The Part Played by Education

in Society

Education: Topic 1
 The purpose of Education
Today most young people
spend approximately six
hours per day in school,
from aged four to at least
sixteen
They gain knowledge,
attitudes and skills via the
formal curriculum and the
hidden curriculum
The start of compulsory education

Forsters Education Act 1870 brought in State

responsibility for education of aged five to ten years

1880 Act made education compulsory for five to ten

year olds
 Compulsory education was
introduced in 1880 in order to:

1. Create a more
skilled workforce

2. Improve the
effectiveness of our
armies

3. Re-socialise the
feckless
(irresponsible) poor
4. Reduce the level of
street crime

5. Ward off the threat

of revolution

6. Provide education
as a human right
(This is a liberal
view of education)
 Functionalist view of education
(Parsons)

Socialisation into core values, e.g.

equality of opportunity

Skills provision needed in modern

industrial society

Role allocation (sorting the right type of

student for the right type of job)
 Marxists' view of education

Education is part of the ideological state

apparatus

Education promotes ruling class values, (not

common values as functionalists say)

Education justifies and reproduces class

inequality (it does not produce equality of
opportunity)
Louis Althusser

Education contains a hidden curriculum

which promotes ruling class values and
attitudes. This ensures that the working
class accept their own failure, whereas in
reality it is the capitalist education system
which causes them to fail
 Bowles and Gintis claim that:
School

Education reflects the needs of capitalism

by giving pupils the appropriate skills and
attitudes to make them good and
obedient workers.
Work

There is a direct correspondence

between school and work. E.g. teachers
are the bosses who control learning
pupils are the workers who have no
control over their learning
 Students are rewarded
with success for their
conformity not their
intellectual ability

Students who conform do

better than those who
challenge the system.
 Two views of education
Functionalist view: Marxist view:
Education produces Education turns
model citizens working class pupils
into conformists
Education is part of Education is part of
social structure social structure

Does not look at Does not look at

behaviour in the behaviour in the
classroom itself. classroom itself.
 Criticism of both Functionalism and
Marxism:

Paul Willis says that both Functionalism and

Marxist theories are deterministic

Both theories ignore the ability of many pupils

to resist the education system

Willis went into schools to observe and

understand what actually happens inside
the classroom which he linked this to Marxist
theory
 Inside schools, Willis
found:
i. a pro school subculture (the lads) and
an anti school subculture, (the ear
oles)

ii. The ear oles tended to be middle class

and conformed, while the lads tended to
be working class and rebelled by having
a laff
iii. having a laff was a coping strategy for
the boredom of school. Willis said this
prepared them for coping with boring
routine jobs in adult life
iv. It was their very rebellion, (not passivity)
which reproduced the capitalist
workforce
NB
Today such strategies as having a laff tend
to lead to unemployment not routine jobs
Possible examination style question:

Discuss reasons why we have an

education system

The end