role allocation: the functionally most important jobs go to the most intelligent people.
social solidarity AKA 'blu tack' theory.
social solidarity = "the welding of a mass of individuals into a united whole". This is the main function of education.
the development of schooling = directly related to the needs and ideas of society; all great social movements arose out of changes in education.
social solidarity is achieved through:
therefore education creates social cohesion and unity.
This refers to the movement within education away from academic stuff, and towards more vocationalqualifications/subjects.
this movement is the province of the New Right/functionalists, but was started by Labour PM James Callaghan, who initiated the 'Great Debate' on the role of edu.
Developed Marx and Engels' theory of false class consciousness.
edu benefits capitalism by teaching students passivity and docility to make them the next generation of compliant workers.
correspondence principle: "work casts a long shadow over the educational system: education is subservient to the needs of those who control the workforce". meaning that education aims to resemble school because it's whole purpose is to prepare students to be exploited. some of the ways it does this, AKA some of the ways education is similar to school:
Marxists (such as Bowles and Gintis) argue that educational achievement and occupational status are based on socioeconomic class not merit/effort/ability.
this is because of the process of cultural reproduction whereby mc parents have cultural knowledge that, due to schools functioning for capitalism, schools attribute symbolic value to. see more about cultural capital here
schools have meritocratic ideologies where they instill the idea that those who get the best grades are those who are most intelligent/work the hardest. but this is a hegemonic ploy to ensure that when schools (systematically) fail the working class, this class believes it is their fault; thus their consequent exploitation in lower-paid jobs is seen as justified rather than inflicted.
analogy of 'haunting' to describe the hidden curriculum.
posits that teachers are not autonomous; the teaching and learning is not solely controlled by them, but also by the:
everything school teaches us outside of formal lesson time. e.g.
learning to labour. qualitative study of 12 working class lads in their move from school to work. participant observation and USI.
Disagreed with Bowles and Gintis. They saw education as basic indoctrination, pushing wc kids into failing and accepting their failure. Whereas Willis found that while wc kids did inevitably fail, and the school system did have a part in this, they displayed agency in recognising that education was failing them, and they formed an anti-school subculture in light of this, taking agency over their own failure and inverting school values in order to create their own symbolic capital on messing up in education.
anti-school subculture:
critiques of Willis:
gratification means pleasure or rewards. the gratification in this case is measured by job prospects, educational qualifications, and salary.
DOE (Department of Education, 2012): only 1/3 of pupils who were eligible for FSMs achieved 5+ GCSEs graded A*-C including Maths and English.
(2004) found that money problems in the family were a significant factor in younger children's non-attendance to school.
also found that fear of stigmatisation may explain why 20% of those eligible for FSMs don't take up the entitlement.
(2001) poorer young people have lower intakes of Energy (vitamins and minerals). this poor nutrition adversely affects their health, and therefore school performance. lower energy =
among 10y.o.s., the lower the socioeconomic class is, the higher the rate of:
all of these things negatively affect their educational achievement.
found children in low-income families are more likely to engage in externalising behaviour, such as fighting and temper tantrums, which disrupts their schooling.
lack of parental financial support for poor students means they have limited access to school equiment and trips. this affects their cultural and educational capital.
(1980) calls these things the 'costs of free schooling'
(2013) study of Oxford area.
found examples of items needed for school that cost students money:
this places a burden on poorer families, resulting in use of cheaper and unfashionable equipment or hand-me-downs. this leads to
argue poverty is a barrier to education in other ways
found that children in poverty often take on jobs and this has a negative impact on school work. examples include:
used data from a nationwide questionnaire/survey.
asked nearly 2000 prospective students
found the wc = 'debt-averse', seeing the costs of HE as greater than the benefits. this was the most important factor in students' decision to enter uni, with the working class being 5x less likely to apply.
whereas the mc = 'debt-tolerant'
wc = more likely to apply to local unis, ub order to live at home and cut down on living/travel expenses.
this gives them less opportunity to apply to russell group unis, degrees from which are more highly valued by some employers.
wc are also more likely to work part-time jobs to fund studies, and this makes it more difficult for them to obtain higher class degrees (e.g. 1st or 2:1, instead of 2:2)
unis that have a larger proportion of poor students have higher drop-out rates. e.g.
also found wc students spend 2x as much time in paid-work in order to fund studies.
argue material inequalities have the greatest effect on edu achievement.
argues tackling child poverty = the most effective method of boosting achievement.
