Sociological approaches to education with reference to class, gender or ethnicity | My sociology essay

Below is an essay I wrote for sociology. Please have a read, and comment, I will be writing a follow up within the next week as to my thoughts on what education is like now. After listening to people like Sir Ken Robinson, I have some definite views on education.

You might have read my earlier posts when I mentioned this, but in the next post I want to try and expand on my thoughts. Perhaps it is a good time as I have now returned to education and in September, I will be entering University as an undergrad. Exciting times.

In the mean time, please let me know what you think of the ideas in my essay.

Sociological approaches to education with reference to class, gender or ethnicity.

The Functionalist approach whose view on society as a whole is one that society does not change, should not change and does not need to change.  It is fine the way it was, bearing in mind that functionalists idea of a perfect society is the 1950’s model of society, with the nuclear family consisting of the father going out to work and the mother ‘keeping house’ and looking after the children.  Along these lines, functionalists think of education as a means to teaching boundaries, preparing children for the move into working in a society.  The belief is that education should be there to teach children values in terms of respect, loyalty and individual attainment.  Meritocracy is the idea that you advance in education on merit.  Everyone is subject to the same rules, uniform and exams, and everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.  Failure or success being a measure of ones own merit or intelligence.  Therefore, what you get when you leave school is what you deserve. Which leads onto the functionalist view that society is also based on a meritocracy approach.  People are in the jobs they are in because that is where they are meant to be.  Power for example is not a problem in functionalist society as everyone is where they should be, for example, a banker, having progressed though education and having attained his position through a meritocracy based system, deserves his position and society needs him in this position.