Essay Plans

Question 1

Evaluate New Right views of the Family

Answer 1

1. Single parents are over-reliant on welfare benefits and lack of responsible male role models lead to unemployment and crime, this is a dependency of culture, MURRAY
2. CHARLES MURRAY: family diversity threatens the nuclear family and the stability of society:
   - Cohabiting couples are less secure and more likely to split up
   - Gay couples don’t provide adequate role models for gender socialisation
   - Working mothers can’t spend enough time to socialise children
3. Family ideology/ cereal packet image: socialises + good role models based on biological gender differences
   - Cereal packet image: the stereotype of the ideal family found in the mass media and advertising

Question 2

Evaluate New Right views on Education

Answer 2

1. CHUBB & MOE: voucher system, parent should be given a voucher with money on it to go to the school they choose
2. CHUBB & MOE: schools are business-like as they meet the needs of the industry, schools contribute to the needs of the industry
3. CHUBB & MOE: Marketisation/parentocracy of education: competition within schools to make them more responsive

Question 3

Evaluate Postmodernist views of the Family

Answer 3

1. THE RAPOPORTS: We have moved away from the traditional nuclear family, and there is now a range of family types which are adapted to the different cultures/ diversity in Britain today.
   5 types of family diversity:
   - Organisational diversity: How family roles are organised e.g. one or two wage earners
   - Cultural diversity: Cultural, religious and ethnic differences; all differing in structure.
   - Social class diversity: Family structure depends on the income of the household
   - Life stage diversity: Focus on key life events: university, marriage, first child, retired, widowed, etc.
   - Generational diversity: Older and younger members have different attitudes, experiences, and possibly even different norms and values
2. DAVID CHEAL: Because of today’s chaotic society, there is much more family diversity, is a chaotic society due to fragmentation, pick and mix identities and rapid social change, new technology and media makes life less predictable
3. ANTHONY GIDDENS: the main cause of change in family and marriage:
   -greater equality between men and women
   -changes in contraception has meant that ‘sex and intimacy’ is often a reason for relationships forming rather than reproduction.
   people are defining their own relationships rather than acting out specific roles by tradition and law, called a pure relationship

Question 4

Evaluate Postmodernist views on Education

Answer 4

1. USHER ET AL: there is a shift away from ‘one style fits all’ educational approach, now many alternatives like academies, private schools, boarding schools, etc.
   Schools now pay close attention to individual learning styles of students.
   Globalisation has led to immigration which has led to multiculturalism, has led to individual identity becoming more fluid

AO3: DURKHEIM- shared values

2. JEAN BAUDRILLARD: we live in a world where there is more and more information with less and less meaning. Hyperreality is the inability to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, links to education as education has to adapt to changing technologies, there is no ‘one truth’ so teachers and pupils should construct knowledge together.
3. LEVI-STRAUSS: Pick and mix- we choose ideas, products from a variety of sources.
   Bricolage: the variety of schools and the breakdown of a single state education system.

Question 5

Evaluate Feminist views of education

Answer 5

1. ANN OAKLEY: negative view on the hidden curriculum as it reinforces patriarchal gender roles:
   Examples:
   - Head teacher is usually male
   - Cleaners and canteen workers are usually female
   - Research shows that boys receive more attention in class
2. BROWNE & ROSS: argue that children’s beliefs about gender domains are shaped through their early life experiences, domains are tasks that are seen as male or female ‘territory’, and will follow which ones are relevant to them
3. McCABE: symbolic annihilation- an invisibility of women in the curriculum, women are hidden from history.

Question 6

Evaluate Feminist views of the Family

Answer 6

1. YOUNG & WILMOTT: ‘march of progress’