Functionalism And Education Essay

The functionalist perspective argues for education as a means of development from simple, traditional social structures to more complex, modern ones. Drawing heavily from biological theories, functionalism equates society with a living organism composed of various internal systems, asserting that an understanding of these systems, in our case social practices and institutions, requires an examination of the means by which they serve the ‘body’, society (Feinberg and Solitis, ). In assessing the relationship between education and development, it is imperative to note that functionalists associate the advent of formal, compulsory education with the requirements of modern society, with modernity seen as synonymous with industrialization. That

While traditional societies relied on ascribed characteristics to determine an individual’s role in society, modern societies use the education system as a means to sort individuals on the basis of achievement, using measures such as grades, test scores, and work ethic to guide high-achieving students into jobs that recognize and utilize their skills, and low-achieving students into jobs that are less skill-demanding. For example, a high-school student with high-grades, high test scores, and a strong work ethic will be readily accepted into colleges and universities and afforded with opportunities to pursue more intellectually demanding occupations, but a high-school student with low-grades, low test-scores, and a low-to-moderate work ethic will not be accepted into college, and rather, must enter the workforce with only a high school degree, limiting his career options to categories that require low-to-average cognitive skills. Thus, the education system ensures that only the most qualified individuals end up in challenging occupations, directly serving the needs of industrial society. Specifically, functionalists argue that education as a system of role differentiation is beneficial in two ways. Firstly, it is able to address

Specifically, functionalists argue that school performs two key functions that contribute to social cohesion: assimilation and political socialization. The education system serves as a means by which to instill the norms of a specific group (usually a dominant group) through a wide array of mechanisms ranging from medium-of-instruction policies to the hidden curriculum, thus producing a set of individuals with the same cultural and linguistic norms, a cohesive social unit. Likewise, political socialization expands on this notion of group identity, applying it as a loyalty not only to one’s own group, but to the nation as a whole. Through reciting the pledge of allegiance and teaching students about traditional political values in required U.S. history and government classes, the education system instills in students a loyalty to the nation as a whole. Assimilation and political socialization, as argued from the functionalist perspective, serve to socialize individuals in ways that enable them to adapt to the larger social world of mass society. These ideals, when paired with the meritocratic role differentiation system described above, form the