Topic 5 - The role of Education in society Flashcards
(22 cards)
1
Q
What do functionalist believe ?
A
- Believe that society is a system held together by a shared culture or value consensus
- Each part of society such as family plays an important function that helps to maintain society as a whole
2
Q
What is the first function of education according to Durkheim?
A
- Argues that education performs 2 main functions
- One is creating social solidarity, as he argues that society needs to feel a sense of solidarity, and that individuals need to feel themselves being apart of a single body or community, and he argues without it, social life and cooperation would be impossible because each individual would pursue their own selfish desires
- Education helps to create social solidarity by transmitting society’s culture from one generation to another
- for example through teaching the country’s history it instils a sense of shared heritage and a commitment to a wider social group in children
3
Q
What is the second function of education according to Durkheim?
A
- Teaching specialist skills
- Education prepares individuals for the division of labor in modern industrial society as it teachers us the skills and knowledge needed to perform complex roles in society
- Such roles such as engineers and healthcare workers cannot be performed without training, so education provides a bridge between the individual and their economic function
- School acts as a society in miniature, by preparing us for life in wider society
- For example both in school and at work, we have to cooperate with people who are neither friends or family, teachers and pupils and school and colleagues and customers at work
4
Q
What is Parsons view on education?
A
- Parsons sees the school as a focalising agent in modern society, which acts as a bridge between the family and wider society.
- This bridge is needed because the 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
- In the family the child is judged by particularistic standards, which are rules that apply only to that particular child for example the youngest child getting special treatment. Also within the family the child’s status is ascribed meaning fixed by birth
- However in the school and wider society, there is universalistic standards where everyone is treated the same, for example in society the same laws apply to everyone. similarly in school, each pupil is judged against the same standards like during exams that everyone sits
- Likewise in both school and wider society a person’s status is largely achieved and not ascribed for example at work we gain promotion or get sacked depending on how good we are at our job, while at school we pass or fail through our own efforts
5
Q
What is Davis and Moore’s view on education?
A
- They argue that schools also perform the function of selecting and allocating pupils to their future job roles
- By assessing individuals abilities, schools help to match them to the job they are best suited to
- Argue that inequality is necessary to endure that the 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, as not everyone is equally talented, so society has to offer higher rewards for these jobs, and this will encourage them to compete for them and this allows society to to select the most talented for these positions
- Education plays a key role in this because this is where individuals are able to show what they can do and sorts us according to ability, so the most able get the most qualifications
6
Q
What do Blau and Duncan argue?
A
- That a modern economy depends for its prosperity on using its human capital, which is skills, knowledge and qualifications that individuals gain from education and training which makes them more productive and valuable to employers and the economy
- They argue that a meritocratic education system does this the best since it allocates each student to their job best suited to their abilities.
- This will make most effective use of their talents and maximise their productivity
7
Q
What are evaluations of functionalist ?
A
- Education system does not teach specialised skills adequately as Durkheim claims. Wolf’s review of vocational education claims that higher quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 year olds are on courses that do not lead to high education or good jobs
- Marxist
- Wrong argues that functionalists have an over socialised view of the people as mere puppets of society and they wrongly assume that all students accept what they are taught and never reject school values
8
Q
What do Neo liberals argue?
A
- That the state should not provide services such as education, health and welfare.
- Neo liberalism is on the idea of free market capitalism and minimal state intervention
-Believe in an unregulated free market economy so governments should encourage competition and private state run business - They believe operating education as a business will encourage competition as schools will compete for pupils and drive up standards and parents act as consumers
9
Q
What are the similarities between functionalism and New right view?
A
- both believe that some people are naturally more talented than others
- both favor 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 children into shared norms and values
10
Q
What is the difference between new right and functionalism ?
A
- New right do not believe that the current education system is achieving these goals
- The reason for this is because it is run by the state
11
Q
What do the New right argue?
A
- Their argument aligns closely with the Neo Liberal
- However they argue that the state education systems take a one size fits all approach , imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs
- The local consumers who use the school such as pupils, parents and employers have no say, the schools that waste money and get poor results are usually the ones that don’t respond to the consumers
- This thus means lower standards of achievement for pupils and thus a less qualified workforce which leads to a less prosperous economy
- Their solution to this is the marketisation of education, creating an education market, by doing this it will create competition between schools and empower consumers
12
Q
What do Chubb and Moe argue and find?
A
- Argue that a state run education in the US has failed because it has not created equal opportunity and has failed the needs of disadvantaged groups and it is inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed by the economy.
