PROFED 2: THE TEACHER AND THE COMMUNITY, SCHOOL

CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

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Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning Objectives

1. List the major functions of education.

2. Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
3. Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional,
conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table
16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say.

Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical
Major assumptions
perspective

Education serves several functions for society. These include (a) socialization, (b)
social integration, (c) social placement, and (d) social and cultural innovation.
Functionalism Latent functions include child care, the establishment of peer relationships, and
lowering unemployment by keeping high school students out of the full-time labor
force.

Conflict theory Education promotes social inequality through the use of tracking and standardized
testing and the impact of its “hidden curriculum.” Schools differ widely in their

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Theoretical
Major assumptions
perspective

funding and learning conditions, and this type of inequality leads to learning
disparities that reinforce social inequality.

This perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on the playground,

Symbolic and in other school venues. Specific research finds that social interaction in schools
interactionism affects the development of gender roles and that teachers’ expectations of pupils’
intellectual abilities affect how much pupils learn.

The Functions of Education

Functional theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a

society’s various needs. Perhaps 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 Rs, 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 (remember the Pledge
of Allegiance?), punctuality, individualism, and competition. Regarding these last two
values, American students from an early age compete as individuals over grades and
other rewards. The situation is quite the opposite in Japan, where children learn the
traditional Japanese values of harmony and group belonging from their schooling
(Schneider & Silverman, 2010). They learn to value their membership in their homeroom,
or kumi, and are evaluated more on their kumi’s performance than on their own individual
performance. How well a Japanese child’s kumi does is more important than how well the
child does as an individual.

A second function of education is social integration. For a society to work,

functionalists say, people must subscribe to a common set of beliefs and values. As we
saw, the development of such common views was a goal of the system of free,
compulsory education that developed in the 19th century. Thousands of immigrant
children in the United States today are learning English, U.S. history, and other subjects
that help prepare them for the workforce and integrate them into American life. Such
integration is a major goal of the English-only movement, whose advocates say that only
English should be used to teach children whose native tongue is Spanish, Vietnamese,
or whatever other language their parents speak at home. Critics of this movement say it

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slows down these children’s education and weakens their ethnic identity (Schildkraut,
2005).

A third 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 are taught at the level that is thought to suit them best. In this way
they are prepared in the most appropriate way possible for their later station in life.
Whether this process works as well as it should is an important issue, and we explore it
further when we discuss school tracking shortly.

Social and cultural innovation is a fourth 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.

Education also involves several latent functions, functions that are by-products of
going to school and receiving an education rather than a direct effect of the education
itself. One of these is child care. Once a child starts kindergarten and then 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. This fact keeps the unemployment rate
lower than it would be if they were in the labor force.

Education and Inequality

Conflict theory does not dispute most of the functions just described. However, it
does give some of them a different slant and talks about various ways in which education
perpetuates social inequality (Hill, Macrine, & Gabbard, 2010; Liston, 1990). One example
involves the function of social placement. As most schools track their students starting 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; in high school, three common tracks are the college track, vocational track,
and general track.

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, 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

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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, 2006; Oakes, 2005).

Social inequality is also perpetuated through the widespread use of standardized

tests. Critics say these tests continue to be culturally biased, as they include questions
whose answers are most likely to be known by white, middle-class students, whose
backgrounds have afforded them various experiences that help them answer the
questions. They also say that scores on standardized tests reflect students’
socioeconomic status and experiences in addition to their academic abilities. To the
extent this critique is true, standardized tests perpetuate social inequality (Grodsky,
Warren, & Felts, 2008).

As we will see, schools in the United States also differ mightily 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.

Conflict theorists also say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum, by which
they mean a set of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including the existing
social hierarchy (Booher-Jennings, 2008). Although no one plots this behind closed
doors, our schoolchildren learn patriotic values and respect for authority from the books
they read and from various classroom activities.

