F soc usic lecture eight

Education and Social Equality

Effective from September 2015 | F_Soc USIC Sociology week 8– Society

Contents

1.Review from Lecture Seven2.Education in Contemporary England3.Education and social mobility4.Gender and Education5.Ethnicity and Education6.Conclusion7.Homework

sheffield.ac.uk/international-college 2


Review from Lecture Seven


Last week we learned about the significance of identity in explaining why people act the way they do and reviewed forms of socialisation.

In the next two weeks we will be introducing two major social institutions that contribute to the formation of human identities. These are education and media.


Education and Schooling (Giddens and Sutton 2015: 870):

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Education is one of the sociology’s founding subjects and crucial for the transmission of society’s values and moral rules to new members. Education: a social institution which enables and promotes the acquisition of skills, knowledge and the broadening of personal horizons which can take place in many social settings . Schooling: the formal process through which certain types of skill and knowledge are delivered normally via a pre-designed curriculum in specialised setting -schools.Question:

What Mark Twain (1835-1910) means by his note ‘I never let my schooling get in the way of my education’?


As a significant social institution, education has strong connections with other social structures such as social class, gender, religion and ethnicity.

Durkheim who was concerned with increasing individualism in the 19th century French society viewed education as a place to transmit society’s norms and values and essential to establish social solidarity.

The school is a society in miniature where children learn to interact with other members of the school community and to follow a set of rules and social norms/values.



Taking Durkheim's view further, Parsons believed that education acts as a bridge between the family and society. It helps the young members of the society to make a transition into the world of adults.

Different from the family context, in school a child’s status is achieved through assessments designed to measure performance according to universal standards. Therefore, schools operate on a meritocratic basis where children achieve their status according to their merits.



History of Education in England

In the early 19th century the Church of England was responsible for most education until the establishment of free, compulsory education towards the end of that century.

The education system has followed a similar path, resulting in the development of two separate education streams:1.State schools – came about in 1833 when Parliament voted to allocate sums of money each year towards the construction of schools for poor children2.Independent schools – funded by charities and run by independent school boards. Open to the public regardless of religious beliefs, later termed public schools.



As a result of Foster Act of 1870 school attendance became compulsory for children between the ages of 5-10 years with exceptions for illness, if children worked or lived too far from school.

In 1880 the Elementary Education became compulsory for all children within that age range.

While this shift was made with good intentions it also created difficulties for poor families who relied on their children’s paid or unpaid work.



In contemporary England state schools are free to all children between the ages of 4 -16 years and funded by government.

Independent or private schools are fee based and less common in the UK with 7% of children enrolled. They are available from nursery to secondary school (16 years of age).

93% of children in England and Wales attend state schools. State schools are managed by Local Authorities; organisations that

are officially responsible for all the public services and facilities in a particular area.

In state schools most of the child’s specialised educational equipment (e.g. books, examination fees) are paid through taxes.


Education in Contemporary England



Social Mobility is the movement—usually of individuals but sometimes of whole groups—between different positions within the system of social stratification in any society (Oxford Dictionary of Sociology ).

Social mobility rate in each society signifies the ability to move up or down the class structure. It is concerned with the changes people from different backgrounds have on attaining different social positions.

Education & Social Mobility


There are two main ways to measure social mobility:

1.Inter-Generational – refers to the movement between generations, such as the difference between a parent and their adult child’s occupational position.

2.Intra-Generational – refers to an individual’s mobility over the course of their life, comparing the position of someone’s starting occupation with their occupation upon retirement.



The relationship between education and social mobility is argued by some to be directly related to state and independent streams of education . The type of education an individual obtains can determine their degree of social mobility. Statistics from the British Social Attitudes Survey of 2013 support this argument indicating that:

34% of privately educated people have fathers whose jobs were professional or managerial, compared with 14% of those who were state educated.

Over half of those who were privately educated had a professional or managerial job compared to 29% who were state educated.

One in five people who attended fee-paying schools are placed in the top 10 percentile of the income distribution.



Functionalist view on the relationship between education and the economy:

Regards education as a bridge between family and the economy. A vehicle for social mobility: believe that it is necessary for people to be allowed to move up or down the occupational social structure. This guarantees that important social positions are filled by those that are more qualified. Upward mobility is believed to be earned through individual merit and attainment of educational qualifications.


