Education

• Education as a major social institution


  Education is a major social institution

  ~13% of public spending goes on education

  -       8 Billion a year in 2014

  Schools in Britain go from 4-18

  -       Youth spend ~half awake time in education

  They’re a major agent of secondary socialisation in advanced societies
• Functionalist perspective of education:

  • Concerned with links between education and other social institutions
  • Societal functions of education include:
  • Major agency of socialization
  • Maintains social stability through development of value consensus, social harmony, and social cohesion
  • Prepares young people for adulthood, citizenship, and working life
  • Provides means for improving lives and life chances through upward social mobility
  • Prepares individuals for a rapidly changing society
• Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons are the two most important functionalist writers in education
• Functionalist views of education 


  Passes on society’s culture and builds social solidarity, provides social bridge, developing human capital and a labour force and role allocation
• Functionalists on education - passes on society’s culture and builds social solidarity


  Passes on norms, value and culture of a society.

  Achieved through hidden curriculum and overt curriculum

  Glues people together and builds social solidarity
• Functionalists on education - provides a social bridge

  Durkheim sees schools as ‘society in miniature’, a small-scale version of society as a whole that prepares young people for life in the wider adult society

  Parsons believed Schools built a bridge between ascribed status and particularistic values of the family and achieved status and universalistic values of wider society, which are based off meritocracy
• Functionalists on education - developing human capital and a labour force

  Schultz developed the theory of human capital, which suggests that high levels of spending on education is worthwhile as they develop and justify skills.

  Important factor in a successful economy

  Necessary to provide a trained and qualified labour force which can undertake the wide variety of jobs which have arisen from the specialised division of labour.

  Ensures the best and most qualified people end up in the jobs requiring the greatest skills and responsibilities.
• Functionalists on education - role allocation

  Davis and Moore - It sifts and sorts people to different levels of the job market.

  Most talented end up in most important jobs.

  Grading with exams and streaming fits people into the hierarchy of unequal positions in society.

  In a meritocracy, success in career and wealth is down to educational qualifications, skills and talents.

  Davis and Moore suggest there is an equality of educational opportunity – whoever has ability and puts in effort ends up on top.

  Inequalities are therefore legitimised, those who fail only have themselves to blame
• Criticisms of the functionalist view of education

  • Feminists argue school passes on patriarchal values
  • Ascribed status still impacts jobs, e.g. class, gender
  • Educational qualifications don’t always impact career
  • Social class and other factors impact educational achievement
  • Bowles and Gintis argue social class means there is no equality of educational opportunity
• New right on education - talent


  The new right reflects some similar ideas to functionalism 

  Argue education should be concerned not with promoting inequality but training the workforce, making sure the most able students have their talents developed and recruited into most important jobs.
• New right on education - collective values

  Education should socialise people into collective values and responsible citizenship

  This builds social cohesion and social solidarity to ensure a stable and united society

   
• New right on education - Free market of education

  Chubb and Moe - state education ignores wishes of communities

  They argue a free market of education, with a range of independently managed schools and colleges, shaped by wishes and needs of parents and local communities.

  Competition for students leads to more efficient education, so better value for taxpayer.

  Producing creating a higher quality of education and more skilled workforce - benefits taxpayer

  The new right therefore sees education as like a supermarket, forced to supply cheaper and better quality products.
• Marxists on education - general

  • Education is a form of social control
  • Encourages young people to be conformists
  • Accept social positions
  • Not to do anything to upset current distribution of wealth
  • Marxists emphasis how education reproduces class inequality and passes it on through generations
  • Done by giving the impression that those who fail in education do so due to their own faults
  • Makes people accept the positions they have after schooling, even if due to class
• Althusser (Marxist) - education as an ideological state apparatus


  Reproduction of efficient and obedient labour force, necessary technical skills, ruling class ideology and socialising workers into accepting it (false consciousness)

  Ideological state apparatus persuade working class to accept ruling class ideology and not rebel

  In Western societies, Althusser believes education is the main ideological state apparatus

  Selects people for social classes, develops right attitudes and behavior (e.g. workers to accept exploitation, administrators to rule)