"material circumstances played a key role in determining how long children stayed in school. In our analysis class inequalitiesat school leaving had virtually nothing to do with family climate. Material disadvantage is far more important." (bolded text not from original)
"educational deprivation is not mainly due to the effects of poverty; paternal attidude and maternal care are far more important than the level of material needs."(bold not original).
the way that the dominant class reproduce their power in society by imposing their definition of knowledge/intelligence.
this is done through the school system.
we generally accept that the curriculum tries to teach us skills and knowledge that is valuable to wider societal pursuits. But cultural deprivation theory conceptualises the curriculum as a mode for the dominant class to express to each new generation the particular bourgeois cultural values and standards, and to define this as the only mode for success. Thus those who want to succeed in education are measured by their 'cultural capital' (closeness to the upper class culture), symbolic violence is wrought on lower class cultures (by devaluing their cultural sensibilities), and the class system is reproduced (by ensuring those who adhere to upper class culture will succeed).
the
of the dominant class which is given symbolic capital (given subjective value - think about how your English teacher values Shakespeare's work)
and therefore is given educational capital (think about how you will get an A* if you also learn to value Shakespeare's work),
which then translates into material capital (think about the high-paying job you can get if you get good qualifications).
describes how education translates upper class culture into capital:
the lesson: culture is capital.
speech codes
middle class talk in elaborated code: Received Pronounciation (RP), features:
wc have restricted code
positional theory
this theory has a tricky name, but it is easy. Boudon argues that what is important in whether a student progresses onto uni or doesn't is not only whether they have the cultural capital (Bourdieu) to pass exams, or whether they have the language code of the mc curriculum (Bernstein) to pass exams, but also whether they are in a good 'position' to go to uni.
he posited that the decisions you make about schooling aren't solely based whether you can progress through school and make the grades to get into uni; they are also about whether:
'position' is a very vague term, but for this theory think of 'position' like when someone says "you're putting me in a really bad position here".
think about the social position of a mc person attending uni where there are upper mc lecturers and fellow students with cars and whose parents loan them money; all their friends are going and it is normal and expected of them by their parents; the decision becomes easy for them, so they apply. it is an extension of their homes
now think about the wc person thinking of applying to uni; their parents didn't go, and so can't help with the application process, several of their friends aren't going and therefore feel left behind by them; they are constantly reminded of the crushing debt, and the people in their community consider them a snobby uni person who thinks they are better than everyone else; going to uni raises tensions with their home life in every aspect. the decision is much harder.
Boudon's basic argument is that socioeconomic class is a factor in decisions and ability to go to uni; but not only in terms of whether their culture equips them to achieve academically, but also in whether their culture permits and equips them to choose and value higher education; whether it is worth it for them.
worked as a teacher in a boys' secondary modern.
found evidence of 'typing' = sorting pupils into labels like 'bright', good, bad, 'troublesome'.
boys were sorted into 4 streams in the first year, and once they were in one stream, it was almost impossible to move up or down; only one boy had ever moved all the way from stream-D to A.
lack of social mobility inspires disillusionment with the meritocracy of the system, and thus leads to anti-school subcultures.
Hargreaves also talks about a 'cooling out process'; for more information, see Ball.
