Tag: education

Joel Spring – Education Networks: Power, Wealth, Cyberspace and The Digital Mind

A summary of one thread within this excellent book….

The DFES (2013) has an overwhelmingly positive view of the future role of ICT in schools and colleges, noting that it has transformed other sectors, that parents and pupils expect it, and that pupils need ICT to equip them with future-work skills. In DFES literature, digital media seems to be presented as a neutral technology through which individual students can be empowered, with emphasis on the benefits such technology can bring to schools, such as more personalised learning, better feedback, a richer resource base and the possibility of extending the learning day. This discourse further constructs not only technologically reticent staff and lack of access to ICT resources as a potential problem, but also centralised government itself, with the forthcoming renewal of the ICT curriculum being fully endorsed and authored by Google, Microsoft, and IBM, with the vision being that 16 year olds will be able to write their own apps by the age of 161.

There are, however, those who are skeptical about the neutrality ICT, the claimed inevitability of its expansion and the supposed benefits of the increasing digitisation of education. One such skeptic is Sociologist Joel Spring who, in a recent book, Education Networks: Power, Wealth, Cyberspace and The Digital Mind, draws our attention to the increasing control of education systems around the world by global corporations, a process which he refers to as Educational Corporatism.

The Nature and Extent of Global Educational Corporatism

According to Spring, a global shadow elite network is responsible for encouraging the growth of Information Communications Technology in state education programs in the USA and increasingly in other countries, something which is unsurprising given that the global education market is a $7 trillion industry, greater than the value of every other information industry combined (WEF 2014).

This network consists of a relatively small number of IT and communications company executives who have close links with senior policy makers in governments, who together have overseen an increase in the use of ICT for the surveillance and education of students. Spring characterises this network as a ‘Flexnet’ because the key actors, or ‘Flexians’, move between government departments and education, media and ICT companies, spending a few years working respectively for one government department before moving to an ICT corporation, and then back to the public sector to spearhead technological initiatives drawing on their corporate contacts to do so, and finally moving back to a more senior Corporate role, supposedly to take advantage of the profits generated from said initiatives.

The Corporate takeover of New York City’s Schools

The means whereby Flexians within the global shadow elite operate is illustrated by the Corporate takeover of New York City Schools.

In 2001 billionaire and superlcass ICT mogul Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York City. After lobbying for and gaining control of New York schools, Bloomberg appointed as school chancellor Joel Klein, a lawyer from another ICT conglomerate, Bertelsmann. Technically Klein lacked the legal requirements to head NYC schools, but this requirement was waived by the state commissioner for education.

Klein initiated changes that centred on student testing and data collection (echoed in education ministries around the world). To aid in this, he contracted with the company Wireless Generation to use their ‘ARIS’ system of data collection and management. Klein then left his position as chancellor to become executive vice president at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which bought 90% of Wireless Generation for $360 million.

In addition to the above, while Klein was chancellor, Murdoch’s New York Post also supported Klein’s efforts to establish more charter schools and undermine protection for teachers.

The Global Neoliberal Agenda for Education

At a global level, the shadow elite influence governments through The World Economic Forum and The United Nations, which both voice considerable optimism about the future role of ICT in meeting the world’s educational needs in the future. As an example of this optimism, Spring points to The World Economic Forum’s Global Information Technology Report 2010-11, authored by prominent members of the Shadow Elite.

Where education is concerned, the report anticipates ‘Transformation 2.0′, a process in which educational institutions will make increasing use of analytic software tools which convert data into actionable insights. This not only means the now well established use of data on students’ past test results to predict the probability of their passing or failing certain subjects and then directing resources more efficiently to those in need, but the report also predicts the increasing use of ‘data exhaust’, or more qualitative information collected on students throughout their school careers, for the same purposes which in the future might mean increasing surveillance of the number of and length of virtual interactions students make each term in in order to inform educational interventions.

Individual schools and universities do not possess the resources to develop and maintain the kind of software required to collect and collate such ‘Big Data’, so ‘transformation 2.0 might see educational institutions becoming locked into long-term data-analytics contracts with global ICT companies: The future of education might be one where schools do the teaching at a national level but informed by data analysis carried out by global corporations using global data sets.

The WEF report makes several other recommendations:

  • To use ICT to make education more engaging and better suited to the needs of each student through making greater use of data analytics and what Spring calls ‘edutainment’ software, which special emphasis being given to promoting STEM subjects.
  • To better link technology to assessment.
  • To support access to online instruction in and out of school.
  • To increase ‘productivity’ in the education sector: ICT is seen as a relatively const-efficient means whereby schools can accelerate student progress, rather than employing more teachers.

According to Spring’s analysis this vision is ideological and it represents a global Neoliberal agenda for the progressive privatisation of education through governments spending more public money on data analytics, online instruction and assessment delivered by global ICT corporations. It is already the norm in the US for IT and communications companies to develop educational software which are provided to schools for a profit, a practice which the ICT elite wishes to see replicated in other parts of the world.

The ICT Shadow Elite’s ambitions are not limited to developed countries, they are also targeting the education sectors of developing countries, and as an an example of this Spring cites the Microsoft-UNESCO agreement established in 2009 regarding ICT and Higher Education. As part of this agreement, Microsoft offered £50 million of ‘seed money’ to introduce a range of educational technologies to a number of countries – such as DreamSpark, MicrosoftLive@edu, Digital Literacy Curriculum, and The Microsoft IT Academy Program. Spring’s theory is that such an initial seeding will reap dividends in the future as public education sectors expand they will spend increasing sums of money on upgrading software and buying related ICT educational products from Microsoft in future years.

