Education Perspectives

1)Passing on culture and building social solidarity - hidden curriculum and socialisation promote value consensus.

2)A bridge between particularistic values + ascribed status and universalistic values and achieved status of advanced society through secondary socialisation.

3)Human capital - Schultz (1971) theory claims high levels of spending on education is justified as it develops knowledge and skills to develop a specialised division of labour and a qualified labour force. 

4)Allocating roles in a meritocratic society and legitimising social inequality - Davis and Moore (1967) suggest there is equality of educational opportunity.

-Marxists argue schooling passes on the shared values of the dominant class.

-Feminists argue school disadvantages girls and women by passing on patriarchal views.

-Society is not based on universalistic values - inherited wealth and social characteristics affect highest positions.

-Marxists argue education reproduces the inequalitites existing outside of school.

-Educational qualifications and the jobs people eventually get have a weake relationships. Employers argue that school often does not produce well-dosciplined or qualified workforce.

-Education is not meritocratic - social class, gender and ethnicity are still barriers to success in education. 

-Functionalists exaggerate education's role and ignore wider influences like family and the media.  

The New Right is similar to functionalists:

-Education should be concerned with training the workforce.

-Socialise young people into collective values and responsible citizenship. Social cohesion. 

-Mst important jobs go to most qualified.

Chubb and Moe:

An education system controlled by state and local authorities is not the best way to achieve NR aims.

There should be a free market in educaiton, with range of different types of independently managed schools run like private businesses. 

Competition leads to better quality schools - Marketisation widens parental choice. 

Education acts as a means of social control. The education system reproduces class inequality so it fails the working class in each generation. It also legitimates class inequality by making people accept their inevitably inferior place in society.

Louis Althusser (1971):

To reproduce an efficient workforce the necessary technical skills and the ruling class ideology must be reproduced, as well as false conciousness.

RSA - Maintains dominance by force or threat e.g. police, army and cars.

ISA - Controls people's ideas and values and beliefs e.g. education system, religion and media.

-Althusser was called an 'armchair theorist' as he didn't actually carry out empirical research, he was simply expressing an opinion based on his beliefs. 

Bordieu (1977):

-The culture of education is the culture of the dominant class. Workig-class have less cultural capital, making it harder to success.

-Legitimises and reproduces class inequality

Illich and Freire (1995 + 1996):

-Schools are repressive and promote conformity into passive acceptance of inequality.

-illich suggests deschooling.

-Schools reqard those who accept the regime and exclude those who dont.

-The education system helps produce the hegemony of the ruling class. 

Bowles and Gintis:

-Correspondence principle suggests hidden curriculum creates similarities between school and work. e.g. preparation for future exploitation and submission to authoritive figure.

-Meritocracy is a myth that promotes the idea failure is due to lack of hard work, rather than class. 

-Privileges and responsibilities for sixth formers teachers respect for elders and superiors/managers.

-Assemblies show respect for religious beliefs and dominant moral values

-Rules, rewards and detentions ensure confromity to rules and laws

-Males and females different dress codes - Conform to gender stereotypes.

-Competition and testing - Workers competing for promotions and wages

-Lack of control - lack of power as a worker

-Streams and bands - accepting different levels of the job

-Seperate subjects - Division of labour 

-Hierarchy and departments - Accepting position - conformity to authority

• In modern society the education system has replaced the church as the main agency for ideological control. 
• Schools prepare pupils to accept future exploitation.
• Transmit an ideology that states capitalism is just and reasonable.
• Ideological control is the most effective way for the ruling class to maintain power.

Paul Willis

-Marxist interactionist.

-Recognises schools don;t provide an obedient workforce and disruption and challenge.

-Studied 12 working-class 'lads' in the 1970s. They developed an anti-school subculture that is considered themselves about 'ear'oles' who conform to become docile and subservient. Focused on 'having a laff' This contradicts Althusser and Bowles and Gintis. Working class sometimeschose to fail and get semi-skilled work for money. 

• Lack of detailed and empirical research - assume that the hidden curriculum is influencing people.
• Illich and Freire - pupils often have little regard for teachers authority.
• Marxist disagree w/ eachother - e.g. Bowles and Gintis and Willis.
• Out of date. 
• Doesn't account for gender and ethnicity.
• Highly abstract ideas that are difficult to operationalise - ideology and hidden curriculum. 
• Ignores influence of formal curriculum. 
• Employers often complain well-qualified, conformist workers are not produced by education.
• Deterministic - assume people have no ability to make choices.
• Doesn't explain how and why many WC children are successful in education 
• Pays little attention to influence of other institutions and agencies of socialization.
• See too tight a link between education and the economy. 

Henry Giroux (1984) disagrees with Bowles and Gintis' conventional Marxist approach as he doesn't believe WC pupils passively accept, but actively shape their own education and sometimes resist the imposed discipline. Schools are sites of ideological struggle by different classes, ethnic and cultural groups striving to ensure education provides things they wish for.

Neo-marxism suggests that the hidden curriculum is not always accepted and does not always succeed in socialising pupils. 

-Vocational educaiton involved work experience, training courses and improving the quality of the basic skills of the workforce to develop 'human capital' - to meet the needs of economy,

Functionalist and NR see it as beneficial.

Marxists see it as a second-rate education for working-class

Thought it would better meet employers needs 

-Ending status division between academic and vocational qualifications

-Work experience 

-Expansion of 16-18 training - Harder AS and A-levels 

-Stronger emphasis on key skills for the workplace.

• Lower status qualifications
• Seen as dll and repetitive
• Little practical values
• Often fail in preparing young people for work 
• More to do with reducing NEET 16-18 Y/O and reducing deviance 
• Neglects vocational students