Download Education - Speyside Mod Squad

Learning Intentions
• Explain different sociological theories of
purposes of education, and strengths and
weaknesses of each theory.
• Explain how education can contribute to
inequality in the UK
• Explain how educational achievement can be
affected by ethnicity, class and gender
• Link to case studies
• Give balance and informed evaluation
Discuss and write down answers to the
following
• What do you think are the purposes of the
following features of school life:
• Uniform
• Classroom Code
• Group work
• Exams
• Detention
What is a school for? This is what most
sociologists can agree on…
• Schools are agents of secondary socialisation –
they play a role in teaching society’s members
how to behave.
• Schools are places where children absorb the
norms and values of society
• Schools are places where children can interact
with others and become aware of themselves as
individuals – the process through which they can
acquire a personal and a social identity
George Mead – Latent and Manifest
functions
• Do you remember what this means?
• What do you think are the latent and manifest
functions of the things mentioned at the
beginning of the powerpoint?
History of compulsory education
• The Education system takes children from a very
young age and places them within a structure with
rules, passing on knowledge, values and skills.
• Compulsory education has only existed since the
1870 Education Act – which made it compulsory
up to the age of 10.
• In 1918 the Fisher Education Act led to state
provision of secondary education.
• There was a need to create a skilled workforce in
order to compete with other industrialised nations.
Different views on education…
• Political viewpoints at the time:
• Worried that it would teach the lower classes to
see their lives as unsatisfying – encouraging
revolution
• Others felt it would have a civilising role and
could serve the powerful as a means of
ideological control
• Some saw education as a possible route out of
poverty – a basic human right.
Functionalism
• Functionalism was the most prominent sociological
theory on education until the 1960’s.
• It asks questions like – what is the function of
education? What is the relationship between
education and other aspects of the social system?
Remember that functionalists see society as a big
organic structure.
• Sees education as promoting consensus by
transmitting the norms and values of society.
• Functionalism sees education as having 3 core
purposes
3 Purposes of Education
• 1) Socialisation
Helps to maintain society by socialising young people
into key cultural values such as such as achievement,
competition, equality of opportunity, social solidarity,
democracy and religious morality.
Durkheim was concerned that education should
emphasise the moral responsibilities that members of
society have to each other – remember he was worried
about individualism leading to anomie.
So this links to things like PSE; Happy, Health, High
Achieving; GIRFEC; CfE
• Talcott Parsons said education forms a bridge
between parents and the wider world. At home
kids are loved regardless of their awful
personalities. Their social status comes from
being part of the family – it is particular.
• In school, social status is achieved through merit
– which is more like the actual world (at least
that’s what functionalists think) – so these are
universalistic standards, judged against the same
criteria as everyone else
2) Skills Provision
• Education teaches the skills required by modern
industrial society – maybe general skills that
everyone needs like literacy and numeracy; or
specific skills for particular occupations.
• Longer periods in education become necessary
as labour becomes more complex.
3) Role Allocation
• Education allocates people to the most
appropriate job for their talents – using exams
and qualifications.
• The most talented are allocated to the most
important occupations – seen to be fair because
of equality of opportunity.
Questions
• So what do you think might be the strengths and
weaknesses of the functionalist view of
education?
• How would functionalists view each of the
features at the beginning of the powerpoint?
Strengths of Functionalism
• Functionalism links education with wider society
• Explains how schools help select people and
allocate them into adult society
• Explains how pupils are assessed and given roles
Weaknesses of Functionalism
• Too simplistic – sees only one set of norms and
values – there may be more in competition
• Assumes education is a meritocracy – ignores
class, gender and ethnic inequalities
• Assumes that the education system fits the
needs o the world of work – when actually the
stuff we’re teaching you is utterly irrelevant to
any work you will ever have to do.
Marxism
• For Marxists education is seen as an important
part of the superstructure – which means it
works alongside family, religion, the media to
serve the needs of the economic base ( the
capitalist system of production for profit)
• Remember in Marxism the base shapes the
superstructure – while the superstructure
maintains and justifies the base
Education has 2 main functions
• 1) It reproduces the inequalities and social
relations of production of capitalist societies
• It serves to justify inequalities in the system
through the myth of meritocracy – so people
grow up unquestioning of the system
Education has replaced religion
• Marxists also believe that the universal education
system is a way of reaching and manipulating
the hearts and minds of the working classes in a
way that religion used to before its decline in the
West.
• Getting people to believe they have a place in
society, and blinding them to their true
conditions, offering false hope.
Louis Althusser
• French Neo-Marxist
• Disagreed with the functionalist view that the main
function of education is the transmission of common
values – instead he argues that education is an
“Ideological State Apparatus” (ISA) this means a tool of
the state to pass on its dominant ideology.
• Its main function is to legitimate, maintain and continue
to produce throughout the generations class inequalities
in wealth and power by transmitting ruling class values
disguised as common values
• Education reproduces the conditions needed for
capitalism to flourish without having to use
force. So it gets people to quietly consent to
inequality, and know their place as workers –
when in the past systems such as slavery would
have required force.
• Using force would reveal the system to be
oppressive, and so people would eventually fight
against it.
• Education teaches that capitalism is just and
reasonable.
• Ideology gets better results than force by exerting
influence subconsciously (think about Lukes’ ideas
of thought control)
• This is carried out through the hidden curriculum the way schools are organised and the way that
knowledge is taught means that working class
people are encouraged to conform to the capitalist
system, and accept failure and inequality uncritically
Pierre Bordieu
• Called the means by which the working classes
are effectively duped into accepting their failure
and limited social mobility as justified “symbolic
violence”. Their cultural attributes are rejected
because the system is defined by, and for, the
middle classes, who succeed by default because
they have cultural capital which is considered
more valuable.
• Marxists would also draw similarities between
the social relationships in a classroom between
teachers and pupils, and between pupils from
different backgrounds as a training ground for
the workplace – children learn to “know their
place”
Strengths of Marxism
• Strong in analysing the inequality in the system –
which can help to explain inequality in later life
– and the cycle of poverty
Weaknesses of Marxism
• Again, takes away from the individual’s ability to
affect own destiny – pupils seen as creatures of
the system with no control.
• Not all teachers are agents of the state
• Pupils do have power to exercise control over
own environment – there are examples of
classes where pupils call the shots