What Are Norms And Values

Outline and assess the view that the role of education system is to justify and reproduce social inequalities (50)

In an article written in the Jamaica Observer, Haughton (2017) describes the state of Jamaica as an under-developed child who continues to depend on its parents for approval. “For many years colonialism milked Jamaica and other Caribbean countries by imposing a false identity on our people, diminishing resources that affected growth and development (Haughton, 2017).

Socioeconomic status plays a key factor in the type of education a child receives today and ultimately functions to keep individuals in the class they are born into. Those who are part of the lower class receive the bare minimum in education with the end goal being blind obedience, while the upper class is educated in a way that encourages self-regulation, individual thought, and creativity. These vast differences in education are no mistake and are put in place for overall control.

Throughout life, in any society we develop a sense to conform and adjust to our surroundings but why? Our values in our society determines our norms and why we do the things we do. I recently sought out to break these social conformities that violated the values, and norms we hold as a society. Every society is different and, in every society there are different and similar values, norms, sanctions folkways, and mores. Breaking them up and analyzing them we began to understand why these terms and values are so important to us.

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 takes a theoretical approach to education and states that the ruling class has two ways of controlling the working class, through ideological state apparatus which controls the way we think and repressive state apparatus which controls us physically. Althusser argues that education has overtaken religion as the most dominant ideological state apparatus and that meritocracy is a myth because education is naturally suited to the ruling classes therefore education reproduces and legitimates inequality.

The largest of all the social institutions in America is, of course, the American Education System. The education system in our country functions by providing our population with the important knowledge and basic facts about the world in which they live. Our education system also passes on the cultural norms and values that will allow people to become responsible members of our society. And finally, perhaps the greatest need that education fulfills is the discovering, developing, and sustaining of the human resources that our society must have to function effectively.

Bowles and Gintis also believe that schools are no longer about the teaching of a subject but the Social Principle or control of the pupils meaning that schools concentrate more on the hidden curriculum than the knowledge process. Equally, schools don’t reward independence and innovation, therefore meritocracy cannot exist within our capitalist society as capitalism is based on the principle of a ruling class (the bourgeosis) and a working class (the proletariat) and meritocracy would abolish the idea of the ruling class, society would be equal. According to Louis Althusser (1972), a French Marxist philosopher, the school serves to mould individuals into subjects that fit with the requirements of capitalism, they learn submission, deference and respect for the economy and their place in it. The school also works to ensure that the labour force is technically competent. Also, according to Althusser, the ruling class within any society exercises control over and through schooling and the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). The ideologies themselves express the material interests of the ruling class, so this control over and through the ISAs maintains what is called class hegemony, or domination. Althusser is also draws attention to the powerful effects of the ‘hidden curriculum’ of

138). These hierarchies are based on various factors such as social class, religion, nationality, race, ethnicity, or any other social distinction recognized by both society and the individual. Along with pointing out what other, mainly sociological, theories have highlighted about social stratification, SDT considers structural factors and makes the important step in considering psychological factors. Along with considering these different factors, SDT recognizes the way structural factors (i.e. institutional and societal) create psychological factors (i.e. attitudes) and how those in turn influence structural differences through mutual constitution (Sindanius et al, 1998).

In the book “Social Problems: Continuity and Change”, I studied the chapter Schools and Education. This chapter is very informative on the different social problems that are occurring within schools and education in the United States. The chapter begins with the definition of education, briefly explaining how it is a social establishment that teaches people skills, knowledge, norms, and values that will be beneficial in today society. There are two different types of education. They are formal education and informal education. Teachers, through professional training, often teach formal education to students whereas informal education can occur anywhere, mainly in homes by parents or guardians.

This essay is an exploration of the social policy into an educational intervention for students of low socioeconomic backgrounds. Education is a precursor to the overall wellbeing and income of a person into adulthood. It has been shown that people from low socioeconomic backgrounds faired worse in overall health as well as occupational outcomes. It has long been the policy of the government to educate its people, as it benefits the nation in terms of productivity and high economic growth. The government and other agency have taken it upon themselves to intervene to ensure people from low socioeconomic background do not full behind the benefits education brings. Firstly the essay will look at the historical context and how these attitudes have

The relation between the study of how people act towards each other and education is a subject of debate. One idea says education is meant to overcome where two things are not the same. Whereas other says the most important function of education is helping to increase balance status of good people in the world and to maintain inequality whatever state it comes in. I will focus on three areas that affects the educations of Socialogy. The first area is Structural Functionalism.

The Social structure are the legs on which our society stands on; it houses the institutions that our society is based on. The institutions that it houses include the following: Economic, Political, Family, Mass Media, and Education. What will be discussed here is the effect that the Economic and political institutions have on the urban student attempting to gain an education.

Althusser also argues that pupils learn a smokescreen so they cannot see inequality and the lie of meritocracy. He claims that schools try to promote the belief of meritocracy this basically means success is based on your own merit and ability. This supposedly helps motivate pupils to work hard because if they do they will succeed in life and in their chosen careers. However Althusser believes this is a lie as schools are in no way meritocratic. This is shown through the fact that the middle classes have more opportunity i.e. being able to afford the best possible education etc. Althusser believes that schools teach working class pupils to blame themselves for social failure instead of society i.e. if pupils fail they will usually say they didn’t work hard enough etc. Although schools have a role of promoting the ruling class ideology, educations main role is to mould pupils into ideal workers which helps prop up and maintain capitalism.

Education is an important structure in society that shapes the most important years of your life, and therefore many theorists have ideas about what is wrong with education, what is right, and what needs to change or develop. Education is confined a lot by social control and social reproduction. Social control is a concept that refers to how social systems control the way we feel, think, behave, and even how we should present ourselves. These can appear openly, shown as rules and laws, or they could be not openly acknowledged and just appear as the “common” thing to do. Social reproduction is the reproduction of inequalities throughout generation-to-generation, one way education does this is how it supplies “wealthy” schools more and “poor” schools less. Michael Apple and Maxine Greene both define Social reproductions and Social Control. Throughout this text, I will explain the theories of Greene and Apple, as well as comparing and contrasting them against one another while applying some of my own experiences of education.