Potential Problems with Increasing Educational Corporatism

Spring points to several possible negative consequences of global companies effectively having more control over national education systems.

Firstly, this is likely to further reduce educational management to the employment of data mining and analysis to predict how student test scores and graduation rates relate to social characteristic information and identifying which limited interventions can be made to improve examination results, with the effectiveness of teachers further reduced to how efficiently they can enhance these measurable results.

Secondly, it is likely that there will be an increasing level of control of knowledge by ICT corporations. The concern here is that this will lead to the further standardisation of knowledge into a form which can be easily assessed through technology, which potentially means preferencing quantifiable knowledge over more qualitative and critical knowledge which require more human intervention to asses. In addition to this, schools are increasingly likely to be seen as institutions whose job it is to provide a 21st century workforce for ICT firms, meaning the preferencing of STEM, ICT and business related courses.

Thirdly, the corollary of greater control being handed to global ICT corporations is declining autonomy of individual schools and teachers. This actually seems to be an explicit goal of the global shadow elite: the WEF (2011) states that the main barrier to extending technology in is ‘human’, with ICT, rather than more teacher-time being (quite literally) sold as the most effective means to personalise learning in order to meet the needs of each learner.

Another idea which potentially undermines teachers which is widely publicised by prominent Flexian Bill Gates is that we should have least one good course online for all subjects rather than lots of mediocre ones. This idea seems both sensible and inevitable but its manifestation might come in the form of a core of highly skilled experts constructing corporate-approved online content for a global education market, with for-profit companies responsible for managing testing and tutoring replacing much of the work teachers currently do.

A final possible consequence is an increasing inequality of educational provision. As governments struggle with finances in the age of ideological driven Neoliberal austerity, it might be that cash strapped schools move towards providing online only tuition for some courses while students at better managed and funded schools retain more formal ICT-supported lessons. This is precisely what happened in Florida in 2010-11 when 7000 students in Miami-Dade county were placed in virtual classrooms in order to beat the state’s class size mandate, which specified a maximum of 25 students per class, but did not apply to virtual classrooms.

Conclusion:

While the increasing use of ICT in education appears to offer many benefits, such as enhanced personalisation of learning and increased teacher productivity, the importance of Spring’s analysis lies in reminding us that while technology itself is neutral, the way in which it is deployed is not given the corporate networks and which are currently lobbying for the further digitisation of state education, and the neoliberal agenda of which this is a part.

At present it is difficult to see how anything can halt the spread of Educational Corporatism: there is a clear demand from today’s students and their parents for digitised education and global ICT corporations are clearly well positioned to play an increasing role in the delivery and management of virtual learning environments; and with further government cuts likely, the viritualising of learning seems an obvious way to save money in the education sector by reducing the number teachers.

Whether or not the future of education will be one of reduced teacher autonomy with for-profit Corporations having greater control over national curriculums and thus even more access to students, and what the effects of this will be remain to be seen.

Bibliography 

C. Paucek et al (2014) Chapter 8: Online Education: From Novely to Necessity, in World Economic Foundation: Education and Skills 2.0: New Targets and Innovative Approaches. Geneva: Switzerland.

DFES (2013): Digital Technology in Schools. http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/a00201823/digital-technology-in-schools accessed 16/01/2104, updated 18 October 2013. Archived at http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130123124929/http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/a00201823/digital-technology-in-schools

Spring, J (2012) Education Networks: Power, Wealth, Cyberspace and The Digital Mind. New York: Routldege. Kindle Edition.

WEF (2011) The Global Information Technology Report 2010-11: Transformations 2.0

AS and First Year A Level Sociology – Whole Course Overview

An overview of the entire course for AS and first year A level sociology covering the following ‘modules’:

The overview below is taken directly from the AQA’s scheme of work and broken down further into more sub-topics to make it more teachable/ learnable. Within each ‘module’ there are about 7 sub-topics, and any of which could (although not necessarily) form the basis of one essay question, so you need to be able to write on each sub-topic for a solid 30 minutes.

This will relevant to most teachers and students teaching the AQA syllabus, unless you do an alternative option to families and households (which I don’t cover!)

My advice is that students generally need at least one side of revision notes for each of the subtopics below, with three-five points/ explanations/ examples and with evaluations (e.g. one side for Functionalism, another for Marxism etc…)

Education

Education brief

  1. Perspectives on Education

    1. Functionalism

    2. Marxism

    3. Neoliberalism and The New Right

    4. New Labour (a response to the New Right)

    5. Postmodernism

  1. In school process and education

    1. Teacher Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy

    2. School organisation (banding and streaming)

    3. School Type, School Ethos and the Hidden Curriculum

    4. School Subcultures

    1. Pupil Identities and the Education System

  1. Education Policies

    1. The strengths and limitations of successive government education polices:

      1. 1944 – The Tripartite System – brief

      2. 1965 – Comprehensivisation – brief

      3. 1988 – The 1988 Education Reform Act

      4. 1997 – New Labour’s Education Policies

      5. 2010 – The Coalition and the New New Right’s Education Policies

    1. Evaluating Education Policies

      1. To what extent have policies raised standards in education?

      2. To what extent have policies improved equality of opportunity?

      3. Perspectives on selection as an educational policy

      4. Perspectives on the increased privatisation of education

      5. How is globalisation affecting educational and educational policy?

  1. Social Class and Education

    1. Material Deprivation

    2. Cultural Deprivation

    3. Cultural Capital Theory

    4. In-School Factors

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle working class underachievement

  2. Gender and Education

    1. Out of school factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    2. In-School factors which explain why girls do better than boys in education

    3. Explanations for gender and subject choice

    4. Feminist Perspectives on the role of education in society

    5. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle gender differences in educational achievement

  3. Ethnicity and Education

    1. Cultural factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    2. In-School Factors which might explain ethnic differences in educational achievement

    3. The strengths and limitations of policies designed to tackle ethnic differences in educational achievement

Methods in Context

Here you need to be able to assess the strengths and limitations of using any method to research any aspect of education.

