education (theories: role of education)

Durkheim

Durkheim

creating social solidarity - education makes us feel like we are a community. Giving individuals a sense of social solidarity lessens conflict. school transmits shared values to help create social solidarity (through history, English and citizenship) Teaching specialist skills - industrialised economies need cooperation of many different skills to produce an item. each person needs necessary specialist skills and flexible skills also knowledge. SCHOOLS HELP SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOUR. School curriculum is responsive of what society needs.

creating social solidarity- transmits values, but whose values should we follow? Teaching specialist skills - Hargreaves if individuals do not achieve individual success, then they tend to rebel and form subculture is no sense of belonging

Parsons

Bridge between family and wider society. FAMILY - judged on particular standards, whose only apply to them status is ascribed fixed from birth. SCHOOL - judged on universalistic and impersonal standards (pupils judged on same standard) judged on meritocratic standards = talent and hard work) School pass us to move from family to wider society at school and society is based on meritocracy.

Marxists criticize the idea that schools transmit shared values, rather they see the education system as transmitting the values of the ruling class.

Schultz

The function of education as the development of human capital. Education gives them skills and knowledge which were forms of capital – increasing spending on education represented an investment in people and the more governments spent on education, the more skilled the workforce would become, and the more productive they should be.

Critics of the theory argue that it is flawed, overly simplistic, and confounds labor with capital.

Davis and Moore

selecting and allocating pupils to future work roles by assessing skills and abilities. Inequality is necessary so much important roles of field by the most talented need it off a high reward for these jobs. Education ‘siffs and sorts’ us according to abilities.

People do not always get charged on talents, not everyone is motivated by money. Nurses get paid less than doctors, but they are just as important. Tumin importance hasn’t been defined Dennis Wrong- wrongly assume that peoples accept what they learn.

education should be privatised because it’s not effective as the government own it.

if education becomes privatised, it means that people will have to pay for education so working-class will not be able to get a good education therefore creating more inequality between middle-class and working-class children

create an education market, where schools compete for students so that it will bring greater competition which creates higher standards

1988

League tables, OFSTED funding formula

consumers choice

Disadvantage groups, lower classes, ethnic minorities, and wall areas are badly served by the state which has failed to create equal opportunities. State education is insufficient as it fails to teach skills needed by economy.

private schools deliver higher quality education as they are answerable to consumers. Peoples from low-income to 5% better in private schools.

it puts control into the hands of parents and community, so they can shape schools to meet their own needs and provide quality

Karl Marx

The bourgeoisie control the economic base, and therefore control the superstructure.

They try to keep the masses, ignorant of the exploitation through ideological control which leads to false class consciousness where we feel happy, and thankful for what we have

education is to prepare pupils for work by teaching them to be obedient and acceptable authority

Althusser

says that our talents are only but we need to sell them e.g a doctor talent in science

State is ruling class to maintain their power and dominant position. Keep the bourgeois.

Maintain rule of bourgeois by force or threat of it e.g the police court and army when needed. They use physical things to repress working-class.

maintain rule of bourgeoisie by controlling peoples ideas, values and beliefs to media, religion and education

it reproduces class inequality by passing on from generation to generation by failing each generation of working-class children

class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise it’s true cause, for example, persuade workers to accept inequality as inevitable, and they deserve that position in society. If they accept this, they are less likely to challenge capitalism.

7% of children in the UK go to a private school

Bourdieu

working-class are dumped or conned into accepting their failure and limited social mobility systems. The systems disregard culture and attribution of the working-class, as it is run by middle class.

Having of middle class norms and values

People can move up through meritocracy

people treated differently because they don’t have cultural capital. Also Althusser agreed with Bourdieu that working-class don’t have the same opportunities as middle class and are not treated the same.

Wills

he was interested in the way schools, serve capitalism

He used qualitative research methods included using participant, observations, and unstructured interviews.

He studied the counter school culture of the lads, a group of 12 working-class boys as they transition from school to work

The lads found school boring and meaningless. Also they flout its rules and values. They are the opposite of pro school, subculture values.

they see no further progress on fun. wills also said that anti-schools are similar to manual work, the counter culture of resisting to school, helps them to slot into them very jobs.

he sees poor people choose these jobs.

The role of education is to reproduce an obedient workforce that accepts inequality, hard work, low pay orders from above

they studied 237 New York, high school students and concluded that schools reward personalities that are submissive, compliant workers. people that showed independence and creativity got lower grades and people that showed obedience and discipline.

That school produces obedient workers also stunts and distraught students development

The norms and values that school teaches in an indirect way. And that is not a part of the national curriculum.

They say school and work out very similar as they are both based on meritocracy submitting to a higher authority and obey rules