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Classical Sociological Perspectives of Education. Sept 18 th , 2006. What is Education?. Education is the social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural vales within a formally organized structure. Cultural Transmission.
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Classical Sociological Perspectives of Education Sept 18th, 2006
What is Education? • Education is the social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural vales within a formally organized structure
Cultural Transmission • The process by which children and recent immigrants become acquainted with the dominant cultural beliefs, values, norms and accumulated knowledge of a society – occurs through informal and formal education.
Informal education • learning that occurs in a spontaneous, unplanned way.
Formal Education • Learning that takes place within an academic setting such as a school, which has a planned instructional process and teachers who convey specific knowledge, skills and thinking process to students
Theories of Education • Functionalist • Conflict • Interactionist
Functionalism • Dewy • Parsons • Durkheim • Education is responsible for developing moral or normative consensus, which is at the centre of social integration and pattern maintenance.
Meritocracy • A form of social system in which power goes to those with superior intellects - the belief that rulers should be chosen for their superior abilities and not because of their wealth or birth
Functions of School System • to teach the values of achievement, universalistic standards of judgment, and emotional neutrality appropriate for specialized occupations • to train in specific skills and knowledge appropriate for occupational roles • to ensure the appropriate selection and allocation of young adults to occupational roles in accordance with merit, as measured by universal standards of achievements • to legitimate inequalities in material rewards in democratic society through principles of merit established in the school grading system • to develop stable social relations with age peers outside the family • to inculcate appropriate sex-roles identification
Schools Instill • a) The value of achievement - by rewarding those who achieve through exam success. • b) The value of equality of opportunity - by offering everyone an equal chance to succeed.
Emile Durkheim ..main function of education is the transmission of society's norms and values in three mains areas: • 1. SOCIAL SOLIDARITY - For example the teaching of history provides social continuity. • 2. SOCIAL RULES - At school we learn to co-operate with strangers and to be self-disciplined. • 3. DIVISION OF LABOUR - Education teaches individual skills necessary for future occupations. This is a most important function in advanced industrial society with its complex division of labour.
Schools transmit • a) General Values necessary for homogeneity • b) Specific skills provide necessary diversity for social co-operation as people need to work together to produce goods.
Manifest Functions of Education • Socialization • Transmission of culture • Social Control • Social placement • Change and innovations
Latent Functions of Education • Restricting some activities • Matchmaking and production of social networks • Creation of a Generation Gap
Conflict Perspective on Education • From a conflict perspective, education is used to perpetuate class, racial-ethnic, and gender inequalities through tracking, ability grouping and a hidden curriculum that teaches subordinate groups conformity and obedience.
Conflict theorists • argue that access to quality education is closely related to social class. • education is a vehicle for reproducing existing class relationships.
Pierre Bourdieu • argues that the educational system uphold patterns of behaviour and attitudes of the dominant class. • argues that students from diverse backgrounds come to school with different amounts of Cultural Capital – social assets that include values, beliefs, attitudes and competencies in language and culture.
Hidden Curriculum • is the transmission of cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority, through implied demands found in rules, routines and regulations in schools.
Marxism • For Karl Marx, education performs two main functions in capitalist society: • 1. It reproduces the inequalities and social relations of production of Capitalist Society. • 2. It serves to legitimate these inequalities under the guise of Meritocracy.
Interactionist Perspective on Education • Interactionists focus on classroom communication patterns and educational practices such as labeling that affect students’ self-concept and aspirations
Interactionist • Labeling is the process whereby a person is identified by others as possessing a specific characteristic or exhibiting a certain pattern of behaviour (such as being deviant).
Interactionist • Self-fulfilling Prophecy – defined as an unsubstantiated belief or prediction resulting in behaviour that makes the originally false beliefs come true. • Typing refers to how teachers 'type' or categorize pupils as 'bright' or 'troublesome', 'good' or 'bad' etc.
