Functionalist view on education

• Durkheim

  specialist skills -

  • education teaches skill to prepare students for work and create ideal workers for the complex division of labour
  • education does this by setting up the knowledge and skill that is required via the national curriculum Which helps to prepare students for future employment
• specialist skills evaluation -

  • high levels of unemployment in the uk despite having qualifications-skills doesn’t always guarantee employment
  • feminist argue that teaching specialist skills has created hierarchies which has led girl down certain employment routes
• Durkheim

  social solidarity-

  • believes that education promotes shared norms and values to create social solidarity -a feeling of belonging
  • it transmits society’s culture through the overt curriculum and through the hidden curriculum
  • school is society in a miniature- the child learns to interact and follow a fixed set of rules
• social solidarity evaluation-

  • ball suggested that the British curriculum is guilty of little englndism which dismisses ethnic minorities
  • Marxists argue that the benefits do not serve the masses but the ruling classes as it is there literature that is been learnt and values been passed on
• parsons

  secondary socialisation -

  • education acts as a bridge between family and wider society which is necessary as both institutions operate differently
  • family- particulartistic standards and ascribed status
  • school- universalistic standards ,achieved status argues that it creates a value consensus
  • assessments are used in schools to allow students to achieve their status
• secondary socialisation evaluations -

  • post modernists -disagree with universalistic standards as the believe that society is fragmented and people choose their own values
• Davis and Moore

  role allocation-

  • argues that education system shifts and sets people according to their abilities
  • high and low status knowledge
  • they say that inequality is needed as it drives competition and society needs this in order to have the most skilled workforce
• role allocation evaluation-

  • class dive races in education suggests that not everyone gets the same chance , middle class get better jobs ,reproduce and so on