Theories on Education

• When analysing markets, a range of assumptions are made about the rationality of economic agents involved in the transactions
• The Wealth of Nations was written

  1776
• Rational


  (in classical economic theory) economic agents are able to consider the outcome of their choices and recognise the net benefits of each one
• Rational agents will select the choice which presents the highest benefits
• Consumers act rationally by

  Maximising their utility
• Producers act rationally by


  Selling goods/services in a way that maximises their profits
• Workers act rationally by


  Balancing welfare at work with consideration of both pay and benefits
• Governments act rationally by

  Placing the interests of the people they serve first in order to maximise their welfare
• Groups assumed to act rationally

  • Consumers
  • Producers
  • Workers
  • Governments
• Rationality in classical economic theory is a flawed assumption as people usually don't act rationally
• Marginal utility

  The additional utility (satisfaction) gained from the consumption of an additional product
• If you add up marginal utility for each unit you get total utility
• right hello again and uh welcome to the seventh of these uh gcc revision videos today what we're going to be looking at is the role of education in society and specifically theoretical views on the role of education
• if you haven't tuned in before then go back and have a look at some of the previous videos i've done six of them uh the first one was like on an introduction to sociology and then the rest of them second third fourth fifth sixth have all been on the family
• today we're looking at uh theories on the role of education this one is going to take you through uh the functionalist view the marxist view the feminist view and then also at the end what we're going to do is have a bit of a look at a very typical essay that you might get given on this in the gcse exam for education it would be a 15 mark essay
• if you don't study the education course this is still going to be relevant for you because all of the theories they don't change they say what they say and pretty much every example is going to ask you about theoretical views on education