The different methods you need to be able to consider include –

1. Secondary Documents

2. Official statistics

3. Field Experiments

4. Lab experiments

5. Questionnaires

6. Unstructured Interviews

7. Overt Participant Observation

8. Covert Participant Observation

9. Non Participant Observation

The different aspects of education you might consider are

• Researching how the values, attitudes, and aspirations of parents contribute to the achievement of certain groups of children

• Why boys are more likely to be excluded than girls

• Why white working class boys underachieve

• Exploring whether teachers have ‘ideal pupils’ – whether they label certain groups of pupils favourably!

• Assessing the relative importance of cultural deprivation versus material deprivation in explaining underachievement

• Assessing the success of policies aimed to improve achievement such as ‘employing more black teachers’

Families and Households

AS Sociology Families and Households

  1. Perspectives on Families

1.1 Functionalism

1.2 Marxism

1.3 Feminisms

1.4 The New Right

1.5 Postmodernism and Late Modernism

1.6 The Personal Life Perspective

  1. Marriage and Divorce

2.1: Explaining the trends in marriage

2.2: Explaining the trends in divorce

2.3: Perspectives on the consequences of declining marriage and increasing divorce

2.4: Examining how marriage, divorce and cohabitation vary by social class, ethnicity, sexuality and across generations.

3. Family Diversity

3.1 – The underlying causes of the long term increase In Reconstituted families, Single parent families, Multi-generational households, Single person households and ‘Kidult’ households.

3.2 Perspectives on the social significance of the increase of all of the above (covered in 3.1).

3.3 – The extent to which family life varies by ethnicity, social class and sexuality.

4. Gender Roles, Domestic Labour and Power Relationships

4.1. To what extent are gender roles characterised by equality?

4.2. To what extent is the Domestic Division of Labour characterised by equality?

4.3. Issues of Power and Control in Relationships

4.4. To what extent has women going into paid work resulted in greater equality within relationships?

5. Childhood

5.1 – To what extent is ‘childhood socially constructed’

5.2 – The March of Progress view of childhood (and parenting) – The Child Centred Family and Society?

5.3 – Toxic Childhood and Paranoid Parenting – Criticisms of ‘The March of Progress View’

5.4 – Is Childhood Disappearing?

5.5 – Reasons for changes to childhood and parenting practices

Topic 6 – Social Policy

6.1 You need to be able to assess the effects of a range of policies using at least three key perspectives

• The New Right

• New Labour

• Feminism (Liberal and Radical)

6.2 You need notes on how the following policies affect men and women and children within the family

• Changes to the Divorce law

• Tax breaks for married couples

• Maternity and paternity pay

• Civil Partnerships

• Sure Start – early years child care

Topic 7: Demography

7.1: Reasons for changes to the Birth Rate

7.2: Reasons for changes to the Death Rate

7.3: The consequences of an Ageing Population

7.4: The reasons for and consequences of changes to patterns of Migration

Research Methods

Factors effecting choice of research method copy

  1. The Factors Affecting Choice of Research Method – Theoretical, Ethical and Practical Factors.Introduction to Research Methods – Basic types of method and key terms

  1. Secondary Quantitative Data – Official Statistics

  1. Secondary Qualitative Data – Public and Private Documents

  1. Experiments – Field and Laboratory

  1. Interviews – Structured, Unstructured and Semi-Structured

  1. Observational Methods – Cover and Overt Participant and Non-Participant Observation

  1. Other methods – e.g. Longitudinal Studies

  1. Stages of the Research Process

Crucial to the above is your mastery of the TPEN structure

  1. Theoretical factors – Positivism, Interpretivism, Validity, Reliability, Representativeness

  1. Practical factors –Time, Money, funding, opportunities for research including ease of access to respondents, and the personal skills and characteristics of the researcher.

  1. Ethical factors – Thinking about how the research impacts on those involved with the research process: Informed consent, ensure confidentiality, be legal and ensure that respondents and those related to them are not subjected to harm. All this needs to be weighed up with the benefits of the research.

  1. The Nature of the Topic studied. Some topics lend themselves to certain methods and preclude others!

 

Sociological Explanations of Educational Underachievement

This post attempts to demonstrate what sociology is by examining how the discipline approaches one particular issue – why some children do worse at school than others…from a sociological perspective, educational failure is not simply down to the individual!

The easiest way to illustrate the sociological imagination, and to demonstrate how sociologists ‘do sociology’ is to look at an example of how Sociology approaches a particular social issue – such as the the issue of educational underachievement. Most Sociologists regard this as a social problem because leaving school with few or no formal qualifications is strongly related to a future of unemployment and/ or low-skilled and low-paid work.

This post has primarily been written for students studying A-level sociology, to read as part of a two week introduction to sociology.

