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Role of education in society - Coggle Diagram
Role of education in society
Functionalist perspective on education
Durkheim: solidarity and skills
Social solidarity:
Society needs a sense of solidarity - without, social life and cooperation would be impossible as each individual would pursue their own selfish desires
Education system helps create this by transmitting society's culture between generations - teaching of a country's history instils in children a sense of shared heritage and a commitment to the wider social group
School acts as 'society in miniature' - cooperating with different people, interacting with others according to set of impersonal rules that apply to everyone
Specialist skills:
Modern industrial economies have complex division of labour
Each person must have necessary specialist knowledge and skills to perform their role
Education teaches individuals specialist knowledge and skills they need to play their part in social division of labour
Parsons: meritocracy:
Sees school as 'focal socialising agency' in modern society - bridge between family and wider society, needed as family and society operate on different principles
Family: child judged by particularistic standards, status is ascribed
Society: judged by universalistic and impersonal standards, achieved status
School prepare movement from family to wider society - school and society based on meritocratic principles
Davis and Moore: role allocation:
Inequality is necessary to ensure more important roles filled by most talented, encourage to compete for them
Education acts as ground for providing ability. 'Sifts and sorts' based on ability - most able gain highest qualifications = entry to most important and highly rewarded positions
Human capital - Blau and Duncan (1978) - modern economy depends for its prosperity on using its human capital - workers skills. Meritocratic education system enables allocation of best suited job to abilities - effective use of talents and maximise productivity
Evaluation:
Education doesn't teach specialist skills adequately, as D claims. - Wolf review of vocational education (2011) - high quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 year olds are on courses that don't lead to higher education or good jobs
Evidence equal opportunity in education doesn't exist - class, gender, ethnicity
Tumin (1953) - criticise D and M for putting forward circular argument
Functionalists see education as process that instils shared values of society as a whole - Marxists education in capitalist society only transmits ideology of a minority - ruling class
Interactionist - Wrong (1961) - functionalists have an 'over-socialised view' of people as puppets of society. Wrongly imply pupils passively accept all they're taught and never reject schools' values
Neoliberals and New Right - state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work
Neoliberalism and the New right on education
Neoliberals argue the value of education lies in how well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace. Claim 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
The New Right:
Favour marketisation of education.
Similar views to functionalist:
some people are more naturally talented than others
favour education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition, and one that serves the needs of the economy by preparing young people for work
education should socialise pupils into shared values and instil sense of national identity
NR don't believe current education system achieves these goals - reason for failure is that it's run by the state
State education systems take one size fits all approach - imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs. Local consumers who use schools have no say - state education systems are unresponsive and inefficient
Schools that waste money or get poor results aren't answerable to their consumers - lower standards of achievement for pupils, less qualified workforce and less prosperous economy
Solution = marketisation of education - competition between schools bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools' ability to meet needs of pupils, parents and employers
Chubb and Moe: consumer choice:
State run education in US failed:
not created equal opportunity and failed needs of disadvantaged
inefficient as fails to produce pupils with skills needed by economy
private schools deliver higher quality education as are answerable to paying consumers
C + M - comparison of the achievements of 60,000 pupils from low income families in 1,015 state and private high schools, with findings of parents survey and case studies of 'failing' schools apparently being 'turned around' - pupils from low income families consistently do about 5% better in private compared to state schools
Call for intro of market system in state education that would put control in hands of consumers - allow consumers to shape schools to meet own needs and improve quality and efficiency
Two roles for the state:
State imposes framework on schools within which they have to compete - Ofsted inspection reports and league tables of exam results, give parents info to make informed choice between schools
State ensures schools transmit shared culture. Single national curriculum - seek to guarantee schools socialise pupils into single cultural heritage
NR - education should affirm the national identity - curriculum should emphasise Britain's positive role in world history and teach British literature, should be Christian act of worship.
