Assess the view that the main function of the education system is to reproduce and legitimise social inequalities free essay sample

The education system has faults and many inequalities throughout it. The inequalities can be seen in many different areas including, meritocracy, different social classes, gender and ethnic inequalities, racism, cultural capital, and repressive state apparatuses etc. Various sociologists have different views about the education system and what the inequalities consist of. The neo-Marxist Althusser (1971) disagrees that the main function of the education is the transmission of common values. He thinks that education is an ideological state apparatus and its main function is to maintain, Legitimate and reproduce, generation by generation, class inequalities in wealth and power by transmitting capitalist values disguised as common values. Althusser also believes that ideology is done subconsciously through the hidden curriculum. He thinks that the way schools are organized and the way the curriculum is taught means that working-class people are encouraged to conform to the capitalist system and accept failure and inequality within their class. Bowles and Gintis’s correspondence theory suggests that what goes in school corresponds directly to the world of work. Teachers are seen to be the bosses and pupils are like the workers, who work for rewards. However, Bowles and Gintis suggest that the success of the pupils is not entirely based on ability. The pupils who conform to the rules, rise above those who express attitudes or display behaviour which challenge the system. Schools reproduce sets of workers with the appropriate ways of being for the position that they come to occupy. This is why white middle-class pupils normally do better for themselves. This is hidden throughout education and people believe it is just meritocracy, so people blame themselves for denied success. Therefore the education system reproduces the inequalities and makes them seem fair. Reynolds (1984) criticizes Bowles and Gintis’s correspondence theory as he claims that the curriculum set in schools does not seemed design to teach the skills needed by employers. Brown (1997) suggests that businesses to this date have more creativity and teamwork which is far from what pupils are taught in schools with exams. Pupils are expected to compete in order to achieve better grades than their fellow classmates. There are huge class differences within the tripartite system. This consists of grammar schools for academically able pupils, technical schools, and secondary modern schools. Two- thirds of grammar school places are taken by middle-class pupils, and working-class pupils mainly attend secondary moderns. This suggests that being in a higher class gives the pupils more opportunities being at a grammar school, and suggests that they have higher academic abilities. Grammar schools have more facilities and will offer far more opportunities for the pupils, and as the pupils are from a higher class they will be able to afford any extra curricular activities or trips. Secondary moderns may not offer these things or may not have the same facilities so there is a big inequality. This is where material deprivation comes into place and families in the working class will suffer. If families are unable to afford uniforms, trips, transport to and from school, classroom materials and textbooks, it can lead children to be isolated and bullied, meaning their school work suffers. Marketization of schools means that there will be better resourced, oversubscribed schools in more affluent areas, while socially disadvantaged children are concentrated in a limited number of increasingly unpopular schools. Pupils that attend Grammar schools also know that they are more capably academic and therefore may strive to success with a good attitude. Pupils that attend secondary moderns may be more relaxed towards their work as they are not in an environment where they know they are doing well so will not be as determined as higher class students. This is a case of reproduction and causes the same classes to have a better education and have better paid jobs when they are older. Cultural disadvantages are also a major cause of inequalities throughout education. Education is mostly controlled by middle-class people, many whom are white. These who have these characteristics may be seen more positively and be more likely to succeed in the tests and exams created to assess their abilities. The 11+ has been criticized for middle-class bias. Being able to unscramble muddled up words to make a word is much easier for a child familiar with anagrams (as parents do crosswords). Research into language has identified class differences in spoken and written language which disadvantage working-class children. Middle classes do better as they use the preferred way of speaking. Cultural capital is used by Marxists to explain cultural influences on educational success. Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) suggest that middle-class culture is as valuable in educational terms as material wealth. Schools are middle-class institutions run by middle class. Knowledge, values, ways of interacting and communicating ideas that middle-class children possess are developed further and rewarded by the education system. Ethnic minority and working- class children may lack these qualities and therefore do not have the same opportunities to do well. Therefore in conclusion, it seems as though the main function of the education system is to reproduce and legitimise social inequalities. The education in this country systematically fails the majority of working-class pupils, whose likelihood is to end up in the same kind of working-class jobs as their parents. This reproduces the class structure from one generation to the next and doesn’t allow there to be any change, meaning it is harder for people within the working-class to break out of this class into the middle-class. The education system then legitimises these inequalities by claiming that every pupil has an equal chance to succeed.