Functionalist, Marxist, New Right and other perspectives on the role and purpose of the education system, including socialisation, role allocation, the correspondence principle and human capital.

What this dot point is asking

AQA wants you to compare the main perspectives on what education is for: functionalist, Marxist, New Right and feminist views. You should explain the functions each perspective claims education performs, and evaluate whether education serves society as a whole or reproduces inequality. The central evaluative thread is meritocracy versus the myth of meritocracy.

The functionalist view

Functionalists see education as performing positive functions for society as a whole.

• Durkheim: education creates social solidarity by transmitting society's shared culture and history, making individuals feel part of a wider whole, and teaches the specialist skills needed for a complex division of labour.
• Parsons: school is a bridge between the particularistic, ascribed-status values of the family and the universalistic, achieved-status values of wider society. It operates as a meritocracy where everyone is judged by the same universal standards.
• Davis and Moore: education performs role allocation, sifting and sorting pupils by ability so the most talented are motivated (by unequal rewards) to fill the most important jobs.
• Human capital theory (Schultz): investment in education raises the skills and productivity of the workforce, benefiting the whole economy.

The Marxist view

Marxists argue education reproduces and legitimates class inequality.

• Althusser: education is part of the ideological state apparatus, transmitting ruling-class ideology and reproducing both the skills and the submissive attitudes capitalism needs.
• Bowles and Gintis: there is a correspondence principle between school and work, operating through a hidden curriculum that rewards passivity, punctuality and obedience and teaches acceptance of hierarchy and external rewards. They argue meritocracy is a myth that legitimates inequality by persuading the working class their failure is their own fault.
• Willis: in his ethnographic study of the "lads", working-class boys form an anti-school counter-culture and partly see through the system, yet their rejection of school still channels them into low-skilled manual labour, so they reproduce their own class position.

The New Right and feminist views

The New Right believes the state education system is unresponsive, inefficient and lowers standards because it lacks the discipline of competition. It favours marketisation, competition between schools and parental choice to drive up standards (Chubb and Moe), while still wanting education to transmit a shared national culture and identity. Critics note this contradicts itself by promoting both a free market and a centralised national curriculum.

Feminists argue education reproduces patriarchy, historically through gendered subject choice, the hidden curriculum and a male-dominated curriculum, although they recognise girls now outperform boys at most levels, so the picture has shifted.

Evaluation

The functionalist view is criticised for assuming a value consensus and exaggerating how meritocratic education is (the achievement gaps by class, gender and ethnicity suggest it is not). Marxism is criticised for being deterministic and for downplaying the genuine benefits and skills education provides (and Willis is criticised for a small, unrepresentative sample). The most balanced position recognises education performs real functions while also reproducing inequality, so the debate turns on how meritocratic it truly is.