Perspectives On Education Flashcards
(16 cards)
Durkheim ~ functionalist
Social soclidarity
—> society needs a sense of solidarity, that is, its individual members must feel as though they are part of a single ‘body’ or community
- Education system helps to create social solidarity by transmitting society’s shared beliefs and values from one generation to the next.
- School also acts as society in miniature, preparing us for life in wider society
Specialist skills
- education teaches everyone specialist knowledge and skills they need to play a part in the social division of labour.
—> modern industrial economies have a complex division of labour where the poor duct ion of even a single item usually involves the cooperation of many different specialists.
Parsons ~ functionalist
Meritocracy
- sees the school as a ‘focal socialising agency’, acting as a bridge between family and wider society, this bridge is needed as the family and wider society have different principles.
Particularistic standards = rules that only apply to that child in particular —> in the family the child’s status is ascribed (fixed by birth, e.g. oldest son)
Universalistic standards = laws in society’s that apply to everyone —> in school and wider society status is achieved (worked for, e.g. promotion)
Parsons sees school 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 equal opportunity, and individuals achieve rewards through their own efforts and ability
Davis and Moore ~ functionalist
Role allocation
- schools select and allocate pupils to their future work roles. By assessing their aptitudes and abilities, and match them to the job they are best suited to.
D+M argue that inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people
Not everyone is equal in society so they offer higher rewards for these types of jobs. This encourages people to compete for these jobs and society can then select the most talented
Education sifts and sorts pupils into the right job prospects.
Similarities between the new right and functionalist view in education
- both believe that some people are naturally more talented than others
- both favour an education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition, and one that serves the needs of the economy by preparing young people for work
- both believe that education should socialise pupils into shared values, such as competition, and instil a sense of national identity.
New right
Key difference between new right and functionalism
—> new right do not believe the current education system is achieving these goals. The reason for its failure, in their view is that it is run by the state.
Argue the education system takes a ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs. The local consumers who use the scoools (pupils, parents, employers) have no say.
State education therefore are unresponsive and inefficient.
Schools that waste money or get poor results are not answerable to their consumers.
This means lower standards of achievement for pupils, a less qualified workforce and a less prosperous economy
New right solutions
The marketisation of education
—> creating an ‘education market’
They believe that competition between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools ability to meet the needs of the consumers
Chubb and Moe ~ new right
Argue that state run education in the US has failed
This is 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 answerable to paying consumers (parents)
C+M compared achievements of 60,000 pupils from low income families in 1015 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 schools than in state schools.
Due to these findings C+M want to introduce a market system in state education, argue 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, C+M propose a system in which 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.
—> these principles are already at work in the private education sector.
C+M believe that educational standards would be greatly improved by introducing these marketing factors into the state sector.
Two roles for the state ~ new right
- The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete e.g. through publishing OFSTED reports and league tables of exam results, the state gives parents more information so they can make a more informed choice between schools
- The state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture. By imposing a single national curriculum, seeks to guarantee that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage.
The new right believe that education should affirm the national identity.
—> e.g. the curriculum should emphasise Britain’s positive role in world history and teach British literature, and there should be a Christian act of worship in school everyday as Christianity is Britain’s main religion.
The aim is to integrate pupils into a single set of traditions and cultural values. For this reason the new right also oppose multicultural education that reflects the cultures of the different minority groups in Britain
Althusser ~ Marxist
The ideological state apparatus
—> maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people ideas, values and beliefs. The ISAs include the media, religion and the education system.
In his view the education system is an important ISA as it performs 2 functions:
- education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working class pupils in turn
- education legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies 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 position in society. If they accept these ideas, they are less likely to challenge or threaten capitalism.
Bowles and Gintis ~ Marxist
Study on schooling in capitalist America
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 B+G this is the role of the education system in a capitalist society.
—> to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
From their study of 237 NY high school students and the findings of other studies, B+G conclude that schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker.
E.g. they found that students who showed independence and creativity gained low grades, while those who showed characteristics liked to obedience and discipline tended to gain higher grades.
B+G 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 a students development.
Bowles and Gintis ~ Marxist
The correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum
B+G argue that there are close parallels between schooling and work in capitalist society. Both schools and workplaces are hierarchies, with headteachers or bosses at tip making decision and giving orders, and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying.
B+G refer to these parallels between school and workplace as examples of the correspondence principles.
They argue that the correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum.
—> this is all the ‘lessons’ that aren’t learnt in school without being directly taught, e.g. obedience.
