The Role of Education in Society

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  • Created by: evekav
  • Created on: 23-03-21 10:20
What is functionalism based on?
The view that society is a system of interdependent parts held together by a shared culture or value consensus. Each part performs a function to help maintain society as a whole.
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What did Durkheim (1903) identify as the two main functions of education?
*Social solidarity
*Specialist skills
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How did Durkheim argue education creates social solidarity?
By transmitting society's culture from one generation to the next. Eg. teaching a country's history instills a sense of shared heritage and a commitment to a wider social group.
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How did Durkheim argue school acts as a 'society in miniature'?
It prepares us for life in wider society, eg. at school and work we have to cooperate with people who are neither friends or family.
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What did Durkheim argue specialist skills do for society?
Each person must have specialist skills to perform their role. Cooperation is needed in modern industrial economies of many different specialist skills, he argues education teaches the skills needed in society.
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What did Parsons (1961) see school as?
The 'focal socialising agency'-acting as a bridge between family and wider society as they act on different principles so school is needed to learn a new way of living to cope in the wider world.
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What did Parsons see school as preparing us for?
To move from the family to wider society because school and work are based on meritocratic principles.
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What is meritocracy?
This is where everyone is given an equal opportunity and individuals achieve rewards through their own effort and ability.
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What did Davis and Moore (1945) see education as?
A device for selection and role allocation.
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What did Davis and Moore argue about inequality?
That it is necessary to ensure that the most important roles in society are filled by the most talented people.
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What did Davis and Moore argue education acts as?
A providing ground for ability-it is where individuals show what they can do, it 'sifts and sorts' us according to ability. Most able gain high qualifications so they can gain access to high positions.
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What did Blau and Duncan (1978) argue about 'human capital'?
Argues a modern economy depends on 'human capital' (workers skill) and a meritocratic system enables each person to be allocated to the job best suited to their abilities = maximised productivity.
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What does the Wolf review of vocational education (2011) claim?
Education system doesn't teach skills adequately-High-quality apprenticeships are rare and up to a third of 16-19 yr olds are on courses that don't lead to higher education or jobs.
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Why does Tumin (1953) criticise Davis and Moore?
For putting forward a circular argument: How do we know a job is important? Because it’s highly rewarded-Why are some more highly rewarded? Because they're important.
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How do Marxists criticise functionalists?
They argue that education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of the ruling class.
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What does Wrong (1961) criticise about functionalists?
Argues functionalists have an ‘over-socialised view’ of people as mere puppets of society.
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What do Neoliberals and the New Right criticise about functionalist's view?
Argues state education fails to prepare young people adequately for work.
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What is Neoliberalism?
It is an economic doctrine that has major influence on education policy, who argue the state shouldn’t provide services such as education, health and welfare.
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What is it based on?
The idea the state must not dictate to individuals how to dispose of their own property and shouldn’t try to regulate a free-market economy. Governments should encourage competition , privatise state-run businesses.
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What do they argue about the value of education?
The value of education lies in how well it enables the country to compete in global markets, they claim that this can only be achieved if schools become more like businesses, empowering parents as consumers and using competition to drive up standards.
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What is the New Right?
A conservative political view that incorporates neoliberal economic ideas, a central belief that he state cannot meet people's needs and people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market.
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What similarities are there between the New Right and functionlists?
*believe some people are more talented than others.
*favour the education system that is based on meritocratic principles.
*believe education should socialise pupil into shared values.
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What is the key difference between the New Right and Functionalism?
They do not believe the education system is achieving these goals and it is failing because it is run by the state.
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What do the New Right argue about the education system taking a 'one size fits all approach'?
They state they take this approach imposes uniformity and disregards local needs.
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What do they argue about consumers?
Parents are the consumers but they have no say meaning state education is inefficient as they aren't answerable to the consumers. This leads to lower standards of achievement and a less prosperous economy.
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What is the New Right's solution to these problems?