Hightown Grammar. first year boys were not streamed, and so had a homogeneous pro-school attitude.
but in second year they were streamed, and so their attitudes began to polarise.
within this, there are 2 processes:
'classroom knowledge': studied a large comprehensive (mixed ability).
streaming isn't all there is to polarisation and anti-school subcultures; even in non-streamed classes, labelling led to these pupil attitudes.
teachers denied it, but they still labelled students as "an A-stream student" or as B or C.
these labels were based not on intimate knowledge of pupil ability, but on stereotypes of their social class.
teachers treated questions from negatively labelled students with suspicion as ingenuine, disruptive, or attention-seeking.
whereas they treated questions from positively-labelled students as evidence of their enthusiasm.
'beachside comprehensive'
found that when schools replaced streaming with more subtle forms of stratification, it successfully ameliorated/reduced the formation of anti-school subcultures.
by placing students in 'mixed-ability' groups, the stratification was more informal, upheld solely by teacher labels rather than formal organisation of classes, and, as such the failing of negatively labelled wc pupils seemed more just and meritocratic; they accept this as fair, and believe it is their fault.
this is what Hargreaves called the 'cooling out process', where wc pupils are encouraged to abandon their academic ambitions voluntarily, believing that they had a fair chance. think about how a fighter in a battle might encourage their opponent to forfeit and accept defeat, in order to get off with their life; the fighter does this through making it seem like the opponent is losing, and while this may be true, the fighter is also tired and it might otherwise end in a draw. negatively labelled pupilsdo have the potential to still succeed, as FUller showed, but they accept defeat anyway, thus foolproofing the capitalist stratification operation of the education system.
(1977) ethnographic study
of an elementary school in a Black community of St. Louis, USA.
found that the pupils in the same class were divided into 3 tables., based not on academic ability, but social class. and that, by second grade they were labelled on the basis of which table they were sat at.
The key finding is that through the process of organising the teaching of pupils around initial subjectively perceived ability, onto different groups/tables (aka streaming), the labels became integrated into their learning experience/patterns, and thus became objective labels, which reflected how they had learned to interact with each other and with their education. labels stick.
this reflects W.I. Thomas' quote.
'pygmalion in the classroom' - a field experiment in a california primary school
researched the effect of teacher expectancy on pupil academic performance.
gave pupils a fake IQ test at the start of the year, ignored the results, and randomly selected 20% of the pupils. The researchers told the teachers that these pupils were 'spurters', a label similar to 'bright' or 'gifted', leading the teachers to believe these pupils had more potential than others.
the teachers treated these pupils differently, and thus by the end of the year, they performed better: for the first 8 months, the spurters increased an average 12 IQ points, compared to the total average for the class (8 IQ points), but after a year the 'expectancy advantage' only continued to advance those pupils aged 10-11.
found 4 factors in how teachers' behaviour changes based on expectations:
Gillborn points out that the very high attainment of Indian pupils suggests that having English as an Additional Language is not always a barrier to success.
Driver & Ballard found that by the age of 16, Asian children whose main home language was not English were at least as competent in English as their classmates.
Also argue that the Asian family structure brings benefits. Asian parents have more positive attitudes towards education, and higher hopes for their children’s futures, as a result they are most supportive.
Consider the language spoken by low income Black American families as being inadequate for educational success. The see it as ungrammatical, disorganised and being incapable of expressing abstract idea.
Identifies their lack of standard English as being a major barrier to progress in education and integration into the wider society
Pupils with English as a second language, who speak another language in their homes, outperformed in the EBacc their classmates who had English as their mother tongue.
Criticised the explanation that black Caribbean parents have different attitudes from other ethnic groups. In her research, she found that black Caribbean parents do value education just as much as other ethnic groups & they are supportive of their children’s schooling. E.g. encouragement given to reading, the priority placed on talking regularly about the school day, the provision of materials & books for the school & the commitment to supporting homework
Argues that a high rate of lone parenthood & a lack of positive male role models lead to the underachievement of some minorities from a New Right perspective. Boys don’t have the ‘tough love’ that fathers provide.