Why do some children fail where others succeed?

The most obvious place to look for this answer is the the children themselves – either their educational failure is a matter of low intelligence or lack of aspiration and individual effort, in which case either there’s not a lot else that anyone could do (in the case of low intelligence), or it’s down to the individual student to pull their socks up (in the case of low aspiration or effort).

A second common place to look is the individual school which could be ‘letting the students down’ – either the teachers are not committed enough, or the school is badly managed, in which case new teachers or management are required.

While Sociologists do not dismiss either of the above explanations as factors related to educational underachievement, they argue that they do not look deeply enough at the underlying causes of this problem, and if you dig deeper (using statistical methods, and more of that later), you will see that there are more significant factors related to differential educational underachievement – such as the level of income of parents, the values of parents.

Poverty and Educational Underachievement

There is in fact a very strong relationship between the amount of income and wealth parents have and how well their children do in school. To put it bluntly, the poorer someone’s parents are, the more likely their children are to get poor GCSEs.

This is because poverty acts as a limiting factor on educational achievement. Poverty leads to material deprivation which in turn is related to such things as poor diets, which means higher levels of illness, and fewer bedrooms in the household which means there is less likely to be a private study-space, and later on, being from a poor background means teenagers are more likely to take up part-time jobs while studying A levels or degrees, which means less study time.

At the other end of the scale, a higher income can mean private tuition or even private schools. Think about it – parents wouldn’t pay £10 000 a year if private schools didn’t work!

What all the above means, is that OBJECTIVELY, all other things being equal, if you take two students, one rich kid and one poor kid, and the poor kid is ill more often, can’t concentrate on homework because he has to share a room with his younger brother, and does 15 hours work a week while doing A levels, while the rich kid has none of the above barriers and has a couple of hours private tuition a week, it is hardly surprising that the rich one is going to get better results.

Parental Values and Educational Underachievement

A second factor which influences how well a child does at school is the values of the parents – it is parents, after all, who teach their children about the value of education, or not; about the importance of sacrificing pleasure now in order to study, or not; and who inspire them to go to university (which requires decent A levels), or not!

It is similarly parents who read to their children when they are young, or not; help children with homework, or not; and police children through their 11 years of formal schooling, or let them run wild on the streets – don’t forget that once you factor in holidays, weekends, and weekday morning and evenings children actually spend far more time outside of school than in it, which suggests parenting (or lack of it) is going to have far more of an impact on how well a child does than schooling.

Numerous studies have shown the importance of Primary Socialisation (the teaching of norms and values in the family) in explaining differential educational achievement – and there are significant differences in the how rich and poor, and male and female children are socialised.

Working class children are more likely to suffer from what sociologists call ‘cultural deprivation‘ – they are more likely to grow up thinking that ‘university is not for the likes of them’ because their parents never went and thus don’t talk about it, which helps to explain why fewer working class teenagers opt to go to university, even when they get good A levels.

While girls are read to more often than boys, which might explain the 10% gender-gap in English GCSE results. Ethnicity also matters. You’ve probably heard of the stereo-type of the fearsome Chinese ‘tiger parents’ who demand their children make enormous effort in school – well, research backs this up – Chinese parents are the most demanding parents, and it works, British-Chinese children outperform every other ethnic group in GCSEs.

All of the above illustrate the importance of not relying on individual level explanations for social phenomena – how well an individual does in school is not just down to their individual talents, it is partly a result of their socialisation, of their background, and social class, gender and ethnicity all have their independent, and combined influences on how well a child does in school.

Still the above isn’t enough to explain differential educational achievement – you also need to look at issues of POWER within the education system.

Power within the Education System

It shouldn’t surprise you that the education system is shaped and run by educated people, typically from wealthy backgrounds, and it is these people and their children who have benefited from various changes in policy over the past century: our education system has changed considerably since WW2, but the middle classes have always come out on top – so it seems that education is primarily about ‘the reproduction of class inequality’ – a mechanism whereby middle class children can do well and go on to get well-paid middle class jobs, while working class children are defined as failures and go on to get low-skilled, lower paid jobs.

The most obvious example of this lies in the existence of private schools, some of which cost up to £30K a year – only 7% of children go to private schools, but over 50% of all the high-paying professional jobs are taken up by these 7% – jobs such Doctors, lawyers, journalists and so on.

The above point of view is mainly associated with the Marxist Perspective on Education.

Conclusions… why do some children underachieve in education?

So to summarise the lessons from the above example – Sociologists do not accept that an individual fails (or succeeds) at school simply because of their individual talents, they succeed or fail at least partly because of their background – the amount of money their parents have, and the values their parents instil in them, which together influence how well the child can do in school, and looked at even more deeply, it seems that the education system is set up to empower the middle classes over the generations, because no educational policies have been put in place which have really broken down inequalities over the decades.

Lessons to learn from the above, and what Sociology does next…

Firstly you are better equipped to find out more about why some kids fail and other succeed – There are of course those from deprived backgrounds who do succeed, and Sociologists recognise that people are not determined by their backgrounds, rather they are steered down certain paths by them, and the question of how such children do succeed is of interest to sociologists as is the question of what we should do about the above unjust situation.

Secondly – learning the above should be empowering – because you now know that the system is not fair – don’t necessarily assume that just because someone has failed at school they are stupid or lazy, and vice-versa about someone who has done well.

Thirdly – there is the question of what we do with the above knowledge – eventually you’ll need to decide whether you work within the system to make it fairer, or whether we need complete systemic change, or whether there’s nothing we can do, and so go and do something else instead!