To create an 'education market' which will create competition between schools and increase diversity and give a say to pupils and parents.
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What did Chubb and Moe (1990) argue about how the US has failed education?
*has not created equal opportunity and has failed disadvantaged groups.
*is inefficient as it hasn't produced pupils with skills needed for the economy.
*private schools give high quality education as they are answerable to consumers.
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What did Chubb and Moe's study find?
Comparison of 60,000 pupils from low income families in 1,015 schools-found pupils from low incomes consistently do about 5% better in private schools
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What do Chubb and Moe call for?
Introduction of a market system that would put
control in the hands of the consumers they believe this would allow consumers to shape schools to improve quality and efficiency.
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What do Chubb and Moe propose for a market in eduucation?
*give a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice.
*this would make schools more responsive to parents' wishes.
*the voucher being a source of income it means schools have to attract customers and improve.
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What do the New Right say the most important roles for the state are?
*state imposes a framework on schools where they have to compete. EG Ofsted and league tables.
*state ensures a shared culture. EG a national curriculum.
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Criticisms of the New Right?
*Gerwitz (1995) and Ball (1994) competition benefits MC.
*Real cause of low educational standards is social inequality and inadequate funding.
*Marxists say there isn't a shared culture but a imposed dominant culture of ruling classes.
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What does Karl Marx describe the two-class system as?
*capitalist class-employes who own the means of production and exploit the labour of the WC to make their profits.
*working class-forced to sell their labour to the capitalists as they have no means of production. They're poorly paid as a result and have
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Why does this cause class conflict?
If workers realise they're being exploited they may demand higher wages, better working conditions or the abolition of capitalism itself. Marx believed the proletariat would unite to overthrow capitalism and create classless system.
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What does Louis Althusser (1971) argue the state consists of?
2 elements of 'apparatus' which serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power.
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What are these?
*The repressive state apparatus-maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it, eg police, courts and using physical force.
*The ideological state apparatus-maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people's ideas, eg media.
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What are the two functions Althusser argues the education system performs?
*reproduces class inequality by failing each successive generation of WC pupils in turn.
*legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause-to persuade workers to accept inequality to stop the overthrow of capitalism.
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What does Bowles and Gintis (1976) argue about schooling in capitalist America?
Capitalism requires a workforce with the kind of attitudes, behaviours and personality type suited to their role as alienated and exploited workers willing to accept hard work, low pay and orders from above.
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What do Bowles and Gintis believe about the role of the education system?
To reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
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What did their study find?
237 New York high school students-they conclude that schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make submissive, complaint workers.
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How does Bowles and Gintis argue school and work are close parallels?
Both are hierarchies, with head teachers or bosses at the top making decisions, giving orders and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying. They put it, schooling takes place in the 'long shadow of work'.
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How does Bowles and Gintis refer to the parallels of school and work?
They refer to them as examples of the 'correspondence principle', the relationships and structures found in education mirror or correspondence to those at work.
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What does Bowles and Gintis argue the correspondence principle operates through?
The hidden curriculum-all the 'lessons' that are learnt in school without being directly thought. Eg. through everyday workings of school, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy, working for extrinsic rewards.
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What does Bowles and Gintis argue school prepares WC pupils for?
For their role as exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation.
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What does Cohen (1984) argue?
Youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers not genuine job skills, but rather the attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labour force and lowers their aspirations.
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How does Bowles and Gintis argue the education system prevents the rebellion against capitalism?
Education system legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is fair, natural and inevitable.
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How does Bowles and Gintis describe the education system?
As 'a giant myth-making machine', a key myth that education promotes is the 'myth of meritocracy'.
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What does meritocracy mean?
Everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, that rewards are based on ability and effort, and that those who gain the highest rewards deserve them because they are the most able and hard-working.
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What does Bowles and Gintis argue about meritocracy?