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

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-role socialization. Girls tend
to play more cooperative games, while boys play more competitive sports (Thorne, 1993).

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 them, 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 them

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and act in a way that leads the students to learn less. One of the first studies to find this
example of a self-fulfilling prophecy was conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore
Jacobson (1968). 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 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. To the extent this type of self-fulfilling prophecy occurs,
it helps us understand why tracking is bad for the students tracked down.

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.

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Other research focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Several studies from the
1970s through the 1990s found that teachers call on boys more often and praise them
more often (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998;
Jones & Dindia, 2004). Teachers did not do this consciously, but their behavior
nonetheless sent an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for girls and
that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. This body of research 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).
Key Takeaways

• According to the functional perspective, education helps socialize children and prepare
them for their eventual entrance into the larger society as adults.
• The conflict perspective emphasizes that education reinforces inequality in the larger
society.
• The symbolic interactionist perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom,
on school playgrounds, and at other school-related venues. Social interaction
contributes to gender-role socialization, and teachers’ expectations may affect their
students’ performance.

The Conflict Perspective

The Conflict perspective refers to the inequalities that exist in all societies
globally. Conflict theory is particularly interested in the various aspects of master status in
social position—the primary identifying characteristic of an individual seen in terms
of race or ethnicity, sex or gender, age, religion, ability or disability, and socio-
economic status. According to the Conflict paradigm, every society is plagued by
inequality based on social differences among the dominant group and all of the other
groups in society. When we are analyzing any element of society from this perspective,
we need to look at the structures of wealth, power and status, and the ways in which
those structures maintain social, economic, political and coercive power of one group at
the expense of others.

The Family

According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social
inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo. Because
inheritance, education and social capital are transmitted through the family structure,
wealthy families are able to keep their privileged social position for their members, while
individuals from poor families are denied similar status. Conflict theorists have also seen
the family as a social arrangement benefiting men more than women, allowing men to
maintain a position of power. The traditional family form in most cultures is

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patriarchal, contributing to inequality between the sexes. Males tend to have more power
and females tend to have less. Traditional male roles and responsibilities are valued more
than the traditional roles done by their wives (i.e., housekeeping, child rearing). The
traditional family is also an inequitable structure for women and children. For example,
more than 60 percent of all mothers with children under six are in the paid workforce.
Even though these women spend as much (or more) time at paid jobs as their husbands,
they also do more of the housework and child care.

Chinese Family in Suriname: According to conflict theorists, the family works

toward the continuance of social inequality within a society by maintaining and
reinforcing the status quo.

Key Points

• The conflict perspective describes the inequalities that exist in all societies globally,
and considers aspects of society as ways for those with power and status to
maintain control over scare resources.
• According to conflict theorists, the family works toward the continuance of social
inequality within a society by maintaining and reinforcing the status quo.

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• Through inheritance, the wealthy families are able to keep their privileged social
position for their members.
• Conflict theorists have seen the family as a social arrangement benefiting men
more than women.

Key Terms

• Family
A group of people related by blood, marriage, law or custom.
• inheritance: The passing of title to an estate upon death.
• Conflict Perspective: A perspective in the social sciences that emphasizes the
social, political or material inequality of a social group; critiques the broad socio-
political system; or otherwise detracts from structural functionalism and ideological
conservativism.

Functionalism and Education

A functionalist’s perspective on education is to have a consensus perspective:

examine society in terms of how it is maintained for the common good. A functionalist will
put an emphasis on positive aspects of schools such as socialization: the learning of skills
and attitudes in school. Education helps maintain society by socializing young people
into values of achievement, competition and equality of opportunity. Skills provision is
also important: education teaches the skills for the economy. For example, literacy,
numeracy and IT for particular occupations. Role allocation is all part of this: education
allocates people to the most appropriate jobs for their talents, using examinations and
qualifications.

Durkheim views education as an entity creating social solidarity: community,

cooperation. Education transmits culture: shared beliefs and values. Schools are a
miniature society: cooperation, interaction, rules – universalistic standards. Specialist
skills: division of labor – schools teach specialist knowledge and skills.
x
Parson views education as being part of a meritocracy. Education is a secondary
agent of socialization – bridge between family and society. Parsons believes that
education instils values of competition, equality and individualism. In a meritocracy
everyone is given equality of opportunity. Achievements and rewards are based on effort
and ability – achieved status. Parsons is supported in these views by Duncan and Blau
who believe that a modern economy depends for its prosperity on using human capital –
its workers and skills. A meritocratic education system does this best.

Davis and Moore examined role allocation. They believe that education selects
talented individuals and allocates them to the most important roles in society. Higher
rewards for jobs such as GP’s and pilots encourages competition. Davis and Moore

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believe that education sifts and sorts according to ability. The Marxist view on educational
achievement is greatly influenced by social class background. Education transmits ruling
class ideology. Melvin Tumin believes that jobs are considered important when they are
highly rewarded. Dennis Wrong views pupils as puppets – that pupils passively accept
and never reject their school’s values. The New Right argue that the state education
system fails to prepare young people adequately for work.

A Functionalist’s view on education:

Structural consensus theory – agreement through socialization; Macro theory;

Society made up of interdependent and interrelated parts; Look at positive aspects and
see education as being very important and beneficial.

Critics of Functionalism state that as a theory it assumes education is fair and that it
rewards the best and ignores social inequalities that may restrict attainment.
Marxism believes that education teaches the values and norms of the bourgeoisie. The
New Right criticizes the skills and knowledge taught in schools and believes that they
teach things irrelevant to the world of work.

Positivists argue that natural science is a good thing because it offers the best way
of obtaining knowledge. Positivists argue that Sociology can and should follow the natural
sciences. That is, we should regard society as a real thing, develop theories about the
laws of social development, and test those theories with quantitative data (data in the
form of numbers e.g. official statistics). Positivists argue that quantitative data is best
because it’s most likely to be valid (because it’s unbiased), reliable (because the research
can be repeated) and representative (because it uses large random samples). An
example of Positivism would be ‘The Black Report’, which after research concluded that
members of the working class had a greater chance of dying earlier when compared to
the middle and upper classes.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships

among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through
language and symbols—is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their
social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees
people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic

interactionism though he never published his work on it (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993).
Mead’s student, Herbert Blumer, coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined
these basic premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those
things; the ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and
society; the meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in
specific circumstances (Blumer 1969). If you love books, for example, a

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symbolic interactionist might propose that you learned that books are good or important
in the interactions you had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe your family had
a special reading time each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event,
or bedtime stories were associated with warmth and comfort.

Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of

interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one
interactions. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might focus
on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how individuals
in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters use to
communicate their message. The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society
led sociologists like Erving Goffman (1922–1982) to develop a technique
called dramaturgical analysis. Goffman used theater as an analogy for social interaction
and recognized that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” Because
it can be unclear what part a person may play in a given situation, he or she has to
improvise his or her role as the situation unfolds (Goffman 1958).

Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative
research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they
seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.

Constructivism is an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that reality

is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based on
interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have
meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the society.
This approach is often used to understand what’s defined as deviant within a society.
There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have constructed
different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors with deviance.
One situation that illustrates this is what you believe you’re to do if you find a wallet in the
street. In the United States, turning the wallet in to local authorities would be considered
the appropriate action, and to keep the wallet would be seen as deviant. In contrast, many
Eastern societies would consider it much more appropriate to keep the wallet and search
for the owner yourself; turning it over to someone else, even the authorities, would be
considered deviant behavior.

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BRING IT HOME

The main tenets of symbolic interactionism are explained in the following video.

Criticism

Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty
of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic
interaction. Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths.

