The sociology of education is the study of how social institutions and individual experiences affect educational processes and outcomes. Education has always been seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour 1999 characterised by aspirations for progress and betterment. By many in society, it is understood to be a means of overcoming handicaps, achieving greater equality and acquiring wealth and status for all 1994. Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potentialities 1999. It is also the best possible means of achieving greater equality in society 1994. The purpose of education then, must be to develop every individual to their full potential and grant them a chance to achieve as much in life as their natural abilities allow. This promising vision, however, does not unfold into reality. The reality, according to many sociologists, is that education works towards a larger goal than that of the individual and its purpose is to maintain social stability, through the reproduction of inequality. What the goal of this stability is differs depending on which sociological perspective one uses to approach the issue.

Theoretical Perspectives

---

Structural Functionalism

Structural functionalists believe that society tends towards equilibrium and social order. They see society like a human body, where key institutions work like the body’s organs to keep the society/body healthy and well & Watts, 2002. Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when everyone accepts the moral values of their society. Hence structural functionalists believe the purpose of key institutions, such as education, is to socialise young members of society. Socialisation is the process by which the new generation learns the knowledge, attitudes and values that they will need as citizens. Although this purpose is stated in the formal curriculum Board of Studies, it is mainly achieved through the hidden curriculum 1997. The hidden curriculum consists of a subtler, but nonetheless powerful, indoctrination of the norms and values of wider society. Students learns these values because their behaviour at school is regulated in Sargent 1994 until they gradually internalise them and so accept them. Education must, however perform another function to keep society running smoothly. As various jobs in society become vacant, they must be filled with the appropriate people. Therefore the other purpose of education is to sort and rank individuals for placement in the labour market 1997. Those with the greatest achievement will be trained for the most important jobs in society and in reward, be given the highest incomes. Those who achieve the least, will be given the least demanding jobs, and hence the least income.

According to Sennet and Cobb Sargent, 1994:238 however, “to believe that ability alone decides who is rewarded is to be deceived”. Meighan agrees stating that large numbers of capable students from working class backgrounds fail to achieve satisfactory standards in school and therefore fail to obtain the status they deserve. Jacob 1987:169 from school with the least qualifications, hence they get the least desirable jobs, and so remain working class. Sargent ^*" target="_blank" >agrees with this cycle, stating that schooling supports continuity, which in turn support social order. Talcott Parsons [in Meighan, 1997:250 believed that this process, whereby some students were identified and labelled educational failures, “was a necessary activity which one part of the social system, education, performed for the whole”. Yet the structural functionalist perspective maintains that this social order, this continuity, is what most people desire & Watts, 2002. The weakness of this perspective here becomes evident. Why would the working class wish to stay the working class? Such an inconsistency demonstrates that another perspective may be more useful in examining the issue further.

Conflict Theory

Education and Social Reproduction

The perspective of conflict theory, contrary to structural functionalist perspective, believes that society is full of vying social groups who have different access to life chances and gain different social rewards & Healy, 1997. In other words power is in the hands of a few who use it to maintain their position by arranging society to their advantage. Relations in society are based on exploitation, oppression, domination and subordination 1994. Although this is a considerably more cynical picture of society, it is also more realistic than the previous idea that most people accept continuing inequality. Conflict theorists believe education is controlled by the state which is controlled by those with the power, and its purpose is to reproduce the inequalities already existing in society as well as legitimise ‘acceptable’ ideas which actually work to reinforce the privileged positions of the dominant group & Healy, 1997. Connell and White ^* state that the education system is as much an arbiter of social privilege as a transmitter of knowledge. Education achieves its purpose by maintaining the status quo, where working class children become working class adults, and middle class children become middle class adults.