That it does not exist as evidence shows the main factor in determining whether or not someone has a high income in their family and class background, not their ability or educational achievement.
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What does Bowles and Gintis believe about the myth of meritocracy?
It serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes, making it seem fair that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition at school, helps to persuade the WC to accept inequality.
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How does Bowles and Gintis argue the education system justifies poverty?
Through what they describe as the 'poor-are-dumb' theory of failure-it does so by blaming poverty on the individual, rather than blaming capitalism
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What do Marxists agree about capitalism?
It cannot function without a workforce that's willing to accept exploitation, they all see education as reproducing and legitimating class inequality. It ensures WC pupils are slotted into poorly paid and alienating jobs.
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What did Paul Willis' (1977) study show?
WC pupils can resist such attempts to indoctrinate them.
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What is Willis interested in as a Marxist?
In the way schooling serves capitalism, however he combines this with an interactionist approach that focuses on the meanings pupils give to their situation and how these enable them to resist indoctrination.
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What research methods did Willis use?
Qualitative research methods-participant observations and unstructured interviews.
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What did Willis study?
The counter-culture of the 'lads'- a group of 12 WC boys -as they make the transition from school to work.
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Who were the 'lads'?
They formed a distinct counter-culture opposed to the school, they are scornful of the conformists, the lads have their own brand of intimidatory humour, 'taking the ****' out of the ear'oles and girls.
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What did the lads think about school?
Thought it was boring and meaningless and flout its rules and values, eg smoking and drinking, disrupting classes, for them this defiance are ways of resisting the school.
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What similarities did Willis note between the lads and culture of male manual workers?
Both cultures see manual work as superior and intellectual work as inferior and effeminate, lads identify strongly with male manual work and explains why they see themselves as superior to girls and them aspired for non-manual jobs.
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Why does the lads being accustomed to boredom help with their future work?
Being accustomed to boredom and finding ways to amuse themselves it means they don't expect satisfaction from work and are good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour.
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Why does the lads acts of rebellion mean they're destined for unskilled work?
Their acts of rebellion guarantees their failure by ensuring they will end up with substandard qualifications.
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For Willis, what is the irony of the lads?
By helping them resist the school's ideology, the lads' counter-culture ensures that they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform.
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How do postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis?
Criticise their correspondence principle on the grounds that today's post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from what Marxists believe. Postmodernists say education reproduces diversity.
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How do some Marxists disagree about how reproduction and legitimation takes place?
Bowles and Gintis take a deterministic view, they assume that pupils have no free will and passively accept indoctrination.
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How does Willis reject the view schools simply 'brainwash' pupils into accepting their fate?
By combining Marxist and interactionist approaches, he shows how pupils may resist the school and yet how this still leads them into WC jobs.
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What do critics argue about Willis' study of the 'lads'?
They argue Willis' account of the lads romanticises them, portraying them as WC heroes despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes, the small scale also is an unfair representation and and too risky to generalise.
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How do critical modernists criticise Marxists?
Morrow and Torres (1998) criticise Marxists for taking a 'class first' approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores all other kinds.
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What do Morrow and Torres argue?
Society is more diverse, they see non-class inequalities, such as ethnicity, gender and sexuality as equally important and argue sociologists must explain how education reproduces and legitimises all forms of inequality, and how they are inter-related.
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What point do feminists make?
MacDonald (1980) argues Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact schools reproduce not only capitalism but patriarchy too. McRobbie (1978)-females are largely absent from Willis' study.
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What did Connolly (1998) explore?
Explores how education reproduces both ethnic and gender inequalities.
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Who else conducted similar studies of inter-relationships between different forms of inequality?
*Sewell
*Evans
*Mac an Ghaill
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Card 2

Front

What did Durkheim (1903) identify as the two main functions of education?

Back

*Social solidarity
*Specialist skills

Card 3

Front

How did Durkheim argue education creates social solidarity?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

How did Durkheim argue school acts as a 'society in miniature'?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What did Durkheim argue specialist skills do for society?

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Preview of the front of card 5
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