Education - The Role Of Education In Society Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is Durkheim’s arguments on solidarity and skills?
Durkheim argues that society needs a sense of solidarity; that is, its individual members must feel themselves to be part of a single ‘body’ or community. He argues that without social solidarity, social life and cooperation would be impossible because each individual would pursue their own selfish desires.
The education system helps to create social solidarity by transmitting society’s culture - its shared beliefs and values - from one generation to the next. For example, Durkheim argues that the teaching of a countries history instils in children a sense of a shared heritage and a commitment to the wider social group.
Schools also acts as a ‘society in miniature’, preparing us for life in wider society. For example, both in school and at work we have to cooperate with people who are neither family nor friends - teachers and pupils at school, colleagues and customers at work. Similarly, both in school and at work we have to interact with others according to a set of impersonal rules that apply to everyone.
What is Parsons argument on meritocracy?
Parsons sees the school as the ‘focal socialising agency’ in modern society, acting as a bridge between the family and wider society. This bridge is needed because family and society operate on different principles, so children need to learn a new way of living if they are to cope with the wider world.
Within the family, the child is judged by particularistic standards; that is, rules that apply only to that particular child. Similarly, in the family, the child’s status is ascribed; that is, fixed by birth. By contrast, both school and wider society judge us all by the same universalistic and impersonal standards. In school each pupil is judged against the same standards (sitting the same exam). For example, at work we gain promotion or get the sack on the strength of how good we are at our job, while school we pass or fail through our own individual effort.
Parsons sees schools as preparing us to move from the family to wider society because school and society are both based on meritocratic principles. In a meritocracy, everyone is given an equal opportunity, and individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.
What is a criticism of Durkheim?
The education system does not teach specialised skills adequately, as Durkheim claims. For example,the wolf review of vocational education claim that high-quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 year olds are on courses that do not lead to higher education or good jobs.
What is Davis and Moore’s argument on role allocation?
Davis and Moore see education as a device for selection and role allocation. They focus on the relationship between education and social inequality. They argue that inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people. For example, it would be inefficient and dangerous to have less able people performing roles such as surgeon or airline pilot. Not everyone is equally talented, so society has to offer higher rewards for these jobs. This will encourage everyone to compete for them and society can then select the most talented individuals to fill these positions.
Education plays a key part in this process, since it acts as a proving ground for ability. Put simply, education is where individuals show what they can do. It ‘sifts’ and ‘sorts’ us according to our ability. The most able gain the highest qualifications, which then gives them entry to the most important and highly rewarded positions.
What is a criticism of Davis and Moore’s argument?
Melvin Tumin criticises Davis and Moore for putting forward
What is Chubb and Moe’s argument on consumer choice?
They argue that state-run education in the United States has failed because:
- it has not created equal opportunity and has failed the needs of disadvantaged groups.
- it is inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed by the economy.
- private schools deliver higher quality education because, unlike state schools, they are unanswerable to paying consumers - the parents.
Chubb and Moe base their arguments on a comparison of the achievements of 60,000 pupils from low-income families in 1,015 state and private high schools, together with the findings of a parent survey and case studies of failing schools apparently being turned around. Their evidence shows that pupils from low-income families consistently do about 5% better in private than in state schools.
Based on these findings, Chubb and Moe call for the introduction of a market system in state education that would put control in the hands of the consumers (parents and local communities). They argue that this would allow consumers to shape schools to meet their own needs and would improve quality and efficiency.
To introduce a market into state education, Chubb and Moe propose a system in which each family would be given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice. This would force schools to become more responsive to parents wishes, since the vouchers would be the schools main source of income. Like private businesses, schools would have to compete to attract customers by improving their product.
What is a criticism of Chubb and Moes arguments?
What is Althusser’s arguments on the ideological state apparatus?
Marxists see the state as the means by which the capitalist ruling class maintain their dominant position. According to Althusser, the state consists of two elements or ‘apparatus’, both of which serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power:
- the repressive state apparatus, which maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it. The RSA include the police, courts and army. When necessary, they use physical coercion (force) to repress the working class.
- the ideological state apparatuses, which maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and belief. The ISA include religion, the media and the education system.
