Education

• Consensus theories of education

  Theories that suggest the education system functions to maintain social order and stability
• Consensus theories of education covered

  • Durkheim's views
  • Parsons' views
  • Davis and Moore's views
  • New Right views
• Durkheim's views on the functions of education


  • Secondary socialisation
  • Role allocation
  • Providing necessary skills for the economy
• Norms


  Behaviour and attitudes which are considered normal
• Values


  Things that people consider important to them
• Mechanical solidarity


  People have face-to-face contact with each other and have very little contact with people in other parts of the country or the world
• Organic solidarity


  A more complex, large-scale society where people have to learn the shared values of broader society
• How Durkheim saw education performing secondary socialisation

  • Instilling social solidarity
  • Teaching social rules and how to abide by them
  • Teaching specialist skills
• Marxists question where the shared values come from and whose interests they serve
• Hargreaves argued the education system encourages individualism and competition rather than social solidarity and shared values
• Meritocracy


  A society where jobs and pay are allocated based on an individual's talent and achievements rather than social status
• Parsons' views on the functions of education

  • Facilitating role allocation
  • Ensuring a meritocratic society
• Marxists criticise the functionalist view of role allocation and "sifting and sorting" as the myth of meritocracy
• Davis and Moore's views on the functions of education

  • Social stratification (inequality) is essential to facilitate meritocracy
  • The most important jobs that need the most able and determined people bring the most rewards
• Marxists argue that social stratification means the education system fails to grade people by their ability or effort, and instead reproduces inequality
• New Right views on the functions of education


  • Education needs to be more competitive, about choice and winning/losing, and less about collaboration and fairness
  • Education should impart shared values set by parents, not left-wing local authorities
• The problem with excessive competition in education is that the losers are children
• Functionalists are particularly interested in the role of education in society. They see one key function of education as being secondary socialisation: teaching children the norms and values of wider society
• Other sociologists, such as Marxists, argue that functionalists ignore the negative effects of education for some and that education might not work in the interests of the whole of society, but just of some powerful groups
• Ideological state apparatus (Althusser)


  Institutions that spread bourgeois ideology and ensure that the proletariat is in a state of false class consciousness
• Schools and educational institutions (Althusser)


  Part of the ideological state apparatus that prepare working-class pupils to accept a life of exploitation
• Althusser argued that the bourgeoisie maintain power by using both repressive state apparatus (coercive power like the police and the army) and ideological state apparatus
• Formal curriculum (Althusser)


  • Decisions about what is taught and what is not taught impact the nature of the value consensus that the education system produces
• Hidden curriculum (Althusser)


  • Other aspects of school life that teach hierarchy, respect for authority, obeying the rules
• Correspondence principle (Bowles and Gintis)


  The correspondence between school and the workplace, where both involve uniforms, strict time-keeping, hierarchy, rewards, punishments, etc. to prepare pupils for life in the capitalist system and prevent rebellion or revolution
• Aspects of education that correspond to the workplace under capitalism (Bowles and Gintis)


  • Hierarchy
  • Rewards and sanctions
  • Passive and docile
  • Motivation
  • Fragmentation
• Bowles and Gintis argued that the education system works directly in the interests of the capitalist system and the ruling class, and its principal purpose is to produce the workforce
• Anti-school subculture (Willis)


  The culture of "having a laff" and entertaining themselves which prepares working-class "lads" for the tedium of work, rather than developing the qualities of subservience and passivity
• For Willis, the outcome is the same: an easily exploitable workforce which serves the interests of capitalism
• Cultural capital (Bourdieu)


  Knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and cultural experiences that ensure the children of middle-class or wealthier parents succeed in education (and society)
• Habitus (Bourdieu)


  A culture or worldview that is associated with a social class or social group, deeply embedding habits, skills and ways of behaving and thinking
• Pierre Bourdieu


  A sociologist influenced by Marxist ideas
• Cultural assets


  Things that give the wealthy power, in addition to money
• Children of middle-class or wealthier parents


  • They are likely to have knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and cultural experiences that ensure they succeed in education (and society)
• Schools assess cultural capital rather than what has been learnt in school


  Teachers perceive cultural capital as intelligence, and this in turn leads to them applying a positive label to the pupils
• Habitus


  A culture or worldview that is associated with a social class or social group
• Cultural capitalmore subtle and deeply-ingrained attributes
• Teachers are often middle class themselves, and have a middle-class habitus, so they find it easier to relate to pupils who are similar</b>
• Aspects of a working-class habitus can be interpreted negatively or unconsciously associated with being less academic or intelligent
• Elaborate language code


  The language code used by teachers, textbooks, exam papers and middle-class pupils