   
• Bourdieu (Marxist) - reproduction of class inequalities 


  • Legitimises class inequality and reproduces class structure.
  • Each social class has a cultural framework called a habitus, ideas on taste picked up through socialisation
  • The dominant class imposes its own habitus during education
  • Educational knowledge is only that of dominant social class.
  • Upper classes have more access to the culture of the dominant class - cultural capital
  • This causes success in the education system.
  • Failure is inevitable and social mobility is impossible
  • Devalues working-class culture 
• Illich and Freire (Marxists) - hegemonic control 


  Schools are repressive institutions which promote conformity

  Encourage students into passive acceptance of existing inequalities

  Doesn’t encourage critical thinking and thinking for self

  They do this by rewarding those who accept the school regime with qualifications and access to higher levels of education and jobs

  Freire sees schools as repressive institutions where learners are conditioned to accept oppressive relations of domination and subordination

  This involves people listening to their superiors
• Althusser, Illich and Freire - similarities 


  Althusser, Illich and Freire suggest the education system helps produce hegemony and hegemonic control of the ruling class

  Convincing the rest of society to accept superiority of ruling class’ ideology and winning their consent to continues social control
• Bowles and Gintis (Marxists) on education 


  Produces a hardworking, submissive workforce through hidden curriculum, correspondence of work and legitimisation of inequality

  Long shadow of work: Work influences organisation of education, e.g. hierarchy and hidden curriculum

  Legitimisation of inequality: Helps maintain system of social inequality and class structure by promoting the idea that there is a meritocracy and failure is from lack of hard work - reducing discontent and opposition to inequality
• Criticisms of Marxists on education

  • Althusser and Bowles and Gintis assume the hidden curriculum is actually influencing students when some don’t passively accept the norms And values
  • Bowles and Gintis and Illich and Freire ignore some influences of the formal curriculum, with some subjectslike sociology promoting critical thinking
  • Deterministic in that they assume people have no ability to make choices and don’t explain why many working class children are successful in education
• Paul WIllis (neo-Marxist) on education


  • Found 12 working-class male pupils he referred to as ‘the lads’ in a school on a housing estate in Wolverhampton
  • Anti-school subculture opposed to aims of school and ‘ear ‘oles’
  • Assigned little value to qualifications
  • Wanted to have a ‘laff’, impress girls and mates and show ‘graft’ for manual labour, with school stopping them from being in the ‘real world’
  • Male lower class jobs shared sexism, lack of respect for authority and having a ‘laff’
  • Schools aren’t preparing a docile workforce - active rejection of school
• Criticisms of functionalism and education

  Too much emphasis on education, as opposed to other social institutions

  Don’t consider ‘dysfunctional’ student reactions to schooling

  Exaggerate the link between education and the economy; vocational education is a direct response to employers who criticised schools for not providing a suitably disciplined and qualified work force
• What is vocational education

  The emphasis on developing human capital by preparing young people for work and making education meet the needs of the economy is known as vocational education.
• Functionalists and new right on vocational education

  Beneficial and boosting the economy
• Marxists on vocational education

  Second rate education for those from working-class backgrounds

  • Concerned with producing passive and conformist workers to support a profit-making capitalist society
  • Middle class enjoy a more academic education leading to well-paid positions of power
• Focuses of vocational education

  • Improves quality of basic skills
  • Ends status division between academic and vocational qualifications, so vocational is within academic learning
  • Produce a more skilled and flexible labour force
  • Better meets needs of employers
  • Provides skills for jobs opened up by globalisation
  • Work experience programs, expansion of post-16 education and training, stronger emphasis on key skills
• Criticisms of vocational education

  Work experience is seen by students as boring and repetitive, little development of skills

  Seen as having lower status than traditional education

  Working-class students are more likely to take vocational qualifications, reinforcing social divisions

  Bradwell suggests secondary schools routinely neglect pupils with vocational aspirations

  Focus on children focused on higher education

   

   
• Interactionists on education

  Micro or small-scale detailed studies of what happens in classrooms

  How students experience education, interpret situations, develop meanings and form identities which influence behavior, through small-scale interactions

  Shown by issues like teacher expectations, streaming, stereotyping and the self-fulfilling prophecy

  How students react to these and how this affects learning and educational progress is what interactionists are concerned with

   
• Interactionists on education - Ethos

  Ethos is the ‘atmosphere’ or climate of a school

  If all pupils, whatever ability, are valued, rewarded and praised

  If theres an emphasis on academic success

  If theres an emphasis on moral/social/spiritual development

  If theres an emphasis on equal opportunity

  Whether parents are encouraged to participate in the child’s learning

  If there is happy, friendly and respectful relationships between students

  If students are encourages to actively participate in school life
• Interactionists on education - the hidden curriculum