Signposting/ Find out More

This post has primarily been written for students studying A-level sociology, to read as part of a two week introduction to sociology.

This particular topic is taught as part of the Sociology of Education module.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

The Marxist Perspective on Crime

Marxism focuses on how crime is a ‘natural outgrowth of the capitalist system and how the criminal justice system works for the benefits of elites and against the lower social classes.

Marxist criminologists see power being held by the Bourgeoisie and laws are a reflection of Bourgeois ideology. The legal system (lawyers, judges and the courts) and the police all serve the interests of the Bourgeoisie. These institutions are used to control the masses, prevent revolution and keep people in a state of false consciousness.

For the purposes of Second Year Sociology, the Marxist perspective on crime may be summarised into four key points:

  1. Capitalism is Crimogenic –This means that the Capitalist system encourages criminal behaviour.
  2. The Law is made by the Capitalist elite and tends to work in their interests.
  3. All classes, not just the working classes commit crime, and the crimes of the Capitalist class are more costly than street crime.
  4. The state practices Selective Law Enforcement – The Criminal Justice system mainly concerns itself with policing and punishing the marginalised, not the wealthy, and this performs ideological functions for the elite classes.

Key Sociologists associated with this perspective are William Chambliss (1978) and Laureen Snider (1993). Examples of more contemporary theorists include Professors Tombs and Whyte (See later).

Mind map summarising the Marxist Perspective on Crime

Capitalism is Crimogenic

Many Marxists see crime as a natural ‘outgrowth’ of the capitalist system. The Capitalist system can be said to be crimogenic in three major ways –

  1. Capitalism encourages individuals to pursue self-interest rather than public duty
  2. Capitalism encourages individuals to be materialistic consumers, making us aspire to an unrealistic and often unattainable lifestyle.
  3. Capitalism in its wake generates massive inequality and poverty, conditions which are correlated with higher crime rates.

Capitalism, self-interest and crime

Capitalism is Crimogenic because it encourages individuals to pursue self-interest before everything else.

Marxist Sociologist David Gordon says that Capitalist societies are ‘dog eat dog societies’ in which each individual company and each individual is encouraged to look out for their own interests before the interests of others, before the interests of the community, and before the protection of the environment. If we look at the Capitalist system, what we find is that not only does it recommend that we engage in the self-interested pursuit of profit is good, we learn that it is acceptable to harm others and the environment in the process. Please see KT’s blog post – ‘On The incredible immorality of corporate greed’ for referenced examples of Corporations acting immorally in the pursuit of profit.

Marxists point out that in a Capitalist society, there is immense competitive pressure to make more money, to be more successful, and to make more profit, because in a competitive system, this is the only way to ensure survival. In such a context, breaking the law can seem insignificant compared to the pressure to succeed and pressures to break the law affect all people: from the investment banker to the unemployed gang member.

Marxists theorise that the values of the Capitalist system filter down to the rest of our culture. Think again about the motives of economic criminals: The burglars, the robbers, and the thieves. What they are doing is seeking personal gain without caring for the individual victims.

crimogenic capitalism

Capitalism, materialism and crime

Capitalism is Crimogenic because it encourages us to want things we don’t need and can’t afford

Companies such as Coca Cola and McDonald’s spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, morphing their products into fantastical images that in no way resemble the grim reality of the products or the even grimmer reality of the productive processes that lie behind making their products. Advertising is a long way beyond merely providing us with information about a product; it has arguably become the art of disinformation.

It is doubtless that corporations benefit through advertising, and modern Capitalism could not exist without the culture of consumerism that the advertising industry perpetuates, and activities have pointed to many downsides. One of the most obvious is that the world of advertising presents as normal a lifestyle that may be unattainable for many people in British Society.

For those millions who lack the legitimate means to achieve the materialist norm through working, this can breed feelings of failure, inadequacy, frustration and anger at the fact that they are working-but-not–succeeding. In short, Advertising creates the conditions that can lead to status frustration, which in turn can lead to crime.

Merton and Nightingale have pointed out that for some the desire to achieve the success goals of society outweigh the pressure to obey the law, advertising only adds to this strain between the legitimate means and the goal of material success.

Capitalism, Inequality and Crime

Thirdly, Capitalism is Crimogenic because it creates inequality and poverty

The Capitalist system is one of radical inequality. At the very top we have what David Rothkopf calls the ‘Superclass’ , mainly the people who run global corporations, and at the very bottom we have the underclass (in the developed world) and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees in the developing world.

The Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman points out that the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages. If people can afford it, they move to a better area, and send their children to private schools. However, this doesn’t prevent the poor and the rich from living side by side.

Marxists argue that this visible evidence of massive inequalities give people at the bottom a sense of injustice, a sense of anger and a sense of frustration that they are not sharing in the wealth being flaunted in front of them (the flaunting is the point is it not?) As a result, Capitalism leads to a flourishing of economic crime as well as violent street crime.

William Chambliss even goes so far as to say that economic crime ‘’represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies”. As we have seen from previous studies. Drug dealers see themselves as innovative entrepreneurs. So internalised is the desire to be successful that breaking the law is seen as a minor risk.

Marxists hold that more egalitarian societies based on the values of the co-operation and mutual assistance, have lower crime rates, as can be evidence from Bruce Parry’s visit to the extremely egalitarian Island of Anuta

Discussion Questions:

  • Does Capitalism encourage competition over co-operation?
  • Does exploitation lie at the heart of the Capitalist system?
  • Does Capitalism encourage us to be selfish consumers?
  • Does Capitalism cause crime?