Believes that ethnic differences in achievement stem from cultural differences outside the educational system, not discrimination within it.
Sees the low achievement levels of some EMGs as a result from a failure to embrace mainstream British culture.
Shows how racial discrimination leads to social exclusion and how this worsens the poverty faced by EMGs. In housing, for instance, discrimination means that minorities are more likely to be offered sub-standard accommodation than white people of the same social class. In employment, there is evidence of direct and deliberate discrimination.
(1990) teachers are quicker to discipline Black pupils.
argue that teachers treat Black pupils differently because of racialised expectations, meaning they misinterpret behaviour as:
when teachers act on these labels, conflict ensues. Therefore white-teacher-Black-pupil conflict is not because of pupil behaviour but because of racist teachers.
(1994) found one effect of teachers viewing Black pupils as
is that these negative labels lead to exclusion.
stereotypes of Black pupils lead to teachers placing them in lower sets than white pupils of a similar academic standard.
Black pupils are more likely to suffer unrecorded and unofficial exclusions at school; an example is internal exclusions AKA being sent out of class.
(1992) study of a multi-ethnic primary school.
found that, despite an apparent commitment to equal opps, teachers had an ethnocentric view; they assumed that British culture and standard English were better.
teachers assumed that Asian pupils had poor English, and as such left them out of class discussions.
Asian pupils felt isolated when teachers:
it was especially the girls who were marginalised, and they felt they couldn't participate in class.
teachers didn't see Asian pupils as a threat, but rather as a problem they could ignore.
studied Black girls in year 11 at a comprehensive school where almost all students were in lower sets.
(1944). introd Tripartite system:
the act was named after R.A Bulter, who was Concervative education minister at the time, and helped to negotiate and secure passage of the act.
post ww2 coalition govt lead by Churchill (Conservative party). part of the aim to build a nation 'fit for heroes', so that uneducated and disillusioned soldiers could return to find their children living their best lives and being educated, and to rebuild a stronger economy.
the aims of this act are built on the post-war consensus that education should be:
advantages: grammars are 'centres of excellence', improving quality of edu.
disadv:
the splitting of the education system into three different types and options of schools available:
introd 1965-79 by Wilson's Labour govt. the aim was cultural rub-off from the mc to the wc, meaning: the wc were to pick up mc values and become a 'sunken mc'. features:
hope was that the large sixe and greater equality and acceptance of diversity would create the scope to build economies of scale. however, this didn't work.
disadv:
started by Labour PM Callaghan 1974-9 with the Ruskin speech in '76 about "legitimate public concern" about "trendy teaching methods". This started the Great Debate which asked whether there should be more govt intervention to safeguard educational quality, and whether teachers were too autonomous in their teaching practices.
the underlying concern in this debate was that schools were focusing their curriculums/courses on academic skills and memorising facts, rather than vocational (job-related) skills that would directly lead them into certain career paths.
think about the difference between transferrable skills such as leadership and teamwork which you can learn in PE just as easily as you can learn in a Politics lesson, and which could lead you into a career in firefighting just as easily as it could lead you into a career in business.
Every debate you've ever had with a teacher about whether trigonometry will aid you in the real world has had the underlying politico-economic social dimensions of wider concerns about whether education is functioning adequately to provide for the next generation of workers.
it did five major things:
new vocationalism was introd by Callaghan (Labour), but Thatcher (Cons) continued the policies. The aim was decentralisation (thatcher's neoliberal rhetoric was to 'roll back the state'); but the outcome was centralisation of power over schools into the hands of central govt.
an example of this is grant maintained status, which took power away from local LEAs (local educational authorities) to determine funding for schools in their area, and placed it directly into the hands of central govt (GM status refers to when a school 'opts out' of LEA control and instead gets its money directly from the govt in the form of a grant. The policy aimed at reducing what was perceived as tyranny from some LEAs over their schools, thus enabling them the autonomy to go over the heads of LEAs and get their money straight from the govt. This is perhaps because Thatcher was annoyed at some Labour-controlled LEAs overspending money. the actual effect of the policy was that it meant schools were controlled from a less democratic and accountable source; GM schools got their grants straight from a govt it took 5 years to vote out (general elections), compared to the 2 years it takes to vote out LEAs (local elections).
