Key Theorists Flashcards
1
Q
Emile Durkheim
Functionalist
A
- Education is the bridge between family and wider society.
- Schools should condition children to think in terms of meritocratic achievement - work hard for your successes.
- Education leads to value consensus: a general agreement about basic values in society.
2
Q
Talcott Parsons
Functionalist
A
- School functions as one of the institutions that meet the needs of society.
- Schools should emphasise the moral responsibilities that members of society should have towards each other.
- A shared identity is crucial to social harmony so, for example, subjects like History should help develop a loyalty towards ones own society.
3
Q
Davis + Moore
Functionalist
A
- Education serves the purpose of allocating people to the most appropriate job for their talents - role allocation.
- Some jobs are more important than others and education helps to identify the best people for these roles - we need to be accepting of that as it for the greater good.
- The examination system is useful as it encourages competition and hard work and closely links to a reward system of high pay for jobs with more specialist skills.
4
Q
Althusser
Marxist
A
- Education is an ideological state apparatus - one that benefits the “haves” and not the “have nots” in society.
- The main function of the education system is to legitimise, maintain and reproduce class inequalities in wealth and power.
- The education system transmits capitalist (ruling class) values by presenting them to people as common values.
5
Q
Bourdieu
Marxist
A
- The education system tricks the working class into thinking and accepting that their failure and limited social mobility are justified.
- The education system values a culture of upper and middle class people and it is this culture that is presented as having greater value and worthy of investment.
- Cultural attributes of the working class are rejected by a system defined the Middle Class - who therefore succeed as a default, not because of their effort.
6
Q
Bowles + Gintis
Marxist
A
- Education is controlled by Capitalists and serves their interests.
- Schooling is used to prepare students for work in Capitalist businesses.
- A docile, obedient and hardworking workforce is prepared through a hidden curriculum of hidden and informal messages transmitted by the way school is organised.
7
Q
Willis
Marxist
A
- Working class pupils don’t passively accept all that they are taught.
- Schools are the site of ideological struggles - where Classes, Genders and Races are all striving to gain the education they think they deserve.
8
Q
Giroux
Neo-Marxist
A
- The curriculum/hidden curriculum is not always accepted - the traditional Marxist view of passivity is incorrect.
- Rebellion / rejection of this system still ends up reproducing class inequality.
- Both Functionalism and Marxism exaggerate conformity in education.
9
Q
Halsey + Floud
A
- Education has the potential to be, but is not automatically, meritocratic.
- Comprehensives mean that Middle-Class pupils cannot gain an advantage by going to selective state schools.
- Some places in Higher Education can be reserved for students of Working Class background.
10
Q
Chubb + Moe
New Right
A
- State Education is unresponsive to the needs of parents and pupils and therefore has lower standards.
- Private education is more dynamic as there is a need to “please customers”.
- These ideas have been used to by New-Right minded politicians when justifying the “marketisation” of schools in the UK.
11
Q
Usher, Bryant, + Johnson
A
- Adult education routes are typical of a postmodern society - where this a blurring of the lines between different areas of life and different greater choice and variety.
12
Q
Haralambos + Holborn
A
- There is actually a large degree of centralisation within the education system - best evidenced by the introduction of a National Curriculum in the 1980s.
