Theoretical Perspectives on Education Problems

Structural functionalist, conflict theorist, and symbolic interactionist approaches to education problems differ yet all make important points regarding the significance of the institution of education including its impact on individuals, social groups, and society at large. The Theoretical Perspectives Snapshot table below summarizes what these approaches focus on.

Theoretical Perspectives Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Structural functionalism	Education serves several functions for society such as socialization, innovation, childcare, and more. Problems in the educational institution harm society because all these functions cannot be completely fulfilled.
Conflict theory	Education promotes social inequality through the use of practices such as tracking, standardized testing, and the hidden curriculum. Schools differ widely in their funding and learning conditions, which to learning disparities that reinforce social inequalities.
Symbolic interactionism	Social interactions in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues affects the development of gender roles and students' understandings of their identities. Teacher biases and assumptions impact student learning.

  

Structural Functionalism

Functionalist theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a society’s various needs. The institution of education is responsible for imparting knowledge and skills required for individuals to successfully contribute to society; however, education involves several other manifest and latent functions. 

Another important function of education is socialization. If children are to learn the norms, values, and skills they need to function in society, then education is a primary vehicle for such learning. Schools teach the three Rs (reading, ’riting, ’rithmetic) but they also teach cultural norms and values. In the United States, these include respect for authority, patriotism (remember the Pledge of Allegiance?), punctuality, and competition (such as for grades and sports victories).

Another function of education is social integration. For a society to work, functionalists say, people must subscribe to a common set of beliefs and values. The development of common views was a goal of the system of free compulsory education that developed in the nineteenth century. Thousands of immigrant children in the US today are learning English, US history, and other subjects to integrate them into American life.

Yet another function of education is social placement. Beginning in grade school, students are identified by teachers and other school officials either as bright and motivated or as less bright and even educationally challenged. Depending on how they are identified, children may be taught at the level that is thought to suit them best. In this way, they are presumably prepared for their later station in life. Whether this process works as well as it should remains a question, and we explore it further when we discuss school tracking later in this chapter.

Social and cultural innovation is another function of education. Our scientists cannot make important scientific discoveries and our artists and thinkers cannot come up with great works of art, poetry, and prose unless they have first been educated in the many subjects they need to know for their chosen path.

The functions of education include socialization, the development of social skills, and foundations to facilitate future innovations.

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Childcare is a latent function of education. Once a child starts kindergarten and especially first grade, for several hours a day the child is taken care of for free. The establishment of peer relationships is another latent function of schooling. Most of us met many of our friends while we were in school at whatever grade level, and some of those friendships endure the rest of our lives. A final latent function of education is that it keeps millions of high school students out of the full-time labor force, which keeps the unemployment rate lower than it would be if they were in the labor force.

Because education serves so many manifest and latent functions for society, problems in schooling ultimately harm society. For education to serve its many functions, various kinds of reforms are needed to make our schools and the process of education as effective as possible.

  

Conflict Theory

Conflict theory does not dispute the functions just described. However, it does give some of them a different slant by emphasizing how education also perpetuates social inequality (Ballantine & Hammack 2012). One example of this process involves the function of social placement. Tracking theoretically involves the process of sorting students by their perceived abilities into different educational programs. Students thought by their teachers to be bright are placed in the faster tracks (especially in reading and math), while the slower students are placed in the slower tracks. In high school, three common tracks are the college, vocational, and general track.

Some may argue that tracking does have advantages, helping ensure that bright students learn as much as their abilities allow them and that slower students are not taught at too quick of a pace. But conflict theorists say that tracking also helps perpetuate social inequality by locking students into faster and lower tracks. Worse yet, several studies show that students’ social class and race affect the track into which they are placed, even though their intellectual abilities and potential should be the only things that matter: White, middle-class students are more likely to be tracked 'up,' while poorer students and students of color are more likely to be tracked 'down.' Once they are tracked, students learn more if they are tracked up and less if they are tracked down. The latter tend to lose self-esteem and begin to think they have little academic ability and thus do worse in school because they were tracked down. In this way, tracking is thought to be good for those tracked up and bad for those tracked down. Conflict theorists thus say that tracking perpetuates social inequality based on social class and race (Ansalone 2010).

