The role of education in society

• Neoliberalism

  New right perspective of education
• Neoliberal perspective


  • The state should not provide education
  • Schools must become more like private businesses
  • Empower parents to use competition between schools to drive up standards
• The state

  Cannot meet peoples needs
• Neoliberal perspective

  • Favour marketisation
• Beliefs shared by new right and functionalists

  • Some people are naturally more able than others
  • Favour meritocracy
  • Believe education should provide shared norms and identity
• The state

  Disregards local needs
• Neoliberal solution

  1. Create an education market

  2. Competition between schools

  3. Empower consumers

  4. Bring greater efficiency to schools
• Chubb and Moe - consumer choice

  • They argue that state run education has failed because: it has not created equality and has failed disadvantaged groups, it fails to provide children with the right skills, and private schools produce better grades because they are answerable;e to the consumers (parents).
  • They call for an education market where families are given a voucher to spend on buying education from schools. For schools to receive money, they’ll have to adjust to consumer wishes. Schools would have to compete to attract consumers by improving schools. 
• The two roles of the state

  1. The state, according to the new right has two functions.
  2. The state imposes a framework for schools to compete, ofsted inspections and league tables give information to parents to allow them to decide between schools. 
  3. The state ensures a shared culture is transmitted through the national curriculum. 
• New right Evaluation

  • Competition between schools can only be utilised by parents with a high economic and cultural capital.
  • They ignore inequality as a cause of low standards within state schools.
  • The shared culture is actually imposing a dominant ethnocentric culture.
• Marxism - Althusser - the ideological state apparatus

  • The state consists of two apparatuses that keep the bourgeoisie ion power. 
  • The repressive state apparatuses - maintain the bourgeoisie through force and threat, e.g the police when necessary have the capability to become violent.
  • The ideological state apparatuses - maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie’s through controlling peoples beliefs, e.g through the education system.
  • Althusser argues that the education system legitimates and reproduces class inequalities.
• Bowles and Gintis

  • Capitalism requires workers who will accept their hard work being exploited. 
  • Schools reward personality traits such as submissive and compliant workers. 
  • Schools produce obedient and docile workers.
• The correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum

  • Bowles and Gintis found close parallels between the workplace and schools.
  • They are both hierarchies, in which pupils and workers are at the bottom. 
  • This is the correspondence principle, where workers are used to their mistreatment as they experienced it in schools.
  • The hidden curriculum indirectly teaches students to accept their role as exploited workers in the future. They are thought to blindly accept authority. 
• Willis

  • Willis found that pupils do not always accept the authority and may resist indoctrination.
  • Willis studied the counter culture of 12 ladies. They are scornful of corn for its boys. 
  • Their defiance is ways of resisting indoctrination. They find school boring and meaningless. The lads identify with manual labour.
  • Despite their resistance, they fit perfectly into tedious manual labour jobs that reinforce capitalism. They amuse themselves at school and distract themselves, perfect for coping with a tedious job.
• Marxist Evaluation

  • Postmodernists argue that school needs a postfordist approach and is reproducing diversity.
  • Willis’ study was small and unrepresentative.
  • They ignore other factors such as gender and ethnicity.
• Durkheim - Social solidarity and specialist skills

  • the education system transmits societys culture, creating social solidarity. example - teaching a countries history promotes a shared heritage.
  • school also acts to prepare children for the wider society.
  • education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills they need to fulfil their later role in society.
• parsons - meritocracy

  school is the “focal socialising agency”. acting as the bridge between the family and wider society.

  children are judged by particularisation standards at home - standards that only apply to that one individual.

  children are judged by universalistic standards in schools - the same standards apply to everyone.
• Davis and Moore - role allocation

  inequality is necessary to ensure that the most able individuals have the most important jobs.

  society offers higher rewards for the more important jobs, giving people an incentive to work for the better jobs.

  education helps sift and sort the most able students.
• evaluation of the functionalist perspective

  Tumin - how do we know which jobs are more important than others?

  education only transmits an obedient culture to allow for inequalities to be reproduced

  functionalists wrongly imply that everyone is passive in regards to the transmission of a shared culture.