Topic 1 - Role of education Flashcards
How does functionalism believe that education has positive functions?
Serves the needs of the economy
Facilitating social mobility
Encouraging social cohesion
Secondary socialisation
Durkheim and the functions of the school in society?
Teaches norms and values for a common culture
Creates homogeneity
Sense of belonging
Talcott Parsons ideas on education:
Meritocratic
Secondary socialisation
Creates a value consensus
Davis and Moore idea of role allocation
Education creates skills and filters out students based on ability for the workforce
Criticisms of a functionalist approach:
Ignores the negative effect education can have on society - bullying
Assumes we live in a homogenous society
Is it really meritocratic?
Marxist view on education:
Capitalist society is reproduced
Skills of the proletariat is reproduced
Althusser’s idea of the ISA
Ruling class own the structures in society such as education and media which brainwash the w/c into accepting their positions in society
Bowles and Gintis idea on the correspondence principle:
The school corresponds with the workplace in the way it creates a specific relationship to help maintain the capitalist system
What does the school teach according to Bowles and Gintis?
Submission to authority
External rewards: work is done not because it is enjoyable but because we get rewarded
Bourdieu’s idea on cultural capital
Each class has it’s own set of ideas/beliefs - culture
With money you can access a wider range of culture such as media and books allowing them to have a higher cultural capital
What are the 4 types of capital Bourdieu argues we have?
Social capital
Economic capital
Cultural capital
Symbolic capital
Neo-Marxist - Paul Willis’ study on the ‘Lads’
12 working class boys that had a counter school culture
Saw that meritocracy was an illusion so rejected the system - not in a false class consciousness
How can Paul Willis’ Lad’s be used to criticise Marxism and Functionalism?
Funct: Evident that education is not meritocratic
Marx: Evidence that education does not provide the ideal working for capitalism
What do Neoliberal think about how society should run?
Should run like the logic of the market-place
What do Chubb and Moe think about how the school system should run?
Should also follow the logic of the market:
Parent and students should be able to choose which school they go to
Schools should compete with each other to try and get the most applicants
