Schools and educational systems play an integral role in individuals’ lives as well as society as a whole, sociologists and educators view that role from many diverse points of view. Functionalists believe that education equips people to perform different functional roles in society. Conflict theorists view education as a means of widening the gap in social inequality. Feminist theorists point to evidence that sexism in education continues to prevent women from achieving a full measure of social equality. Symbolicinteractionists study the dynamics of the classroom, the interactions between students and teachers, and how those affect everyday life. In this section, you will learn about each of these perspectives and review familiar and new theorist such as Piaget, Gardner and Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Functionalism
Functionalists view education as one of the more important social institutions in a society. They contend that education contributes two kinds of functions: manifest (or primary) functions, which are the intended and visible functions of education; and latent (or secondary) functions, which are the hidden and unintended functions.
Manifest Functions
There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. Beginning in preschool and kindergarten, students are taught to practice various societal roles. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who established the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as “socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles” (Durkheim 1898). Indeed, it seems that schools have taken on this responsibility in full.
This socialization also involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. In the early days of compulsory education, students learned the dominant culture. Today, since the culture of the United States is increasingly diverse, students may learn a variety of cultural norms, not only that of the dominant culture.
School systems in the United States also transmit the core values of the nation through manifest functions like social control. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Obviously, such respect, given to teachers and administrators, will help a student navigate the school environment. This function also prepares students to enter the workplace and the world at large, where they will continue to be subject to people who have authority over them. Fulfillment of this function rests primarily with classroom teachers and instructors who are with students all day.
Figure 5.1.1: Teacher lecturing in the classroom (CC BY 2.0; Tulane Public Relations via Wikimedia)
Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility. This function is referred to associal placement. College and graduate schools are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to the careers that will give them the financial freedom and security they seek. As a result, college students are often more motivated to study areas that they believe will be advantageous on the social ladder. A student might value business courses over a class in Victorian poetry because she sees business class as a stronger vehicle for financial success.
Latent Functions
The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is complete. Of course, with social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, these networks are easier than ever to maintain. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace.
The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. This was definitely apparent when the nation went into lock downs and online learning. Students were learning how to navigate and develop relationships with their peers, siblings and families in different ways than before. There were also movements happening within the United States and abroad related to social justice, equity, voting rights, fair pay, health care and many more which were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country.
Manifest and Latent Functions of Education according to functionalist theory, education contributes both manifest and latent functions.
Manifest Functions: Openly stated functions with intended goals
Latent Functions: Hidden, unstated functions with sometimes unintended consequences
Socialization
Courtship
Transmission of culture
Social networks
Social control
Group work
Social placement
Creation of generation gap
Cultural innovation
Political and social integration
Another role of schools, according to functionalist theory, is that of sorting, or classifying students based on academic merit or potential. The most capable students are identified early in schools through testing and classroom achievements. Such students are placed in accelerated programs in anticipation of successful college attendance.
Figure 5.1.2: Young girl looking out window
Conflict Theory
Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Where functionalists see education as serving a beneficial role, conflict theorists view it more negatively. To them, educational systems preserve the status quo and push people of lower status into obedience.
The fulfillment of one’s education is closely linked to social class. Students of low socioeconomic status are generally not afforded the same opportunities as students of higher status, no matter how great their academic ability or desire to learn. Picture a student from a working-class home who wants to do well in school. On a Monday, he’s assigned a paper that’s due Friday. Monday evening, he has to babysit his younger sister while his divorced mother works. Tuesday and Wednesday, he works stocking shelves after school until 10:00 p.m. By Thursday, the only day he might have available to work on that assignment, he’s so exhausted he can’t bring himself to start the paper. His mother, though she’d like to help him, is so tired herself that she isn’t able to give him the encouragement or support he needs. And since English is her second language, she has difficulty with some of his educational materials. They also lack a computer and printer at home, which most of his classmates have, so they have to rely on the public library or school system for access to technology. As this story shows, many students from working-class families have to contend with helping out at home, contributing financially to the family, poor study environments and a lack of support from their families. This is a difficult match with education systems that adhere to a traditional curriculum that is more easily understood and completed by students of higher social classes.
Such a situation leads to social class reproduction, extensively studied by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He researched how cultural capital, or cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency that helps us navigate a culture, alters the experiences and opportunities available to French students from different social classes. Members of the upper and middle classes have more cultural capital than do families of lower-class status. As a result, the educational system maintains a cycle in which the dominant culture’s values are rewarded. Instruction and tests cater to the dominant culture and leave others struggling to identify with values and competencies outside their social class. For example, there has been a great deal of discussion over what standardized tests such as the SAT truly measure. Many argue that the tests group students by cultural ability rather than by natural intelligence.
