Topic 6 - The Role of Education Flashcards
Functionalist perspective
- Organic analogy
Durkheim
- Creating social solidarity
- Teaching specialist skills
Social solidarity
- DURKHEIM
- Members feeling a sense of community
- Shared norms and values
- School = “society in miniature”
Teaching specialist skills
- DURKHEIM
- School teaches specific skills depending on manual labour using their specialist knowledge
Focal socialising agency
- PARSONS
- School = secondary socialisation
- Bridge the gap between knowledge learnt from home (primary socialisation) and wider society
- Family judged on particularistic standards
- School judged on universal standards
Meritocracy
- PARSONS
- Same access to opportunity and rewarded through individual efforts and abilities
Role allocation
- DAVIS and MOORE
- “sift and sort” through pupils to allocate them to jobs that suit their individual skillset
- Human capital = workers skills
A03 Specialist skills
- WOLF REPORT found education system does not actually teach specialist skills
- INTERACTIONISTS “passive puppets”: some reject what they are taught
- NEOLIBERALS and NEW RIGHT argue the state education does not prepare people for work
A03 Social solidarity
- FUNCTIONALISTS argue school instils harmony and solidarity
- MARXISTS argue they are not shared values but ideology imposed by the dominant class
A03 Role allocation
- TUMIN = circular argument
New Right perspective
- CHUBB and MOE
- Stare run education in America = failed
- Not created equal opportunity and has failed disadvantaged groups
- Inefficient = fails to produce pupils that the economy needs/private schools deliver higher quality education as they answer to paying parents
- In a study conducted on 60,000 pupils from low income families = do better in private schools than in state schools
- Parentocracy = giving parents control
A03 New Right
- Takes one size fits all approach which disregards local need
- Unresponsive and inefficient
- Low standards and less qualified workforce due to schools that waste money and do not get good results
Solution to New Right
- Marketisation = create an education market where competition between schools gives choice to the consumer and drives up standards
A03 New Right and Neoliberalism
- GERWITZ and BALL = competition between schools benefit middle class (BOURDIEU)
- Real cause of low education standards is social inequality
- Contradiction between paretocracy and national curriculum
- MARXISTS ruling class dominates subject class
Marxist perspective
- Education based on class division and capitalist exploitation
Capitalist class
- Bourgeoisie
Working class
- Proletariat
Repressive State Apparatuses
- ALTHUSSER
- Maintain rules by force or threat
Ideological State Apparatuses
- ALTHUSSER
- Maintains rule by controlling people ideas and values
2 functions of education according to Marxists
1 Education reproduces class inequality
2 Education justifies class inequalities
Schools in capitalist America
- BOWLES and GINTIS
- Submissive and Compliant students occur through 2 processes:
1 Correspondence principle
2 Hidden curriculum
Correspondence principle
- Establishes a hierarchy between head teachers and pupils
Hidden curriculum
- Lessons learnt from classes
- Fit into mainstream society
Myth of meritocracy
- BOWLES and GINTIS
- Education system helps prevent people feeling like the system is unfair and rebelling by producing ideologies that justify inequality
- They do not believe that meritocracy exists but instead that the factor that defines doing well is making money, not achievement
- Less likely to overthrow capitalism
“Poor are dumb” theory
- BOWLES and GINTIS
- Poverty is the fault of the individual not being “clever enough” rather than capitalism
Learning to labour
- WILLIS
- The lads counter culture = 12 working class boys: school is meaningless and boring
- They take part in acts that defy the school and reject that working class people can achieve more if they work hard = do not accept meritocratic ideology
A03 Marxist perspectives
- POSTMODERNISTS criticise BOWLES and GINTIS as they argue we are in a post modernist economy which requires schools to produce a different workforce
- WILLIS criticised for romanising “lads” and portraying them as class heroes despite their anti-school and sexist attitudes
Postmodernist perspective
- Do not believe society is clear cut and predictable but instead they argue it is chaotic
Postmodernist view point influencing education
- More of a focus on individual learning programmes
- Multitude of different qualifications
- Customised schools
- Increase in adult qualifications
A03 Postmodernist perspectives
- Exaggerate the changes in education
- Education shaped by capitalism rather than individuals