distinguishes between school’s obvious role as educator, and school’s hidden role in socializing us. * Hidden role = its latent function.
Robert Merton (structural functionalist)
Manifest functions
oThe obvious and intended functions.
oTraining and preparation for the job market.
Latent functions
o Hidden role of socialization, teaching us key social values, learning to interact.
o Unintended consequences.
The education system: Manifest and Latent functions
- Education in recognized and accredited schools.
- Highly-institutionalized.
The education system: Formal
- How we learn for ourselves outside of institutions.
- Less organized/controlled
The education system: informal Education
- Socialization of young people.
- Selection of people into employment.
3.Legitimation of certain types of knowledge.
The Roles and Functions of Education Roles and functions fall into three broad categories:
studied how education facilitated the functioning of society in general.
argued universal education serves the needs of society in a number of ways. He argued that:
* Schools convey basic knowledge and skills that will benefit society in general.
* Individuals need skills to fill the occupational roles they will take on later in life.
* Education also socializes children into the mainstream, so society successfully reproduces itself.
Emile Durkheim The Roles and Functions of Education: Socialization
a symbolic interactionist, examined The Adolescent Society (1966), exploring rules governing relations between teenagers.
He explains the different roles students were expected to play.
* Sporty, good-looking teens were favoured; The ‘nerd’ was rejected and ostracised.
* Students attempt to be popular:
examined the formation of cliques, small groups in which students engage in exclusionary practices to limit membership, and follow certain strict rules.
James Coleman (1926-95) The Roles and Functions of Education: Socialization
o Small groups held together by self-defined set of norms and taboos.
o Often deliberately seek to exclude others or to set strict conditions of membership.
Cliques
Education allows you to get qualifications for your future job.
The education system selects individuals by awarding badges of ability.
* It happens through “sorting, differentially rewarding, and certifying graduates of elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools”
- Selection of people into employment.
argued schools are based on bureaucracies and work to confer status and prestige. Bureaucracies in education aren’t necessarily a bad thing when they produce degrees efficiently. But the red tape of bureaucracies frustrates students. The rise in bureaucracies has also meant a growing need for individuals to have certification for specific occupations. Weber highlighted how specialization leads to an increasingly complicated set of certifications and degrees that prevent certain people from entering a trade or profession.
Max Weber The Roles and Functions of Education: Selection
referred to Weber’s observation as credentialing, when a qualification or competence is issued to an individual by a party with the authority to do so.
Growing numbers of jobs have such requirements. Such credentials are not necessary for most of these jobs
* Ever more qualifications needed for jobs that previously had no such requirement.
Randall Collins The Functions of Education: Selection
Interest groups band together to add these requirements for jobs, to minimize the number of people who can do them and reduce competition for jobs. High-status groups maintain their privileged position by keeping others from these routes to upward mobility
o Addition of qualification requirement to take a job.
Credentialism
Modern educational systems claim to focus on providing best opportunities for all.
o Social rank should depend on your ability, not on your birth or wealth.
o Equality of opportunity is emphasized – everyone should have the same chance to succeed.
Meritocracy
Education legitimates certain kinds of knowledge and divisions in society.
- Legitimation of certain types of knowledge
see a different function for education: it prepares them for subordinate positions.
*School has additional latent function of keeping children off the street, under close supervision.
* Lessons subtly prepare people’s expectations about their life – in a way that makes them accept an inferior social status.
* Classes may be gendered – cooking for girls, manual classes for boys; ‘tough’ sports for boys, ‘soft’ ones for girls.
Critical theorists The Functions of Education: Legitimation
believed education maintained inequality and the power of capitalists who are already in control of society.
argued that schools work to reproduce class relations and the capitalist order. The capitalist ruling class diffuses its ideas through the school curriculum
saw the education system as encouraging and fostering conformity to authority.
believed ideas supportive of the ruling class were disseminated through the official curriculum and what he referred to as the hidden curriculum.
Karl Marx The Functions of Education: Legitimation
- Lessons that schools surreptitiously / place in society. unintentionally taught students, such as obedience, and expecting a certain
Hidden curriculum
Parents in low-income families may have different expectations and values than high-income families.
Education and Social Class * Differential expectations
Children from low-income backgrounds are less likely to have role models who were high achievers.
Education and Social Class* Differential association
Students from high-income families had more opportunities tutoring, educational trips, and books and newspapers.
Education and Social Class Differential preparation
o The practice of placing students with comparable skills or needs together.
o Intended to allow stronger students to attempt harder tasks, while giving weaker students extra guidance.
Streaming
- It allows students to advance according to their ability, thus helping to preserve their interest and incentive to perform.
- Teachers can adapt their teaching styles and materials to the types of students in their classes.
- Bright students won’t be bored or slowed down; they’ll be motivated and engaged.
Streaming has several advantages:
- The stigma of being organized into lower-performing classes might discourage the learning of students in these classes.
- This is referred to as a self-fulfilling prophecy, where students who are told they perform poorly, in turn, perform poorly.
- May have unintended effect of limiting access to social and cultural capital and preserve inequalities of upbringing Those who perform well earlier on may have had family advantages. Separating them from weaker students limits chances for transfer of social and cultural capital by peers.
Streaming also has several disadvantages, and sociologists may thus argue against practice of streaming:
used the idea of capital to describe what students in deprived areas lacked: they needed the broader cultural knowledge and social connections to climb higher.
it has been suggested that a deprived group needs to be integrated with a group that has traditions of higher educational aspirations.
One reason that education can perpetuate social inequality is its relationship to social and cultural capital.
These resources can be acquired through the education system and affect one’s chance of future success.
Coleman Education and Social Class: Cultural and Social Capital
