EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION

Education is one of the basic institution in all human societies. The continued existence
of society depends upon the transmission of culture to the young. It is essential that
every new generation must be given training in the ways of the group so that the same
tradition will continue. Every society has its own ways and means of fulfilling this need.
The idea of education is not merely to impart knowledge to the pupil in some subjects
but to develop in him those habits and attitudes with which he may successfully face
the future. Plato was of the opinion that the end of education was to ‘develop in the
body and in the soul) of the pupil) all the beauty and all the perfection of which they are
capable.’ It means in short, ‘a sound mind in a sound body.’
 Durkheim conceives of education as “the socialisation of the younger
generation. He further states that it is a continuous effort to impose on the child
ways of seeing, feeling and acting which he could not have arrived at
spontaneously’.

 Sumner defined education as the attempt to transmit to the child the mores of
the group, so that he can learn “what conduct is approved and what
disapproved…..how he ought to behave in all kind of cases: what he ought to
believe and reject”.

Formal and Informal Education

As already mentioned, education is not solely concerned with the basic academic
concepts that a student learns in the classroom. Societies also educate their children,
outside of the school system, in matters of everyday practical living. These two types
of learning are referred to as formal education and informal education.
1. Formal education describes the learning of academic facts and concepts through a
formal curriculum. Arising from the tutelage of ancient Greek thinkers, centuries of
scholars have examined topics through formalized methods of learning. Three hundred
years ago few people knew how to read and write. Education was available only to the
higher classes; they had the means to access scholarly materials, plus the luxury of
leisure time that could be used for learning. The rise of capitalism and its accompanying
social changes made education more important to the economy and therefore more
accessible to the general population. Around 1900, Canada and the United States were
the first countries to come close to the ideal of universal participation of children in
school.
2. In contrast, informal education describes learning about cultural values, norms, and
expected behaviours by participating in a society. This type of learning occurs both
through the formal education system and at home. Our earliest learning experiences
generally happen via parents, relatives, and others in our community. Through informal
education, we learn how to dress for different occasions, how to perform regular life
routines like shopping for and preparing food, and how to keep our bodies clean.

EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL PROCESS:

Man does not behave in society impulsively or instinctively. He behaves in a way
according to which he is trained. Some thinker have equated it with socialisation. A few
others regard education as an attempt to transmit the cultural norms of the group to its
younger members. It is also understood as a continuous effort on the part of the
individuals to acquire more and more knowledge.
1. SOCIALISATION:
Firstly, education, viewed as socialisation, is continuous. Socialisation is social
learning. This social learning is not intermittent but continuous. Perfection in
social learning is rarely achieved. The more we try to learn about our own society
and fellow beings the more remains to be learned. Social learning begins at birth
and ends only at death. It continues throughout our life. There is no point or state
in our life at which we have learnt everything about one group or society and
beyond that nothing remains to be studied.
2. AN AGENT OF CULTURAL TRANSMISSION:
Secondly, education, viewed as an agent of cultural transmission, is also
continuous. Culture is a growing whole. There can be no break in the continuity
of culture. If at all there is a break, it only indicates the end of a particular human
group. The culture elements are passed on from generation to generation. The
family, school and various other association’s act as the agents of cultural
transmission.
3. AN ATTEMPT TO ACQUIRE KNOWLEDGE:
Thirdly, education, as an attempt to acquire knowledge, is also continuous.
Knowledge is like an ocean. The universe is a miraculous entity. The more one
tries to know of it, the more it become mysterious.

SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF EDUCATION:

1. TO COMPLETE THE SOCIALISATION PROCESS:
The main social objective of education is to complete the socialisation process.
The school and other institutions have come into being in place of family to
complete the socialisation process.
2. FOR THE FORMATION OF SOCIAL PERSONALITY:
Education everywhere has the function of the formation of social personalities.
Education helps in transmitting culture through proper moulding of social
personalities. It helps men to adopt themselves to their environment, to survive,
and to reproduce themselves.
3. CONFERRING OF STATUS:
Conferring of status is one of the most important functions of education. The
amount of education one has, is correlated with his class position. Education is
related to one’s position in the stratification structure in two ways:
1. An evaluation of one’s status is partially decided by what kind of Education
one has received and
2. Many of the other important criteria of class position such as occupation,
income and style of life are partially the results of the type and amount of
education one has had.
4. TO TRANSMIT THE CULTURE:
Culture here refers to a set of belief and skills, art, literature, philosophy, religion,
music etc that are not carried through the mechanism of heredity. They must be
learned. This social heritage must be transmitted through social organisations.
Education has this function of culture transmission in all societies.
5. EDUCATION ENCOURAGES THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION:
The school’s main emphasis is upon personal competition. For each subject
studied, the child is compared with the companions by percentage of marks or
rankings. The teacher admires and praises those who do well and frowns upon
those who fail to do well.
5. REFORMATION OF ATTITUDES:
Education aims at the reformation of attitudes wrongly developed by the children
already. For various reasons the child may have absorbed a host of attitudes,
prejudices, jealousy, loyalties and hatred etc. these are to be reformed. It is the
function of education to see that unfounded beliefs, illogical prejudices and
unreasoned loyalties are removed from the child’s mind. Though the school has
its own limitations in this regard, it is expected to continue its efforts in reforming
the attitudes of the child.
6. EDUCATION FOR OCCUPATION PLACEMENT:
Education has a practical end also. It should help the adolescent for earning his
livelihood. Education has come to be today as nothing more than an instrument of
 livelihood. It should enable the student to take out his livelihood. Education must
prepare the student for future occupational positions.

