The role of education in society: a summary

?
View mindmap
  • The role of education in society
    • The functionalist perspective
      • Emile Durkheim (1903): the two main functions of education are creating social solidarity and teaching specialist skills
      • Talcott Parsons (1961): school is the 'focal socialising agency' in modern society, acting as a bridge between the family and wider society, because both are based on meritocratic principles
      • Criticisms
        • The Wolf review of education (2011) claims that high-quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 y/o are on courses that do not lead to HE or good jobs
        • Melvin Tumin (1953): Davis and Moore put forward a circular argument
        • Dennis Wrong (1961): has 'over-socialised' view of people as mere puppets of society
    • The New Right perspective
      • Jon Chubb and Terry Moe (1990): state-run education in the US has failed because it has not created equal opportunity, is inefficient and is not answerable to paying consumers like private schools are
    • The Marxist perspective
      • Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976): education's role in society is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
      • Phil Cohen (1984): youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers not genuine job skills, but rather the attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labor force
      • Paul Willis' (1977) study shows that W/C pupils can resist such attempts to indoctrinate them (the lads' counter culture)
  • Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1945): education is a device for selection and role allocation
    • Peter Blau and Oris Duncan (1978): a modern economy depends for its prosperity on using its human capital
    • The functionalist perspective
      • Emile Durkheim (1903): the two main functions of education are creating social solidarity and teaching specialist skills
      • Talcott Parsons (1961): school is the 'focal socialising agency' in modern society, acting as a bridge between the family and wider society, because both are based on meritocratic principles
      • Criticisms
        • The Wolf review of education (2011) claims that high-quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 y/o are on courses that do not lead to HE or good jobs
        • Melvin Tumin (1953): Davis and Moore put forward a circular argument
        • Dennis Wrong (1961): has 'over-socialised' view of people as mere puppets of society
  • Two roles for the state: to impose a framework on schools within which they have to compete, and to ensure that schools transmit a shared culture
    • Criticisms
      • Gerwitz (1995) and Ball (1994): competition between schools benefits the M/C who can use their capital to access more desirable schools
      • Marxists: education does not impose a shared national culture but imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class and devalues the culture of the W/C and EM's
  • Criticisms
    • Raymond Morrow and Carlos Torres (1998): takes a 'class first' approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores all other kinds
    • Madeleine McDonald (1980): ignores the fact that schools reproduce not only capitalism, but patriarchy too
      • Angela McRobbie (1978): girls are largely missing from Willis' study
    • The Marxist perspective
      • Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976): education's role in society is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
      • Phil Cohen (1984): youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers not genuine job skills, but rather the attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labor force
      • Paul Willis' (1977) study shows that W/C pupils can resist such attempts to indoctrinate them (the lads' counter culture)

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Sociology resources:

See all Sociology resources »See all Education resources »