The Law benefits the elite and works in their Interests

Basic Marxist theory holds that the superstructure serves the ruling classes, thus the state passes laws which support ruling class interests.

Evidence for this can be found in the following:

  1. Property rights are much more securely established in law than the collective rights of, for instance, trade unions. Property law clearly benefits the wealthy more than those with no property. William Chambliss has argued that ‘at the heart of the Capitalist system lies the protection of Private Property. Consider the fact that there are roughly 100, 000 people recognised as homeless in the United Kingdom1, and 300, 000 houses lying empty2. The rights of the property owners to keep their properties empty are put before the rights of the needy to shelter.
  2. Laureen Snider (1993)argues that Capitalist states are reluctant to pass laws which regulate large capitalist concerns and which might threaten profitability. Having tried so hard to attract investment the last thing the state wants to do is alienate the large corporations. The state is thus reluctant to pass – or enforce – laws against such things as pollution, worker health and safety and monopolies.

While the lack of regulation in these areas is obvious in the third world, in most of Europe, there are many laws protection the environment and health and safety, but fines for them are relatively low, and, until 2007, no individual member of a corporation could be prosecuted for damaging the environment or endangering worker safety through corporate practise.

A further recent example which could be used to support this is the deregulation of financial markets prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent ‘credit crunch’ and economic recession. The activities of the vast majority of bankers and financiers were not seen as illegal and, far from being prosecuted, many grew rich through the payments of large bonuses.

Also, People have unequal access to the law. Having money to hire a good lawyer can delay trials, meaning the difference between being found not guilty or guilty, and influence the length of one’s sentence and the type of prison one goes to. Thus for Marxists, punishment for a crime may depend and vary according to the social class of the perpetrator. Poorer criminals tend to receive harsher punishments than rich criminals. As evidenced in one of the examples above, Mark Thatcher received only a suspended sentence for assisting mercenaries in a military coup against a democratically elected government.

Discussion Question: Can you think of any other ways in which the law works in the interests of the elite?

All classes Commit Crime

Marxists remind us that people from all classes commit crime. Theres no better contemporary reminder of this than the case of Donald Trump in the USA. As the ex president of the country and a billionaire, you don’t get much more elite than him!

Case Study: The Crimes of Donald Trump

The former U.S. President Donald Trump currently stands accused of committing 87 crimes between 2017 and 2022.  The details of these are complex, as this article in The Conversation points out. Four of the most basic crimes he is accused of include:

  • Falsifying business documents (you might do this to increase the sale value of your assets or decrease the amount of tax you pay).
  • Hoarding classified documents (these may contain details of Trump’s allegedly criminal activities).
  • Interference in the 2020 presidential election.
  • Attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results (e.g. through the Capitol Hill insurrection). 

The final one is just about as serious as you can get!

Trump has pleaded not-guilty to all of these charges, and has been in and out of various courts since his presidency ended. However prosecutors don’t normally pursue a prosecution unless they think they have a good chance of getting a guilty verdict. So Trump is probably guilty of all these crimes. 

This is a great example of how all classes commit crime, Trump being a member of the true global elite. It is also a good example of how someone with huge wealth can stay out of jail. Trump is doing this by challenging every little detail of every charge. So this is also an example of how the legal system can work in the interests of the rich. 

However the very fact that Trump is being prosecuted shows that we don’t have selective law enforcement here! 

We will have to wait and see what the outcome of this is.

The ‘Crimes’ of the Elite are more harmful than Street Crime

Marxists and other critical criminologists tend to focus on ‘social and environmental harms’ rather than crimes. If we take this approach then the violence and destruction carried out by elites are by far the worst in history.

The reason for focussing on harms rather than crimes is that historically elites define the violence they do against others as legitimate, or not criminal. However from a Marxist perspective this is only because they have the power to do so.

If we look at harms through history events such as colonialism and slavery, carried out by European powers have done enormous harms across Africa, Asia and the Americas. However throughout the colonial period, these harms were not seen as criminal. But from a Marxist perspective we should redefine them as criminal. As Angela Davis puts it….

‘The real criminals in this society are not all the people who populate the prisons across the state, but those people who have stolen the wealth of the world from the people’

Angela Davis, former leader of the Black Panthers.

(NB This links in to Dependency Theory).

White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime

Marxists argue that although they are hidden from view, the crimes of the elite exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the ‘ordinary people’. Laureen Snider (1993) points out that the cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by ‘typical’ criminals. Two contemporary organisations: Multinational Monitor and Corporate Watch, specialise in documenting the illegal activities of corporations.

In the section below we look at two types of white collar crime – Fraud and Health and Safety infringements. Both of these sound either terribly complex or terribly unexciting (or both) which means people are generally uninterested in hearing about them, and this general lack of public interest is something which helps the elite get away with an incredibly high level of criminality.

Key Concepts

White Collar Crime: Crimes committed in the furtherance of an individual’s own interests, often against the corporations of organisations within which they work.

Corporate Crime: Those crimes committed by or for corporations or businesses which act to further their interests and have a serious physical or economic impact on employees, consumers and the general public. The drive is usually the desire to increase profits.

