Critically Evaluate the Functionalist Perspective on Education

Critically Evaluate the Functionalist Perspective on Education For the Functionalists, education performs a positive function for all individuals in society and has a powerful influence over it. The education system serves the needs of an industrial society by providing a more advanced division of labour; socialising new generations into societies shared norms and values and, according to meritocratic criteria, allocates roles in. Education supposedly meets societies through three related economic roles; socialisation; allocation and vocational training. Firstly, Durkheim and Parsons (1956-9) stated that the education system involves the transmission of socially agreed norms and values, known as the 'Value Consensus', to future generations. This was done through both the 'formal' curriculum and the 'hidden' curriculum, and its economic role is referred to as socialisation or social control. The formal curriculum is more commonly known as the National Curriculum and so is thus the timetabled lessons the state lays out for students to undertake. However, the hidden curriculum teaches such moral lessons as the reward and punishment system, by which students must conform to and obey more authoritative persons (teachers), and installs a sense of work ethic, like punctuality and co-operation. Functionalist theorists believe that this internalisation of norms and values results

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  • Level: AS and A Level
  • Subject: Sociology
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