Education System Performs For Individuals&Society

900 Words4 Pages
Examine different functions that the education system may perform for individual and society Macro theorists discuss the education system in terms of how it contributes to the needs of society and the individual. Functionalists are mainly interested in the positive functions education performs for society, in particular for the economy by allocating individuals into work roles that match their ability. This is because functionalists believe that education plays an important role in teaching individuals the norms and values of society as society needs to be united otherwise the social group would disintegrate. Durkhiem believed in three main functions being specialist work skills (schools teaching work skills that are required by society), learning social rules and linking individuals and society. If we look at the way education links the world and society we can see that education performs the function of making individuals feel that they are members of a larger social group, this can be done by teaching the history of society and citizenship lessons. He also talks about how we learn social values and rules in the education system; school is a miniature version of society, as schools teach people how to work together in a social content. Another functionalist sociologist is Parsons who also believed that the education system has three main functions, which are: learning universalistic values, allocating pupils into future work roles and learning the fundamental values of society. If we look closely at the function learning universalistic values, this is where; unlike the family where people are treated as individuals there is a social structure of universal values and norms that can be applied equally to everyone. School is also the first place an individual is judged by universalistic values and the first place where they are taught. Another function is that of
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