The cycle of rewarding those who possess cultural capital is found in formal educational curricula as well as in the hidden curriculum, which refers to the type of nonacademic knowledge that students learn through informal learning and cultural transmission. This hidden curriculum reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and serves to bestow status unequally.
Conflict theorists point to tracking, a formalized sorting system that places students on “tracks” (advanced versus low achievers) that perpetuate inequalities. While educators may believe that students do better in tracked classes because they are with students of similar ability and may have access to more individual attention from teachers, conflict theorists feel that tracking leads to self-fulfilling prophecies in which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations (Education Week 2004).
To conflict theorists, schools play the role of training working-class students to accept and retain their position as lower members of society. They argue that this role is fulfilled through the disparity of resources available to students in richer and poorer neighborhoods as well as through testing (Lauen and Tyson 2008).
IQ tests have been attacked for being biased—for testing cultural knowledge rather than actual intelligence. For example, a test item may ask students what instruments belong in an orchestra. To correctly answer this question requires certain cultural knowledge—knowledge most often held by more affluent people who typically have more exposure to orchestral music. Though experts in testing claim that bias has been eliminated from tests, conflict theorists maintain that this is impossible. These tests, to conflict theorists, are another way in which education does not provide opportunities, but instead maintains an established configuration of power.
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory aims to understand the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education, as well as their societal repercussions. Like many other institutions of society, educational systems are characterized by unequal treatment and opportunity for women. Almost two-thirds of the world’s 862 million illiterate people are women, and the illiteracy rate among women is expected to increase in many regions, especially in several African and Asian countries (UNESCO 2005; World Bank 2007).
Women in the United States have been relatively late, historically speaking, to be granted entry to the public university system. In fact, it wasn’t until the establishment of Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972 that discriminating on the basis of sex in U.S. education programs became illegal. In the United States, there is also a post-education gender disparity between what male and female college graduates earn. A study released in May 2011 showed that, among men and women who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010, men out-earned women by an average of more than $5,000 each year. First-year job earnings for men averaged $33,150; for women the average was $28,000 (Godofsky, Zukin, and van Horn 2011). Similar trends are seen among salaries of professionals in virtually all industries.
When women face limited opportunities for education, their capacity to achieve equal rights, including financial independence, are limited. Feminist theory seeks to promote women’s rights to equal education (and its resultant benefits) across the world.
Grade Inflation: When is an 'A' Really a 'C'?
Consider a large-city newspaper publisher. Ten years ago, when culling résumés for an entry-level copywriter, they were well assured that if they selected a grad with a GPA of 3.7 or higher, they’d have someone with the writing skills to contribute to the workplace on day one. But over the last few years, they’ve noticed that A-level students don’t have the competency evident in the past. More and more, they find themselves in the position of educating new hires in abilities that, in the past, had been mastered during their education.
This story illustrates a growing concern referred to as grade inflation—a term used to describe the observation that the correspondence between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing (in a downward direction) over time. Put simply, what used to be considered C-level, or average, now often earns a student a B, or even an A.
Why is this happening? Research on this emerging issue is ongoing, so no one is quite sure yet. Some cite the alleged shift toward a culture that rewards effort instead of product, i.e., the amount of work a student puts in raises the grade, even if the resulting product is poor quality. Another oft-cited contributor is the pressure many of today’s instructors feel to earn positive course evaluations from their students—records that can tie into teacher compensation, award of tenure, or the future career of a young grad teaching entry-level courses. The fact that these reviews are commonly posted online exacerbates this pressure.
Other studies don’t agree that grade inflation exists at all. In any case, the issue is hotly debated, with many being called upon to conduct research to help us better understand and respond to this trend (National Public Radio 2004; Mansfield 2005).
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic Interactionism sees education as one way that labeling theory is seen in action. A symbolic interactionist might say that this labeling has a direct correlation to those who are in power and those who are labeled. For example, low standardized test scores or poor performance in a particular class often lead to a student who is labeled as a low achiever. Such labels are difficult to “shake off,” which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton 1968).
In his book High School Confidential, Jeremy Iverson details his experience as a Stanford graduate posing as a student at a California high school. One of the problems he identifies in his research is that of teachers applying labels that students are never able to lose. One teacher told him, without knowing he was a bright graduate of a top university, that he would never amount to anything (Iverson 2006). Iverson obviously didn’t take this teacher’s false assessment to heart. But when an actual seventeen-year-old student hears this from a person with authority over her, it’s no wonder that the student might begin to “live down to” that label.