Functionalist view on Education


Meritocracy : Educational institutions in modern industrial societies empower individuals to demonstrate their differences in objective ways. The system rewards individual abilities and efforts and is competitive but competition must be based on equal opportunity.

In other words, everyone, regardless of social class, race/ethnicity and gender start at the same point in the education system.

Under Functionalist views social inequality is inevitable and necessary because incentive systems are required to motivate and reward the best-qualified people for occupying the most important positions within a social system.



Marxist perspective takes the opposite approach to the Functionalists’ argument on meritocracy.They argue that education is not a source of social mobility in modern industrial societies but a means for the ruling or wealthy classes to cement their privileged social position. Marxists argue that this happens by ensuring that social inequality persists through a system that appears to be fair but which is actually biased in the favour of those already in power. For Marxists the role of education is to educate most people, just enough to create useful employees and a small number to take up the high-powered elite working roles.As a result , education becomes a means of reproducing the social inequalities found in Capitalist societies.


Marxist View on Education: reproduction of social inequality


Even when children of lower-class families are able to attain higher education, Marxists argue that as a population becomes ‘more educated’ powerful groups simply raise the entry requirements for elite occupations.

Thus, while children may gain more and better educational qualifications than their parents or grandparents, the economic value of these qualifications declines.



The structures of social relations in education develops the types of personal demeanours, modes of self-presentation, self-image, and social class identifications and social relationships … all replicate the hierarchical divisions of labour in capitalist societies.

Through hidden curriculum pupils learn to accept discipline, hierarchy and passivity towards the status quo.

Correspondence principle: Schools help to produce the right kind of workers for capitalist businesses. The structure of school life corresponds to the structure of working life in terms of rewards, punishments, tasks, hierarchy… etc.

Therefore education is not a ‘great leveller’ which treats people equally and widens opportunities to all classes, but in fact ‘great divider’ which reproduces social inequality.

Critics: a. Regards pupils as passive agents. B. not based on empirical research.


Schooling for Capitalism, Bowles and Gintis 1976(adopted from Giddens and Sutton 2015:873)


Throughout the 20th century girls tended to outperform boys in terms of school results – until they reached the middle years of secondary education. At that point they would begin to fall behind where boys outperformed girls from the age of 16 years through university.

A series of sociological studies discovered that school curricula and teachers were focusing more on boys education than girls.

However, in recent years, underachieving boys are one of the main subjects of conversation among educators and policy-makers.

Since the early 1990s girls have been outperforming boys in all levels of education and more likely to pursue higher education.


Gender & Education


Despite this, ‘maleness’ still carries significant economic and cultural advantages which are denied to women.

While more girls are pursuing higher education they are still less likely than boys to choose subjects in school leading to careers in technology, science and engineering.

So while females continue to enter into higher education in greater numbers, they also continue to be disadvantaged in the job market in comparison with boys who hold the same level of qualification.


Gender & Education


The educational trajectories of ethnic minorities have been investigated in great detail. A report in 1985 from the Swann Committee in the UK found significant differences in average levels of educational success between groups from different ethnic backgrounds.

By the mid-1990’s the picture had changed suggesting that young people from all minority ethnic backgrounds were more likely than white British children continue into full-time education from the ages of 16-19 years.

Student record statistics from 1995-1996 and 2007-2008 school years demonstrated that students from minority ethnic groups in UK higher education rose by about 8.3% or one in six students.


Ethnicity & Education


There are some large differences between minority groups

British Bangladeshi and Pakistani students were under-represented in the 1990s and remained so in 2007-2008.

Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups found it more difficult in the labour market, with 56 percent in work within a year of graduation compared with 66 percent of white students.

Despite their greater rates of enrolment in higher education the ethnic minorities are not benefitting as much from their education than their white peers.


Ethnicity & Education


Research suggest that forms of education i.e private versus state schools, play an important role in creating and maintaining social inequality in the UK.

Functionalist and Marxist perspectives offer contrasting views on the impact of education on social mobility.

Research also suggest that children from minority ethnic backgrounds tend not to do as well in their education and/or job market as their white peers.

Research also suggest that despite females’ higher admission rate to higher education , they also continue to be disadvantaged in the job market in comparison with boys who hold the same level of qualification.


Conclusion


•Review lecture slides and prepare questions for seminar one.•Read for seminar one, Giddens’ pp.868-873 on MOLE


Homework