Schooling prepares WC pupils for their role as exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation.
Bowles and Gintis ~ Marxist
The myth of meritocracy
Meritocracy = everyone has equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on ability and effort, and that those who gain highest deserve the because they are most able and hardworking. (Functionalist, Parsons)
B+G argue that meritocracy does not 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 achievement.
The myth of meritocracy serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes, making it seem that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition at school. This helps to persuade the WC to accept inequality as legitimate, and makes it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism.
The education system also justifies poverty through what B+G describe as the ‘poor-are-dumb’ theory of failure. It does so by blaming poverty on the individual rather than blaming capitalism. Therefore it plays an important role in reconciling workers with their exploited position, making them less likely to rebel against the system
Willis ~ Marxist
Willis studied the counter-school culture of ‘the lads’ — a group of 12 WC boys — as they transition from school to work.
The lads formed a contar-culture opposed to the school.
—> they are scornful of conformist boys who they call ‘ear’oles’.
—> they find school boring and meaningless and they flout its rules and values e.g. by drinking / smoking
They reject the school rules as a ‘con’ of the schools meritocratic ideology that WC pupils can achieve MC obs through hark work.
Willis sees a similarity between the lads anti-school subculture, and the shop floor culture of male manual workers.
—> Both see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior, the lads identify strongly with male manual work, this explains why they see themselves as superior to girls and the confromist boys who aspire to non-manual jobs.
However, it also explains why the lads subculture helps them to slot into the very jobs that capitalism needs someone to perform :
- having been accustomed to boredom and to finding ways of amusing themselves in school, they don’t expect satisfaction from work
- their acts of rebellion guarantee they will end up in unskilled jobs, as they have no qualifications.
By helping the lads resist schools ideology the lads counter-culture ensures that they are destined for unskilled work that’s capitalism needs someone to perform. N
Evaluation of the functionalist perspective
- The education system does not teach specialised skills adequately, as Durkheim claims
- There is a lot of evidence that equal opportunity in education does not exist.
- Tumin (1953) criticises Davis and Moore for putting forward a circular argument, we know jobs are important if they are highly rewarded and we know that jobs are highly rewarded because they are important.
- Functionalists see education as a process that installs the shared values if society as a whole, but Marxists argue that education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of the minority (the ruling class)
- Wrong (1961) argues that functionalists have an ‘over-socialised view’ of people as mere puppets of society. Functionalists wrongly imply that pupils passively accept all they are taught and never reject the schools values
- Neo liberals and the new right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work.
Evaluation of the New Right perspective
- Gerwitz (1995) and Ball (1994) both argue that competition between schools benefits the middle class, who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access more desirable schools.
- Critics argue that the real cause of low educational standards is not state control instead it is social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools.
- There is a contradiction between the New Right’s support from parental choice on the one hand and the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum on all its schools on the other
- Marxists argue that education does not impose a shared national culture, as the new right claim, but imposes on the culture of a dominant minority ruling class and devalues the culture of the working class and minority ethnic groups.
Evaluation of the Marxist perspective
- Marxist approaches are useful in exposing the ‘myth of meritocracy’. They show that the role that education plays as an ISA, serving the interests of capitalism by reproducing and legitimising class inequality
- Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by marixists. Postmodernists argue that education now reproduces diversity, not inequality
- Marxists disagree with each other about how reproduction and legitimisation takes place. B+G take a deterministic view, assuming that pupils have no free will and passively accept indoctrination. This approach fails to explain why many pupils reject the schools values. By contrast Willis rejects the school simply ‘brainwashes’ pupils into accepting their fate, instead he shows that pupils may resist the school however still leads them to a WC job.
- Critics argue that Willis romanticises the lads, portraying them as WC heroes despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes. His study was small scale (only 12 boys), so it’s unlikely to be representative and would be risky to generalise his findings.
- Modernists, Morrow and Torres (1998) criticise Marxists for taking a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores other kinds. They see non-class inequalities such as gender and sexuality as equally important. They believe they should explain all types of inequality and how they can be inter-related.
- Feminists, MacDonald (1980) argue that B+G ignore that schools reinforce patriarchy as well as capitalism. Similarly McRobbie (1978) points out that women are largely excluded form Willis’ study.
- However, Willis’ study has stimulated more research into how education reproduces and legitimises other inequalities. E.g. Connolly (1998) explores how education reproduces both ethnic and gender inequalities.