Additionally, conflict theorists argue that standardized tests are culturally biased and thus also perpetuate social inequalities (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts 2008). According to this criticism, these tests favor white, middle-class students whose socioeconomic status and other aspects of their backgrounds have afforded them various experiences that help them answer questions on the tests.

 

Standardized testing has been criticized for reproducing social inequalities as questions are often written from a white, middle-class perspective and thus disadvantage other students. 

Standardized test exams form with answers bubbled by Aktuelle Vorschläge via CCNull is licensed under CC BY 2.0 DE

A third critique involves the quality of schools. As we will see later in this chapter, US schools differ tremendously in their resources, learning conditions, and other aspects, all of which affect how much students can learn in them. Simply put, schools are unequal, and their very inequality helps perpetuate inequality in the larger society. Children going to the worst schools in urban areas face many more obstacles to their learning than those going to well-funded schools in suburban areas. Their lack of learning helps ensure they remain trapped in poverty and its related problems.

In a fourth critique, conflict theorists say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum, by which they mean a set of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including existing social hierarchies (Booher-Jennings 2008). Although most school districts or teachers don't necessary plot this behind closed doors, our schoolchildren learn patriotic values, respect for authority, gender roles, family expectations, and other lessons from the books they read at school, various classroom activities, and interactions with teachers and staff. 

A final critique is historical and concerns the rise of free compulsory education during the nineteenth century (Cole 2008). Because compulsory schooling began in part to prevent immigrants’ values from corrupting 'American' values, conflict theorists see its origins as ethnocentric (the belief that one’s own group is superior to another group). They also criticize its intention to teach workers the skills they needed for the new industrial economy. Because most workers were very poor in this economy, these critics say, compulsory education served the interests of the the upper/capitalist class much more than it served the interests of workers.

  

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionist studies of education examine social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. These studies help us understand what happens in the schools themselves, but they also help us understand how what occurs in school is relevant for the larger society. Some studies, for example, show how children’s playground activities reinforce gender socialization.

For instance, girls learn to play more cooperative games while boys play more competitive sports (Thorne 1993). Many studies find that teachers call on and praise boys more often (Jones & Dindia 2004). Teachers do not necessarily do this consciously, but their behavior also sends an implicit message to girls that they are not suited to do well in math or science and later in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). This body of research has stimulated efforts to educate teachers about the ways in which they may unwittingly send these messages and about strategies they could use to promote greater interest and achievement by girls in math and science (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao 2007).

Another body of research shows that teachers’ views about students can affect how much the students learn. When teachers think students are smart, they tend to spend more time with these students, to call on them, and to praise them when they give the right answer. Not surprisingly, these students learn more because of their teachers’ behavior. But when teachers think students are less bright, they tend to spend less time with these students and to act in a way that leads them to learn less.

Research guided by the symbolic interactionist perspective suggests that teachers’ expectations may influence how much their students learn. When teachers expect little of their students, their students tend to learn less.

ijiwaru jimbo – Pre-school colour pack – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) conducted a classic study of this phenomenon. They tested a group of students at the beginning of the school year and told their teachers which students were 'bright' and which were not. They then tested the students again at the end of the school year. Not surprisingly, the bright students had learned more during the year than the less bright ones. But it turned out that the researchers had randomly decided which students would be designated bright and less bright. Because the bright students learned more during the school year without actually being brighter at the beginning, their teachers’ behavior must have been the reason. In fact, their teachers did spend more time with them and praised them more often than was true for the less bright students.

This process helps us understand why tracking has negative consequences for children. Symbolic interactionists are also interested in the mechanisms through which the hidden curriculum occurs, such as through teacher-student interactions that normalize the nuclear family ("tell your moms and dads") or perpetuate gender stereotyping ("I need a strong boy to carry this for me"). Thus, there are commonalities between the classical theoretical perspectives. Though they take a different approach, including a macro or micro perspective, they may have interest in the same problems.