Education

• Durkheim (1903)

  • education system transmits norms and values into students, this promotes social solidarity and value consensus.
• Durkheim

  • schools function as mini society, students work and live together while following rules.
  • it teaches children to respect authority which will decrease deviance and promote value consensus.
• Durkheim -

  • skills are taught which are needed for a wide, complex and specialised labour force, called the Complex Division of Labour.
  • Specialist skills are needed in order to achieve the complex division of labour. They also contribute to societies overall efficiency.
• Durkheim - EVALUATION

  • Society is diverse, there is not one set of universalistic norms and values that everyone follows.
  • (marxist criticism)- education serves as a tool to the ruling class to pass on the ruling class ideology via the hidden curriculum . education contributes to false class consciousness.
  • Schools encourage individual academic attainment is does not promote social solidarity. It encourages individualism and competition.
• Parsons -

  • education is an agent of socialisation.
  • It is a bridge that links values taught by the family (agent of primary socialisation) to broader societal expectations as individuals interact with more agents of socialisation. E.G. the workplace.
• Parsons -

  • it teaches children the universalistic norms and values of society.
  • which encourages value consensus.
• Parsons -

  • education is based on achieved status rather than ascribed status.
  • it promotes meritocratic principles.
  • status is based off of individual effort and hard work.
• Parsons - EVALUATION

  • education is not meritocratic.
  • material and cultural deprivation. (Bourdieu)
  • Schools transmit the ideologies of the ruling class/patriarchy.
• Davis and Moore -

  • education lays an important role in the wider social stratification system.
  • there is a “need for inequality“ - it is neccesarry for the most hardworking and individuals to be placed into their achdived job and for less individuals to have a lowner status job.
  • stratification allows for role allocation to work efficiently.
• Davis and Moore -

  • the education system is meritocratic
  • there is equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome.
• Davis and Moore -

  • Role allocation -

  individuals get assigned jobs based on their achievements and qualifications. based on achieved status as education is meritocratic.
• Davis and Moore -

  • Sifting and sorting -

  the process of evaluating an individual achievements and skills which leads to role allocation.