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE:

The role of education as an agent or instrument of social change and development is
widely recognised today. Social change may take place when human needs change,
when the existing social system or network of social institutions fail to meet the existing
human needs and when new material suggest better ways of meeting human needs.
Social change do not take place automatically.
Education has brought about phenomenal changes in every aspect of man’s life.
Francis J. Brown remarks that education is a process which brings about changes in
the behaviour of society. It is a process which enables every individual to effectively
participate in the activities of society and to make positive contribution to the progress
of society.
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION:
Social stratification which is necessitated by the phenomenon of social differentiation
refers to a process of placing people in different strata or layers. It is an ubiquitous
phenomenon of human society.

 EDUCATION – AS A DETRIMINANT OF SOCIAL PLACEMENT AND

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION:
It is noticeable that the most prestigious jobs tend to be not only those that yield
the highest income but also the ones that require the longest education. The more
education people have, the more likely they are to obtain good jobs and to enjoy
high incomes.

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL MOBILITY:

In society education functions as a promoter of upward social mobility. In such societies
occupation is the principal channel of social mobility. Occupations that help social
mobility require certain educational qualifications. It is in this context education
acquires significance as a promoter of upward social mobility.
Peter Blau and Otis Duncan (1967), in their study of social mobility in America, found
that the important factor affecting whether a son moved to a higher social status than
his father’s was the amount of education the son received. A high level of education is
a scarce and valued resource, and one for which people compete vigorously.
THEORIES OF EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION:
1. FUNCTIONALIST THEORY:
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.

FUNCTIONS OF EDUCATION:

1. SOCIALISATION:
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).
The most important function of education is socialization. If children need 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 R’s, as we all
know, but they also teach many of the society’s norms and values. In the United
States, these norms and values include respect for authority, patriotism,
punctuality, individualism.
2. SOCIAL PLACEMENT:
Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward
social mobility. This function is referred to as social placement. University 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,
university 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 he or she sees business class as a stronger
vehicle for financial success.
3. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INNOVATION:
Social and cultural innovation is a third 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.
2. SYMBOLIC INTERACTION THEORY:
According to the symbolic interaction perspective, interactions between students and
teachers help each develop a set of expectations for that student's performance both in
academic subjects and discipline.
The basic idea of the symbolic-interaction approach is that people create the reality they
experience in their day-to-day interaction. People who expect others to act in certain
ways often encourage that very behaviour. Doing so, people set up a self-fulfilling
prophecy e.g Elliott performed a classroom experiment. She found that almost all of the
children in her class had either blue eyes or brown eyes.
She told the class that children with brown eyes were smarter and work harder than
children with blue eyes. Elliott recalls the effect of this “lesson” on the way students
behaved: “It was just horrifying how quickly they became what I told them they were.
”Within half an hour, Elliot continued, a blue-eyed girl named Carol had changed from
a “brilliant, carefree, excited little girl to a frightened, timid, uncertain, almost-person.
”Not surprisingly, in the hours that followed, the brown-eyed students came to life,
speaking up more and performing better than they had done before. The prophecy had
been fulfilled: Because the brown-eyed children thought they were superior, they
became superior in their classroom performance—as well as “arrogant, ugly, and
domineering” toward the blue-eyed children. For their part, the blue-eyed children
began underperforming; becoming the inferior people they believed themselves to be.

3. Education and Inequality

Conflict theory does not dispute the functions of functions. 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. When most schools begin tracking their students in grade
school, the students thought by their teachers to be bright are placed in the faster tracks
(especially in reading and arithmetic), while the slower students are placed in the slower
tracks.
Such tracking does have its advantages; it helps ensure that bright students learn as
much as their abilities allow them, and it helps ensure that slower students are not taught
over their heads. 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 and ethnicity 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 and ethnicity (Ansalone, 2010).
Conflict theorists add that standardized tests are culturally biased and thus also help
perpetuate social inequality (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.