This cycle occurs because the dominant group has, over time, closely aligned education with middle class values and aspirations, thus alienating people of other classes & White, 1997. Indeed many teachers assume that students will have particular middle class experiences at home, and for many children this assumption isn’t true 2001. Many working class children are expected to help their parents after school and carry considerable domestic responsibilities in the home & Wyn, 1987. The demands of this domestic labour often make it difficult for them to find time to do all their homework and thus affects their performance at school. Where teachers have reduced the formality of regular study and integrated student’s preferred way of working into the curriculum, they noted that particular students displayed strengths they had not been aware of before & Wyn, 1987. However few teacher deviate from the traditional curriculum, and the curriculum conveys what constitutes knowledge as determined by the state – and those in power in Sargent, 1994. This knowledge isn’t very meaningful to many of the working class, they do not see it serving any purpose 2002. Wilson & Wyn state that the students realise there is no direct link between the subjects they are doing and their future in the labour market. Anti-school values displayed by these children, are actually derived from their consciousness of their real interests. Sargent believes that for working class students, striving to succeed and absorbing the middle class values of school, is accepting their inferior social position in society [Sargent, 1994 as much as if they determined to fail. Fitzgerald Henry et al, 1988:143 states that “irrespective of their academic ability or desire to learn, students from poor families have relatively little chance of securing success”. On the other hand, for middle and especially upper class children, maintaining their superior position in society requires little effort. The federal government subsidises ‘independent’ private schools enabling the rich to obtain ‘good education’ by paying for it 1994. With this ‘good education’, rich children perform better, achieve higher and obtain greater rewards. In this way, the continuation of privilege and wealth for the elite is made possible.

Once again the question is raised, why would working class people allow this to happen? Conflict theorists believe this social reproduction continues to occur because the whole education system is overlain with ideology provided by the dominant group. In effect, they perpetuate the myth that education is available to all to provide a means of achieving wealth and status. Anyone who fails, continues the myth, to achieve this goal has therefore only themself to blame 1994:234. Wright Sargent, 1994:234 agrees, stating that “the effect of the myth is to…stop them from seeing that their personal troubles are part of major social issues”. The duplicity is so successful that many parents endure appalling jobs for many years, believing that this sacrifice will enable their children to have opportunities in life that they did not have themselves & Wyn, 1987. These people who are poor and disadvantaged are victims of a societal confidence trick. They have been encouraged to believe that a major goal of schooling in to increase equality while, in reality, schools reflect society’s intention to maintain the previous unequal distribution of status and power. in Sargent, 1994

This perspective has been criticised for being deterministic and allowing no room for the agency of individuals.

Structure and Agency

Bourdieu and Cultural Capital

This theory of social reproduction has been significantly theorised by Pierre Bourdieu. However Bourdieu as a social theorist has always been concerned with the dichotomy between the objective and subjective, or to put it another way, between structure and agency. Bourdieu has therefore built his theoretical framework around the important concepts of habitus, field and cultural capital. These concepts are based on the idea that objective structures determine the probability of individuals' life chances, through the mechanism of the habitus where individuals internalise these structures. However, the habitus is also formed by, for example, an individual's position in various fields, their family and their everyday experiences. Therefore one's class position does not determine one's life chances but it does play an important part alongside other factors.

Bourdieu employed the concept of cultural capital to explore the differences in outcomes for students from different classes in the French education system. He explored the tension between the conservative reproduction and the innovative production of knowledge and experience 1990:87. He found that this tension is intensified by considerations of which particular cultural past and present is to be conserved and reproduced in schools. Bourdieu argues that it is the culture of the dominant groups, and therefore their cultural capital, which is embodied in schools, and that this leads to social reproduction 1990:87.

The cultural capital of the dominant group, in the form of practices and relation to culture, is assumed by the school to be the natural and only proper type of cultural capital and is therefore legitimated. It thus demands “uniformly of all its students that they should have what it does not give” in Swartz, 2000:209. This legitimate cultural capital allows students who possess it to gain educational capital in the form of qualifications. Those students of less privileged classes are therefore disadvantaged. To gain qualifications they must acquire legitimate cultural capital, by exchanging their own (usually working-class) cultural capital 1984:172. This process of exchange is not a straight forward one, due to the class ethos of the less privileged students. Class ethos is described as the particular dispositions towards, and subjective expectations of, school and culture. It is in part determined by the objective chances of that class 1980:226. This means, that not only is it harder for children to succeed in school due to the fact that they must learn a new way of ‘being’, or relating to the world, and especially, a new way of relating to and using language, but they must also act against their instincts and expectations. The subjective expectations influenced by the objective structures located in the school, perpetuate social reproduction by encouraging less-privileged students to eliminate themselves from the system, so that fewer and fewer are to be found as one progresses through the levels of the system 1990:155. The process of social reproduction is neither perfect nor complete 1990:87, but still, only a small number of less-privileged students make it all the way to the top. For the majority of these students who do succeed at school, they have had to internalise the values of the dominant classes and take them as their own, to the detriment of their original habitus and cultural values.

