David Hargreaves also criticises Durkheim’s view on the comprehensive school, claiming it puts too much emphasis on developing the individual and not enough on the responsibilities the individual should have towards group life. He also goes on to say it isn’t clear that education in modern Britain succeeds in transmitting shared values/social solidarity and that Durkheim also assumes that the norms and values are those of society as a whole rather than those of the ruling elite.
Talcott Parsons developed Durkheim’s ideas, arguing several points;
- Parsons argued that education performs an important socialising function, ensuring value consensus.
- He claims the classroom is like a ‘miniature society’ in which it provides training for the wider society and affects the transition from childhood to adulthood, with it acting as a bridge between the family and wider society.
- In school, young people are judged equally in terms of standards of conduct and academic success. They achieve status by effort and ability, therefore promoting the value of achievement and are rewarded for good achievement with good exam results, therefore socialising young people by reflecting wider society.
- He finally argues that schools help to select young people and allocate them to their future adult roles by assessing them in terms of their talents and abilities and matching them to appropriate occupations.
Criticisms of Parsons include his failure to give consideration to the possibility that the values transmitted may be those of the ruling class and not of society as a whole and also that his idea that schools operate on ‘meritocratic’ principles is open to question.
Bowles and Gintis put forward the Marxist view on the role of the education system, claiming in Capitalist societies it is the reproduction of labour power, describing a close correspondence between the relationships in the classroom and those in the workplace, which is essential for social reproduction, the reproduction of new workers who are appropriately schooled to accept their roles in society.
Bowles and Gintis claim that education provides the correct personality, attitudes and values through the hidden curriculum, which pupils learn through their experiences during school. The hidden curriculum works in several ways;
- It helps to produce a subservient workforce of uncritical, passive and docile workers by having teachers give orders and students obeying them with little control over the work they do.
- It encourages the acceptance of hierarchy by organising the school on a hierarchical principle of authority and control, preparing them for the workplace where they will have to listen to their boss.
- Pupils are motivated by external rewards such as good grades. They claim learning is based upon the ‘jug and mug’ principle, meaning the teachers possess the knowledge which they pour into the ‘empty jugs’.
- Fragmentation of school subjects, by having the student move around from one subject to another, with little connection between them, this corresponds to the fragmentation of the workforce as most of the time jobs are broken down into specific tasks performed by individuals so workers are denied knowledge of the overall process, making it impossible to compete with their employers.
Bowles and Gintis therefore believe that the hidden curriculum produces a passive and obedient workforce that accepts authority without question, which is motivated by rewards and which is fragmented. They claim that capitalism needs a surplus of skilled labour which maintains the high rate of unemployment and ensures that workers of all levels of skill have to compete with each other for jobs. Employers can pay low wages by threatening dismissal and replacement by a reserve army of skilled labour. The illusion that everybody has an equal chance is created by the education to help legitimate social inequality, claiming that those who achieve high qualifications deserve their success; this is a myth of meritocracy.
Criticisms of Bowles and Gintis include;
- Brown et al (1997) argue that changes in the workplace have actually increased the importance of team working rather than isolating individuals.
- They are criticised for their claims about the way schools shape personality. They did not carry out detailed research of life in schools, just assuming that the hidden curriculum was influencing pupils.
- They ignore the influence of the formal curriculum, Reynolds (1984) claims that much of the curriculum does not promote the development of the ideal employee under capitalism e.g. the popularity of Sociology can hardly be seen as promoting passive people.
- Teachers are seen as agents of capitalism and pupils its victims, however many teachers are radicals who choose teaching to express their own victims.
- Their theory was developed in the 1970’s so is a little outdated.
In response to the criticisms of Bowles and Gintis, Marxists such as Henry Giroux (1982) have created a modified approach to the analysis. He argues that working class pupils are actively engaged in shaping their own situation, not accepting everything they are taught, nor is their behaviour entirely shaped by capitalism. He claims schools are ‘sites’ of struggle with clashes of cultures trying to influence both the content and process of schooling. He goes on to describe the education system as possessing relative autonomy from the economy. Unlike Bowles and Gintis he argues that education has partial independence from the needs of capitalist industry e.g. in the USA in the 1980’s the education system produced more graduates than were needed. However he does say that the system cannot go against the fundamental interests of capitalism.
Criticisms of the relative autonomy approach include;
- He fails to spell out in what circumstances education can develop independently
- His theory is described as one in which ‘anything goes’ i.e. pupils are indoctrinated with Bourgeois ideology at school or they fight against the authority of teachers, so therefore it becomes impossible to prove his theory wrong.
Feminists once again argue that the main role of education is that it helps to reinforce ‘patriarchy’.
Liberal feminists argue that patriarchy will be ended by changes in equal opportunities and educational policies e.g. they would argue that the introduction of the National Curriculum has played a significant role in bringing about equality by making sure both genders study the same subjects in schools.
Marxist feminists argue that women’s role in society is shaped/determined by the needs of the economy. They blame the capitalist system for allowing women to be forced in a situation where they are socialised to support men in the home and workplace, with education enforcing these expectations both on men and women.
Black feminists argue that it is very different to be black and female in comparison to being white and female, which is seen in the experiences in schools/colleges in the way teachers treat both groups differently and books describe the groups.
Radical feminists argue patriarchy can only end when women are freed from the negative influence and violence that men inflict on women both physically and emotionally, with school life being seen as a prime source of the violence.
Feminists also look at the hidden curriculum, arguing that it operates in 5 different ways;
- Through books – Feminists claim that many children’s books or textbooks portray women as dependent on men; with Kelly (1987) arguing women are largely invisible in science textbooks.
- Through students – Many female students are made to feel uncomfortable in the presence of male students e.g. Culley (1986) when studying computing found that boys liked to ‘colonise’ the space around computers, with many teachers not intervening, leaving the girls to feel excluded from what was wrongly perceived as a male activity.
- Teacher’s expectations and attitudes – Although much has changed in recent years, Heaton and Lawson (1996) argue that many teachers still have strong sexist attitudes towards tasks in the classroom e.g. boys are still asked to move furniture around.
- Through a patriarchal curriculum – Many feminists argue what is taught in school still creates gender inequality in education. The way sport is taught tends to focus more on the achievement of boys than girls e.g. football. The choices made by boys and girls in A Levels are still strongly gender specific in some areas.
- Through a lack of positive role models – Despite the fact that there are more female teachers in England and Wales, more men occupy the senior management levels, with few black female teachers. Feminists argue that this creates an expectation that positions of power and authority are automatically associated with men.
Education is seen as a major source of gender socialisation by feminists. Different feminists highlight different aspects of the education system that enforce an ideology that males are naturally in positions of power and authority. The hidden curriculum shows a variety of ways that these processes work. However, do remember that despite the many problems that females face in school, they are generally outperforming males in all areas of education, so stop complaining.
In conclusion, the functionalists believe that the main function of education is to maintain a value consensus in society, however the Marxist view is that the main role is to serve the needs of capitalism, creating a socialising a new workforce, and the feminists believe that the role is to maintain a state of patriarchy.
