The Part Played by Education in Society Education: Topic 1.

The Part Played by Education in Society

Education: Topic 1

The purpose of Education

• Today most young people spend approximately six hours per day in school, from aged four to at least sixteen

• They gain knowledge, attitudes and skills via the formal curriculum and the hidden curriculum

The start of compulsory education

• Forster’s Education Act 1870 brought in State responsibility for education of aged five to ten years

• 1880 Act made education compulsory for five to ten year olds

Compulsory education was introduced in 1880 in order to:

1. Create a more skilled workforce

2. Improve the effectiveness of our armies

3. Re-socialise the feckless (irresponsible) poor

4. Reduce the level of street crime

5. Ward off the threat of revolution

6. Provide education as a ‘human right’

(This is a liberal view of education)

Functionalist view of education(Parsons)

Socialisation into core values, e.g. equality of opportunity

Skills provision needed in modern industrial society

Role allocation (sorting the ‘right type’ of student for the ‘right type’ of job)

Marxists' view of education

• Education is part of the ideological state apparatus

• Education promotes ruling class values, (not common values as functionalists say)

• Education justifies and reproduces class inequality (it does not produce equality of opportunity)

• Education contains a hidden curriculum which promotes ruling class values and attitudes. This ensures that the working class accept their own failure, whereas in reality it is the capitalist education system which causes them to fail

Louis Althusser

Bowles and Gintis claim that:

• Education reflects the needs of capitalism by giving pupils the appropriate skills and attitudes to make them ‘good’ and obedient workers.

• There is a direct correspondence between school and work. E.g. teachers are the ‘bosses’ who control learning – pupils are the ‘workers’ who have no control over their learning

School

Work

• Students are rewarded with success for their conformity not their intellectual ability

Students who conform do better than those who challenge the system.

Functionalist view:

Education produces model citizens

Education is part of social structure

Does not look at behaviour in the classroom itself.

Marxist view:

Education turns working class pupils into conformists

Education is part of social structure

Does not look at behaviour in the classroom itself.

Two views of education

Criticism of both Functionalism and Marxism:

Paul Willis says that both Functionalism and Marxist theories are deterministic

• Both theories ignore the ability of many pupils to resist the education system

Willis went into schools to observe andunderstand what actually happens insidethe classroom which he linked this to Marxist theory

Inside schools, Willis found:

i. a ‘pro school’ subculture (the ‘lads’) and an ‘anti school’ subculture, (the ‘ear ’oles’)

ii. The “ear ‘oles” tended to be middle class and conformed, while the ‘lads’ tended to be working class and rebelled by “having a laff”

iii. ‘having a laff’ was a coping strategy for the boredom of school. Willis said this prepared them for coping with boring routine jobs in adult life

iv. It was their very rebellion, (not passivity) which reproduced the capitalist workforce

NB

Today such strategies as ‘having a laff’ tend

to lead to unemployment not routine jobs

The end

Possible examination style question:

Discuss reasons why we have an education system