Roles & Functions of Education (WJEC Eduqas GCSE Sociology): Flashcards

The government sets the National Curriculum, which decides the subject content taught in local-authority maintained schools.

Functionalists see the hidden curriculum as positive, because it teaches shared values such as respect for authority and punctuality that maintain social stability.

Marxists point to hierarchy, competition and a lack of satisfaction, which teach students to accept authority, compete for rewards and tolerate alienating work.

False.

Feminists argue that the hidden curriculum sends messages about acceptable behaviour for each gender, which reinforces patriarchal values, e.g. through teacher expectations and subject choices.

Social solidarity is when individuals see themselves as part of something larger than themselves, which unites members of society.

Durkheim argued that history instils shared norms and values through a shared past and a commitment to wider society.

Durkheim argued that school teaches children to follow impersonal rules when they deal with people who are neither kin nor friends.

False.

Durkheim argued that schools should strictly enforce rules through sanctions, so children learn self-discipline and see that misbehaviour damages society.

In an industrial society, making a single item needs the cooperation of many individuals, each with the necessary specialist knowledge and skills.

T Levels are two-year courses after GCSEs, developed with employers and businesses, so their content prepares students for work.

Wolf found that high-quality apprenticeships are rare and about one-third of 16-19-year-olds are on courses that do not lead to good jobs.

Universalistic standards are the same rules and criteria that apply to everyone in society.

False.

Within the family, children have an ascribed status and families judge them by particularistic standards; in wider society, people achieve status through talent or merit.

Parsons said schools promote the importance of achievement and equality of opportunity.

Parsons argued that schools promote equality of opportunity, so students compete on an equal footing and lower achievers accept their inferior status as just.

A meritocracy is a system in which individual status depends on talent or merit rather than social class, gender or ethnicity.

False.

Critics argue that the family, peer groups, media and religion may have a greater influence on children's values than school.

In a multicultural society, there may be no single shared culture for schools to pass on, as different groups have their own norms and traditions.

Marxists argue that education transmits ruling-class values, not shared values, so it benefits capitalism rather than society as a whole.

Feminists argue that education perpetuates patriarchy through gender stereotypes, subject choices and sexist materials.

Marxists see society as based on class division and capitalist exploitation, whereas functionalists see it as based on value consensus.

Marxists argue that schools teach ruling-class values, such as competition, rather than shared values.

False.

Marxists argue that education makes working-class students less likely to gain good qualifications, which reproduces the existing class structure.

Marxists argue that education prepares working-class students to accept hierarchy and obey rules.

Bowles and Gintis carried out surveys of 237 New York high school students and drew on secondary sources, such as existing sociological and economic theories.

Bowles and Gintis found that schools rewarded students who were hard-working, disciplined, obedient and unquestioning of authority.

False.

Bowles and Gintis found that students who showed independence and creative thinking were more likely to gain lower grades.

The correspondence principle is Bowles and Gintis' idea that education mirrors the workplace, so schooling prepares an obedient workforce for capitalism.

The fragmented curriculum corresponds to the workplace because school breaks knowledge into isolated subjects, just as jobs break work into separate tasks that give little knowledge of the overall process.

Schools teach students to find motivation in external rewards, such as exam results, just as workers find motivation in pay.

Bowles and Gintis argue that social class, not intelligence or achievement, decides individual status, but belief in meritocracy stops people questioning the system.

Willis found that some working-class boys actively resisted school authority, yet this resistance led them into low-paid manual jobs, which still reproduced the class structure.

False.

Critics argue that Bowles and Gintis' findings reflect the 1970s industrial workplace, while today's employers value creativity, independence and problem-solving.

Feminists argue that Bowles and Gintis overlook how schools reproduce patriarchal values and gender inequality as well as capitalist ones.

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold power and women hold a subordinate position.

Feminists take a critical view, arguing that education is male-dominated and reinforces gender inequality through the formal and hidden curriculum.

Schools encouraged girls to take cookery and needlework, while boys took woodwork and metalwork.

Textbooks and reading schemes often showed women as housewives or mothers, reinforcing the idea that men belonged in the workplace and women in the home.

The National Curriculum meant that boys and girls study the same subjects in publicly funded schools.

False.

Feminists argue that sexism has not disappeared but has become more subtle.

Teachers often praise girls for being neat and well-behaved, while they reward boys for confidence and assertiveness.

Many people still view physics, engineering and computing as male subjects, and languages and childcare as female.

Compared with secondary teachers, headteachers are more often male: in 2025/26, 57% of secondary school headteachers in England were male, even though 65% of secondary teachers were female (DfE).

Lees found that people criticised girls for being sexually active or flirtatious but praised boys for the same behaviour.

False.

Ofsted found that sexual harassment had become normalised in many schools: 92% of girls said sexist name-calling happened a lot or sometimes to them or their peers.

Francis found that boys dominate classroom space and receive more teacher attention than girls, as boys are typically louder and more assertive.

Feminists argue that schools police girls' behaviour, dress and appearance and hold girls to stricter expectations than boys.

False.

Critics argue that feminists focus too much on gender and overlook how class and ethnicity also shape students' experiences.

Marxist feminists argue that education reproduces both patriarchy and capitalism, which benefits ruling-class men most of all.