rewarded positions.

Question 11

What is human capital?

Answer 11

Worker’s skills.

Question 12

State four criticisms of the functionalist perspective.

Answer 12

Wrong argues that functionalists have an over-socialised view' of people as mere puppets of society. 
Neoliberals and New Right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work.
There is ample evidence that equality in education does not exist. For example, achievement is greatly influenced by class background rather than ability. 
Marxists argue that education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of a minority - the ruling class.

Question 13

State two characteristics of neoliberalism.

Answer 13

They believe that the state cannot meet people’s needs and that people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market.

Question 14

For neoliberalists, what is the value of education?

Answer 14

How well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace. They claim that this can only be achieved if schools become more like businesses, empowering parents and pupils as consumers and using competition between schools to drive up standards.

Question 15

State three similarities between the New Right and the functionalist views.

Answer 15

Both believe that some people are naturally more talented than others.
Both favour an education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition, and one that serves the needs of the economy by preparing young people for work.
Both believe that education should socialise pupils into shared values, such as competition, and instil a sense of national identity.

Question 16

Identify one key difference between functionalism and the New Right.

Answer 16

The New Right do not believe that the current education system is achieving the goals they want. The reason for its failure, in their view, is that it is run by the state.

Question 17

According to the New Right, what is the solution to the problems of state education?

Answer 17

.They argue that the state education system takes the ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs. The consumers who use the schools - pupils, parents and employers - have no say. Their solution is the marketisation of education. They believe that competitions between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools’ ability to meet consumers ‘ needs.

Question 18

Briefly outline Chubb and Moe’s proposed system for education.

Answer 18

They want to introduce a market system that would put control into the hands of the consumers. They argue that this would allow consumers to shape schools to meet their own needs and would improve quality and efficiency.

Question 19

According to the New Right, what are the two roles for the state in education?

Answer 19

The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete. For example, by publishing Ofsted 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. By imposing a single National Curriculum, it seeks to guarantee that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage.

Question 20

State four criticisms of the New Right perspective.

Answer 20

Gewirtz and Ball both argue that 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.
There is a contradiction between the New Right’s support for parental choice on one hand and the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum on the other.
Marxists argue that education does not impose a shared national culture, but imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class and devalues the culture of the working class and ethnic minorities.

Question 21

Define the capitalist class.

Answer 21

Otherwise known as the bourgeoisie, are the minority class. They are the employers who own the means of production. They make their profits by exploiting the labour of the majority - the proletariat.

Question 22

Define the working class.

Answer 22

Otherwise known as the proletariat, they are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists since they have no means of production of their own and so have no other source of income.

Question 23

What do Marxists see as the main function of education?

Answer 23

A way of preventing revolution and maintaining capitalism.

Question 24

Define ideological state apparatus.

Answer 24

Maintaining the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs. The ISAs include religion, the media and the education system.

Question 25

Define repressive state apparatus.

Answer 25

Maintaining the control of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it. The RSAs include the police, court and army. When necessary they use physical coercion to repress the working class.

Question 26

According to Althusser, which two functions does education perform?

Answer 26

It reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working class pupils in turn. 
It legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause. The function of ideology is to accept that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position in society.

Question 27

According to Bowles and Gintis, what is the role of the education system?

Answer 27

To reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept that inequality is inevitable.

Question 28

Outline the findings out Bowles and Gintis’s study.

Answer 28

Bowles and Gintis conclude hat schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker.

Question 29

Give three examples of the correspondence principle.

Answer 29

Bowles and Gintis argue that the correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum - that is, all of the lessons that are learnt in school without being directly taught.
Cohen argues that youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers, not genuine job skills, but rather the attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labour force. It lowers their aspirations so that they will accept low paid work.

Question 30

Explain what Bowles and Gintis meant by the ‘myth of meritocracy’.

Answer 30

The myth of meritocracy 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. This helps persuade the working class to accept inequality as legitimate, and makes it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism.

Question 31

What are the characteristics of the lads’ counter-culture?

Answer 31

They are scornful of the conformist boys who they call ‘ear’oles’ (boys who listen to teachers). The ‘lads’ have their own brand of intimidatory humour, ‘taking the piss’ out of ear’oles and girls.

Question 32

What are the similarities between the counter-culture and the shopfloor culture?

Answer 32

Both cultures see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior and effeminate. This leads to males thinking they are superior to women.

Question 33

How does the counter-culture prepare the lads for the work that capitalism needs someone to perform?

Answer 33

Having been accustomed to boredom and to finding ways of amusing themselves in school, they don’t expect satisfaction from work and are good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour.
Their acts of rebellion guarantee they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualifications.

Question 34

What do Chubb and Moe argue is wrong with state education?

Answer 34

It has not created equal opportunity and has failed to meet the needs of disadvantaged groups.
It is inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed by the economy.
Private schools deliver high quality education because, unlike state schools, they are answerable to paying consumers - the parents.

Question 35

What is the correspondence principle?

Answer 35

When the relationships and structures found in education mirror or correspond to those in work.