The Role of Education: Functionalism and the New

Right

Durkheim: Solidarity and SkillsTwo main functions of education:Creating social solidarityTeaching specialist skillsSocial Solidarity:Durkheim argues that society needs a sense of solidarity;

individual members must feel themselves to be part of a single 'body' or community.

He argues that without social solidarity, social life and cooperation would be impossible as each individual would pursue their own selfish desires.

The education system helps to create social solidarity by transmitting society's culture (shared beliefs) from one generation to another.

School acts as a 'society in miniature', preparing children for life in wider society. E.g. both in school and work you are taught to co operate with people who are not related to you.

The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Specialist Skills:The cooperation of many different specialists

promotes social solidarity but , for it to be successful, each person must have the necessary specialist knowledge and skills to perform their role.

Durkheim argues that education teaches individuals the specialist knowledge and skills that they need to play their part in the social division of labour.

Parsons: Meritocracy Meritocracy- The idea that everyone has an equal

opportunity to succeed and where individuals' rewards and status are achieved by their own efforts rather than ascribed by their gender, class or ethnic group.

Acts as a bridge between the family and wider society. The bridge is needed because family and society operate on

different principles, so children need to learn a new way of living if they are able to cope with the wider world.

Within the family, the child's status is ascribed; particular rules apply to only that particular child.

By contrast both school and wider society judge us all by the same universalistic and impersonal standards. Each pupil is judged against the same standards e.g. they all sit the same exam.

Likewise in both school and wider society, a person's status is achieved not ascribed e.g. working hard for a promotion.

Parsons sees school as preparing us to move from the family to wider society because school and society are both based on meritocratic principles.

Davis and Moore: Role Allocation Like Parson's, Davis and Moore also see education as a

device for selection and role allocation, but they focus on the relationship between education and social inequality.

They argue that inequality is necessary so that the most important roles in society are filled with the most talented people.

Not everyone is equally talented, so society has to offer higher rewards for these jobs thus creating competition as everyone will now compete for these jobs.

Education plays a key part in this process as it acts as a proving ground for ability.

Education 'sifts and sorts' everyone according to ability.The most able gain the highest qualifications, which

then gives them entry to the most important and highly rewarded positions.

Evaluation of the Functionalist PerspectiveThere is evidence that equal opportunities in

education don't exist. E.g. achievement is greatly influenced by class background rather than ability.

Marxists argue that education in capitalist society only transmits the ideology of a minority- the ruling class.

The interactionalist, Dennis Wrong argues that functionalists have an 'over-socialised view' of people as mere puppets of society. Functionalists wrongly imply that pupils passively accept all they are taught and never reject the school's values.

The New Right argue that the state education system fails to prepare young people adequately for work. This is because state control of education discourages efficiency, competition and choice.

The New Right favour the marketisation of education as schools are run like businesses and have to attract consumers (parents) by competing with each other. Schools provide consumers with what they want (good exam results) so that they 'don't go out of business'.

The New Right is similar to Functionalism in many ways e.g. they believe that people are naturally talented.

However the key difference is that the New Right do not believe the current education system is achieving these goals. This is because it is run by the state.

The state take a 'one size fits all' approach. The local consumers who use the school such as parents, pupils as well as employers have no say or input in the educational system.

Schools in which waste money or have poor results are not answerable to their consumers. Which means that pupils potentially have lower standards of achievement.

The New Right Perspective on Education

Chubb and Moe: Consumer choiceChubb and Moe argue that the American state education has

failed and they make the case for opening it up to market forces of supply and demand. They make a number of claims:

Disadvantaged groups- The lower classes have been badly served by the state as it has failed to create equal opportunity.

State education fails to produce pupils needed by the economy.Private schools have higher quality education as they are

answerable to those who are paying- the parents.Chubb and Moe based this on the achievements of 60,000

pupils from low income families in 1,015 state and private schools and parents' surveys. They found that low-income families do about 5% better in private schools. Chubb and Moe call for a market system that would put control in the hands of the consumers (parents) thus allowing them to meet their own needs. For this to work Chubb and Moe would propose the end of guaranteed funding to schools and the introduction of vouchers given to each family to spend on buying education.

Two roles for the StateThe state imposes a framework on schools within which

they have to compete e.g. by publishing league tables of exam results.

The state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture.Evaluation of the New Right PerspectiveMarxists argue that education doesn't impose a shared

national culture, and argues that it imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class.

Gewirtz and Ball argue that competition between schools benefit the middles class.

Critics would argue that real cause of low educational standard isn't the state control but social inequality and adequate funding of state schools.

There is contradiction between the support of new rights parents choice on one hand and the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum all its schools on the other.