The Cost of Financial Crime (Fraud)

Organisations such as Corporate Watch and…. Multinational Monitor, suggest that Corporate Fraud is widespread. The General Accounting Agency of the USA has estimated that 100s of savings and loans companies have failed in recent years due to insider dealing, failure to disclose accurate information, and racketeering. The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bail outs is estimated to be around $500 billion, or $5000 per household in the USA.

Case Study: Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Fraud

In 2009 the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to the maximum 150 years in prison for masterminding a $65bn (£38bn) fraud that wrecked the lives of thousands of investors.

Picture of Bernie Madoff.
Bernie Madoff’s crimes had thousands of victims

The US district judge Denny Chin described the fraud as “staggering” and said the “breach of trust was massive” and that a message was being sent by the sentence. There had been no letters submitted in support of Madoff’s character, he said. Victims in the courtroom clapped as the term was read out.

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering. The sentencing, in what has been one of the biggest frauds ever seen on Wall Street, was eagerly anticipated. Described by victims in written testimony as a “thief and a monster”, Madoff has become an emblem for the greed that pitched the world into recession. Nearly 9,000 victims have filed claims for losses in Madoff’s corrupt financial empire.

Madoff masterminded a huge “Ponzi” scheme. Instead of investing client’s money in securities, it was held with a bank and new deposits used to pay bogus returns to give the impression that the business was successful. At the time of his arrest in December, he claimed to manage $65bn of investors’ money, but in reality there was just $1bn left.

Corporate America has suffered a series of massive frauds during the past decade, including scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and more recently the financial empire run by Texas billionaire Allen Stanford. Former WorldCom chief Benrard Ebbers is serving 25 years for accounting fraud. Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison although the sentence was overturned. He remains in prison awaiting resentencing.

Discussion Question: Are crimes such as fraud more harmful to society than violent crime?

The Ideological Functions of Selective Law Enforcement

Quote about Prison by Angela Davis.

David Gordon argues that the police mainly focus on policing working class (and underclass) areas and the justice system mainly focuses on prosecuting working and underclass criminals. By and large the system ignores the crimes of the elite and the middle classes, although both of these classes are just as likely to commit crime as the working classes.

Gordon argues that the disproportionate prosecution of working class criminals ultimately serves to maintain ruling-class power and to reinforce ruling class ideology (thus performing ‘ideological functions’ for the ruling class.)

According to Gordon ‘selective law enforcement’ benefits the Capitalist system in three major ways:

  1. By punishing individuals and making them responsible for their actions, defining these individuals as ‘social failures’ we ignore the failings of the system that lead to the conditions of inequality and poverty that create the conditions which lead to crime.
  2. The imprisonment of selected members of the lower classes neutralises opposition to the system.
  3. The imprisonment of many members of the underclass also sweeps out of sight the ‘worst jetsam of Capitalist society’ such that we cannot see it.
  • We may also add a fourth benefit, that all of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime means that our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes.

Criticisms of the Marxist Perspective on Crime

Although there are MANY examples of elites committing VERY harmful crimes, SOME of them get prosecuted. This means the elites do not always get away with crime. The case of Sam Bankman-Fried’s guilty verdict following the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX criticises the Marxist Perspective on Crime.

However a counter claim by Marxists would be that the system has to prosecute some elites to maintain legitimacy. Most of them still get away with their crimes.

While it may be true that the economic costs of corporate crime and fraud are greater than street crime, the direct emotional impact of street crimes are greater. If you are a victim of robbery or other types of street violence, you feel it more than being a victim of a corporate crime which you may not even notice!

This is part of the reason why people are more concerned about immediate street crime, which is something Left Realists addressed.

Communist countries are not crime free. Nor are the people who live in them free of persecution by the state! China and North Korea have pretty bad human rights records, for exampl!

Revision Bundle for Sale 

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Crime and Deviance Revision Bundle

Crime Deviance A-Level Revision.png

It contains

  • 12 exam practice questions including short answer, 10 mark and essay question exemplars.
  • 32 pages of revision notes covering the entire A-level sociology crime and deviance specification
  • Seven colour mind maps covering sociological perspective on crime and deviance

Written specifically for the AQA sociology A-level specification.

Related Posts

Selected Sources 

1 http://www.crisis.org.uk/policywatch/pages/homelessness_statistics.html

2 http://www.aboutproperty.co.uk/news/planning/urban-planning/nearly-300000-empty-houses-in-england-$482464.htm

Methods in Context Mark Scheme

My pared down mark scheme for the methods in context question in the previous post, which is adapted from the AQA’s own mark scheme, just put into easier language:

Applying material from Item B and your knowledge of research methods, evaluate the strengths and limitations of using covert participant observation to investigate pupils with behavioural difficulties (20)

Marks Level Descriptors
17-20

 

If work your guts off you could get here!

 

 Knowledge of the strengths and limitations of covert participant observation will be accurate and conceptually detailed.

Application will be very focussed on the specific topic. Students will consider at least two of the following in relation to the specific issue (pupils with behavioural difficulties)

1.    Who you might be researching (e.g. pupils, peer groups, parents, teachers, support staff).

2.    Where you might be doing the research (e.g. classrooms, staffrooms, pupils’ homes).

3.    The sensitivity of researching pupils with behavioural difficulties (e.g. vulnerability, stigmatisation, parental consent, school reputation).

Evaluation of the usefulness of covert participant observation will be explicit and relevant. Analysis will show clear explanation and may draw appropriate conclusions.

