Theories on education Flashcards
What does Functionalist PARSONS say about eduction?
Parsons (1961) draws on many of Durkheim’s ideas. He sees schools as vital secondary source of socialisation that acts as a bridge between the family and society as a whole. After primary socialisation, the school becomes the focal socialising agency preparing young people for their adult roles and encourages them to be a highly motivated and achievement orientated workforce.
According to Parsons, within the family children are judged by particularistic standards, not by a formal standard. However, in wider society, individuals are judged by universalistic standards which applied to all members. Status is achieved, not ascribed. Therefore, school prepares individuals as success is achieved by meritocratic principles – which reflect how society as a whole operates.
Parsons (1961) draws on many of Durkheim’s ideas. He sees schools as vital secondary source of socialisation that acts as a bridge between the family and society as a whole. After primary socialisation, the school becomes the focal socialising agency preparing young people for their adult roles and encourages them to be a highly motivated and achievement orientated workforce.
According to Parsons, within the family children are judged by particularistic standards, not by a formal standard. However, in wider society, individuals are judged by universalistic standards which applied to all members. Status is achieved, not ascribed. Therefore, school prepares individuals as success is achieved by meritocratic principles – which reflect how society as a whole operates.
what does functionalist DURKHEIM say about education?
Parsons (1961) draws on many of Durkheim’s ideas. He sees schools as vital secondary source of socialisation that acts as a bridge between the family and society as a whole. After primary socialisation, the school becomes the focal socialising agency preparing young people for their adult roles and encourages them to be a highly motivated and achievement orientated workforce.
According to Parsons, within the family children are judged by particularistic standards, not by a formal standard. However, in wider society, individuals are judged by universalistic standards which applied to all members. Status is achieved, not ascribed. Therefore, school prepares individuals as success is achieved by meritocratic principles – which reflect how society as a whole operates.
What does functionalists DAVIS and MOORE say about education?
Davis and Moore (1967) also see education as preparation for work, but link it more directly to the stratification system. They view education as a proving ground for ability – a selective agency allocating people to roles according to ability. They link education to social inequality and argue that inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people. Not everyone is equally talented, so society has to offer higher rewards for these jobs. This encourages everyone to compete and then society can select the most talented individuals to fill these positions. Education plays a key part in this process as it:
Sifts, sorts and grades individuals in terms of their talents and abilities and allocates them to different sets/streams/bands and provides them with a curriculum which will ensure they fulfil their potential. By enabling the most talented to gain more educational qualifications they can be selected for the most highly rewarded positions in society.
Similarly, BLAU and DUNCAN (1978) argue that a modern economy depends for its prosperity on using its ‘human capital’ – its workers’ skills. They argue that a meritocratic education system does this best, since it enables each person to be allocated to the job best suited to their abilities. This will make the most effective use of their talents and skills and maximise their productivity.
Evaluation of functionalist perspective on education:
Many critics argue that schools do not promote social solidarity, unity and integration. Many pupils don't enjoy school, don't have many friends and suffer from problems such as bullying and discrimination. There's a vast array of evidence that prove there isn't equal opportunities for everyone in education. eg, achievement is greatly influenced by class background. this undermines the functionalist view that education is meritocratic and that qualifications/ success is based on achieved status. The interactionist WRONG (1961) argues that functionalists have over-socialised view of people as puppets of society - pupils don't passively accept all they're taught, may reject the school's values and rebel against school rules. Therefore, there is evidence against the idea of stability. Marxists critique the functionalist idea that education instils the shared values of society, arguing it transmits the ruling class ideology. The New Right argue that state education fails to adequately prepare young people for work.
What is the New Right?
The New Right (NR) is a conservative political view that incorporates neoliberal economic ideas. Their thinking is similar to functionalists in many ways: (a) They believe that some people are naturally more talented than others; (b) They favour an education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition; (c) They believe that education should serve the needs of the economy by preparing people for work; (d) They maintain that education should socialise pupils into shared collective values such as competition and instil a sense of national identity and citizenship. However, a key difference between the NR and functionalism is that when the Conservatives gained power in 1979, they did not believe that the education system was achieving these goals
How does the New Right criticise education? (2 reasons)
- First of all, the NR were critical of state education, seeing it as inefficient because it failed to produce pupils with the skills needed for the economy. To address this problem, they introduced a policy in the 1980s that became known as New Vocationalism: this is where a range of vocational education courses were introduced by the Conservative government. These included: (a) GNVQ courses (General National Vocational Qualification) which were taught in schools as an alternative to academic courses. They aimed to prepare students for work by teaching job-specific skills in the classroom and placing students into the workplace for work experience placements. (b) The YTS (Youth Training Scheme) was introduced. This was a one-year training scheme that combined work experience with education for unemployed school leavers - to provide skills and help them become more employable.
- The NR were critical of education because it was run by the state. They believed that private schools delivered higher quality education because, unlike state schools, they are answerable to paying consumers – the parents. A central idea guiding NR thinking is the belief that the state cannot meet people’s needs and that people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market. This is reflected in the notion of:
(a) Marketisation: this creates an ‘education market’ where the NR believed that competition should be created between schools to make education more business-like. They believed that the marketisation of education would force schools to become more responsive to parents’ wishes and like private businesses; schools would have to compete to attract ‘customers’ by improving their ‘product’ which would lead to an increase in educational standards.
