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1. The Part Played by Education in Society Education: Topic 1
2. 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
3. The start of compulsory education
Forsters 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
4. Compulsory education was introduced in 1880 in order to:
Create a more skilled workforce
Improve the effectiveness of our armies
Re-socialise the feckless (irresponsible) poor
5. Reduce the level of street crime
Ward off the threat of revolution
Provide education as a human right
(This is a liberal view of education)
6. 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)
7. 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)
8. 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
9. 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
10. Students are rewarded with success for their conformity not their intellectual ability
Students who conform do better than those who challenge the system.
11. 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
12. 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 and
understand what actually happens inside
the classroom which he linked this to Marxist
theory
13. Inside schools, Willis found: a pro school subculture (the lads) and an anti school subculture, (the ear oles)
The ear oles tended to be middle class and conformed, while the lads tended to be working class and rebelled by having a laff
14. 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
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
15. The end Possible examination style question:
Discuss reasons why we have an education system