- They also found that private schools delivered higher quality education because they are answerable to the consumers unlike state schools
- their evidence shows that pupils from low income families consistently do about 5% better in private schools than in state schools
- Based on their findings Chubb and Moe call for an introduction of a market system in state education that would put control in the hands of the consumer such as the parents, and they believe this would allow consumers to shape schools to meet their own needs and it would improve efficiency and quality
13
Q
What do Chubb and Moe propose ?
A
- A system in which each family would be given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice
- And this would force schools to become responsive to parent’s wishes, since the vouchers would be the schools main source of income
14
Q
According to New right what are the 2 important roles for the state?
A
- First is to impose a system or framework where schools have to compete, for example by publishing Ofsted reports and league tables this gives the parents more information to make an informed choice between schools
- Secondly. the state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture, by imposing a single national curriculum
15
Q
What is evaluation of the New right perspective ?
A
- Gewirtz and Ball both argue that competition between schools benefit the middle class who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools
- Critics also argue that the real cause of low educational standards is not because of state control instead it is because of social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools
- Marxists argue that education does not impose a shared national culture as the New right claim but it imposes the dominant ruling class and devalue the culture of the working class
16
Q
What does Althusser discover ?
A
- The 2 ways the state serve to keep the bourgeiosise
- The repressive state apparatuses (RSA’s) , which maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it. RSA’s include the police and courts
- The Ideological state apparatus ( ISA’s) which maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s beliefs, ideas and values, this included religion and the education system
17
Q
According to Althusser what two functions does education perform?
A
- The education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation by failing each successive generation of working class pupils in turn
- Education justifies class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause. Its function persuades workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and they they deserve their subordinate position in society
18
Q
What do Bowlis and Gintis argue?
A
- They argue that the role of the education system in a capitalist society is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
- Argue that there a close parallels between schooling and work in a capitalist society
- Both are hierarchies with head teachers and bosses at the top making decisions and giving orders and workers and pupils at the bottom obeying
- Bowles and Gintis refer to these parallels as the correspondence principle, where the relationships and structures found in education mirror the workplace
- They argue that the correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum, which are lessons learnt in school that are not directly. For example through everyday working of schools, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition
- In this, schooling prepares working class pupils for their role as the exploited workers of the future which reproduces class inequality from generation to generation
19
Q
What is the myth of meritocracy argument?
A
- Because the capitalist society is based on inequality, there is always a danger that the poor will feel that this inequality in unfair and undeserved, and that they will rebel against the system
- In B and G view the education system helps to prevent this from happening by justifying class inequality, it does this by producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is inevitable
- They describe the education system as a giant myth making machine and they say it promotes of meritocracy
- Unlike functionalists, B and G argue that meritocracy does not exist and that evidence shows that the main factor determining whether or not a person has a high income is their family and background and not their ability or educational achievement
- By disguising this, it justifies the privileges of the higher classes, making it seem that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition in school and this reduces the chances of the working class overthrowing as they accept inequality as legitimate
20
Q
What is another way the education system justifies poverty ?
A
- Education system also justifies through what B and G describe as the poor are dumb theory of failure
- It does so by blaming poverty on individuals rather than blaming capitalism so working class individuals are forced to think that they are poor because they did not work hard enough
- Thus making them less likely to rebel
21
Q
What does Willis find and argue?
A
- His study shows that working class pupils can resist such school values
- Studied using qualitative methods such as unstructured interviews on a counter school culture of the lads ( 12 working class boys ) as they made the transition from school to work
- He found that the lads developed a counter school culture where they rejected the values of the school and had their own brand of humor
- They found school boring and meaningless and would smoke, drink and disrupt classes and they resisted the hidden curriculum
- Willis notes the similarity between the lads anti school counter culture and the culture of male manual workers, as both see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior
- However it also explains why the lads counter culture of resistance to school helps them to slot into working class jobs for example their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs because of their failure to gain qualifications
22
Q
What is evaluation of Marxist?
A
- Post Modernist criticize B and G correspondence principle on the grounds that todays economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labor force from the one described by Marxist. And they argue that today schools reproduce diversity not inequality
- B and G assume that pupils have no free will and passively accept their position and they fail to explain why many pupils reject the school’s values
- Critics of Willis view argue that he sees as working class heroes despite their anti social behavior and sexist attitudes and his study is small scale
- PM such as Morrow and Torres argue society is now more diverse and they see non class inequalities such as ethnicity and gender as equally important. They argue that sociologists must now show how the education system reproduces all kinds of inequality
