THEORIES ON EDUCATION Flashcards
What are the two functions of education according to Durkheim?
Creating social solidarity and teaching specialist skills.
What is social solidarity?
A sense of belonging to a single community, necessary for social life and cooperation.
How does the education system create social solidarity?
By transmitting society’s culture, shared beliefs, and values from one generation to the next.
For example , Durkheim argues that the teaching of a country’s history instils in children a sense of shared heritage and a commitment to wider social groups. School also acts as a ‘society in miniature’, preparing us for life in wider society.
What does Parsons mean by specialist skills?
Schools provides individuals with specialist skills necessary for individuals to contribute to the modern economy.
For example, in the modern economy there is a division labour where people are responsible for different task as a result of their specialist skills which leads to cooperation between specialist helping to create social solidarity.
How does Parsons see the school?
Parson sees the school as the ‘focal socialising agency’ in modern society, acting as a bridge between the family and wider society operating on different principles, so children need to learn a new way of living if they are to cope with the wider world.
What does Parsons mean by meritocracy?
A system where individuals are judged by universalistic standards and achieve status based on merit. Parsons sees school as preparing us to move from the family to wider society because school and society are both based on meritocratic principles. In a meritocracy, everyone is given an equal opportunity, and the individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.
For example, in society, the same laws apply to everyone. Similarly, in school each pupil is judged against the same standards. For example, they all sit the same exam and the pass mark is the same for everyone.
How does family differ from school in terms of standards?
In family, children are judged by particularistic standards; that is rules that apply only to that particular child. Similarly, in the family, the child’s status is ascribed; that is fixed by birth. For example an elder son and a younger daughter may be given different rights or duties because of differences of age and sex.
How is status acheived in schools according to Parsons?
In both school and wider society, a person’s status is largely achieved, not ascribed. For example, at work we gain promotion or get the sack on the strength of how good we are at our job, while at school we pass or fail through our own individual efforts.
What is the role of education according to Davis and Moore?
To select and allocate pupils to their future work roles based on their abilities.
What do Davis and Moore argue about social inequality?
Inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles are filled by the most talented individuals.
For example, it would be inefficient and dangerous to have less able people performing roles such as surgeon or airline pilot. Not everyone is equally talented so society has to offer higher rewards for these jobs.
What is the relationship between education and human capital according to Blau and Dunscan?
A meritocratic education system maximizes productivity by allocating individuals to jobs suited to their abilities as modern economy depends for its prosperity on its ‘human capital’- the skills of workers.
What is a criticism of the functionalist perspective on education?
- Equal opportunities in education do not exist; achievement is influenced by class background rather than ability.
- Dennis Wong (1961) argues that functionalists have an ‘over-socialised view’ of people as mere puppets of society. Functionalists wrongly imply that pupils passively accept all they are taught and never reject the school’s values.
What is neoliberalism in the context of education?
An economic doctrine arguing that the state should not provide services like education and should promote competition through a private market.
What does the New Right believe about education?
- Some people are naturally more talented than others
- 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.
- That education should socialise pupils into shared values, such as competition and instil a sense of national identity
What is the New Right’s critique of state education?
The New Right argue that state education systems take a ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local consumer needs e.g parents and pupils which means they don’t have a say in the education system leading to inefficiency and lower standards of acheivement of state education systems.
What is the New Right’s solution of education?
The New Right’s solution to these problems is the marketisation of education- creating an ‘education market’. They believe that competition between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools’ ability to meet the needs of pupils, parents and employers.
What do Chubb and Moe argue about state-run education?
It has failed to create equal opportunity and meet the needs of disadvantaged groups.
Their evidence shows that pupils from low-income families do about 5% better in private schools.
What is the proposed solution by Chubb and Moe for state education?
Introduce a market system where each family would be given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice. This would force schools to become more responsive to parents’ wishes, since the vouchers would be the schools main source of income.
Like private business, schools would have to compete to attract customers’ by improving their ‘product’.
Critics of the New Right
What do critics argue about the cause of low educational standards?
That social inequality and inadequate funding, not state control, are the real issues.
How do Marxists view education?
As a tool for class division and capitalist exploitation, maintaining the status quo. Marxists see education as functioning to prevent revolution and maintain capitalism.
What do Bowles and Gintis argue about the education system?
Bowles and Gintis argue that 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 . In the view of Bowles and Gintis, this is the role of the education system in capitalist society-to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
According to Bowles and Gintis how do schools reproduce an obedient workforce?
From their own study of 237 New York high school students and the findings of other studies, Bowles and Gintis conclude that schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for submissive, complaint workers.
For instance, they found that students who showed independence and creativity tended to gain low grades, while those who showed characteristics linked to obedience and discipline (such as punctuality) tended to gain high grades.
What do Bowles and Gintis conclude about the education system?
They conclude from this evidence that schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs. They do not believe that education fosters personal development. Rather, it stunts and distorts students’ development.
What is the correspondence principle?
The parallels between schools and work, where the relationships and structures found in education mirror or correspond to those of work.
For example, both schools and workplaces are hierarchies, with head teachers or bosses at the top making decisions and giving orders, and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying. They argue that schooling takes place in ‘the long shadow of work’.
Correspondence principle operates through workplace
What is the hidden curriculum?
Lessons learned in school without direct teaching, such as accepting hierarchy and competition.
For example, simply through the everyday workings of the school, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition, working for extrinsic rewards and so on.
According to the correspondence principle how does schools prepare working-class for their role as exploited workers?
Through the hidden curriculum, schooling prepares working-class pupils for their role as the exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation.
For example, Phil Cohen (1984) 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.
What is the myth of meritocracy according to Bowles and Gintis?
Bowles and Gintis describe the education system as a ‘giant myth-making machine’. A key myth that education promotes is the ‘myth of meritocracy’. Meritocracy means that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on ability and effort, and that those who gain the highest rewards deserve them because they are the most able and hardworking- which they argue is false..
For example, evidence shows that the main factor determining whether or not someone has a high income is their family and class background, not their ability or educational achievement.
How does the education system justifies inequality throught the myth of meritocracy?
The education system also justifies poverty, through what Bowles and Gintis describe as the ‘poor-are-thumb’ theory of failure. It does so by blaming poverty on the individual, rather than blaming capitalism (I’m poor because I wasn’t clever enough/didn’t work hard enough at school’). It therefore plays an important part in reconciling workers to their exploited position, making them less likely to rebel against the system.
What does Willis’ study reveal about working-class pupils?
They can resist indoctrination and still end up in working-class jobs.
What do postmodernists criticize about Marxist views on education?
Postmodernists criticise Bowles and gintis’ correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists. Postmodernists argue that education now reproduces diversity, not inequality.
What do feminists argue about education in relation to capitalism?
Education reproduces not only capitalism but also patriarchy.
