The Role of Education in Society Flashcards
(35 cards)
Explain what functionalists mean by ‘value consensus’.
An agreement among society’s members about what values are important.
What do functionalists aim to explain when studying education?
What function education performs in society. What does it do to help meet society’s needs?
According to Durkeim, explain how education helps to create social solidarity.
Solidarity is when individual members of society must feel as part of a single ‘body’ or a community.
It transmits our shared values and beliefs from one generation to the next.
How does school resemble a ‘society in miniature’?
School also acts as ‘society in miniature’, preparing its students for wider society. Both in school and at work we have to interact with others according to an impersonal set of rules that apply to everyone.
According to Durkheim, why does education need to teach specialist skills?
Most industrial economies have a complex division of labour, where the production of even a single item usually involves the cooperation of many different specialists. Durkheim argues that education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills that they need to play their part in the social division of labour.
According to Parsons, what are particularistic standards?
Rules that only to a particular child. Similarly, in the family, the child’s status is ascribed. For example, an elder son and a younger daughter may be given different rights or duties because of differences of age and sex.
According to Parsons, how does education act as a bridge between the family and wider society?
Both school and wider society judge us all by the same universalistic and impersonal standards. For example, in society, the same laws apply to everyone. Similarly, in school, each pupil is judged against the same standards.
What is meritocracy?
When everyone is given an equal opportunity, and individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.
According to Davis and Moore, why is it important for role allocation to be meritocratic?
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 a surgeon or an airline pilot.
How does education achieve meritocracy?
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 human capital?
Worker’s skills.
State four criticisms of the functionalist perspective.
Wrong argues that functionalists have an over-socialised view' of people as mere puppets of society. Neoliberals and New Right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work. There is ample evidence that equality in education does not exist. For example, achievement is greatly influenced by class background rather than ability. Marxists argue that education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of a minority - the ruling class.
State two characteristics of neoliberalism.
They believe that the state cannot meet people’s needs and that people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market.
For neoliberalists, what is the value of education?
How well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace. They claim that this can only be achieved if schools become more like businesses, empowering parents and pupils as consumers and using competition between schools to drive up standards.
State three similarities between the New Right and the functionalist views.
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.
Identify one key difference between functionalism and the New Right.
The New Right do not believe that the current education system is achieving the goals they want. The reason for its failure, in their view, is that it is run by the state.
According to the New Right, what is the solution to the problems of state education?
.They argue that the state education system takes the ‘one size fits all’ approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs. The consumers who use the schools - pupils, parents and employers - have no say. Their solution is the marketisation of education. They believe that competitions between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools and increase schools’ ability to meet consumers ‘ needs.
Briefly outline Chubb and Moe’s proposed system for education.
They want to introduce a market system that would put control into the hands of the consumers. They argue that this would allow consumers to shape schools to meet their own needs and would improve quality and efficiency.
According to the New Right, what are the two roles for the state in education?
The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete. For example, by publishing Ofsted reports and league tables of schools’ exam results, the state gives parents information with which to make a more informed choice between schools.
The state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture. By imposing a single National Curriculum, it seeks to guarantee that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage.
State four criticisms of the New Right perspective.
Gewirtz and Ball both argue that competition between schools benefits the middle class, who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools.
Critics argue that the real cause of low educational standards is not state control but social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools.
There is a contradiction between the New Right’s support for parental choice on one hand and the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum on the other.
Marxists argue that education does not impose a shared national culture, but imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class and devalues the culture of the working class and ethnic minorities.
Define the capitalist class.
Otherwise known as the bourgeoisie, are the minority class. They are the employers who own the means of production. They make their profits by exploiting the labour of the majority - the proletariat.
Define the working class.
Otherwise known as the proletariat, they are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists since they have no means of production of their own and so have no other source of income.
What do Marxists see as the main function of education?
A way of preventing revolution and maintaining capitalism.
Define ideological state apparatus.
Maintaining the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs. The ISAs include religion, the media and the education system.
