This document is a well written summary of the education topic in Sociology A- Level, which consists of all the sociologists names, evaluation points and more, to help with your A- Level sociology exams
• Society in Miniature
Functionalism is based on the view that society is a system of separate parts that are held together
by their shared culture or value consensus. Each parts of society performs a function to help
maintain society as a whole. So for instance education, work, religion are all separate but all have
the same values of respect, hard work and compromise instilled in them so they work together.
,Durkheim
- Argues that society needs a sense of solidarity, as without this social cooperation it
would be impossible to form a society as individuals would become selfish.
• The education system helps create social solidarity by transmitting the society’s culture to
the younger generation. School prepares children for wider society as these interpersonal
rules in school apply to wider society. Durkeim argues that another function of education is
to teach specialist skills. These are skills that each person is good at. The production of a
single item involves the cooperation of many specialists. This cooperation promotes social
solidarity. Education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills that they need to
play their part in the social division of labour. For instance to build a home specialist
architects, plumbers, builders etc are all needed.
Parsons
Draws on many of Durkheim's ideas and sees school as the social socializing agency as it acts as
bridge between family and wider society.
• Within a family children are judged by particularistic standards, i.e. the rules for each child.
Similarly child's status within the family is ascribed, ie fixed from birth. By contrast in
school/ society judge us by universalistic standards, i.e. the same law applies to everyone. In
society and school one’s status is achieved not ascribed i.e. you have to work hard to gain
some status.
• Parsons sees school and society as based on meritocratic principles, so everyone is given an
equal opportunity and individuals achieve rewards through own effort and ability. Parsons
argue schools also allocate pupils to their future work roles by assessing their abilities.
Davis and Moore
- See education as a device for selection and role allocation. They argue inequality is
necessary to ensure that the most important roles of society are filled by the most
talented people this encourages people to compete for the most talented jobs and
improve the workforce.
- Inequality within society is made legitimate by meritocracy in schools.
Evaluation
, - However Marxists argue that such schemes only benefit capitalist companies who
benefit from cheap labour, and also lower the aspirations of young children by giving
them low skilled jobs.
- functionalist perspective has been criticised for idealising education as in reality the
system is not equal instead influences by class, gender and ethnicity
- Marxists also argue that schools only transmit the ideology of ruling class and further
suppress the working class. This can be seen by the increase of university fees
making it impossible for lower classes to afford higher education and raising its
availability only to the elite class.
- Finally new right perspective argues that education fails to prepare young people for
work as the state control of education discourages efficient, competition and choice.
New right perspective on education
- The new right is a conservative political perspective influences by both labour and
conservative polices. They believe the state cannot meet people’s needs and
people are best left to meeting their needs in a free market. They argue some
people are naturally more talented than other, and that education should
socialise pupils into shared values such as competition and instil national identity
- However new right argue the current system is not doing this because it is run by
the state. State education systems use a one size fits all approach imposing
uniformity and disregarding local needs. The local councils have no say which
leads to inefficiently, wasted money and poor results. This leads to lower
achievement of pupils and less qualified workforce for the future. The new rights
solution to this is the marketisation of education creating an education market.
They believe competition between schools will empower the pupils and bring
about greater diversity, choice and efficiency.
Chubb and Moe
- Argue that the American school system has failed miserably and make a case for
marketisation. They argue that state education has failed to create equality between
races, religious and lower class members of society, failed to develop pupils into
effective workers and that private schools outperform state schools because they
are answerable to a paying consumer ie parents Chubb and Moe base their findings on
60,000 pupils from 1015 schools, through case studies and surveys they found that low
income students do 5% better in private schools.
, - They suggest that instead of having guaranteed funding, parents should be given
vouchers to spend on schools of their choice. Schools are thus forced to appeal to
parents wishes as vouchers means funding for school
• New right argue that the state still has a role to play, namely by providing a framework in
which schools compete. That is having Ofsted inspection, results published and exam
boards. The state also ensures a shared set of values are instilled through national
curriculum
Criticisms
However critics argue that the cause of failing education is because state schools do not receive
enough funding. They also see marketisation as only benefiting the middle class who can use their
cultural capital to get into good schools and low class students are left with unpopular schools.
Finally Marxists argue that schools do not instil a shared set of values but just the values of the elite
upper class to control the working class.
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