Compare, Contrast And Evaluate The Sociological Perspectives On Teh Role Of Education

Functionalists view the role of education as a means of socialising individuals and to integrate society, to keep society running smoothly and remain stable. Emile Durkheim, creator of the Organic Analogy, was a functionalist during the 1870’s. Durkheim believes that society can only survive if its members are committed to common social values and that education provides these to children and young people as well as raising awareness of their commitment to society. Durkheim also believed that schools teach young people that they must co-operate with their peers and be prepare to listen to and learn from their teachers. Individual pupils eventually learn to suspend their own self interests for those of society as a whole, work together and that success in education, just like in society, involves commitment to a value consensus. Similarly, Kingsley Da

vis and Wilbert Moore, functionalists during the 1970’s, believed that education is strongly linked to social stratification by members of society and that education ‘sifts, sorts and allocates’ people to their correct place in the economy and society. By rewarding the most talented and most dedicated by allowing them into the highest paid and highest status jobs, education performs the function which is always necessary to Functionalists – differentiating all members of society so that the system runs smoothly.

Liberalism is unlike either of the other views; it contrasts sharply with the individual Marxists and Functionalists views on the role of education. The liberal view of education rests on the assumption that individuals should be free to determine their own destiny. Liberalism concentrates on the individual rather than society as a whole and that education should consider individual strengths not impose the same curriculum on everyone and presume that it would be suitable; education should bring out a persons strengths. Ivan Illich, writer of ‘Be-schooling Society’ (1971) says that formal schooling is failing most children and that schools over concentrate on paper qualifications, which do little or nothing in themselves. He also suggests that formal curriculum’s should be abolished and set lessons made non-compulsory and that education should find children’s strengths, not impose vague notions on what the government wants. Illich also suggests that the school indoctrinates pupils through the hidden curriculum and cares more about control of the pupils then their actual learning. An application of the liberal view to education was the fee-paying school created by A. S. Neill, headmaster of Summerhill School in the 1920’s, created one of the first Free Schools – not in the financial sense but in the curricular sense. Nei

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