Therefore Bourdieu's perspective reveals how objective structures play a large role in determining the achievement of individuals at school, but allows for the exercise of an individual's agency to overcome these obstacles, although this choice is not without its penalties.

Educational Sociologists Around the World

---

Educational Sociologists in Asia

Educational Sociologists in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China

• Chan Kit Wah
• Cheng Kai Ming(程介明)
• Cheung Kwok Wah(张国华)
• Choi Po King
• Hayes Hei Hang Tang (鄧希恆)
• Gerard A. Postiglione （白杰瑞）
• Greg P. Fairbrother
• Koo Ching Ha, Anita

Educational Sociologists in America

• James S. Coleman
• Michael Apple
• Henry Giroux

Educational Sociologists in Europe

• Pierre Bourdieu

References

---

• Apple, M.W. (1982) Education and Power. Boston : Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Bessant, J. and Watts, R. (2002) Sociology Australia, Second Edition, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
• Bourdieu, P., (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Bourdieu, P., (1984) Distinction, a Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Harvard University Press, Cambridge
• Bourdieu, P., (1986) “The Forms of Capital” in Halsey, A., Lauder, H., Brown, P., & Stuarts Wells, A., (eds) (1997) Education: Culture, Economy and Society, Oxford University Press, Oxford, p.46-58
• Bourdieu, P., (1990) Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture, Sage Publications, London
• Bourdieu, P., (1996) The State Nobility, Polity Press, Cambridge
• Connell, R. W. and White, V., (1989) ‘Child poverty and educational action’ in Edgar, D., Keane, D. & McDonald, P. (eds), Child Poverty, Allen & Unwin, Sydney
• Foster, L. E. (1987) Australian Education: A Sociological Perspective, Second Edition, Prentice Hall, Sydney
• Foster, L. E. (1992) Australian Education: A Sociological Perspective, Third Edition, Prentice Hall, Sydney
• Furze, B. and Healy, P. (1997) “Understanding society and change” in Stafford, C. and Furze, B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
• Gorder, K., (1980) “Understanding School Knowledge: a critical appraisal of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.218-233
• Harker, R., (1984) “On Reproduction, Habitus and Education” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.164-176
• Harker, R., (1990) “Education and Cultural Capital” in Harker, R., Mahar, C., & Wilkes, C., (eds) (1990) An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu: the practice of theory, Macmillan Press, London
• Harper, G. (1997) “Society, culture, socialisation and the individual” in Stafford, C. and Furze , B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
• Henry, M., Knight, J., Lingard, R. and Taylor, S. (1988) Understanding Schooling: An Introductory Sociology of Australian Education, Routledge, Sydney
• Jacob, A. (2001) Research links poverty and literacy, ABC Radio Transcript URL: http://www.abc.net.au/pm/s433501.htm [Accessed 2002, Oct 29
• Meighan, R. & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (1997) A Sociology of Educating, Third Edition, Cassell, London
• Meighan, R. (1981) A Sociology of Educating, First Edition, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Sydney
• Munro, L., (1997) “Education” in Stafford, C. and Furze , B. (eds) Society and Change, Second Edition, Macmillan Education Australia, Melbourne
• NSW Board of Studies (no date), K-6 HSIE Syllabus URL: http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au [Accessed 2002, Oct 28
• Sargent, M. (1994) The New Sociology for Australians, Third Edition, Longman Chesire, Melbourne
• Schofield, K. (1999) “The Purposes of Education”, Queensland State Education: 2010, URL: www.aspa.asn.au/Papers/eqfinalc.PDF [Accessed 2002, Oct 28
• Swartz, D., “Pierre Bourdieu: The Cultural Transmission of Social Inequality” in Robbins, D., (2000) Pierre Bourdieu Volume II, Sage Publications, London, pp.207-217
• Tang, H.H. (2002) New Arrival Students in Hong Kong: Adaptation and School Peformance. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
• Wilson, B. and Wyn, J. (1987) Shaping Futures: Youth Action for Livelihood, Allen & Unwin, Hong Kong

Education | Sociology