  Students learn attitudes and values reflected in the school’s ethos and curriculums by participating in daily life

  • Things underpinning the ethos like punctuality and respect for authority instil values, attitudes and behaviour into society
  • Many parents assess the suitability of a school for their children based on ethos and hidden curriculum and whether these combine to produce high educational standards.
  • High quality teaching
  • High quality disclipline
  • Results in exams

   

   

   

   
• Interactionists on education - pupil identities

  Teacher student interactions influence constructions of positive or negative pupil self-concepts

  • Teachers judge pupils in various ways, interpreting behaviour and forming impressions, contributing to the moulding of student identities
  • This affects educational performance and can have the halo effect or opposite halo effect
  • Can give rise to student responses like teacher-pupil conflicts, classroom confrontations and the formation of school subcultures
• Waterhouse (interactionist) on education 


  Did studies on four primary and secondary schools

  • Teacher labelling as normal or deviant has implications for how teachers interact with students
  • They become a ‘pivotal identity’ – a core identity which teachers use to interpret classroom events
  • When a student with a ‘deviant’ identity is well-behaved, the teacher regards it as a temporary phase
  • Construction by teachers of normal or deviant identities lead to self-fulfilling prophecy – where people act in response to predictions made about their behaviour, making it come true
• Hempel-Jorgensen (interactionist) on teacher stereotypes

  The ‘ideal pupil’ identity includes hard-work, concentrating, listening and conforming to rules

  • Year-long research on twelve primary schools in Hampshire using observation and conversation with children and semi-structured interviews with teachers
  • Pupils share a similar concept of an ‘ideal learner’
  • This influences how they see themselves and affects their education, including motivation etc.
  • These ‘ideal pupil’ and ‘ideal learner’ identities arise out of teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interactions in the schooling process
• Becker and Rist (interactionists) on teacher stereotypes


  • Becker and Rist found that social class of students and the extent to which they conformed to the middle-class expectations of teachers, including clothing, were the most significant factors influencing teacher typing or labelling, occurring also with ethnic background and sex
  • Students (particularly male) from working class backgrounds are seen as lacking motivation and support from home and liable to be disruptive in class. Opposite to middle-class stereotypes This all impacts students’ academic achievements such as streaming and sets.
• Harvey and Slatin on teacher stereotypes

  Study in America

  • Showed photographs of children from different ethnic and social class backgrounds to 96 primary school teachers. 
  • White middle class children were identified as more likely to be successful students
  • Teachers had lowered expectations from those of poorer and non-white backgrounds
• Gillborn on teacher stereotypes

  The ‘ideal pupil stereotype held by teachers also favours those who are white and many teachers do not see black children as likely of academic success

  Teachers denying opportunities to black children

  More likely to be placed in lower teaching groups

  Less likely to be given educational opportunities
• Harley and Sutton on teacher stereotypes

  Suggest the ‘ideal pupil’ stereotype is more likely to be applied to girls rather than boys
• Interactionists on education - the self-fulfilling prophecy


  Teachers assess and evaluate students affects pupil identities and their achievement levels. 

  Pupils gradually bring their own self-image in line with the one the teacher holds of them

  Those labelled as bright/slow will be persuaded to continue their patterns

  They will doubt themselves and alter their effort to suit their vision of themself
• Rosenthal and Jacobson on self-fulfilling prophecy


  • In California
  • Randomly chosen group of students whom teachers were told were bright and could be expected to make great progress, even thought they were no different from other students in terms of ability
  • They did in fact make greater progress
• Harley and Sutton on self—fulfilling prophecy


  Gender, as well as ethnicity and class, affects self-fulfilling prophecies

  140 children in three Kent primary schools, children assigned to two groups,  first group told boys don’t perform as well as girls, other was not

  Then tested in maths + English

  Boys in group 1 performed significantly worse than girls, girls similar in both

  Boys’ relatively poor educational performance nationally can be partly explained by negative gender stereotypes, e.g. those held by teachers and wider society using phrases like ‘silly boy’, ‘school boy pranks’
• Banding

  Used in 2 ways

  To describe the situation which comprehensive schools try to ensure their intakes have a spread of pupils drawn from all bands of ability

  Used as an alternative word for streaming