Assess the view that the main function of education is to maintain value consensus in society

maintaining consensus in society. I will also be reviewing briefly on how feminists see the function of education.Functionalists believe that the education maintains a value consensus in society, and therefore promotes value consensus, with the educational and economic system working hand in hand to develop the skills required for the world of work. Functionalists accept that society is corresponding to a human body, this means that if all the organs in the body work and they are healthy then there is richness and sharing of values and norms. Durkhime provides the basic framework of the functionalists view on the education system, agreing with its function of transmitting norms and values. Emile Durkhime believed that for society to operate effectively they have to develop a sense of belonging to something, becoming social beings with a loyalty and commitment to society as a whole. Marxsits would agree with this but would criticize the point about which jobs students are prepared for. Marxists like the fact that bowles and gintis say that working class students are prepared for working class jobs and upper class students are prepared for upper class jobs. The reason for this being is because as working class students come from working class backgrounds they are less likely going to be prepared for exams and they are going to have revised less this is because their families are most likely not going to be able to afford the revision materials, whereas the upper class students would be able to. Also the upper class students could purchase their job, this means that as they are so rich they are going to be able to buy their way into things and this gives the working class less opportunity to get somewhere high in society.  Also another example could be that is you come from a working class background as you prepare yourself for working class jobs you’re going to be low paid which means you’ll have fewer skills, and that goes the same for the working class except for they have higher skills and therefore get higher paid jobs. This now means that Marxists has become the perpetuation of social inequality and class division.