A* Sociology Student, sat exams in 2022 and received a grade of over 95%.
These are notes for AQA (but would work for all exam boards).
Functionalist perspective on education, notes for Paper 1 - Education. These are a set of extensive notes primarily taken from the textbook and written in a ...
Social Solidarity
Specialist Skills
Secondary Socialisation
Role Allocation
Durkheim (1903) is seen as a founding father of functionalist taught, sees education as a vital party
of society.
Parsons (1955) building upon this further developed the ‘organic theory’, in which he believes that
society can be likened to a human body, with institutions acting like organs and necessary for them
all to function correctly for society to be maintained and not to become dysfunctional.
The Education System is thus one of these institutions that provide important functions to the
perpetuation of society, helping support the economy and industries in an effective manner.
This is a consensus theory viewing society as essentially and necessarily harmonious, education
performs positive functions for societies and individuals, criticising the conflict approaches taken by
other sociologist schools of thought such as Feminism and Marxism.
, Sociology
2. The Role of Education in Society
1) Functionalist Perspective on Education
Social Solidarity
This is where individual members of society feel they belong to a community that is much bigger
than themselves, such as through the learning of subjects such as History and English which give us a
shared sense of identity and also within American schools where children pledge allegiance to the
flag.
Durkheim (1903) argued that the school is representative of society and that ‘school is a society in
miniature’, its replication of society prepares us for life in wider society. This is through instilling a
sense of belonging to a wider society and commitment to the importance of working towards
society’s goals and a feeling that society is more important than the individual. As both in school and
work we have to co-operate with people whom are neither friends nor family. This is important
because without the solidarity taught by school, people would perhaps be more inclined to pursue
selfish aims and would not co-operate, instead teamwork and co-operation is promoted.
He argued that school rules should be strictly enforced with a series of punishments for those who
broke the school rules to reflect the seriousness of damage done either physically or socially, he
believed this would help children would learn self-discipline not only because of the fear of
punishment, but because they could see the damage of their deviant behaviour to school (and thus
within society).
A03:
Functionalist views might be ‘rose-tinted’, as it sees society in an excessively positive light, in
the sense that they place emphasis on the harmony of society by sugar coating the
education system and not accepting or including its flaws.
Fails to pass on a shared culture, other sociologists instead argue the education system
passes on the dominant culture and may be inclined to exclude minorities. The School
system and curriculars is argued to be seen as ethnocentric – prioritising (in the western
world) white culture and ostracising ethnic minorities, leading to a division rather than unity
through solidarity.
Post modernists may criticise Durkheim for his assumption that society needs shared values
– Britain has become more multicultural in recent decades, to the extent to which there is a
single British culture is debatable, with communities largely cut of from the mainstream
culture, evidenced in the case of ethnic segregation in Oldham, in which Louise Carey (2016)
found that the ethnic divide favoured different laws and their Pakistani culture, over that of
the British, which they see as contrary to their religious beliefs, thus not being wary of
learning the language.
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