In order to exist, societal members must share common beliefs and values, these are only partially taught by the family, he emphasized the moral force of education, the way in which the school continues this process and the way in which children internalise the values and belief of society to became ‘social beings’. According to him the main functions of education was the development of social solidarity through the transmission of a collective culture and making them realise they are part of something bigger. An example of this is in American schools where pupils sing the national anthem and pledge their allegiance to the flag everyday by making tem feel part of the American society.
According to functionalists, school is society in miniature, where pupils have to get on with strangers and where they learn that status is to be achieved not ascribed as in the family. Parsons argues that the school acts as a bridge between the family and wider society, that is between childhood and adulthood, where children stop being judged by the particularistic norms of their families and are judged instead universalistic norms of society. Parsons also believe that the role of education is also to promoter these universalistic values such as achievement, individualism, competition and equality of opportunity.
Davis and Moore argue that education plays a selection/ allocation function, selecting individuals for the role that their abilities best suit them for and slotting the most talented in to the most functionally most important jobs in society, differentiating between pupils. Educational mechanisms such as grades, examinations, references and qualifications are used to sort individuals. Society is this a meritocracy in which people are rewarded for intelligence, ability and effort. Functional importance is decided by length and specialist training required for particular occupations. It is claimed that to be a brain surgeon, for example takes much more talent, education and training than to be a nurse. Therefore in order to ensure that people are prepared to undertake long and expensive training, the rewards offered must be substantially greater for surgeons than for nurses.
“A medical education is a burdensome and expensive that virtually none would undertake it if the MD did not carry a reward commensurate with the sacrifice”
(Davis and Moore).
Inequality is therefore functionally necessary. If everyone had the same levels of pay and status no one would be prepared to take on the most difficult and responsible jobs, it is argued.
However, Marxists such as Bowles and Gintis criticise the view that education is a meritocracy where children achieve according to their abilities. Marxists and other critical thinkers reject the view that the UK educational system is meritocratic for three broad reasons firstly because as long as private education continues to exist society can never be meritocratic, because public schools symbolise class equality. Secondly a focus on choice has created hierarchy of educational institutions based on forms of selection rather than equal opportunities, thirdly the concept of meritocracy is undermined by the disproportionate inequalities in achievement experienced by groups such as the working class and particular ethnic minorities in the British Education system. Other criticisms of the functionalist perspective is that it assumes that all pupils start from the same point whereas in fact some children start with large amounts of cultural capital in the form of language, attitudes, confidence and manners that privilege them in school. It also assumed a value consensus where everyone agrees about the most important jobs and shares the same values to be transmitted through society by schools.
However it should be noted that despite differences between functionalism and Marxism, these two perspectives do share some similarities. Firstly they are both structuralist theories in that they see social institutions as more important than individuals. Secondly they don’t pay much attention to classroom interaction on how teachers and pupils interpret what goes on in school.
The functionalist’s view that education provides pupils with the skills for work has also been criticised. Since these are often not acquired at school but from additional trainings by employers. New right thinkers and some labour politicians, criticise schools for teaching things not relevant for work. Others argue that education really only has a baby-sitting or control function. It’s a way of controlling young people and of allowing parents to go out and work.
Functionalists are useful in drawing attention to the many functions education can perform but they are probably wrong to see them as well-being for the goods of individuals and society as a whole. For example it may be only the ruling class who benefit from education producing a docile workforce. From another perspective, interactionists would argue that they have an over socialised view of individuals and that we cant see education in terms of ‘functions’ anyway we should look instead at how individuals interact with schools rather than seeing education as a thing which shape the individuals in societies interests.