The labeling with which symbolic interactionists concern themselves extends to the very degrees that symbolize completion of education. Credentialism embodies the emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications. These certificates or degrees serve as a symbol of what a person has achieved, and allows the labeling of that individual.
Indeed, as these examples show, labeling theory can significantly impact a student’s schooling. This is easily seen in the educational setting, as teachers and more powerful social groups within the school dole out labels that are adopted by the entire school population.
Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, of which there are currently nine so-called intelligences, listed as follows. (Note: number nine is pretty new on Professor Gardner’s evolving list and is yet to be included in most representative graphics, such as the one below.)
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw—who coined the term Critical Race Theory defined as "a practice of interrogating the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship.” (Crenshaw, 2011) This describes this theory as a verb. Here's an example of what this looks like in practice.
Critical Race Theory in Education
Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) introduced CRT to education by arguing that race has remained undertheorized, and although race has been examined "as a powerful tool for explaining social inequity, the intellectual salience of this theorizing has not been systematically employed in the analysis of educational inequality" (p. 50). After Ladson-Billings and Tate's (1995) seminal article on CRT in education, many authors have applied CRT to educational research (Solorzano, 1998; Tate, 1997).
There are five tenets that CRT scholars have developed that guide the examination of educational equity and racial justice:
Centrality of Race and Racism: CRT research within an education context should center race and racism, as well as the intersections of other forms of oppression, such as gender, class, and sexual orientation.
Challenge to the Dominant Perspective: CRT in education challenges dominant culture perspectives and centers historically marginalized perspectives.
Commitment to Social Justice:CRT is consistently rooted in social justice outcomes.
Valuing Experiential Knowledge:CRT builds on the oral traditions and narratives of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities when discerning social inequities.
Interdisciplinary: CRT asserts that scholarly research should reflect multiple perspectives (Solorzano & Bernal, 2001).
Critical Race Theory has also received criticisms by the educational systems as shame blaming or not the history which should be shared in our schools and classrooms.
Critical Reflection and Application Time
What did you hear the General in the video above say and what are your thoughts and feelings of what was said?
In what ways is education shaped by the theories we learned in this chapter, what examples would you add to each of the theories to provide deeper understanding?
Summary
The theories offer insight into how we understand education and how schools play a role in the development of child within Bronfenbrenner's Bio-Ecological Systems Theory. . Functionalists view education as an important social institution that contributes both manifest and latent functions. Functionalists see education as serving the needs of society by preparing students for later roles, or functions, in society. Conflict theorists see schools as a means for perpetuating class, racial-ethnic, and gender inequalities. In the same vein, feminist theory focuses specifically on the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education. The theory of symbolic interactionism focuses on education as a means for labeling individuals. Piaget's cognitive development describes the stages of thinking from individual to interpersonal based on interactions and experiences. Gardner incorporates the way we learn based on our diverse array of intelligences. Critical Race Theory calls us to act and identify race and racism in the communities we live and engage as educators.
Education Week. 2004. “Tracking.” Education Week, August 4. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
Godofsky, Jessica, Cliff Zukin, and Carl Van Horn. 2011. Unfulfilled Expectations: Recent College Graduates Struggle in a Troubled Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University.
Iverson, Jeremy. 2006. High School Confidential. New York: Atria.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.2307/1163320
Lauen, Douglas Lee and Karolyn Tyson. 2008. “Perspectives from the Disciplines: Sociological Contribution to Education Policy Research and Debate.” AREA Handbook on Education Policy Research. Retrieved February 24, 2012.
National Public Radio. 2004. “Princeton Takes Steps to Fight ‘Grade Inflation.’” Day to Day, April 28.
Mansfield, Harvey C. 2001. “Grade Inflation: It’s Time to Face the Facts.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 47(30): B24.
Merton, Robert K. 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press.
Solorzano, D. G. (1998). Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 121–136.
Solorzano, D. G., & Bernal, D. D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban education, 36(3), 308-342.
Tate, W. F., IV. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. In M. Apple (Ed.), Review of research in education (Vol. 22., pp. 195–247). American Educational Research Association.
UNESCO. 2005. Towards Knowledge Societies: UNESCO World Report. Paris: UNESCO Publishing.
World Bank. 2007. World Development Report. Washington, DC: World Bank.