Thatcher/Cons New Right policy: introduced marketisation.
the five policies:
these are also policies passed by the Thatcher NR govt and the New Labour NL govt; both govts had an interest in marketisation.
1996 Labour party conference, Blair says: "Ask me for my 3 main priorities for govt and I tell you: education, education, education".
In reality, NL change to edu system was small and Thatcherite, and marketisation. However, there was greater state intervention; NL spent £1.2bn/week on edu.
(2007) Labour HE policy is not as generous as secondary school sector policy. e.g. NL introd a maximum £3000 flat fee, but in 2010 they renegotiated maximum fees at £9000. Also Blair promised a 50 percent participation rate, but this has been stalled by Brown's vague aspirations for HE edu policy. NL invested less money in HE than secondary schools, with the exception of investments in science, and even this money comes from the Treasury, not the DfE.
2004. Due to criticisms of NL policy, this policy proposed huge changes to the 14-19 edu sys. Including to phase out A Levels and GCSES; and to replace them with a diploma of 4 levels of attainment. The aim was to remove perceived inequality between vocational and academic qualifications/edu. This policy shows how NL was criticised, alongside the lasting effects of New Vocationalism.
educationalists who criticise NL policy for creating an A-C economy in which such policies to increase attainment focus only on aiding A-C students.
argued there are contradictions in NL policy. They aim to tackle class inequality while at the same time aiming to increase marketisation. E.g. NL's EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance) encourages wc pupils to continue post-16 education, thereby tackling class inequality. This is contradictory with the aim of NL's policy to increase tuition fees, which actively deters debt-averse wc pupils (see also: Callender and Jackson).
another critique of NL edu policy is that they didn't abolish selective schools (grammar and public schools), and haven't removed the loophole that allows public schools to register as charities (thus reducing the amount of taxes they have to pay).
This writer (2008) estimates that this status is worth £100mn in taxes that taxes that public schools unfairly don't have to pay.
Cons-led coalition govt with LibDems.
(2010) In Sweden, 20% of schools are free schools. Studying Swedish free schools, this writer found that their introduction only benefited children from high-income families.
found that in 2011, only 6.4% of pupils at Bristol free school were eligible for FSM, compared to a 22.5% national average.
this shows the social divisiveness and exclusivity of free schools. Other critics of free schools argue that, like their US counterpart (Charter schools), they only appear to raise educational standards, but actually this is done through strict selection and exclusion policies, rather than high quality teaching and learning.
(2007) found that PPPs (Public-private partnerships) generate 10% more profit for private companies than do investments in non-education industry.
PPPs are where private companies pay for the building and designing of the school, and can then operate the school. Contracts last about 25 or more years. Since the school is owned by the Trust that built it, this trust has complete authority over, for example, sourcing supply teachers; this is often the reason why supply teachers get such low pay.
coalition policies are part of the "long march of the neoliberal revolution".
This writer argues that neoliberals create the myth that privatisation and greater competition between schols will increase educational standards. But this is simply a myth that aims to legitimate (justify) the act of profiting from provision of education.
(2004) flow of personnel: when senior personnel in public education sphere (e.g. LEA heads, and headteachers) leave to work for or set up private educational businesses, such as Edexcel, they pass on 'insider knowledge' of the firled, which is then framed as a marketplace. This flow of personnel affects the power dynamics of the
the UK's 4 leading educational software companies are all owned by global MNCs, such as Mattel and Disney.
UK families spent £110,000 in Tesco to win 1 computer for a school.
Cadbury sports equipment promotion was scrapped after it was found that students had to eat 5440 chocolate bars to qualify for 1 set of volleyball posts.
