Functionalist view

• Durkheim - social solidarity

  • The education system creates social solidarity by transmitting society's culture - shared beliefs and values - through the overt and hidden curriculum
  • Eg. teaching the country's history instils shared heritage within children
  • School is society in minature and prepares a child to interact with members of society
• Durkheim - specialist skills

  • Individuals must learn specialist skills to take place within a highly complex division of labour
  • Co-operating to produce items and promotes social solidarity
• Criticisms of Durkheim

  • Marxists argue that educational institutions transmit a dominant culture which serves interest of ruling class only
  • Transmission of norms and values not always successful - Willis Learning to Labour
  • High quality apprenticeships are rare to get for specialist skills - Wolf Review of Vocational Education (2011)
• Parsons - universalistic values

  • School is a bridge between family and wider society
  • Ascribed status and particularistic standards = family
  • Achieved status and universalistic standards = wider society
  • Education is meritocratic
  • Value of achievement
  • Value of equality of opportunity for students
• Criticisms of Parsons

  • Dennis Wrong argues functionalists wrongly imply pupils passively accept all they are taught and never reject school values
  • Assumes all Western education is meritocratic and ignores social class, gender and ethnicity as impacting factors
• Davis and Moore - role allocation

  • Education system sifts and sorts based on ability
  • Most talented gain high qualifications leading to better jobs with higher rewards
  • Leads to inequality but is natural and desirable for capitalism as there is a limited amount of talent
  • Talented are persuaded to make a sacrifice (staying on in education) for great rewards (higher salaries)
• Criticisms of Davis and Moore

  • Intelligence and ability only have a limited influence on educational achievement - Bourdieu says increased cultural capital enables higher qualifications
  • Bowles and Gintis say meritocracy is a myth and only m/c children obtain higher qualifications
  • Inequality in society is legitimated and made to appear fair
• New Right perspective

  • More political than sociological
  • Recent conservative view and influences educational policy
  • Agree with functionalists that education should run on meritocracy
  • Older industrial societies are in decline as a result of global competition
• • New Right does not believe the state can run an efficient education system
  • Too much state control of education has resulted in inefficiency, national economic decline and a lack of personal and business initiative
  • Culture of welfare dependency has developed
  • Education inevitably ends up as 'one size fits all' and does not meet individual needs
  • State run schools are not accountable to those who use them - students, parents and employers. Poor results with lower standards and a less qualified workforce
• The solution - marketisation

  • Make schools more responsive to their 'consumers'
  • Introduction of market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers (schools)
  • Forces schools to respond to the demands of 'consumers'
  • A school's survival depends on it's ability to raise the achievement levels of its students
• Chubb and Moe - giving the consumer choice

  • Compared achievement of 60,000 students from low income families in 1015 state and private high schools in the US
  • Data shows low income family students do 5% better in private schools. This suggests that state education is not meritocratic
  • State education fails to create equal opportunity as it does not respond to students needs
  • Private schools produce higher quality education because they are answerable to paying consumers - parents
• Criticisms of Chubb and Moe

  • Low standards in some state schools are a result of inadequate funding rather than state control of education
  • Gerwitz argues that competition between schools benefits the m/c who can get their children into more desirable schools
  • Marxists argue that education imposes the culture of a ruling class, not a shared culture or 'national identity' as the New Right claim