Classical%20Sociological%20Perspectives%20of%20Education

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Classical Sociological Perspectives of Education

• Sept 18th, 2006

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What is Education?

• Education is the social institution responsible
  for the systematic transmission of knowledge,
  skills, and cultural vales within a formally
  organized structure

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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.

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Informal education

• learning that occurs in a spontaneous, unplanned
  way.

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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

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Theories of Education

• Functionalist
• Conflict
• Interactionist

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Functionalism

• Dewy
• Parsons
• Durkheim
• Education is responsible for developing moral or
  normative consensus, which is at the centre of
  social integration and pattern maintenance.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Manifest Functions of Education

• Socialization
• Transmission of culture
• Social Control
• Social placement
• Change and innovations

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Latent Functions of Education

• Restricting some activities
• Matchmaking and production of social networks
• Creation of a Generation Gap

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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.

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Conflict theorists

• argue that access to quality education is closely
  related to social class.
• education is a vehicle for reproducing existing
  class relationships.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Interactionist Perspective on Education

• Interactionists focus on classroom communication
  patterns and educational practices such as
  labeling that affect students self-concept and
  aspirations

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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).

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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.

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Recap
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Average Tuition Fees
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Level of Educational Attainment
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Ed in Canada
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Uni Qualifications