Y12 M2

• Durkheims two functions?

  • Specialist skills and knowledge
  • Maintaining social solidarity
• Examples of maintaining social solidarity in schools?

  • Personal development/awareness curriculum
  • Adaptation - adapt to work environment (timetables)
  • Goal attainment
  • Integration - encourages teamwork
  • Latent Pattern Maintenance - keep improving and changing
• The hidden curriculum?

  Everything not on the curriculum that helps to maintain social solidarity
• Why do functionalists believe education should teach specialist skills?

  • We all need different skills to bring to the workplace
  • Different groups provide different functions for the smooth running of society
  • Enables individuals to take their place in the complex division of labour in modern societies
• What type of training do functionalists advocate?

  Vocational
• What does Parsons see education as?

  A bridge between home and work

  A meritocracy
• Ascribed status?

  An inherited status not reliant on merit (eg race)
• Achieved status?

  A status based on merit eg exam results
• Particularistic standards?

  Rules that apply only to specific cases (particular situations) eg girls held to different standards in patriarchal communities
• Universal standards?

  The same standards and expectations are held to everyone
• Who theorised role allocation?

  Davis and Moore
• What is role allocation?

  • Inequality is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people
  • Competition means higher rewards for important roles (surgeons, pilots etc)
  • Education sorts us according to ability, most able gain higher qualifications and positions
• Complex division of labour?

  The production of a single item usually involves the cooperation of many different specialists
• How does the complex division of labour influence education for functionalists?

  This cooperation promotes social solidarity but for it to be successful each person must have the necessary specialist knowledge and skills to perform their role
• Criticisms of functionalist theory?

  • Imposes values of 'ruling class' rather than shared values of society
  • Curriculum is ethnocentric - focuses on own society
  • Certain groups underachieve (gender, ethnic, class) so its not meritocratic
  • Not enough links with work - subjects too theoretical so it doesn't prepare for the workplace
• Who suggested Human Capital and what does this mean?

  Blau and Duncan - a modern economy depends on human capital for its prosperity, the education system's meritocracy helps this through role allocation
• What type of theory is Functionalism?

  Old, consensus, structural
• How do interactionists criticise Functionalist views on education?

  They suggest functionalists have an 'oversocialised' view of people as puppets in society - it wrongly implies all students are taught and never reject school values
• Why do Chubb and Moe suggest US state-run education is a failure?

  • Not equal opportunity created, failed the needs of disadvantaged groups
  • Inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with skills needed by economy
  • Private schools deliver higher quality education
• How do Chubb and Moe propose fixing the problems in the education system?

  Marketisation into state education through a voucher system

  • In theory, would prevent 'cream-skimming' or 'salt shifting'
• What does the New Right propose are the roles of the state in education?

  • The state imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete (Ofsted reports, League tables)
  • The state ensures schools transmit a shared culture (national curriculum
• What do the New Right suggest are problems in education?

  • the state imposes their view of what kind of schools we should have
  • 'one size fits all' approach disregards local needs
  • local consumers - parents, students, employers - have no say so schools do not respond to them
• What do the New Right advocate for in education?

  Marketisation

  Competition and 'supply and demand' will bring greater power to consumers
• Where do functionalists and the new right agree?

  • Some people are more naturally talented than others
  • Education should be run on meritocratic principles of competition
  • Education should socialise pupils into shared values and provide a sense of national identity
• What do Marxists suggest is the role of education?

  Preventing revolution and maintaining capitalism

  • Reproduces class inequality (fails the working class in each generation)
  • Legitimates class inequality (makes people accept their inferior place in society as it is inevitable)
• What does Althusser suggest education functions as?

  An ideological state apparatus
• Who do Bowles and Gintis suggest school rewards?

  Those with personality traits of submissive workers
• What does Cohen suggest about Youth Training Schemes?

  They serve capitalism by teaching young workers the attitude needed in a submissive labour force instead of genuine skills. It lowers aspirations so the proletariat accept low paid work.
• What do Bowles and Gintis suggest is the role of education?

  To reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.

  Students who showed creativity and independence recieved low grades, those who showed obedience/discipline tend to get higher
• The idea that school mimics the workplace so students learn what the bourgeoisie want and to obey is called what?

  The correspondence principle
• What did Paul Willis study?

  12 working class boys in the 70s, from their last 18 months in school to their first few months in work
• What were Willis' main findings?

  He found working-class pupils were not brainwashed/passively going along with capitalist exploitation, rather were aware but ended up in the same place due to external influences (eg parental attitudes) or lack of a better option. They ACTIVELY rejected school and education
• How does Willis differ from Bowles and Gintis?

  Bowles and Gintis are classical, thinking the working-class are conditioned to be submissive to capitalism
• One issue with Willis' study?

  A small study sample of 12, all were white