Education

• Education Key Thinkers

  • Functionalism
  • Parsons
  • Davis and Moore
  • New Right (Chubb and Moe)
  • Marxism (Althusser, Bowles and Gintis)
  • Bourdieu
  • Willis
  • Feminism (Browne and Ross, Sharpe, Weiner)
  • Labelling/social action (Rosenthal and Jacobsen, Ball, Lacey, Sewell, Rutter)
  • Postmodernism (Usher, Thompson)
• Functionalism


  • Education teaches specialist skills and encourages social solidarity
• Parsons


  • Education provides secondary socialisation, teaches universalistic standards and is meritocratic. School is society in miniature.
• Davis and Moore


  • Education sifts and sorts pupils into appropriate jobs, role allocation
• New Right (Chubb and Moe)

  • Marketisation of education is best as it creates a paying customer mentality
• Marxism (Althusser)


  • Education is an ideological state apparatus that reproduces and legitimates capitalism
• Marxism (Bowles and Gintis)


  • Correspondence principle – school mirrors work e.g. hierarchy, following rules etc.
• Bourdieu


  • The middle class habitus is valued over the working class habitus
• Willis


  • Working class lads "learn to labour" at school as education fails them and they form anti-school subcultures
• Feminism (Browne and Ross)


  • Boys and girls see certain tasks and activities as part of their "gender domain"
• Feminism (Sharpe)


  • Girls' aspirations changed from the 70s to the 90s, they now aspire to a career/education
• Feminism (Weiner)


  • The curriculum is a "woman free zone"
• Labelling/social action (Rosenthal and Jacobsen)


  • Students who are labelled positively by teachers who believe they are "spurters" will have a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Labelling/social action (Ball, Lacey)

  • Setting and streaming encourages the formation of pupil subcultures // differentiation and polarisation
• Labelling/social action (Sewell)


  • Black male pupils respond in different ways to negative labelling – rebels, conformists, retreatists, innovators (subcultural responses)
• Labelling/social action (Rutter)


  • Fifteen Thousand Hours study – good teaching can make a difference to student outcomes
• Postmodernism (Usher)


  • Education needs to be lifelong and flexible
• Postmodernism (Thompson)


  • Education needs to be customised, a "one-size-fits-all" approach is outdated
• Poor diet and health among working class students

  Educational underachievement
• Many students eligible for FSM

  Reject them due to stigma
• Overcrowding and lack of study space in the home along with poor living conditions (cold, damp, illness) etc.

  Disadvantages working class students
• Selection by mortgage


  Gives middle class students the advantage of living nearer to better school
• Education has hidden costs e.g. uniform, books, trips etc.

  Disadvantages working class students
• Cultural capital


  Intellectual development before school
• Parental attitudes and education

  Feinstein
• Blaming the parents' cultural deprivation is a victim blaming approach
• Cultural deprivation is a myth
• Working class subcultural values

  Collectivism, immediate gratification, present-time orientation, fatalism
• Middle class have better cultural and social capital

  Children access educational books/TV giving them more cultural capital
• Cultural deprivation is a myth and victim blaming
• Compensatory education policies help extent but cannot overcome deep inequality/poverty
• Marketisation and parental choice

  Only benefits the middle-class parents/students
• Schools normalise the underachievement of the working class so have low expectations
• Middle class students fit the "ideal pupil" identity
• Students who are labelled as "spurters" go on to have a self-fulfilling prophecy
• Setting and streaming based on notions of ability
• 1. C economy and educational triage
• Polarisation and differentiation lead to subcultures
• Middle class habitus/culture better fits with that of the school
• Uniforms/rules are felt as symbolic violence, Nike identities are a response