Sociological Perspectives - Education

• Secondary socialisation
  • Teach value consensus

• Organic analogy
  • Teach institutuion must work together to ensure society moves and progresses
  • When one institution fails, the others must pick up the slack

Functions of Education

• Durkheim
  • Creating social solidarity
  • Teaching specialist skills

• Parsons
  • Education is a bridge between home and wider society
  • Selecting and allocating pupils for future work roles

Davis and Moore

• Relationship between role allocation and inequality

• Inequality is needed to ensure most talented perform most important roles

• Education begins the process of 'shifting and sorting'
  • Ability groups - most able get the highest qualifications

Blau and Duncan

• Meritocratic education systems are the best at matching skill-based jobs to human capital

• Matching ensures maximum productivity

Evaluation of Functionalism

• State education is meritocratic
  • Talent + motivation + equal opportunity = good job

• Tumin
  • Davis and Moore have a circular argument
  • Why are some job important? Because they're highly regarded. Why are they highly regarded? Because they're important.

• Wrong
  • Interactionalist
  • Functionalists have over-socialised the view of people as 'puppets'
  • Assumes no student rejects school values

Evaluations of Functionalism

• Chubb and Moe
  • New Right
  • State control discourages efficiency, choice, etc

• Marxists
  • Education cannot instil shared values
  • Purpose is to transmit ideology of the minority (bourgeoisie)
  • Equality of opportunity does not exist in education

• Teaches us to abide by Capitalist views

• Socialises us into obedience to authority

• Creates a hierarchy and reproduces it

• Acts as an ideological state apparatus

Bowles and Gintis

• Myth of Meritocracy - does not exist in education

• Reinforces false class consciousness

• Hidden curriculum - punctuality, conformity, subordination, etc

• Correspondence Principle - role of education is the reproduction of the workforce

• Surplus of skilled labour created
  • Children are over-educated
  • Maintain high rate of employment to control the workforce
  • Proletariat scared of losing their jobs so work for low wages

Criticisms of Bowles and Gintis

• Cannot prove hidden curriculum exists

• If education prepares for work, why are there apprenticeships?

• Not all students are passive and obedient

• Ignores other factors like gender and ethnicity

Althusser

• Takes a theoretical approach

• Working-class are controlled by ruling-class through RSA and ISA

• Dominant ideology passes on through education and basic skills taughts

Willis' Study

• 12 working-class boys in their final year
• Unstructured interviews and observations
• Counter-school system - directly oppose the values of the education system
• Boys actively chose to fail in order to land 'dream jobs' in factories with friends and have little responsibility

Criticisms of Willis

• Working-class ended up getting working-class jobs so system did its job of creating a workforce
• Small sample - unrepresentative/not generalisable
• Ignores 'conformist culture' - only looked at one subculture
• Boys could have exaggerated/lied

• Performitivity - to what extend schools provide an 'outstanding' education

• Market education - competition in schools
  • Due to marketisation - key to raising standards in education

• Privatisation
  • Private investment
  • Arrangement with corporations - cola-isation
  • Subcontracting services
  • Academies

• Formula Funding
  • "bums on seats"
  • Sum of money received by schools for each child registered (approx. £4000 each)

• Parentocracy
  • Power in the hands of parents
  • Decide where their child attends schools and therefore directs funding