(b) Parentocracy: by empowering them as the consumers of education, parents were transformed into customers/clients of the education marketplace. Parents were granted greater power to shape their children’s educational future by giving them the right to choose which school to send their child/ren to (previously, children were allocated to schools in their catchment area by their LEA (local education authority)). The NR believed that this would bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools increasing their ability to meet the needs of pupils, parents and employers.
Evaluation if the New Right perspective on education:
critics would argue that problems in education are not a result of state controlled education, but a lack of state funding it. BALL + GERWITZ argue that competition between schools more likely benefits the middle class who can use their cultural and economic capital to ensure their children gain access to the best schools. Marxists argue that education doesn't impose a shared culture but the culture of the dominant class and devalues the culture of the working class and ethnic minorities.
What is Marxists BOWLES and GINTIS (1976) perspective on education?
According to Bowles and Gintis (1976) the education is best understood as an institution which acts to perpetuate the social relationships which exist in economic life. Schools foster types of personality development compatible with the relationships of domination and subordination in work and society as a whole.
This means: capitalism requires a workforce with the kind of attitudes, behaviour and personality-type suited to their role as alienated and exploited workers willing to accept hard work, low pay and orders from above.
They argue that the education system operates in this way, not through the official curriculum – the actual content of sessions, but through the hidden curriculum:
Hidden curriculum: All the ‘lesson’s that are learnt in school without being directly taught simply through the everyday experiences of being in school, unofficial/informal learning e.g. rules, punctuality, attendance, behaviour.
For Bowles and Gintis, the role of the education system in a capitalist society, is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable. They argue that there are close parallels between schooling and work, as they put it, schooling takes place in ‘the long shadow of work’. Reflecting this view, they concluded that the relationships and structures found in education mirror or correspond to those of work:
The Correspondence Principle:
- Relationships of authority and control: The relationships of authority and control among teachers and between teachers and students reflects the hierarchy of authority in the workplace. The fact that schools operate on a hierarchical principle of authority prepares individuals for work as it fosters deference to authority and an acceptance of hierarchy. The alienation that students experience through their lack of control in school is mirrored in the alienation through workers’ lack of control over production.
- Relationships of domination and subordination: The relationships of domination and subordination differ in relation to type of school and level of schooling - schools do different things to different pupils. In lower streams and year groups there is closer supervision and few choices whereas higher levels are trusted to get on with self-directed study. This reflects the different levels of the occupational structure: at lower levels workers are closely supervised and given orders and the higher levels are trusted to internalise the company’s goals. This is also mirrored in the school itself – schools which cater for pupils largely from working class backgrounds emphasise obedience, conformity and dependability, whereas independence, innovation, initiative and creativity are discouraged.
- Fragmentation of knowledge: The fragmentation and compartmentalisation of knowledge into unconnected subjects reflects the fragmentation of work through the division of labour into small, meaningless tasks.
- Motivation by external rewards: Pupils are motivated by extrinsic rewards and satisfaction, rather than from interest in the subjects studied. This reflects and mirrors closely the roles of wages as motivation for the workforce, rather than intrinsic satisfaction from the job itself.
However, because capitalist society is based on inequality, there is always a possibility that the poor will feel that this is unfair and will rebel against the system responsible for it. However, Bowles and Gintis (like Althusser) argue that the education system helps to prevent this from happening, by legitimating class inequalities. It does this by producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is fair, natural and inevitable. They claim that the education system is a ‘gigantic myth-making machine’. A key myth that it promotes is the ‘myth of meritocracy’ which serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes, making it appear that they gained them through succeeding in an open and fair competition in school. This helps persuade the working class to accept inequality as legitimate and makes it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism. The education also justifies poverty by promoting the ‘poor are dumb’ myth. It blames poverty on the individual rather than blaming capitalism. It therefore contributes to reconciling workers to their exploited position, making them less likely to rebel against the system.
Evaluation of Marxist perspective on education:
Marxist approach is useful as it exposes the 'myth of meritocracy' and highlights the fact education reproduces and legitimises class inequality. MORROW and TORRES criticise Marxist perspective for having a 'class-first approach'. This means it sees class inequality as the key inequality - thereby ignoring all the others inequalities. they see non-class inequalities (ethnicity + gender etc.) as equally important. They argue sociologists must explain how education reproduces and legitimises all types of inequality and how all forms of inequalities are inter-related. Critics also argue that it is too deterministic. they assume that pupils passively accept indoctrination and are passively obedient, when Neo-Marxist such as Willis argue that many pupils reject school values.
Post-modernist evaluation of Marxist perspective on education:
They argue that Marxist perspective is outdated.
They argue class divisions are no longer important and society is more fragmented and diverse. They also claim that the economy has moved away from the ‘assembly line mass production’ and is now based on ‘flexible specialisation’, where production is customised for small specialised markets.
The POST FORDIST system requires a skilled, adaptable workforce able to use advanced technology and transfer their skills from one specialised task to another.
POST-FOPRDISM requires a different kind of education system.
As a result, postmodernists argue that education has become more diverse and responsive to the different individuals and groups.
MARXIST evaluation of Post-Modernism:
claim changes generated by POST FORDISM result in low paid workers being exploited more than ever before. They also claim that the education system still prepares the majority of pupils to defer to authority etc. in the future.
NEO-MARXIST VIEW OF EDUCATION:
