function of education for society

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16.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

List the major functions of education.
Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
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

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, as we saw in Chapter 4 “Socialization” , 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 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.

Figure 16.1 The Functions of Education

The Functions of Education: social integration, social placement, socialization, social and cultural innovation

Schools ideally perform many important functions in modern society. These include socialization, social integration, social placement, and social and cultural innovation.

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 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) (see Chapter 4 “Socialization” ). 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) (see Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” ).

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 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.

Pre schoolers working on arts and crafts

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.

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.

For Your Review

Review how the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives understand and explain education. Which of these three approaches do you most prefer? Why?

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.

Utility Menu

Department of Sociology

Education and Society

Schools and colleges are transforming the lives of individual learners and their families. They play a core role in society. At the same time, they are continuously transformed by politics, markets, and scientific, technological, and cultural change. Sociologists of education and higher education at Harvard are engaged in basic and applied research, both contemporary and historical, and focusing on the United States as well as on cross-national and cross-cultural analyses. The broad array of research in this cluster applies core sociological concepts, such as equity and (in)equality; race and ethnicity; social networks; immigration; stratification; organizations; culture; social mobility; socialization and others to the study of education. The research cluster has links to the Graduate School of Education (GSE), the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Education, the Secondary Field in Education Studies and the Mahindra Seminar on Universities: Past, Present and Future.

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Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

11.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

List the major functions of education.
Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2012). Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2012). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Table 11.1 "Theory Snapshot" summarizes what these approaches say.

Table 11.1 Theory Snapshot

The Functions of Education

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 presumably prepared 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 later in this chapter.

Figure 11.6 The Functions of Education

Schools ideally perform many important functions in modern society. These include socialization, social integration, social placement, and social and cultural innovation.

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.

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.

Education and Inequality

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). Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2012). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. 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; 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 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). Ansalone, G. (2010). Tracking: Educational differentiation or defective strategy. Educational Research Quarterly, 34 (2), 3–17.

Conflict theorists add that standardized tests are culturally biased and thus also help perpetuate social inequality (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts, 2008). Grodsky, E., Warren, J. R., & Felts, E. (2008). Testing and social stratification in American education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34 (1), 385–404. 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.

A third critique of conflict theory involves the quality of schools. As we will see later in this chapter, US schools 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.

In a fourth critique, conflict theorists say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum A set of values and beliefs learned in school that support the status quo, including the existing social hierarchy. , by which they mean a set of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including the existing social hierarchy (Booher-Jennings, 2008). 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. 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.

A final critique is historical and concerns the rise of free, compulsory education during the nineteenth century (Cole, 2008). Cole, M. (2008). Marxism and educational theory: Origins and issues. New York, NY: Routledge. Because compulsory schooling began in part to prevent immigrants’ values from corrupting “American” values, conflict theorists see its origins as smacking of ethnocentrism (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 upper/capitalist class much more than it served the interests of workers.

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) Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. (see Chapter 4 "Gender Inequality" ).

Applying Social Research

Assessing the Impact of Small Class Size

Do elementary school students fare better if their classes have fewer students rather than more students? It is not easy to answer this important question, because any differences found between students in small classes and those in larger classes might not necessarily reflect class size. Rather, they may reflect other factors. For example, perhaps the most motivated, educated parents ask that their child be placed in a smaller class and that their school goes along with this request. Perhaps teachers with more experience favor smaller classes and are able to have their principals assign them to these classes, while new teachers are assigned larger classes. These and other possibilities mean that any differences found between the two class sizes might reflect the qualities and skills of students and/or teachers in these classes, and not class size itself.

For this reason, the ideal study of class size would involve random assignment of both students and teachers to classes of different size. (Recall that Chapter 1 "Understanding Social Problems" discusses the benefits of random assignment.) Fortunately, a notable study of this type exists.

The study, named Project STAR (Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio), began in Tennessee in 1985 and involved 79 public schools and 11,600 students and 1,330 teachers who were all randomly assigned to either a smaller class (13–17 students) or a larger class (22–25 students). The random assignment began when the students entered kindergarten and lasted through third grade; in fourth grade, the experiment ended, and all the students were placed into the larger class size. The students are now in their early thirties, and many aspects of their educational and personal lives have been followed since the study began.

Some of the more notable findings of this multiyear study include the following:

While in grades K–3, students in the smaller classes had higher average scores on standardized tests.
Students who had been in the smaller classes continued to have higher average test scores in grades 4–7.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were more likely to complete high school and also to attend college.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were less likely to be arrested during adolescence.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were more likely in their twenties to be married and to live in wealthier neighborhoods.
White girls who had been in the smaller classes were less likely to have a teenage birth than white girls who had been in the larger classes.

Why did small class size have these benefits? Two reasons seem likely. First, in a smaller class, there are fewer students to disrupt the class by talking, fighting, or otherwise taking up the teacher’s time. More learning can thus occur in smaller classes. Second, kindergarten teachers are better able to teach noncognitive skills (cooperating, listening, sitting still) in smaller classes, and these skills can have an impact many years later.

Regardless of the reasons, it was the experimental design of Project STAR that enabled its findings to be attributed to class size rather than to other factors. Because small class size does seem to help in many ways, the United States should try to reduce class size in order to improve student performance and later life outcomes.

Sources: Chetty et al., 2011; Schanzenbach, 2006 Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hilger, N., Saez, E., Schanzenbach, D. W., & Yagan, D. (2011). How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project STAR. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 , 1593–1660; Schanzenbach, D. W. (2006). What have researchers learned from Project STAR? (Harris School Working Paper—Series 06.06).

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. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968) Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom . New York, NY: Holt. 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 is bad for the students tracked down.

Other research in the symbolic interactionist tradition focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Many studies find that teachers call on and praise boys more often (Jones & Dindia, 2004). Jones, S. M., & Dindia, K. (2004). A meta-analystic perspective on sex equity in the classroom. Review of Educational Research, 74 , 443–471. Teachers do not do this consciously, but their behavior nonetheless sends an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for them and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. 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). 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.

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.

For Your Review

Review how the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives understand and explain education. Which of these three approaches do you most prefer? Why?

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66 11.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

List the major functions of education.
Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2012). Table 11.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say.

Table 11.1 Theory Snapshot

The Functions of Education

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 presumably prepared 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 later in this chapter.

Figure 11.6 The Functions of Education

The Functions of Education include: social integration, social placement, socialization, and social and cultural innovation

Schools ideally perform many important functions in modern society. These include socialization, social integration, social placement, and social and cultural innovation.

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 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. 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; 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 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.

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 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.

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 smacking of ethnocentrism (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 upper/capitalist class much more than it served the interests of workers.

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

Applying Social Research

Assessing the Impact of Small Class Size

For this reason, the ideal study of class size would involve random assignment of both students and teachers to classes of different size. (Recall that Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems” discusses the benefits of random assignment.) Fortunately, a notable study of this type exists.

Some of the more notable findings of this multiyear study include the following:

While in grades K–3, students in the smaller classes had higher average scores on standardized tests.
Students who had been in the smaller classes continued to have higher average test scores in grades 4–7.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were more likely to complete high school and also to attend college.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were less likely to be arrested during adolescence.
Students who had been in the smaller classes were more likely in their twenties to be married and to live in wealthier neighborhoods.
White girls who had been in the smaller classes were less likely to have a teenage birth than white girls who had been in the larger classes.

Sources: Chetty et al., 2011; Schanzenbach, 2006

Pre-schoolers creating little works of art

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

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. 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 is bad for the students tracked down.

Other research in the symbolic interactionist tradition focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Many studies find that teachers call on and praise boys more often (Jones & Dindia, 2004). Teachers do not do this consciously, but their behavior nonetheless sends an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for them and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. 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).

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.

For Your Review

Review how the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives understand and explain education. Which of these three approaches do you most prefer? Why?

Ansalone, G. (2010). Tracking: Educational differentiation or defective strategy. Educational Research Quarterly, 34 (2), 3–17.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2012). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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.

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Hilger, N., Saez, E., Schanzenbach, D. W., & Yagan, D. (2011). How does your kindergarten classroom affect your earnings? Evidence from Project STAR. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126 , 1593–1660.

Cole, M. (2008). Marxism and educational theory: Origins and issues. New York, NY: Routledge.

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

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

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

Schanzenbach, D. W. (2006). What have researchers learned from Project STAR? (Harris School Working Paper—Series 06.06).

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

Social Problems: Continuity and Change Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Education in society.

Changes in developed economies and societies stemming from the Industrial Revolution have shifted responsibilities for the education of young people from the family and community to schools. Schools are now a major institution, educating the vast majority of children and youth in the developed world and functioning as a primary engine of change in developing countries. Although education brings about changes in society as a whole as well as in individuals, schools are also influenced by larger social forces. Sociological theories address these central roles that schools play in society from differing perspectives.

The functionalist paradigm emphasizes the role that education plays for society. Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, was among the first educational researchers to focus on the function schools serve for the larger society. Durkheim (1961) argued that the main goal of education was to socialize individuals so that they share values with the larger society. Ensuring that all students received the same moral education allowed for a more integrated society with less social conflict about wrong behaviors or attitudes. A second important functionalist perspective on education developed in economics through research on human capital (Schultz 1961). The human capital perspective describes education as a set of investments that increase individuals’ knowledge and skills, which in turn improves national labor productivity and economic growth. Education then becomes an important tool for societies to increase the efficiency and size of their economy.

While the functionalist perspective emphasizes the role of education for society as a whole, the conflict paradigm focuses on divisions within society that education maintains or rein forces. Max Weber (2000) was one of the first to argue that education serves dual and potentially conflicting functions for society. First, schools can be an equalizing institution where individuals, regardless of their social status, can gain access to high status jobs through their own talent and hard work. Second, schools can rein force existing status hierarchies by limiting opportunities to individuals from high status backgrounds. In other words, Weber recognized schools’ potential to either facilitate or block social mobility. Weber’s incorporation of the notion of social status into the function of schools in society was extremely influential in shaping sociological research on education. Randall Collins (1979), Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, and others furthered Weber’s ideas on status attainment by arguing that schools socialize individuals to accept their place in an unjust, capitalist society. This work shifted the emphasis found in human capital theory away from schools as providers of skills and training to schools as providers of hollow credentials that are rewarded in the labor market. Critically, these credentials do not represent higher levels of skills, but simply serve as status markers that employers use to sort workers into low and high prestige occupations.

Both historically and when comparing countries today, the structure of a country’s educational system is closely linked to its economic and political history. Developed countries are generally characterized by a history of relatively steady economic growth, a stable political system, and freedom from the devastation of war. This common context enables developed countries to form a cohesive formal schooling system that serves all children until at least the age of 15 or 16. In recent decades, developed nations have incorporated the ideals of equality of educational opportunity and providing opportunities to children from disadvantaged backgrounds into their goals for educational policy.

Though all developed nations provide universal education and many are motivated by similar ideals, the structure of schooling can vary drastically from developed country to developed country (for an overview, see Brint 1998). In Japan, France, and Sweden, the school system is run by a central governmental ministry of education that ensures standardized curricula and funding. Other countries, such as Germany, Canada, and the US, are more decentralized and allow local or regional governments to maintain control over public education. Additionally, the school systems in these nations vary in how they structure opportunities to learn and earn credentials. In his classic article, Ralph Turner (1960) contrasted the English and US school systems, characterizing the former as a “sponsored” system, in which talent is identified in the early years and nurtured in a stratified system. The US system, on the other hand, is a “contest” system, consisting of a series of contests in which all students compete on a level playing field. Though “sponsored” and “contest” systems are ”ideal types,” most developed nations’ school systems reflect aspects of sponsored or contest systems.

In the developing world, many countries have been independent from colonizing powers for approximately only 50 years and do not have the same history of political stability, economic security, and times of peace that privilege developed countries. These instabilities (along with problems related to poverty) affect the ability of developing countries to provide and prioritize universal education. In many developing countries, the school system is inherited in large part from former colonizers and is heavily shaped by the policies of the World Bank. The World Bank promotes a model of schooling that emphasizes primary schools, private spending, balances equity and efficiency, and discourages vocational education. Though the structure and experience World Bank policies provide can improve schooling priorities in developing nations, they sometimes do not recognize that factors unique to a particular country may require modifications. A central question concerning the role of education in developing nations concerns how important education systems are to economic growth. Much of the research on education in developing nations examines this question and generally finds that having a disciplined and educated labor force is a positive and important step in economic development.

Though commonalities in the structure of schooling exist across countries in the developed and developing world, each country is generally unique in the development of its particular educational system. Systems of education not only reflect national values and attitudes, they also play a major role in shaping national culture and social status hierarchy. In the US, the idea of public schooling – or the common school – developed in the early nineteenth century as a response to political and economic shifts in American society (see Parkerson & Parkerson 2001 for a history). Prior to common schooling, the majority of Americans were educated by their families, and only children from wealthier families could afford formal schooling. As the US moved away from a barter and trade economy toward markets where goods were exchanged for cash, white Protestant Americans from the middle and working classes recognized that the fragmented and informal system of schooling was no longer adequate preparation for their children to be competitive in the market driven economy. This realization led these Americans to demand that a quality primary education be made available to their children. The ideal of equality emphasized during the American Revolution meant that there was already growing political support among the Protestant political elite for the idea of public education for white children.

The end result of these forces was the development of the common school. Common schools had two main goals: first, to provide knowledge and skills necessary to being an active member of economic and social life; and second, to create Americans who value the same things – namely, patriotism, achievement, competition, and Protestant moral and religious values. Significantly, these goals were important both to individuals trying to make it in the new economic and social order and to the success of solidifying the young United States into a coherent nation. Religious diversity was not tolerated in the nascent nation, and Catholic immigrants were often seen as threats to the dominant Protestant way of life. Therefore, though common schools were open to all white Americans, the emphasis on Protestant values (which went hand in hand with anti-Catholic attitudes) alienated many Catholics. This religious tension eventually led Catholics to pursue alternative schooling and resulted in the development of Catholic private schools.

Though common schools provided more equitable access to education than the previous informal system, these schools still reflected the values of the ruling elite – white Anglo Saxon Protestants – in US society. In addition to appreciating Protestant values over those of other religions, educating white boys was generally seen as more important than educating white girls as white boys were more likely to benefit from their education upon entry into the formal labor market. Furthermore, African Americans, freed or enslaved, were almost categorically excluded from common schools in the early 1800s as the flawed ”ideal of equality” applied only to white Americans.

Despite the development of the common school, elite white Protestant Americans were able to maintain educational superiority by opting out of the common school system. The elite private and boarding school system began before the American Revolution and flourished during the nineteenth century (at the same time that the common school system was expanding). Though the growing public education system diminished the percentage of secondary students in private schools, private schools maintained an exclusivity that appealed to elite parents eager to pass on status and advantage to their children. In Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools (1985), authors Cookson and Persell explore the admissions process and the demographic characteristics of ”the chosen ones,” America’s most privileged students. Historically, these elite schools tended to have a homogeneous student body in terms of family background, religion, and race, and admission was based not on openly stated academic requirements but on a complicated balance of merit, family wealth, social standing, and an individual’s ability to fit the school’s ideal. Thus, the presentation of self as a person of status – someone with ambition, confidence, and poise – was just as important as academic capacities to gaining access to America’s most elite secondary education. Though these private schools continue to promote an elite social class identity, currently they also face pressure to diversify the racial composition of their student bodies.

While elite private schools have historically allowed privileged Americans to opt out of public schooling, religious schools have offered an important private alternative to non-elite, and sometimes marginalized, Americans throughout the history of the US. Catholic schools were a part of Colonial America and are among some of the oldest educational institutions in the US. In contrast to elite private schools, religious schools had a moral purpose of teaching religious beliefs and producing religious leaders. Beginning in the 1800s, Catholic schools provided an alternative to the public school where children read the Protestant version of the Bible. Today, Catholic schools serve a more diverse student population in terms of race, social class, and religious beliefs. Catholic schools today are known for providing good opportunities to learn and prepare for college (Bryk et al. 1993). Critics suggest that Catholic schools select more promising students, an option not available to public schools.

Though research on elite and Catholic private schools suggests that access to a private versus public education affects students’ academic opportunities, inequalities between schools within the public sector have long plagued the American educational system, with serious implications for children with no choice other than public schooling. As mentioned previously, the common school system generally excluded African American children until after the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Though the end of slavery meant that the common school system finally included African American children, they were generally educated in separate facilities (see Orfield & Eaton 1996 for a history). By 1896, the idea of ”separate but equal” schools was officially sanctioned by the Supreme Court through its decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Racially segregated schools became the norm across the US, though whether this segregation was by law or by practice varied by state and region. Equitable distribution of resources between racially segregated schools never existed; white schools received substantially more financial and academic support. ”Separate but equal” schools were eventually declared inherently unequal in the Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), and schools were ordered to desegregate ”with all deliberate speed.”

Though Brown is perhaps one of the most widely celebrated Supreme Court decisions, schools in the US have failed to reflect the ideals of desegregation and educational equality put forth in the ruling. Early research in sociology of education recognized that stratification in educational attainment was related to students’ family background, such as race or ethnicity, rather than simply differences in achievement test scores (e.g., Coleman et al. 1966). These differences were social and had to do with the schools’ social context rather than factors that could be affected by redistribution of funding levels alone. Since the Coleman Report (1966) and its political consequences of busing that shocked the nation, educational researchers and policymakers have struggled to know how to provide equality of educational opportunity within a context of socioeconomic inequality.

Beginning around 1980, sociologists of education turned their attention to stratification systems at work within schools. Secondary schools tend to group students in courses or ”tracks” (such as academic, general, or vocational), and through these groupings schools can either reinforce or disrupt the relationship between family background and attainment. Typically, the high school curriculum is organized into sequences of courses in which subject knowledge gained from one course pre pares a student for the next course. Mobility between sequences is restricted and forms the foundation of a stratification system for adolescents. Furthermore, schools tend to provide more resources, such as higher quality instruction, to students in higher level courses, which can have serious consequences for low ability students (Hallinan 1994). The result is that students’ course taking patterns follow a trajectory or sequence of courses over the years of high school in which mobility between course sequences is unusual. This is especially true in mathematics, where mobility into the elite college preparatory classes is nearly impossible after the sequence has begun. Students’ placement in these sequences explains much of why family background is linked to students’ attainment and is strongly related to a variety of

outcomes that indicate students’ basic life chances.

Research on stratification within schools further confirmed the results of Coleman’s earlier analysis on equity in education – schools are more effective at educating students from privileged family backgrounds. Because schools have been idealized as a great equalizing force, understanding why family background is linked strongly to education became the next important goal of sociology of education.

Annette Lareau (1987), building on Pierre Bourdieu’s (1973) idea of cultural capital, offered one explanation of how parents transmit advantages to their children when she found that parents interacted with teachers and schools very differently depending on their social class backgrounds. In addition to conditioning how parents interact with the school, parents’ cultural capital also influences how they socialize their children. Lareau describes middle class parents’ childrearing strategies as ”concerted cultivation” or active fostering of children’s growth through adult organized activities (e.g., soccer, music lessons) and through encouraging critical and original thinking. Working class and poor parents, on the other hand, support their children’s ”natural growth” by providing the conditions necessary for their child’s development, but leaving structure of leisure activities to the children. These different styles have implications for students’ abilities to take advantage of opportunities in schools.

Coleman’s concept of social capital articulated another way that families transmit advantages to their children. In parenting, social capital refers to ”the norms, the social networks, and the relationships between adults and children that are of value for the child’s growing up” and can exist within families and communities (Coleman 1987: 334). Social capital within families taps how close parents and children are and how closely parents are able to monitor their child’s development. For example, Coleman (1988) found that a higher percentage of children from single parent families (who have less social capital in the home) drop out during high school than children from intact families. Social capital in communities is also important, as Coleman et al. (1982) demonstrated: students in Catholic high schools were less likely to drop out compared to their peers in other private and public schools, not because of school related differences (such as quality curriculum), but rather because of the close knit adult relationships surrounding Catholic schools. The cohesive Catholic community allowed adults to better transmit norms about staying in school to teenagers.

Though the principal manifest function of schools is undoubtedly to provide opportunities for learning, schools also serve as the primary location for social interaction with peers and for the development of adolescent cultures. Since Durkheim first emphasized schools as a socializing institution, sociologists have investigated how schools’ adolescent cultures affect adolescents’ priorities, goals, and behaviors. James Coleman’s The Adolescent Society (1961) recognized the importance of ”adolescent culture” in schools to the decisions, both academic and social, that adolescents make. Coleman stated that adolescents turn to each other for social rewards, not to adult communities; therefore, understanding the value systems of adolescent society is key to understanding what motivates students. Importantly, for some adolescents, the goals of formal schooling – achievement, engagement – are reflected in the adolescent culture; however, when students rebel against the formal goals of schooling, it can reinforce preexisting inequalities based on family back ground.

Fordham and Ogbu (1986) have examined how adolescents’ oppositional culture to schooling develops and how it explains in part the links between family background and students’ achievement. Given the history of racism in the US, Fordham and Ogbu argue that doing well in school has come to represent ”acting white” to African American youth in an urban school. This may lead many African American students who are academically able to perform significantly below their capabilities. It also creates a tension for African American students who want to succeed academically; not only do they have to cope with the challenge of coursework, but they also have to deal with the burden of appearing to act white. More recently, this perspective has been challenged by researchers who argue that African American students actually hold educational values in high esteem and do not reject academic success.

Much of the sociological research on education has focused on equity – with good reason. Education has serious implications for adolescents’ future lives. Individuals’ academic credentials affect the jobs they are able to get and the incomes they earn. Individuals with a college degree earn higher wages than those with a high school degree who earn more than high school dropouts (Arum & Hout 2000). Educational attainment also has serious implications for health throughout the life course. More highly educated individuals experience better health (including self-perceived health, morbidity, and mortality) than people with less education (Ross & Mirowsky 1999). Education also shapes the social relationships that individuals form. People tend to marry others with similar amounts of education. Taken together, these findings indicate that education plays a powerful role in individuals’ lives. Though we don’t fully understand how education affects these diverse aspects of the human experience, it is clear that education is an important social institution.

References:

Arum, R. & Hout, M. (2000) The Early Returns: The Transition From School to Work in the United States. In: Arum, R. & Beattie, I. R. (Eds.), The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 423-34.
Bourdieu, P. (1973) Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. In: Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change. Tavistock, London.
Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions ofEconomic Life. Basic Books, New York.
Brint, S. (1998) Schools and Societies. Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Bryk, A. S., Lee, V. E., & Holland, P. B. (1993) Catholic Schools and the Common Good. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Coleman, J. S. (1961) The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of Teenagers and Its Impact on Education. Free Press, New York.
Coleman, J. S. (1987) Families and Schools. Educational Researcher 16(6): 32 8.
Coleman, J. S. (1988) Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology 94 (Supplement): S95-S120.
Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M., Weinfall, F. D., & York, R. L. (1966) Equality of Educational Opportunity. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Washington, DC.
Coleman, J. S., Hoffer, T., & Kilgore, S. (1982) Cognitive Outcomes in Public and Private Schools. Sociology of Education 55(2/3): 65 76.
Collins, R. (1979) The Credential Society: A Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification. Academic Press, New York.
Cookson, P. W. & Persell, C. H. (1985) Preparing for Power: America’s Elite Boarding Schools. Basic Books, New York.
Durkheim, E. (1961) Moral Education: A Study in the Theory and Application of Sociology of Education. E. K. Wilson & H. Schnurer. Free Press, New York.
Fordham, S. & Ogbu, J. U. (1986) Black Students’ School Success: Coping With the Burden of ”Acting White.” Urban Review 18(3): 176-206.
Hallinan, M. T. (1994) Tracking: From Theory to Practice. Sociology of Education 67(2): 79-84.
Lareau, A. (1987) Social Class Differences in Family School Relationships: The Importance of Cultural Capital. Sociology of Education 60: 73-85.
Orfield, G. & Eaton, S. E. (1996) Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown v. Board of Education. New Press, New York.
Parkerson, D. H. & Parkerson, J. A. (2001) Transitions in American Education: A Social History of Teaching. Routledge Falmer, New York.
Ross, C. E. & Mirowsky, J. (1999) Refining the Association Between Education and Health: The Effects of Quantity, Credential, and Selectivity. Demography 36(4): 445-60.
Schultz, T. W. (1961) Investment in Human Capital. American Economic Review 51(1): 1-17.
Turner, R. H. (1960) Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System. American Sociological Review 25: 855-67.
Weber, M. (2000) The ”Rationalization” of Education and Training. In: Arum, R. & Beattie, I. R. (Eds.), The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 16-19.

16.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Define manifest and latent functions of education
Explain and discuss how functionalism, conflict theory, feminism, and interactionism view issues of education

While it is clear that education plays an integral role in individuals’ lives as well as society as a whole, sociologists 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. Symbolic interactionists 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.

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.

Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility. This function is referred to as social 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

Education also fulfills latent functions. As you well know, much goes on in a school that has little to do with formal education. For example, you might notice an attractive fellow student when he gives a particularly interesting answer in class—catching up with him and making a date speaks to the latent function of courtship fulfilled by exposure to a peer group in the educational setting.

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 and that might not be learned in a homeschool setting.

The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. There is ample opportunity for social and political advocacy, as well as the ability to develop tolerance to the many views represented on campus. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across college campuses all over the United States, leading to demonstrations in which diverse groups of students were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country.

Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most important U.S. values students in the United States learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics as well as athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual.

In the United States, schools also fill the role of preparing students for competition in life. Obviously, athletics foster a competitive nature, but even in the classroom students compete against one another academically. Schools also fill the role of teaching patriotism. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and take history classes where they learn about national heroes and the nation’s past.

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.

Functionalists also contend that school, particularly in recent years, is taking over some of the functions that were traditionally undertaken by family. Society relies on schools to teach about human sexuality as well as basic skills such as budgeting and job applications—topics that at one time were addressed by the family.

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.

Sociology in the Real World

Grade inflation: when is an a really a c.

In 2019, news emerged of a criminal conspiracy regarding wealthy and, in some cases, celebrity parents who illegally secured college admission for their children. Over 50 people were implicated in the scandal, including employees from prestigious universities; several people were sentenced to prison. Their activity included manipulating test scores, falsifying students’ academic or athletic credentials, and acquiring testing accommodations through dishonest claims of having a disability.

One of the questions that emerged at the time was how the students at the subject of these efforts could succeed at these challenging and elite colleges. Meaning, if they couldn’t get in without cheating, they probably wouldn’t do well. Wouldn’t their lack of preparation quickly become clear?

Many people would say no. First, many of the students involved (the children of the conspirators) had no knowledge or no involvement of the fraud; those students may have been admitted anyway. But there may be another safeguard for underprepared students at certain universities: grade inflation.

Grade inflation generally refers to a practice of awarding students higher grades than they have earned. It reflects the observation that the relationship between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing over time. Put simply, what used to be considered C-level, or average, now often earns a student a B, or even an A.

Some, including administrators at elite universities, argue that grade inflation does not exist, or that there are other factors at play, or even that it has benefits such as increased funding and elimination of inequality (Boleslavsky 2014). But the evidence reveals a stark change. Based on data compiled from a wide array of four-year colleges and universities, a widely cited study revealed that the number of A grades has been increasing by several percentage points per decade, and that A’s were the most common grade awarded (Jaschik 2016). In an anecdotal case, a Harvard dean acknowledged that the median grade there was an A-, and the most common was also an A. Williams College found that the number of A+ grades had grown from 212 instances in 2009-10 to 426 instances in 2017-18 (Berlinsky-Schine 2020). Princeton University took steps to reduce inflation by limiting the number of A’s that could be issued, though it then reversed course (Greason 2020).

Why is this happening? 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 for instructors to earn positive course evaluations from their students. Finally, many colleges may accept a level of grade inflation because it works. Analysis and formal experiments involving graduate school admissions and hiring practices showed that students with higher grades are more likely to be selected for a job or a grad school. And those higher-grade applicants are still preferred even if decision-maker knows that the applicant’s college may be inflating grades (Swift 2013). In other words, people with high GPA at a school with a higher average GPA are preferred over people who have a high GPA at a school with a lower average GPA.

Ironically, grade inflation is not simply a college issue. Many of the same college faculty and administrators who encounter or engage in some level of grade inflation may lament that it is also occurring at high schools (Murphy 2017).

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 Iversen 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 (Iversen 2006). Iversen 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.

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About education

UNESCO believes that education is a human right for all throughout life and that access must be matched by quality. The Organization is the only United Nations agency with a mandate to cover all aspects of education. It has been entrusted to lead the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4 . The roadmap to achieve this is the Education 2030 Framework for Action (FFA).

UNESCO provides global and regional leadership in education, strengthens education systems worldwide and responds to contemporary global challenges through education with gender equality an underlying principle.

Its work encompasses educational development from pre-school to higher education and beyond. Themes include global citizenship and sustainable development, human rights and gender equality, health and HIV and AIDS, as well as technical and vocational skills development.

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UNESCO leads the coordination and monitoring of the Global Education 2030 Agenda through Sustainable Development Goal 4 and using the Education 2030 Framework for Action as a roadmap.

The UNESCO Education Strategy 2014-2021 has three strategic objectives:

The education sector is shifting and evolving towards a more explicit, active commitment to addressing gender-related barriers within and beyond the education system. This shift is being accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic with more NGOs, local governments as well as national governments recognizing the role education has in promoting gender-transformative change. Many are responding to this shift with innovations that aim to address the persistent challenges faced by girls and women in education. By highlighting these key practices through the Prize, we can contribute to inspiring more action for girls and women.

We speak about the importance of gender-transformative change both in and beyond education. Can you define what this means for you?

Gender-transformative education aims not only to respond to gender disparities within the education system but also to harness the full potential of education to transform attitudes, practices and discriminatory gender norms. Education can support critical changes for gender equality, such as promoting women’s leadership, preventing gender-based violence, and catalyzing boys' and men's engagement to embrace gender equality.

I have been very impressed by the capacity shown by many organizations and individuals nominated to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure they could maintain the delivery of their programmes. We know that fewer girls and women have access to and use the internet, and the digital gender gap is growing, particularly in developing countries. Many found new ways of delivering educational content and finding solutions to conduct fully online or blended approaches to learning, often in low-resource settings where access to the internet is extremely limited.

Reflection on Education and Society

Yoshi Budd 6
First Online: 18 July 2019

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The relationship between education and society is complex and fraught with contesting beliefs about what should be taught and how. In this chapter, I will explore this complex relationship from the perspective of my own and my pre-service teachers’ personal and professional experiences: experiences that have shaped personal values and relationships, as well as professional beliefs and teaching priorities. In this way, I hope to make visible not only the ways in which education shapes society but also the ways in which society shapes teachers’ understandings of the means and ends of education. I begin by sharing my own memories as a learner, reflecting on how my personal and educational experiences have shaped my values and beliefs as a teacher educator. Next, I discuss the ways in which the following chapters in this section also offer unique perspectives on the relationship between education and society.

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The Role of Education in Society: How It Impacts Our Lives?

Role of Education in Society: Education is a process of acquiring knowledge, through which, a person learns to interact with society. We can pass down our values and beliefs to the next generation through education, and allow us to grow up to be productive members of society.

In this blog post, we will discuss the importance of education and how it impacts our lives.

Table of Contents

What is Education?

Education reforms the life of an individual and society as a whole. The primary purpose of education is to disseminate knowledge and understanding. It helps individuals gain an insight into the happenings of the world around them. It also sensitizes them about their roles and responsibility in society.

In a fast-changing world, education plays a pivotal role in our lives – personal, professional and societal. By keeping us aware and updated about what’s happening around us.

Different types of education vary depending on the country or region. In general, there are three main levels of education: primary, secondary, and tertiary (or higher).

Primary education is typically compulsory and provides basic reading, writing, and recognising skills. It usually starts at around the age of five or six and lasts for five to six years.

Secondary education builds on primary education and typically lasts for another four to five years. Tertiary, or higher, education is not compulsory but is often necessary to pursue further studies or enter certain professions. It can last anywhere from one year to several years, depending on the program of study.

There are many different philosophies about what the role of education should be in society. Some believe that it should primarily focus on academics and cognitive development, while others place more importance on social and emotional growth.

There is no single answer that is right for everyone, as each individual has unique needs and goals. However, it is quite vivid that education plays a significant role in the formation of a developed nation.

Primary Function of Education

The primary function of education is to empower individuals and prepare them for life. It helps us develop our skills and abilities so that we can be successful in our careers and contribute to society. Education also teaches us how to think critically, solve problems, and make informed decisions.

What is the Importance of Education in Society

Education helps an individual in making informed decisions. It equips them with the essential skills and knowledge to be successful in their chosen field. The role of education in society is empowering an individual. It helps people to understand the world around them and their role in it. Moreover, it also instils in them a sense of social responsibility so that they can contribute meaningfully to society.

The role of education in human capital formation is significant, as education improves productivity and prosperity of a society. The economic returns of education are higher for countries with more educated populations.

Education is the most important tool for social and economic development. It helps in reducing poverty, inequality and unemployment. Moreover, education also plays a critical role in empowering women and girls. Thus, it can be said that education is the cornerstone of any progressive society.

The role of education is not just limited to shaping our personal lives but so far it is meant to shape the entire world. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi , “The role of education is to change the heart of man.”

What is the Importance of Educational Institutions in Society?

Educational institutions play a very important role in imparting education to the students. They act as a medium through which knowledge and understanding are disseminated to the students. Moreover, they also help inculcate social values and ethics in the students.

Apart from imparting formal education, educational institutions also help in the personality development of the students. At educational institutions, the students are also made aware of the ethical values in society. Educational institutions help students to learn the foundational skill sets which later becomes foundational knowledge to acquire the professional knowledge to contribute towards the economy of society.

It is said that the role of educational institutions in society is twofold – to educate and to socialize. They play a significant role in moulding the future of our society.

The role of Education in Society is instrumental to grow human resources. An educated citizen is the greatest asset for any democratic society. A social revolution comes through educated, politically conscious and socially responsible people.

But still, there is a critical concern about the basic educational infrastructure in developing countries. It should be noted that nearly one-fourth of the Indian population still lacks access to basic educational activities. Moreover, the pandemic amplified the existing disparity of the basic education in the society, predominantly has hit hard in rural demographics.

Now look at this data: India spends nearly 4.6% of its GDP on education, which is much less than most of the G20 nations. Hence developing countries invest more on quality education, innovation, and world class training for teachers.

The need of the hour is to provide inexpensive and accessible education to meet the aspirational value of Indian students. A robust education is the key to the growth and innovation of society, also to bringing peace and harmony as well.

Recommended Reading: Best Time-management Apps for College Students

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The Role of Education in Society: How It Impacts Our Lives? - March 12, 2022

14.1: The Sociology of Education

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Explain the different views held by functionalist, conflict, and interactionist sociologist with regards to education.
Describe some of the issues affecting American education system.

Universal Generalizations

Every society has developed a system education to ensure its new members become functioning members of society.
The basic function of education is to teach children the knowledge and skills they will need in the world.
For societies to survive, they must transmit the core values of their culture to the following generations.
Education is used throughout societies to socialize their young to support their communities’ own social and political systems.
Schools help to teach socially acceptable forms of behavior.
All societies must have some system for identifying and training he young people who will do the important work of society in the future.
Most Americans believe education is the key to social mobility and possible economic success.
Since the foundation of the United States, education has been highly valued.

Guiding Questions

How do we learn what it means to be an American?
What is the purpose of education?
How does education influence society?
What is the difference between formal and informal education?
What is the functionalist view on education?
What is the conflict perspective on education?
How do sociologists view education using the interactionist view?

The Sociology of Education

Students standing on the grounds of a high school or college campus.

From the moment a child is born, his or her education begins. At first, education is an informal process in which an infant watches others and imitates them. As the infant grows into a young child, the process of education becomes more formal through play dates and preschool. Once in grade school, academic lessons become the focus of education as a child moves through the school system. But even then, education is about much more than the simple learning of facts.

Our education system also socializes us to our society. We learn cultural expectations and norms, which are reinforced by our teachers, our textbooks, and our classmates. (For students outside the dominant culture, this aspect of the education system can pose significant challenges.) You might remember learning your multiplication tables in second grade and also learning the social rules of taking turns on the swings at recess. You might recall learning about the U.S. Constitution in an American Government course as well as learning when and how to speak up in class.

Schools also can be agents of change, teaching individuals to think outside of the family norms into which they were born. Educational environments can broaden horizons and even help to break cycles of poverty and racism.

Of course, America’s schools are often criticized—for not producing desired test results, or for letting certain kids slip through the cracks. In all, sociologists understand education to be both a social problem and a social solution.

Education in the United States

Education is the social institution through which a society teaches its members the skills, knowledge, norms, and values they need to learn to become good, productive members of their society. As this definition makes clear, education is an important part of socialization. Education is both formal and informal . Formal education is often referred to as schooling , and as this term implies, it occurs in schools under teachers, principals, and other specially trained professionals. Informal educationmay occur almost anywhere, but for young children it has traditionally occurred primarily in the home, with their parents as their instructors. Day care has become an increasingly popular venue in industrial societies for young children’s instruction, and education from the early years of life is thus more formal than it used to be.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009).Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2009). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. "Theory Snapshot" summarizes what these approaches say.

Theory Snapshot

The functions of education.

The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Manifest Functions

Teacher and high school students in a classroom looking at the projection screen in the front of the classroom.

Latent Functions

Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most important American values students in the United States learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics as well as athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual.

A young boy is shown from behind saluting the American flag flying from a flagpole.

Conflict Theory on Education

Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities arising 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.

Boy kicking a soccer ball on a playground toward three other boys who are caged against a wall by a small metal goal post. The boys are crying or holding their ears.

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.

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).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. 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.

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).

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) 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. 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.

Interactionist Perspective on Education

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

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

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

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.

Education in the United States is a massive social institution involving millions of people and billions of dollars. About 75 million people, almost one-fourth of the U.S. population, attend school at all levels. This number includes 40 million in grades pre-K through 8, 16 million in high school, and 19 million in college (including graduate and professional school). They attend some 132,000 elementary and secondary schools and about 4,200 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities and are taught by about 4.8 million teachers and professors (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010).U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2010 . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Retrieved from www.census.gov/compendia/statab Education is a huge social institution.

Correlates of Educational Attainment

About 65% of U.S. high school graduates enroll in college the following fall. This is a very high figure by international standards, as college in many other industrial nations is reserved for the very small percentage of the population who pass rigorous entrance exams. They are the best of the brightest in their nations, whereas higher education in the United States is open to all who graduate high school. Even though that is true, our chances of achieving a college degree are greatly determined at birth, as social class and race/ethnicity have a significant effect on access to college. They affect whether students drop out of high school, in which case they do not go on to college; they affect the chances of getting good grades in school and good scores on college entrance exams; they affect whether a family can afford to send its children to college; and they affect the chances of staying in college and obtaining a degree versus dropping out. For these reasons, educational attainment depends heavily on family income and race and ethnicity.

Figure 14.1.6 "Race, Ethnicity, and High School Dropout Rate, 16–24-Year-Olds, 2007" shows how race and ethnicity affect dropping out of high school. The dropout rate is highest for Latinos and Native Americans and lowest for Asians and whites. One way of illustrating how income and race/ethnicity affect the chances of achieving a college degree is to examine the percentage of high school graduates who enroll in college immediately following graduation. As Figure 14.1.7 "Family Income and Percentage of High School Graduates Who Attend College Immediately After Graduation, 2007" shows, students from families in the highest income bracket are more likely than those in the lowest bracket to attend college. For race/ethnicity, it is useful to see the percentage of persons 25 or older who have at least a 4-year college degree. As Figure 14.1.8 "Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Persons 25 or Older With a 4-Year College Degree, 2008" shows, this percentage varies significantly, with African Americans and Latinos least likely to have a degree.

Why do African Americans and Latinos have lower educational attainment? Two factors are commonly cited: (a) the underfunded and otherwise inadequate schools that children in both groups often attend and (b) the higher poverty of their families and lower education of their parents that often leave them ill-prepared for school even before they enter kindergarten (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009; Yeung & Pfeiffer, 2009).Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2009). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall; Yeung, W.-J. J., & Pfeiffer, K. M. (2009). The black-white test score gap and early home environment. Social Science Research, 38 (2), 412–437.

Issues in Education

As schools strive to fill a variety of roles in their students’ lives, many issues and challenges arise. Students walk a minefield of bullying, violence in schools, the results of declining funding, plus other problems that affect their education. When Americans are asked about their opinion of public education on the Gallup poll each year, reviews are mixed at best (Saad 2008). Schools are no longer merely a place for learning and socializing. With the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling in 1954, schools became a repository of much political and legal action that is at the heart of several issues in education.

Equal Education

Until the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, schools had operated under the precedent set by Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, which allowed racial segregation in schools and private businesses (the case dealt specifically with railroads) and introduced the much maligned phrase “separate but equal” into the United States lexicon. The 1954 Brown v. Board decision overruled this, declaring that state laws that had established separate schools for black and white students were, in fact, unequal and unconstitutional.

While the ruling paved the way toward civil rights, it was also met with contention in many communities. In Arkansas in 1957, the governor mobilized the state National Guard to prevent black students from entering Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower, in response, sent members of the 101st Airborne Division from Kentucky to uphold the students’ right to enter the school. In 1963, almost ten years after the ruling, Governor George Wallace of Alabama used his own body to block two black students from entering the auditorium at the University of Alabama to enroll in the school. Wallace’s desperate attempt to uphold his policy of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stated during his 1963 inauguration (PBS 2000) became known as the “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door.” He refused to grant entry to the students until a general from the Alabama National Guard arrived on President Kennedy’s order.

Armed National Guardsmen escorting black students up the outside stairs of a brick high school building.

Presently, students of all races and ethnicities are permitted into schools, but there remains a troubling gap in the equality of education they receive. The long-term socially embedded effects of racism—and other discrimination and disadvantage—have left a residual mark of inequality in the nation’s education system. Students from wealthy families and those of lower socioeconomic status do not receive the same opportunities.

Today’s public schools, at least in theory, are positioned to help remedy those gaps. Predicated on the notion of universal access, this system is mandated to accept and retain all students regardless of race, religion, social class, and the like. Moreover, public schools are held accountable to equitable per-student spending (Resnick 2004). Private schools, usually only accessible to students from high-income families, and schools in more affluent areas generally enjoy access to greater resources and better opportunities. In fact, some of the key predictors for student performance include socioeconomic status and family background. Children from families of lower socioeconomic status often enter school with learning deficits they struggle to overcome throughout their educational tenure. These patterns, uncovered in the landmark Coleman Report of 1966, are still highly relevant today, as sociologists still generally agree that there is a great divide in the performance of white students from affluent backgrounds and their non-white, less affluent, counterparts (Coleman 1966).

No Child Left Behind

In 2001, the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act , which requires states to test students in designated grades. The results of those tests determine eligibility to receive federal funding. Schools that do not meet the standards set by the Act run the risk of having their funding cut. Sociologists and teachers alike have contended that the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act is far more negative than positive, arguing that a “one size fits all” concept cannot apply to education.

Bilingual Education

New issues of inequality have entered the national conversation in recent years with the issue of bilingual education, which attempts to give equal opportunity to minority students through offering instruction in languages other than English. Though it is actually an old issue (bilingual education was federally mandated in 1968), it remains one of hot debate. Supporters of bilingual education argue that all students deserve equal opportunities in education—opportunities some students cannot access without instruction in their first language. On the other side, those who oppose bilingual education often point to the need for English fluency in everyday life and in the professional world.

Charter Schools

Charter schools are self-governing public schools that have signed agreements with state governments to improve students when poor performance is revealed on tests required by the No Child Left Behind Act. While such schools receive public money, they are not subject to the same rules that apply to regular public schools. In return, they make agreements to achieve specific results. Charter schools, as part of the public education system, are free to attend, and are accessible via lottery when there are more students seeking enrollment than there are spots available at the school. Some charter schools specialize in certain fields, such as the arts or science, while others are more generalized.

Home Schooling

Homeschooling refers to children being educated in their own homes, typically by a parent, instead of in a traditional public or private school system. Proponents of this type of education argue that it provides an outstanding opportunity for student-centered learning while circumventing problems that plague today’s education system. Opponents counter that home-schooled children miss out on the opportunity for social development that occurs in standard classroom environments and school settings.

Proponents say that parents know their own children better than anyone else and are thus best equipped to teach them. Those on the other side of the debate assert that childhood education is a complex task and requires the degree teachers spend four years earning. After all, they argue, a parent may know her child’s body better than anyone, yet she seeks out a doctor for her child’s medical treatment. Just as a doctor is a trained medical expert, teachers are trained education experts.

The National Center for Education Statistics shows that the quality of the national education system isn’t the only major concern of homeschoolers. While nearly half cite their reason for homeschooling as the belief that they can give their child a better education than the school system can, just under 40 percent choose homeschooling for “religious reasons” (NCES 2008). To date, researchers have not found consensus in studies evaluating the success, or lack thereof, of homeschooling.

Teaching to the Test

The funding tie-in of the No Child Left Behind Act has led to the social phenomenon commonly called “teaching to the test,” which describes when a curriculum focuses on equipping students to succeed on standardized tests, to the detriment of broader educational goals and concepts of learning. At issue are two approaches to classroom education: the notion that teachers impart knowledge that students are obligated to absorb, versus the concept of student-centered learning that seeks to teach children not facts, but problem solving abilities and learning skills. Both types of learning have been valued in the American school system. The former, to critics of “teaching to the test,” only equips students to regurgitate facts, while the latter, to proponents of the other camp, fosters lifelong learning and transferable work skills.

School Vouchers and School Choice

Another issue involving schools today is school choice . In a school choice program, the government gives parents certificates, or vouchers, that they can use as tuition at private or parochial (religious) schools.

Advocates of school choice programs say they give poor parents an option for high-quality education they otherwise would not be able to afford. These programs, the advocates add, also help improve the public schools by forcing them to compete for students with their private and parochial counterparts. In order to keep a large number of parents from using vouchers to send their children to the latter schools, public schools have to upgrade their facilities, improve their instruction, and undertake other steps to make their brand of education an attractive alternative. In this way, school choice advocates argue, vouchers have a “competitive impact” that forces public schools to make themselves more attractive to prospective students (Walberg, 2007).Walberg, H. J. (2007). School choice: The findings . Washington, DC: Cato Institute.

Critics of school choice programs say they hurt the public schools by decreasing their enrollments and therefore their funding. Public schools do not have the money now to compete with private and parochial ones, and neither will they have the money to compete with them if vouchers become more widespread. Critics also worry that voucher programs will lead to a “brain drain” of the most academically motivated children and families from low-income schools (Caldas & Bankston, 2005).Caldas, S. J., & Bankston, C. L., III. (2005). Forced to fail: The paradox of school desegregation . Westport, CT: Praeger.

School Violence

The issue of school violence won major headlines during the 1990s, when many children, teachers, and other individuals died in the nation’s schools. From 1992 until 1999, 248 students, teachers, and other people died from violent acts (including suicide) on school property, during travel to and from school, or at a school-related event, for an average of about 35 violent deaths per year (Zuckoff, 1999).Zuckoff, M. (1999, May 21). Fear is spread around nation. The Boston Globe , p. A1. Against this backdrop, the infamous April 1999 school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two students murdered 12 other students and one teacher before killing themselves, led to national soul-searching over the causes of teen and school violence and on possible ways to reduce it.

