Education is the main agent of secondary socialisation. How do schools prepare us for social life?

Parsons views education as having four main functions in society. He argues that school can be viewed as a link between those values learned in the family and those achieved in school. Schools teach the children what society expects from them and how to obey them. The third and fourth function Parsons views as given by education are that pupils are differentiated according to their achievement and this helps society determine where to employ different individuals. Davis and Moore agree completely with Parsons because they to see education as a selective agency which places people in different social and occupational positions according to abilities and qualifications.

Many of these views were criticised because they are too idealistic and ignore social inequalities. Their view is that there are equal opportunities for everyone, whereas in reality this is not the truth. Marxists view education as being an all part superstructure of the capitalist society. Socialization serves the interests of the economic role. They argue that education considers the culture of the higher classes whilst ignoring the social inequalities suffered by the working class. Education in a capitalist society can never be equal for all classes.

Children come from various social backgrounds and develop in different sub-cultures that affect their schooling. These differences give rise to the hidden curriculum schools have. The hidden curriculum is a concept that refers to all of those socialising practices that are not included in the official curriculum but that contribute toward the reproduction of society’s culture including the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs a certain society has.

The hidden curriculum was criticised mainly by Bowles and Gintis (Marxists) for making students passive and accept everything authority states instead of having active criticism. The knowledge given to the students is beyond their concern and they should accept it. Authority is valued – independent judgement is not because individual and peer ideas are not important to authority. Each subject is separate from the other; stating a hierarchy of subjects; where for example sciences are considered more important than home economics. They criticised Parsons for saying that every child has equal chances to achieve school objectives because he ignores conflict.

Hierarchy is found in every part of society. In the education system (mainly classrooms) there will always be people at the top controlling: teachers above pupils. Teachers need to give permission to the student for him/her to do something, or else one is considered a deviant and gets punished for not obeying authority. Moreover, with time certain labelling starts to emerge; students labelled as ‘good’ often perform well at school, they tend to respond well to the high expectations of teachers, on the other hand those labelled as ‘bad’ may think they have little hope of being seen in a good way, hence they rebel against the culture of the school and behave in a rude and disruptive manner. This labelling may be linked with streaming.

Streaming is a lead agent of secondary socialization because it assigns students of the same age to different classes; whereby they are grouped according to ability (often evaluated by the marks achieved on standardised tests). This concept determines the child’s ability and revolves around the belief that this ability will not change. Those in favour of streaming argue that it ensures effective teaching and pupils that achieve high marks can continue to progress at a fast pace because it is based on meritocratic principles. On the contrary, those against streaming say that assessments might be inaccurate and the ability grouping is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Stephen J. Ball introduced his study on streaming by giving three bands in which children would be categorised; Band 1 – The most able, Band2 – average ability, Band 3 – least able. The selections were based on the father’s occupation. This study conveys that there is a strong bond between ‘banding’ and performance in school. This portrays that the parents of students have a role in their children’s academic success. Everyone is given the opportunity to achieve success but those that have parents in higher jobs or classes in society have a tendency of continue further on with their studies in contrast to children whose parents fall into the working class position; this is because one is motivated to achieve success and usually has more support to continue on with his/her education.

Education is the main agent of secondary socialisation because it prepares us for the world of work. Though there are a lot on inequalities and conflicts in the system because of capitalism, one must accept that without education, a child has merely no chance of having a future in today’s demanding society.