Role of Education Perspectives

• Functionalist perspective on education:

  • positive outlook
  • society based on "building blocks"
  • meritocratic
  • social solidarity
  • role allocation
• Durkheim: Social Solidarity

  Without social solidarity life and competition = impossible as individuals pursue selfish desires

  • education system transmits society's culture

  e.g. shared beliefs and heritage

  • "society in a miniature" preparing for wider society

  e.g. interacting with others according to impersonal rules
• Durkheim: Specialist Skills

  • complex division of labour involves cooperation of many specialists
  • necessary knowledge and skills to perform roles
  • necessary to play their role in the division of labour
• Parsons: Meritocracy

  School = "focal socialising agency" acting as bridge between the family and wider society

  • needed as they operate on different principles
  • in family child judged by particularistic standards BUT school and wider society = same universalistic and impersonal standards
  • meritocratic principles - equal opportunity and achieve awards through effort + ability
• Davis and Moore: Role Allocation

  School function = selecting and allocating pupils future work roles - and matching them to the best suited job

  • most important roles filled by most talented - e.g. surgeon and pilot
  • education "sifts and sorts" = most able gain highest qualifications
• EVALUTION: Functionalist Perspective

  • Wolf review of vocational education (2011) - high quality apprenticeships are rare (a third of 16 - 19yr old's on courses that don't lead to high education
  • Melvin Tumin: criticises D + M for circular argument
  • Dennis Wrong (interactionalist): have "over-socialised view" of people as puppets - implies pupils passively accept and don't reject school values
  • Neoliberal + New Right: education system fails to prepare pupils adequately for work
• New Right believe that state can't meet people's needs and should meet them through the free market
• New Right

  • believe education system isn't achieving goals due to being run by the state
  • argues state education system is "one size fits all" approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs
  • local consumers have no say as state systems are unresponsive + inefficient

  Solution = marketisation of education

  • competition between schools empowers consumers, bringing greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools - meets needs of local consumers
• According to the New Right education is:

  1. schools waste money/poor results
  2. not answerable to consumers
  3. low standards of achievement
  4. less prosperous economy
• Chubb and Moe: Consumer Choice

  Argue state-run education failed due to:

  • not creating equal opportunity + failed needs of disadvantaged groups
  • inefficient as it fails to produce skills needed by the economy
  • private schools = higher quality education answerable to paying consumers
• Chubb and Moe: their research

  Evidence showed pupils for low-income families consistently do 5% better in private than state

  • believe market system with consumer control, allows them to shape schools for their own needs - improving equality and efficiency
• Chubb and Moe: propose system where family is given vouchers to buy education from school of choice

  • forcing schools to become more responsive to parents' wishes

  e.g. schools competing to "attract customers" by improving their "product"
• Two roles for the state

  1. state imposes a framework where schools compete - e.g. Ofsted reports and league tables

  • state gives parents information to make informed choice in school

  
  

  2. school transmits shared culture, imposing National Curriculum - ensures schools socialise pupils into single cultural/heritage
• EVALUATION of the New Right perspective:

  • Ball + Gerwitz - competition benefits middle class who use cultural and economic capital to gain access to desirable schools
  • Marxists - education doesn't impose shared national culture + devaluate culture of working class and ethnic minority groups
  • some argue cause of low educational standards = social inequality + inadequate funding
• Marxist perspective on education

  • bourgeoise are minority class - own means of production + make profits by exploiting labour of proletariats
  • work under capitalism = poorly pay, alienation + unsatisfying BUT workers have no control - creates potential for class conflict
• Althusser: Ideologies

  see state as how capitalist ruling class maintain dominant position to keep bourgeoise in power
• Repressive state apparatuses (RSA) maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force, using physical coercion to repress the working class.
• Ideological state apparatuses (ISA) maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people's ideas, values, and beliefs, through institutions such as religion, media, and education system.
• Education reproduces class inequalities by transmitting from generation to generation.
• Education legitimises class inequalities, producing ideologies, suggesting that inequality is inevitable and those in a subordinate position deserve their position.
• myth of meritocracy - legitimises class inequalities, producing ideologies to justify why it's fair

  meritocracy doesn't exist: high income determines on family + class background NOT ability/achievement

  • justify privileges of higher classes "achieving status" so we legitimise inequality
  • justifies poverty "poor people are dumb" - blaming on individual than capitalism
• Bowles and Gintis: schooling in capitalist America

  Capitalism requires workforce suited to their roles as alienated, exploited workers

  • reproduce obedient workforce that accept inequality
  • believe education stunts + distorts students' development

  their research - concluded school rewards personality traits for compliant workers
• correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum

  • close parallels with schooling + work in capitalist society (schools mirror workforce)
  • operates through hidden curriculum prepares working class pupils for role as exploited workers + reproducing capitalist needs
• Willis: Learning to Labour

  Studied counter-school culture of "the lads" a group of 12 WC boys - transition from school to work

  • viewed school as boring + meaningless: so they disrupted classes and truanted

  Reject schools' meritocratic ideology

  • see manual work as superior + intellectual as inferior and effeminate
• Willis: Learning to Labour

  Find ways of amusing themselves and good at finding diversions to cope with unskilled labour

  • acts of rebellions guarantee ended up in unskilled jobs + failure to gain qualification

  IRONIC - resisting school's ideology ensures they are destined for unskilled work

  CAPITALISM NEEDS SOMEONE TO PERFORM
• EVALUTATION of Marxist approaches

  Morrow + Torres - see non-class inequalities as equally important

  • education reproduces + legitimises all forms of inequality - inter-related
  • Willis' account romanticisies lads as WC heroes despite anti-social behaviours and sexist attitudes
  • B+G take a determinist view - assume pupils have no free will + passively accept doctrination