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EDUCATION: PERSPECTIVES - Coggle Diagram
EDUCATION: PERSPECTIVES
Functionalism
Consensus theory:
Society has basic needs (social order). Society needs social solidarity through shared norms and value.
Social institutions perform functions for both society and individuals.
Conservative view of society. Focus on the positive contribution of education.
DURKHEIM
Social Solidarity: Saw major function of education as a transmission of society's norms and values.
Necessary to produce social solidarity (where individual members of society feel that they need to belong to a community).
Teaching Specialist Skills: Argues that individuals must be taught specialist skills so that they can take their place within a highly complex division of labour in which people have to co-operate to produce items.
Criticisms
Marxists: argue that educational institutions tend to transmit a dominant culture which serves the interests of the ruling class rather than society as a whole.
Willis and Hargreaves: study shows that the transmission of norms and values is not always successful. some students openly rejects values and form anti-school subcultures
PARSONS
Education acts as a bridge between family and society.
In the family, children are judged according to particularistic standards that apply only to them. Their status within the family is also ascribed.
In wider society, individuals are judged against standards which apply equally to all members. Status is achieved through merit rather than ascribed
Education helps spcialise young people into basic values of society. School transmits two major values:
Value of achievement: everyone achieves their own status through own effort.
Value of quality of opportunity
Criticism:
Dennis Wrong: functionalists have an "over-socialised view" of people as mere puppets of society. They wrongly imply that pupils passively accept all that they are taught and never reject school values.
Assumes that Western education systems are meritocratic.
DAVIS AND MOORE
Sees education as a means of role allocation. The system sifts and sorts people according to ability.
Most talented gain high qualifications which lead to functionally important jobs with high rewards.
Leads to inequalities in society, but this is natural and even desirable in capitalist societies becuase there is only a limited amount of talent.
Criticisms
Intelligence and ability only have a limited influence on achievement. Research indicates that achievement is closely tied to issues of social class, gender and ethnicity.
Bowles and Gintis: reject this view that capitalist societies are meritocratic. Children of upper classes obtain high qualifications and well-rewarded jobs irrespective of their abilities. "Myth of meritocracy"
Range of class differences in achievement suggests that not everyone actually has the same chance at education.
New Right
Market VS State
Effects of state control:
Key feature is that too much state control of education has resulted in inefficiency, national economic decline and lack of personal and business initiative.
A culture of welfare dependency has developed
One size fits all:
Arguments are based on the belief that the state cannot meet people's needs. In state-run education, education inevitably ends up as "one size fits all" that does not meet individual and community needs, or needs of the employers.
Lower standards:
State-run schools are not accountable to those who use them. schools get poor results do not change because they are not answerable to their consumers. This results in lower standards and less qualified workforce.
Solution: Marketisation
Issue is how to make schools more responsive to consumers. The solution is the marketisation of education. Marketisation is the introduction of market forces of consumer choice and competition between schools into areas run by the state.
New Right argue that creating an "education market" forces schools to respond to the demands of students, parents and employers.
CHUBB AND MOE
Compared the achievement of 60,000 students from low-income families in 1015 state and private schools in USA. Data shows that students from low-income families do 5% better in private schools. Suggests education is not meritocratic
State education has failed to create equal opportunity because it does not have to respond to students needs. Parents and communities cannot do anything about failing schools while the chools are controlled by the state,
Private schools produce higher quality education because they are answerable to paying consumers
Solution: Introduce a market system in state education - that is, give control to consumers. This should be done by a voucher system in which each family would be given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice.
Evaluation:
Although school standards seem to have risen, there are other possible reasons for this improvement apart from the introduction of a market.
Critics argue that low standards in some state schools are the result of inadequate funding rather than state control.
Gerwitz: competition between schools benefits middle class, who can get their children intro more desireable schools.
Marxist: education imposes the culture of a ruling class, ot a shared culture or "national identity"
Marxism
Conflict view:
Sees society as being based on class divisions and exploitation.
Two classes: ruling class (bourgeoisie) and subject class (proletariat)
Capitalist class own means of production and exploits the labour of w/c.
Creates class conflict and threaten stability of capitalism (revolution)
Social institutions reproduce class inequalities.
ALTHUSSER
Sees education system as part of ISA.
Claims that education, with family and mass media reproduce class-based inequalities by creating the belief that capitalism is "normal"
Effect of all this is that the reproduction of the class system in that the next generation of the w/c tend to remain w/c
BOURDIEU:
Cultural Capital: argues that the main function of education is to reproduce and legitimize ruling class culture and power.
and to socialize the w/c into a "culture of failure" so they take up routine.
BOWLES AND GINTIS
Argues that there is a close relationship between social relationships in the workplace and in education.
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Giroux: argues that w/c students do not accept the legitimacy of school. Many resist the influence of the hidden curriculum and the history of trade unionism and industrial action in the UK does not support the idea of work conformity.
WILLIS
Challenges the over-deterministic nature of much of Bowles and Gintis, which sees schools producing docile and compliant workers.
Argues that w/c "lads" see through the smokescreen of meritocracy that tries to legitimate inequality.
Accepts that the outcome is similar to that suggested by Bowles and Gintis, as their anti-school behaviour guarantees that they end up in dead-end jobs.
Evaluation:
Blackledge and Hunt: argues his sample is inadequate for generalizing about the role of education. His sample contained 12 pupils, all of them male, who were by no means typical of the children at school.
It largely ignores the full range of subcultures within schools.