(2005) schools by nature carry huge connotations of good will, since they confer legitimacy on "anything associated with them"., AKA schools are ideal product endorsement.
Govt in 2017-8 claimed they spent more than ever on edu (£49bn) but in reality, with inflation and the increase in number of pupils, there was a reduction in spending per pupil by 8 percent.
from 1980s onwards, girls outperform boys at every level of education and in every subject except maths and physics (and even in these subjects, the gender attainment gap is narrowing).
in 2019, 2/3 of the 837 pupils who achieved 7 or more grade 9s at GCSE were girls.
in 2019, the gender attainment gap was 8.9%; it is a steady gap, but one that has signs of decreasing.
difference between percentage of girls and boys who achieve A*-C grades.
the current gender attainment gap (of girls outperforming boys) stands true across all class and ethnic groups.
teen magazines in the 1970s made girls concerned only with 'keeping their man' and 'not being left on the shelf' and 'getting married'.
But by the 1990s, they shifted to a depiction of women as as assertive and independent.
Equal Pay Act
Divorce Reform Act. This act allowed for what was ostensibly 'no-fault' divorce through allowing someone to petition for divorce on grounds of 'irretrievable breakdown of marriage' rather than the other grounds, such as adultery or desertion; this allowed for less confrontational divorce, where no partner has to lay blame on another partner for the divorce.
see Dutchman-Smith for how this affected women.
Sex Discrimination Act
gave 2 explanations for gender DoL:
both of these explanations support the liberal feminist or functionalist march of progress notion that with changing cultural attitudes and economic arrangements, men and women can progress towards symmetrical DoL.
younger men do more housework.
this supports Crompton and Lyonette's cultural explanation for DoL, since there is an age demographic factor in how much symmetry there is between couples, and this will improve over time, due to the younger couples continuing symmetrical arrangements in the future.
this shows that there is an improvement in cultural attitudes towards DoL in the younger generation, thus suggesting a trend towards symmetry.
couples are more likely to besymmetrical when their parents modelled equal relationships for them when younger. This shows that generationally, social attitudes can slowly change, especially since 72% of women work now, thus leading to them modelling more equal relationships for their children.
better-paid mc women are more able to buy labour-saving devices. (this supports Crompton and Lyonette's economic explanation for gender DoL).
argued there was no immediate chance of an equal DoL (symmetry), because there exists continued economic inequality.
report: 'home truths' (2002), authors = Jayatilaka and Rake
when men buy products for themselves, they spend more money than when women buy products for themselves.
(2003) 'a tale oftwo nations? Juggling work and home in the new economy'
when the man becomes unemployed, the woman takes control of spending and debt. (this supports the argument that unequal gender DoL is caused by economic inequality, however it also implies the functionalist solution of a 'march of progress' since it posits that if economic inequality is resolved, so will unequal gender DoL).
(1993)
corroborated Edgell's (outdated) 1980 study
key takeaway: the most egalitarian financial arrangement between couples was wife-controlled pooling, where there is a joint bank account, but the wide has more of a say on expenditure. This was also the second least common type, occuring in only 1/4 of households (27/102).
similar income = more egalitarian.
further details:
(1980) study (outdated) of financial power in middle class families.
found that men are responsible for the major decisions e.g. house, holiday, car.
and women for the minor decisions e.g. food, clothes.
argued for stratified diffusion, and therefore this gender inequality will seep down into the working classes as well.
overall this study provides further evidence for continued gender inequality in power and family decision-making, and while outdated, it is corroborated by Pahl (1993).
"power is the probability that the actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests."
radical psychiatrist and phenomenological psychiatrist (meaning only studies the family interactions when one member is schizophrenic.
Laing further argued that this harms wider society
'A Runaway World' (1967).
anthropologist - looking at small-sclare pre-industrial family.
found it is part of a wide kinship unitwhich offers practical and psychological support for individuals.