FARMING AND LOCAVORES: HOW SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES MIGHT VIEW FOOD

CONSUMPTION

The consumption of food is a commonplace, daily occurrence, yet it can also be

associated with important moments in our lives. Eating can be an individual or a group
action, and eating habits and customs are influenced by our cultures. In the context of
society, our nation’s food system is at the core of numerous social movements, political
issues, and economic debates. Any of these factors might become a topic of sociological
study.
A structural-functional approach to the topic of food consumption might be
interested in the role of the agriculture industry within the nation’s economy and how this
has changed from the early days of manual-labor farming to modern mechanized
production. Another examination might study the different functions that occur in food
production: from farming and harvesting to flashy packaging and mass consumerism.
A conflict theorist might be interested in the power differentials present in the regulation
of food, by exploring where people’s right to information intersects with corporations’ drive
for profit and how the government mediates those interests. Or a conflict theorist might
be interested in the power and powerlessness experienced by local farmers versus large
farming conglomerates, such as the documentary Food Inc. depicts as resulting from
Monsanto’s patenting of seed technology. Another topic of study might be how nutrition
varies between different social classes.
A sociologist viewing food consumption through a symbolic interactionist lens would be
more interested in micro-level topics, such as the symbolic use of food in religious rituals,
or the role it plays in the social interaction of a family dinner. This perspective might also
study the interactions among group members who identify themselves based on their
sharing a particular diet, such as vegetarians (people who don’t eat meat) or locavores
(people who strive to eat locally produced food).

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Sociological Theory Today

These three approaches are still the main foundation of modern sociological
theory, but some evolution has been seen. Structural-functionalism was a dominant force
after World War II and until the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, sociologists began to feel
that structural-functionalism did not sufficiently explain the rapid social changes
happening in the United States at that time.

Conflict theory then gained prominence, as there was renewed emphasis on

institutionalized social inequality. Critical theory, and the particular aspects of feminist
theory and critical race theory, focused on creating social change through the application
of sociological principles, and the field saw a renewed emphasis on helping ordinary
people understand sociology principles, in the form of public sociology.

Postmodern social theory attempts to look at society through an entirely new lens
by rejecting previous macro-level attempts to explain social phenomena. Generally
considered as gaining acceptance in the late 1970s and early 1980s, postmodern social
theory is a micro-level approach that looks at small, local groups and individual reality. Its
growth in popularity coincides with the constructivist aspects of symbolic interactionism.

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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Review the major sociological theories (excluding social constructionism) again in the following video.
For more information please click the link below to see videos related on the topic

[Link]

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References
American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. (1998). Gender gaps: Where
schools still fail our children. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational
Foundation.

Ansalone, G. (2006). Tracking: A return to Jim Crow. Race, Gender & Class, 13, 1–2.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2009). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (6th ed.).
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Battey, D., Kafai, Y., Nixon, A. S., & Kao, L. L. (2007). Professional development for teachers on gender
equity in the sciences: Initiating the conversation. Teachers College Record, 109(1), 221–243.

Booher-Jennings, J. (2008). Learning to label: Socialisation, gender, and the hidden curriculum of high-
stakes testing. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29, 149–160.

Grodsky, E., Warren, J. R., & Felts, E. (2008). Testing and social stratification in American
education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 385–404.

Hill, D., Macrine, S., & Gabbard, D. (Eds.). (2010). Capitalist education: Globalisation and the politics of
inequality. New York, NY: Routledge; Liston, D. P. (1990). Capitalist schools: Explanation and ethics in
radical studies of schooling. New York, NY: Routledge.

Jones, S. M., & Dindia, K. (2004). A meta-analystic perspective on sex equity in the classroom. Review of
Educational Research, 74, 443–471.

Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York, NY: Holt.

Schildkraut, D. J. (2005). Press “one” for English: Language policy, public opinion, and American identity.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schneider, L., & Silverman, A. (2010). Global sociology: Introducing five contemporary societies (5th ed.).
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press

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