Perspectives of education

》 Functionalism

Solidarity & skills - Durkheim

Solidarity - to feel like a member of a larger body/community. School acts as a society in miniature which prepares you for wider society.

Skills - schools teach specialist skills which are needed to help the economy. This increases social solidarity as you feel like a valued member.

Meritocracy - Parsons

School is a socialising agent which acts as a bridge between home and wider society. Within the home a child is judged with a set of particular standards unique to the child. In society we are all judged by a universal set of standards.

Meritocracy is the idea that everything is fair, we get out what we put in. We achieve through our own efforts and therefore, failure is our own fault.

Role allocation - Davis & Moore

School select and allocates pupils to their future work roles. This happens through evaluating pupils aptitudes and abilities. It is important that the most important jobs go to the most able in society.

Human capital

Modern industrial society is technologically advanced, so the skills of its workforce are its main economic asset or ‘capital’.

A meritocratic education system is the bests way to develop a sufficiently skilled workforce and thus create greater economic efficiency and higher standards of living.

✗ The education system doesn't adequately teach skills needed by the economy with many pupils leaving education with degrees or diplomas that don't equate to employment.

✗ Equal opportunities are limited for W/C pupils. ✗ Functionalist theories suggest that pupils are passive

and accept their designated roles.✗ Neo-liberalists argue that schools systematically fail

to produce skilled labourers. ✗ Hargreaves – schools place more value on

competition and developing individuals than developing a sense of social solidarity.

》 Neo-liberalism & New Right

New right

The state cannot meet people's needs and that the people are best suited to meet their own needs through a free market.

Similarities to functionalism:

Both believe that some are naturally more able.

Both favour a meritocratic education system that serves the needs of the economy.

Education should socialise pupils into value consensus and instil a sense of national identity.

New right don't believe that the current education system is meeting the these goals. New right imposes marketisation of education which creates competition between schools to improve standards. Education shouldn’t be a ‘one-size fits all’ approach.

Formula funding – schools have incentive to be successful since those that attract more pupils get more money.

Consumer choice - Chubb & Moe

The American education system has failed because:

Has not created equal opportunities for disadvantaged groups.

Fails to produce pupils with the skills needed for the economy.

Private schools provide better quality education as they are answerable to paying consumers (parents).

They studied 60,000 low income families in 1015 state and private schools. Private school pupils did on average, 5% better.

Two roles of the state

Imposes a framework on schools within which they have to compete. E.g. schools have to publish Ofsted reports and league tables. This gives parents the information they need.

Schools transmit a shared culture. Through the use of a national curriculum E.g. teaching British history.

✗ Competition between schools only benefits the M/C as they can use their economic capital to access better schools.

✗ Social inequality is to blame for inadequate funding of state schools.

✗ Parental choice and the national curriculum contradict each other.

✗ Marxists argue that schools impose the culture of the ruling class.

》 Marxist perspective

Apparatus - Althusser

Ideological apparatus - maintain rule of bourgeoisie by controlling people's ideas and beliefs through things like the media.

Repressive apparatus - maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or threat, thus includes police and courts.

Two functions of education:

Reproduction of class inequality by failing generations of W/C pupils.

Legitimises class inequality by providing ideas that disguise it's true cause. They persuade W/C to accept lesser positions in society without rebellion.

Correspondence principle & Hidden curriculum - Bowles & Gintis

School and work are parallels, there are several similarities E.g. hierarchy, obedience to authority.

All lessons learned in school, outside of the curriculum, without being directly taught E.g. dress codes, obeying rules, respectful of authority, working to a timetable/schedule. This helps pupils get ready for their roles as low-paid, exploited workers.

Myth of Meritocracy - Bowles & Gintis

The education system helps prevent rebellion from the W/C in society by legitimising their failure. They do this by creating ideologies as to why it is fair.

The myth of meritocracy serves to justify M/C achievement making it seem that their success is gained through hard work. It labels the W/C as 'dumb' because they are poor. This blames poverty on the individual rather than capitalism.

Schooling in capitalist America

Capitalism requires the kind of workforce with the kind of attitudes, behaviour and personality type to accept their work role as exploited workers.

Study of 237 New York schools found that teachers praised this kind of behaviour. Independent and creative children often got low grades.

✓ Useful at exposing the myth of meritocracy.✓ Shows how education serves the interest of

capitalism and legitimises class inequality. ✗ Bowles & Gintis's view about the reproduction of

class inequality is too deterministic, sees pupils as having no free will and passively accept indoctrination.

✗ Post-modernists and post-fordists argue that today's post-industrial economy requires workers to be creative and eager to learn.

✗ Feminists - ignoring the reproduction of patriarchy.

Learning to labour - Willis

12 W/C boys who apposed school. They verbally abused pupils willing to learn. They saw themselves as superior to women and that manual work was superior to professional work. They flouted the school rules by comitting deviant acts like smoking and disrupting lessons.

This made them perfect for their work roles because they had grown accustomed to boredom and seek no satisfaction from work. Their rebellious acts guarantee unskilled jobs because it ensures failure in education.

✓ He shows that pupils can reject the school ethos and still end up in W/C professions.

✗ The sample size was too small - representativeness.✗ Doesn't include girls.✗ Portrays the lads positively - rejecting labels creating

one's own path, when in fact they were bullies and anti-school.