The murders in Littleton were so numerous and cold-blooded that they would have aroused national concern under any circumstances, but they also followed a string of other mass shootings at schools. In just a few examples, in December 1997 a student in a Kentucky high school shot and killed three students in a before-school prayer group. In March 1998 two middle school students in Arkansas pulled a fire alarm to evacuate their school and then shot and killed four students and one teacher as they emerged. Two months later an Oregon high school student killed his parents and then went to his school cafeteria, where he killed two students and wounded 22 others. Against this backdrop, Littleton seemed like the last straw. Within days, school after school across the nation installed metal detectors, located police at building entrances and in hallways, and began questioning or suspending students joking about committing violence. People everywhere wondered why the schools were becoming so violent and what could be done about it (Zuckoff, 1999).Zuckoff, M. (1999, May 21). Fear is spread around nation. The Boston Globe , p. A1.

Violence can also happen on college and university campuses, although shootings are very rare. However, two recent examples illustrate that students and faculty are not immune from gun violence. In February 2010, Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who had recently been denied tenure, allegedly shot and killed three faculty at a department meeting and wounded three others. Almost 3 years earlier, a student at Virginia Tech went on a shooting rampage and killed 32 students and faculty before killing himself.

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Outline three functions which education might perform for society (6)

Last Updated on January 11, 2019 by Karl Thompson

This is an example of a relatively straight forward 6 mark question which might appear on the AQA’s A level paper 1 (7192/1).

If you require a more detailed breakdown of paper 1 please click here.

The basic approach to answering 6 mark ‘outline’ questions is to think of them as 1+1 questions – in this case identify a function (for 1 mark) and then explain how education performs that function (for +1). Repeat this 3 times, and you have 3*(1+1) = 6/6 marks.

You should spend no more than 9 minutes on this question (a minute and a half per mark).

A ‘function’ of education is something education (mainly schools) does; a purpose it fulfills, or a goal it contributes towards achieving.

Below are some (1+1) suggestions as to how you might successfully answer this question.

Outline three functions which the education might perform for society (6)

Getting students ready for work – school does this by starting off teaching basic reading and writing, which most jobs require, and later on by giving students specific job related skills – such as biology gets you ready for a career in medicine.
Education creates social solidarity which is where we all feel as if we are part of something bigger, working towards the collective good – school does this by teaching everyone the same history and literature, which helps to forge a sense of national identity.
Education maintains social order, performing a social control function – it does this through requiring that all students attend and through surveillance, any student who does not conform is subject to disciplinary procedures, thus learning to stick to the rules in later life.

I’ve basically taken the above from the Functionalist Perspective on the role of education in society .

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Function of Education in the Society

Education is the most crucial aspect of society which should be given great attention for it to become the powerful tool to make every individual become the catalyst of change. Changes are rampant on the society, but all of those are needed to make the society progressive and functional. Society and every individual should work hand in hand so that no one would be set aside and become outdated knowing that we are now living in a highly modernized society. In order to achieve that, everyone should be aware on the functions of education in the society.

Social control and change

Society is said to be dynamic and progressive and not a station. Education helps every individual to develop their skills that are needed to control and change the society positively. Social environment is where the child’s personality can be fully developed that is why it should be conducive enough for them to grow into a better person.

Reconstruction of individual’s experiences

Education is life that is full of different experiences which would make every person become an agent of change that is essential for the society. This helps them to reconstruct all their experiences in life as well adjust with environmental changes.

Development of moral and social value

Moral and social values affect every individual in dealing with the society. Through proper education, they would be given the chance to acquire moral and social values which would help them become the reason for the society to achieve positive changes towards success.

Providing equality and opportunity

Discrimination should be lessen if every person would be given proper education which is needed for providing equality and opportunity. We cannot deny that educated people are more successful in life and have greater opportunities in life that is why every educational institution is providing good quality of education for people to become successful in their career.

Training ground for leadership

The quality of an individual in being a leader can be developed through education that they can be used in participating in the spheres of political, educational, social, and religious activities.

Inculcation of social and civic responsibility

Education is the best tool for the rising education to become aware and understand their duties and rights of having a democratic country where everyone is given the chance to express and be treated equally.

National Integration

People living in different countries are diverse that is why respect of language, color, physical environment habits, dress, and caste should be adhere.

Those are the functions of education in the society and the lives of people who are needed by the society to empower changes. Life is full of challenges and problems which make every individual neglect what their social responsibilities are. This is the main reason why the society is having a hard time to progress but this can be solved through the help of good quality of education to make people acquire the needed knowledge and develop their innate skills that can be used to be good citizens in their own ways.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

This article is part of the research topic.

Integration-Focused Approaches of Educational Systems Across the EU

Navigating the Peer-to-Peer Workflow in Non-Formal Education Through an Innovative E-learning Platform: A Case Study of the KIDS4ALLL Educational Project in Hungary and Italy Provisionally Accepted

1 University of Turin, Italy
2 TÁRKI Social Research Institute, Hungary

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

The digital revolution is affecting all aspects of life, radically transforming everyday tasks and routines. The ability to cope with new challenges in life, including new forms of learning are key skills in the 21st-century, however, education systems often struggle with tackling digital inequalities. A digital learning platform developed by the KIDS4ALLL educational project, implemented in face-to-face student interactions, aims to mitigate the divide and the resulting social disadvantages among children with and without migration/ethnic minority background. Analysing data collected during the pilot phase of the project in two of the participating countries, Italy and Hungary, this paper examines how students and teaching staff adapt to a newly introduced digital learning tool based on peer-to-peer workflows. Firstly, it examines the role of educators' interpersonal competences in navigating the innovative learning activities and delves into how they use them and how they manage resources. Secondly, the study explores what attitudes and behaviours are observed among students engaged in the proposed peer-led activities, in particular in terms of their ability to cope with uncertainty and complexity. The analytical framework of the paper is based on two cultural dimensions offered by Hofstede (2001), the index of uncertainty avoidance (UAI) and power distance (PDI), and it utilizes the personal, social and learning-to-learn competence of the 8 LLL Key Competences as defined by the European Commission to conceptualize the skills of educators and students. Interpreting data from Italy and Hungary in their respective social and educational contexts, the study finds that the most important features that proved to be effective and useful during the pilot phase were the democratic power-relations between students and educators, the peer-to-peer scheme and its further development to the peer-for-peer approach. The child-friendly and real-life-related new curriculum and its appealing digital learning platform, embedded into a flexible, playful and child-centred pedagogical approach, were also successful. These are all complementing the traditional, formal school environment and pedagogy which, despite all developments in formal education in the past decades, can be characterized as teacher-centred and frontal.

Keywords: peer-to-peer learning, Educational inclusion, LLL Key competences, uncertainty avoidance, Power distance

Received: 10 Jan 2024; Accepted: 08 Apr 2024.

Copyright: © 2024 Schroot, Lőrincz and Bernát. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Dr. Tanja Schroot, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

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16.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

The Functions of Education

Education and Inequality

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

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14.1: The Sociology of Education

The Sociology of Education

Education in the United States

Theory Snapshot

The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Manifest Functions

Latent Functions

Conflict Theory on Education

Education and Inequality

Interactionist Perspective on Education

Correlates of Educational Attainment

Issues in Education

Equal Education

No Child Left Behind

Bilingual Education

Charter Schools

Home Schooling

Teaching to the Test