In Althussers view, the education system is an important ISA. He argues that it performs two functions:
- Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working-class pupils in turn.
- Education legitimates (justifies) class inequality by producing ideologies (sets of ideas and beliefs) that disguise its true cause. The function of ideology is to persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate positions in society. If they accept these ideas, they are less likely to challenge or threaten capitalism.
What is a criticism of Althusser’s argument?
Explain Bowles and Gintis’ study on schooling in capitalist America.
They argue that capitalism requires a workforce with the kind 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. In the view of Bowles and Gintis, this is the role of the education system in capitalist society - to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
From their own study of 237 New York high school students and the findings of other studies, Bowles and Gintis conclude that schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker. For instance, they found that students who showed independence and creativity tended to gain low grades, while those who showed characteristics linked to obedience and discipline (such as punctuality) tended to gain high grades.
Bowles and Gintis conclude from this evidence that schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs. They do not believe that education fosters personal development. Rather, it stunts and distorts students’ development.
What is Bowles and Gintis’ argument on the correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum?
Bowles and Gintis argue that there are close parallels between schooling and work in capitalist society. Both schools and workplaces are hierarchies, with head teachers or bosses at the top making decisions and giving orders, and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying.
Bowles and Gintis refer to these parallels between school and workplace as examples of the ‘correspondence principle’. The relationship and structures found in education mirror or correspond to those of work.
Bowles and Gintis argue that the correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum - that is, all the ‘lessons’ that are learnt in school without being directing taught. For example, simply through the everyday workings of the schools, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition, working for extrinsic rewards and so on.
In this way, schooling prepares working-class pupils for their role as the exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation.
What is Bowles and Gintis’ argument on the myth of meritocracy?
Because capitalist society is based on inequality, there is always a danger that the poor will feel that this inequality is undeserved and unfair, and that they will rebel against the system responsible for it. In Bowles and Gintis’ view, the education system helps to prevent this from happening, by legitimating class inequalities. It does this by producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is fair, natural and inevitable.
Bowles and Gintis describe the education system as ‘a giant myth-making machine’. A key myth that education promotes is the ‘myth of meritocracy’. Meritocracy means that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on ability and effort, and that those who gain the highest rewards deserve them because they are the most able and hardworking.
Unlike functionalists such as Parsons, Bowles and Gintis argue that meritocracy does not in fact exist. Evidence shows that the main factor determining whether or not someone has a high income is their family and class background, not their ability or educational achievements.
By disguising this fact, the myth of meritocracy serves to justify the privilege of the higher classes, making it seem that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition at school. This helps persuade the working class to accept inequality as legitimate, and makes it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism.
What is a criticism of Bowles and Gintis’ argument?
What is Willis’ arguments on the lads’ counter-culture?
Using qualitative research methods including participants observation and unstructured interviews, Willis studied the counter-school culture of ‘the lads’ - a group of 12 working-class boy - as they make the transition from school to work.
The lads from a distinct counter-culture opposed to the school. They are scornful of the conformist boys who they call the ‘ear oles’ (so called because, unlike the lads, they listen to what the teachers tell them). The lads have their own brand of intimidatory humour, ‘taking the piss’ out of the ear’oles and girls.
The lads find school boring and meaningless and they flout its rules and values, for example by smoking and drinking, disrupting classes and playing truant. For the lads such acts of defiance are ways of resisting the school. They reject as a ‘con’ the schools meritocratic ideology that working-class pupils can achieve middle-class through hard work.
Willis notes the similarity between the lads anti-school counter-culture and the shop floor culture of male manual workers. Both cultures see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior and effeminate. The lads identify strongly with male manual work and this explains why they see themselves as superior both to girls and to the ‘effeminate’ ear’oles who aspire to non-manual jobs.
However, it also explain why the lads counter-culture of resistance to school helps them to slot into the very jobs - inferior in terms of skill, pay and conditions - that capitalism needs someone to perform. For example:
- having been accustomed to boredom and to finding ways of assuming themselves in school, they don’t expect satisfaction from work and are good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour.
- Their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualifications.
For Willis, the irony is that by helping them resist the schools ideology, the lads counter-culture ensures that they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform.
What is a criticism of Willis’ arguments?
