Describe Functionalist and Marxist Perspective on Education.

Describe functionalist and Marxist perspective on education. Functionalist Education can be described as the method whereby society continually passes on the knowledge it has gain from pass generations to the next or future generation. It is centered around and entails the teaching of the three R’s, which includes: arithmetic’s, reading and writing but also encompass social, spiritual, moral and physical component. It is viewed as a secondary agent of socialization as it socializes individuals into the norms and acceptable behaviors of society. Functionalist view education as having many roles but are interested mainly in how education meets society needs. They believe that one of its major roles being to equip individuals with intellectual knowledge. Functionalist also believes that besides it most obvious role of passing on society’s knowledge, education also has other latent roles that affects the individual on a holistical level and is reflective of society values, beliefs and norms. According to Durkheim individuals learn to socialize with one another within the schools through the integration of people from all diversity of society and this he believes is one of the latent roles of education, which he also call â€Å"moral education†. Besides this, functionalist believes that education have other latent or subtle roles that are used to instill in individuals values that stem from political and economic system and as a result help them build their self-confidence and prepares them for meeting society demands. For example, independence is taught through individualism. Functionalist also, believe that sorting (separating students on the basis of merit) another function of the school is essential in determine from early on who is capable of doing what and what job they will be better suited to in the future. The next function to take place after this is networking, they believe this function facilitates matchmaking and is unavoidable within the schools setting as individual of background, interest and education comes together to learn. Marxist Marxist sees education as a continuation of functionalist ideologies. They believe that education is used by functionalist to maintain the line of segregation that exists between the classes. Hence the reason why the Marxist view education as being used to create an â€Å"obedient working class† continuing the status quo. Acting as a persistent cause of inequality continuing to maintain the power structures and giving them the tool to create a â€Å"docile† work force. However, it is the view of the Marxist that the education system could be used as a system that helps in sorting the individuals of society into what is their calling position in life, it is the way it is done that their exist a problem. The problems they believe exist in the strategy that is used to by the functionalist to achieve this. This strategy they see as based on the ideals of functionalism which is according to class, race and gender. This is achieved in the form of the hidden agenda that exist within the curriculum that is used to educate. This hidden curriculum Marxist believes is present in every classroom and is taught through the use of the curriculum, hence the reason it is call the hidden curriculum. To the Marxist school of taught the hidden curriculum is present in numerous forms, this is evident in the funding that is available to school in affluent areas. These school according to Marxism are funded by â€Å"property taxes† because of there affluent location. Because of this they can afford to pay higher salaries to their teacher and this give them better teachers, available books and even technology. This in turn cause the students that attend these school to have better opportunities than child children who are schooled in rural areas that do not get the amount of funding that the other school get. Some of theses children are not even given the opportunity to go to college or even complete school. This inequality is also present in the exams that are given to children of the two classes. This is seen in the traditional IQ test that is given to student for acceptance into school. This test is Suppose to test the mental knowledge of the child but the formation of the test is not based on the intelligence of the child but on cultural knowledge. This creates a bias because children from a poor social background will not be able to answer question base on the culture of the affluence classes. This is called Cultural bias and is caused by inequality of the classes. They disagree with the idea that education can be used as a tool for any individual to move up within the social classes that exist in society. They believe that these principles are far from the truth. As religion is used to opiate the people against the real issues that affect them and to help in keeping them from solving their problems so to is education used to discourage the people from helping themselves and to remain within their social classes. Marxist see education as an influential tool in maintaining the lines that separate the have from the have not. Another argument of the functionalist school of taught is the use of meritocracy to help individual achieve status in life. However that Marxist sees this as a false perception, and believes that through meritocracy functionalist portrays the ideals of inequality of opportunity. Marxist believed that it is just another tool that is used to create an unequal society. The hidden curriculum is also present in the socialization process that takes place in school. It is of the view of many sociologists regardless of association or theory that the school is a major institution in the socialization process. It is for this reason that the Marxist believes that functionalist used this as the bases for the continuation of their theories. They see the hidden curriculum in this case as use to instill the norm and values of the functionalist. This is used to tell student what is deem as wrong or right, not allowing room for questioning. The question that Marxist asks is who is to tell what is right or wrong? Whether culturally, academically or otherwise. The hidden curriculum does not stop at school level but it is seen as being continued through out an individual lifetime whether it is in the home, work place or society as a whole.