For Parsons schools operate on meritocratic principles. This means that everyone is treated the same way and that everyone has the same chances to succeed. Therefore, those that achieve the most in school do so on merit.
Ability + Effort = Merit
Schools operate on the principle and reward the most ability and those who try hardest with exam success. Therefore, schools ensure that the best people will perform the most important jobs- and this will benefit society as a whole. However, Althusser, a Marxist, disagrees, saying it is merely ideology that makes people believe that the education is fair, when really it serves the interests of the ruling class because they control the education system. They argue as long as private education continues to exist society can never be meritocratic, because public schools symbolise class inequality.
Parsons argues that schools also perform the function of role allocation. This means that by testing and evaluating students, schools match the students’ talents and capacities to jobs they are best suited for.
Marxist on the other hand argue that education is an ideological state apparatus which aims to maintain, legitimate and reproduce, generation by generation, class inequalities in wealth and power. The role of education to a Marxist is ideological- it promotes capitalist values as common values. This is done through the hidden curriculum, which refers to the informal ways in which conformity, subordination and acceptance in equality are encouraged in working class young people in the knowledge that is taught in schools and the ways schools are organised.
Marxists believe that schools mould children into subjects to fit the requirements capitalism. At school children learn- submission, deference, respect for work and their place within it. In summary, schools work to meet the needs of the workforce. Functionalists partly agree with this, as Davis and Moore argue that the role of education is to allocate people to occupations that best suit their abilities. Moreover, both the most talented and the least talented will end up in jobs, which they will make efficient contributions to the smooth running of capitalist society. In this sense, inequality in functional and necessary. Teachers are like bosses, and pupils are like workers, who work for rewards. The higher up the system the individual progresses, however, the more personal freedom they have to control their own education or working experiences, the more responsibility they have as an outcome. They do point out however, success is not entirely related to intellectual ability. Those people who fit in rise above those who challenge the system. They give this reason as an example why white middle-class pupils tend to do better.
Functionalists claim that there is a strong relationship between education and the economy. As the economy becomes more complex, it requires new skills and greater technical expertise, and education must provide a work force to meet these needs. Marxism in criticism, claim that education is not about transmitting skills, but about transmitting good worker attitudes. Bowles and Gintis suggest that what goes on in school directly corresponds with what goes on in factories. Most work is boring and routine and school functions to prepare working class pupils for their future role as a factory worker.
Paul Willis provides a major critique of both perspectives by pointing out that both theories are over-deterministic, i.e. both see pupils as passive products of the educational system. Functionalist see pupils being turned into model citizens whilst Marxist argue that working class kids are turned into conformist workers. Both theories fail take into account the power of pupils to resist these processes. In Willis’ study, ‘Learning Labour’, the ‘lads’ took little notice of the hidden curriculum- they substituted their own definitions of what school was, based upon ‘having a laff’. The ‘lads’ in his study were very happy to take factory jobs because their working class culture valued factory work. Taking such jobs was seen as success rather than failure.
Both Marxist and Functionalist approaches are structuralist theories in that they see social institutions as more important than individuals. Out that both theories are over-deterministic, meaning they fail to take into account the power of pupils to resist these processes. They do not pay mush attention to classroom interaction or how both teachers and pupils interpret what goes on in schools.