Aim to integrate pupils into single set traditions and cultural values - oppose multicultural education
Evaluation:
Gerwirtz (1995) and Ball (1994) - competition between schools benefits MC - use cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools
Critics - real cause of low educational standards is not state control but social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools
Contradiction between NR support for parental choice and state imposing compulsory national curriculum on all its schools
Marxists - education doesn't impose shared national culture but imposes culture of dominant minority ruling class and devalues culture of WC and ethnic minorities
Marxist perspective on education
Althusser: the ideological state apparatus:
Marxists see state as the means by which the capitalist ruling class maintain their dominant position
State consists of two apparatuses which serve the bourgeoisie in power:
Repressive state apparatus: maintain the rule of bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it. Include the police, courts and army. When needed use physical coercion to repress WC
Ideological state apparatus: maintain rule by controlling people's ideas, values and beliefs. Include religion, media, education system
A - education system important ISA - performs two functions:
reproduces class inequality by transmitting through generations, fail each gen of WC
legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause. Function of ideology - persuade workers to accept inequality as inevitable and they deserve subordinate position in society - acceptance = less challenge or threat on capitalism
Bowles and Gintis: schooling in capitalist America:
Capitalism requires a workforce with the kinds 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
Role of education system in capitalist society - reproduce obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
Study 237 New York high school students and finding of other studies - schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for submissive, compliant worker
Students who showed independence and creativity tended to get low grades, characteristics of obedience and discipline higher grades.
Schooling helps produce obedient workers capitalism needs - education doesn't foster personal development, stunts and distorts student development
The correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum:
B + G - close parallels between school and working in capitalist society. Both are hierarchies - school takes place in 'the long shadow of work'
Parallels = correspondence principle - relationships and structures in education mirror or correspond to those of work
CP operates through hidden curriculum - e.g. becoming accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition
Schooling prepares WC pupils for role as exploited workers, reproducing workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from gen to gen
Cohen (1984) - youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers no genuine job skills but attitudes and values needed in subordinate labour force - lowers aspirations so accept low paid work
Myth of meritocracy: legitimation of class inequality:
Education system help prevent rebellion by legitimising class inequality - producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is fair, natural and inevitable
Education system = 'giant myth making machine' - key myth education promotes is myth of meritocracy
Argue meritocracy doesn't exist - evidence shows main factor determining whether someone has high income is their family and class background, not ability or educational achievement
Myth of M serves to justify privileges of higher classes, making it seem they gained success in open and fair school competition - persuade WC to accept inequality as legitimate - less likely overthrow capitalism
Education system justifies poverty - 'poor-are-dumb' theory of failure - blame poverty on individual rather than capitalism
Willis: learning to labour:
WC pupils can resist attempts to indoctrinate them
Focus on meanings pupils give to their situation and how they enable them to resist indoctrination
Lads' counter-culture:
Qualitative research methods - participant observ, unstruct interviews - studied counter-school culture of the 'lads', group 12 WC boys, making transition from school to work
Form distinct counter culture opposed to school - scornful of the conformist boys, own brand of intimidatory humour - taking the piss of other pupils
Find school boring and meaningless - flout rules and values. Acts of defiance are ways of resisting the school. Reject school's meritocratic ideology WC pupils can achieve MC jobs through hard work
Similarity between lads' anti-school counter-culture and shopfloor culture of male manual workers - both see manual work as superior, intellectual as inferior and effeminate
Resistance to school helps slot into jobs of inferior skill, pay and conditions that capitalism needs someone to do:
accustomed to boredom and finding ways of amusing themselves - don't expect satisfaction from work, find diversions to cope with tedium of unskilled labour
acts rebellion guarantee end up in unskilled jobs - ensuring failure to gain worthwhile qualifications
Evaluation:
Postmodernists criticise B + G CP - today's post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce different labour force from described - education reproduces diversity not inequality
Marxists disagree on how reproduction and legitimation take place - B + G = deterministic - assume pupils have no free will and passively accept indoctrination - fail to explain why pupils reject school values
Willis reject view school brainwashes pupils to passively accept fate - combining marxist and interactionist show how pupils resist school and yet still lead to WC jobs
Critics - Willis account of lads romanticises them - portraying them as WC heroes despite anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes. Small-scale study (12 boys) unrepresentative of other experiences and cannot be generalised
Critical modernists - Morrow and Torres (1998) - criticise marxist 'cladd first' approach that sees class as key inequality and ignores others - argues society is now more diverse, other inequalities equally important - must explain how education reproduces and legitimises all inequality and how they're inter-related
Feminists - MacDonald (1980) - B + G ignore fact schools also reproduce patriarchy as well as capitalism. McRobbie (1978) females largely absent from Willis' study
Willis work stimulated research into education reproduces and legitimises other inequalities - Connolly (1998) - education reproduces ethnic and gender inequalities. Sewell, Evans, Mac an Ghaill...