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Lecture 9:Education
General sociology:
Learning goals:
● Evaluate educational institutions from a functionalist versus a conflict
perspective
● Understand how shared socialization as a function of schooling can clash
with skill development
● Describe the role of schooling in social and cultural reproduction
● Explain Bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital and how the latter
two relate to cultural reproduction through school
● Explain the relation between educational expansion and diploma inflation
Education versus schooling:
● Education = “a social institution* which enables and promotes the acquisition
of skills and knowledge and the broadening of personal horizons”
● Schooling = “the formal process through which certain types of skill and
knowledge are delivered, normally through a pre-designed curriculum in
specialized settings – schools”
● *Social institution = an interrelated system of social roles and social norms,
organized around the satisfaction of an important social need or social function
(also: family, religion, government, healthcare, economy)
Education’s sociological significance:
● Schooling as socialization (conformism, cohesion, but also preparing for a
job)
● Schooling as reproduction (inequality in opportunities, schools confirm
unequal starting positions of pupils rather than compensate for these)
● Schooling as emancipatory institute (meritocracy rewards the most talented
and allows for intergenerational social mobility)
● Schooling as producer of values (belief in science / rationality / personal
freedoms, critical thinking, but also religious schools)
Schooling as socialization
● Durkheim: for cohesion, common values are needed
● These are transferred to the next generation in family, wider social networks,
but also in school
40
, ● Socialization is the internalization/appropriation of such values
○ Mutual respect and responsibility, interest in the greater good,
obedience to rules ...
●
● But also increasingly differentiation of skills is needed due to growing division
of labor
○ This is more about individual achievement than fitting into the
collective
○ Notion of society as a single collective is probably exaggerated by
functionalists
But, Dilemmas with educational goals:
● On the one hand, shared socialization for common values would benefit from
offering all pupils the same schooling as long as possible
● On the other hand, separating them on the basis of their skills (tracking /
streaming) earlier will allow them to better develop their particular talents
● Politics struggle with the right age at which children should be sent into
different tracks
● ‘late developers’ will end up in lower levels if streaming starts at an earlier age
● Very smart and very dull students will get bored resp. confused if streaming
starts at a later age
The conflict perspective:
● Apart from teaching relevant skills for future jobs, schools also help shape the
personalities of future workers
● Schools are a micro-cosmos where social hierarchies are reproduced
○ Future blue-collar workers are taught obedience
○ Future white-collar workers are thought critical thinking, autonomy
○ This is part of schools’ hidden curriculum; the stuff they ‘teach’
implicitly, like obedience, acceptance of hierarchy, manners…
● Instead of fostering emancipation, schools may contribute to reproduction of
social hierarchies
Cultural reproduction:
● The hidden curriculum implies that characteristics of pupils unrelated to
intelligence or effort may play a role in how they are evaluated at school
● Basil Bernstein (pp 644-645): social class background affects whether pupils
use a restricted or an elaborate speech code, which affects how teachers
judge them
● Cultural proximity to the academic culture at school matters a lot for
educational success
41
, Cultural reproduction:
● Paul Willis wanted to know how (white British) working-class kids get working-class
jobs
● These kids do not feel like they failed in school
● “The lads” saw school as a hostile environment that should be cleverly sabotaged
through subordination
● They wanted to work for money, not for a career
● Schools were not successful in turning them into docile workers
○ It was all about subversion of authority, joking around, having a laugh, what
workers would do as well
Pierre Bourdieu expanded the meaning of the term capital:
● Economic capital = money and goods people own
● Social capital = resources and connections you have access to via your social
network
● Cultural capital = to be distinguished into three states:
1. Embodied state: cultural knowledge, cultural taste, manners
2. Institutionalized state: educational credentials / diplomas
3. Objectified state: cultural goods such as art works, books, etc.
● Symbolic capital = prestige, status, honor, often derived from other types of
capital, that renders power and influence
Bourdieu’s forms of capital:
● Forms of capital can be transformed into one another
● Cultural capital can be turned into economic capital as diplomas get you a job
and cultural skills help you with job interviews
● The reverse transformation would be buying yourself a diploma or a work of
art
● Social capital can be turned into economic capital if someone from your
social network puts in a good word for you with a future employer
● Economic capital can be turned into symbolic capital, e.g., if you publicly
invest in a good cause
Bourdieu’s concept of fields:
● Example: field of cultural lifestyles
● Activities have their specific place in the field
● This place is based on total capital volume (vertical axis)
and capital composition (cultural vs economic capital;
horizontal axis)
● Occupations / schooling levels can also be positioned in
their proper place in the field
● This makes homology visible, or the idea that certain social
positions (here: occupation) tend to go hand in hand with
matching cultural positions (here: leisure activities / voting)
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