Students will typically apply 4/5 of the following strengths and limitations of covert Participant Observation to the above issue:

1.    Practical issues in the research process: Access (getting in, staying in, getting out), data recording, time/ cost

2.    Ethical issues – e.g. sensitivity, informed consent

3.    Issues of validity: qualitative data/ verstehen/insight, flexibility

4.    Interpretation and analysis problems

5.    Small sample size/ unrepresentativeness

 

Marks Level Descriptors
13-16

You should aim to be here!

 

 1.    Knowledge of the strengths and limitations of covert participant observation will be accurate, broad and deep, but incomplete.

2.    Application of knowledge to the topic (students with behavioural difficulties) will be more generalised or more restricted way, for example:

 

•      applying the method to the study of education in general, not to the specifics of studying pupils with behavioural difficulties, or

 

•      specific but undeveloped application to pupils with behavioural difficulties, or

 

•      a focus on the research characteristics of pupils with behavioural difficulties, or groups/contexts etc. involved in it.

 

3.    Evaluation and analysis are likely to be explicit but limited

 
9-12

It’s reasonable but not desirable to be here

 1.    Knowledge of the strengths and/or limitations of covert participant observation will be accurate but with limited breadth and depth

 

2.    Application of the method will be limited to education in general, rather than the specific topic

 

3.    Evaluation and Analysis will be limited, with answers tending towards the descriptive.

 
5-8

No one should be here!

 1.    Knowledge of covert participant observation will be limited and undeveloped – e.g. two to three insubstantial points about some features of covert participant observation.

 

2.    Application to the topic will be very limited and at a tangent to the demands of the question, e.g. perhaps drifting into an unfocused comparison of different methods.

 

3.    Minimal/no evaluation.

 
1-4

You defo shouldn’t be here!

 Answers in this band will show very limited knowledge, eg one to two very insubstantial points about methods in general. Very little/no understanding of the question and of the presented material.

Significant errors, omissions, and/or incoherence in application of material.

Some material ineffectually recycled from the Item, or some knowledge applied solely to the substantive issue of pupils with behavioural difficulties, with very little or no reference to covert participant observation.

 

 

 

 

Methods in Context Essay Template

A suggested template for the Methods in Context Question on one of the AQA’s 7191 (1)education and methods in context sample exam papers – the template should work for most Method in Context questions, but it won’t work for all of them (it’ll fit less well for secondary data MIC questions)

Question: 06 Read Item B below and answer the question that follows

Item B

Investigating pupils with behavioural difficulties

Some pupils experience behavioural difficulties and problems interacting with others. This can create a major obstacle to learning, for both themselves and their classmates. In some cases, they are taught in specialist schools or in pupil referral units separate from mainstream education. Often, their behavioural difficulties result from problems outside school and many pupils come from materially deprived and chaotic home backgrounds.

Some sociologists may study pupils with behavioural difficulties using covert participant observation. This method enables the researcher to witness directly the pupils’ behaviour and its context. It may also allow the researcher to build a relationship of trust with pupils and parents. However, the researcher may find it difficult to fit in and he or she may need to adopt a specialised role such as teacher or support worker.

Evaluate the strengths and limitations of using covert participant observation to investigate pupils with behavioural difficulties (20)

Suggested Essay Plan

Cover Four things – Sampling/ Representativeness, Access, Validity, Ethics – In relation to the specific topic you are will be researching….

Discuss getting a sample/ Representativeness How might you gain a representative sample of the group you are studying? Are there any reasons why it might be difficult to get a representative sample?

Will the research method in the question make achieving a representative sample easier or more difficult?

What could you do to ensure representativeness?

 

 

 
Discuss gaining access to respondents Once you’ve decided on your sample, why might gaining access to respondents be a problem? (think of who you will be researching, and where you will be researching)

 

 

 

Will the choice of method make gaining access easier or more difficult?

 

 

 

 

What would you have to do to make sure you can gain access to this particular group?

 

 

 

 
Discuss validity/ empathy/ trust/ Insight Think of who you will be researching – are there any specific reasons why they may not wish to disclose information, or be unable to be disclose information?

 

 

 

Will the research method in the question make gaining trust easier or more difficult?

 

 

 

What could you do to make sure you get valid data from the people you will be researching?

 

 

 
Discuss Ethics Think of the specific topic you are researching in relation to who you will be researching – are there any specific ethical problems with researching these people?

 

 

Given these ethical problems, is the research method appropriate?

 

 

How can you make sure research is ethical?

 

 
Conclusion Based on all of the above is this a practical, theoretically sound and ethical method for this topic

 

NB – For the Topic you could discuss any of the following:

Who you might be researching

  • Pupils
  • Teachers
  • Parents
  • Support Staff

Where you might be researching pupils with behavioural difficulties

  • Classrooms
  • Staffrooms
  • Parents’ homes

 Specific characteristics of the subjects under investigation

  • Vulnerability
  • Stigmatisation
  • Parental consent

For the Method – You should consider all of TPEN: See here for the factors you should consider

Also relevant:

Participant Observation

Using Participant Observation to Research Education

 

Globalisation and Education

This post explores five ways in which globalisation has changed education in the U.K. including increased competition for jobs from people abroad, the increasing influence of global ICT companies, and increasing multiculturalism in education.

Globalisation refers to the increasing interconnectedness between societies across the globe.

Globalisation and Education

Three dimensions of Globalisation

This post examines how economic and cultural globalisation and increasing migration have affected education in the United Kingdom, before we look at the consequences we review these three aspects of globalisation!

Economic globalisation

is the globalisation of trade, production and consumption. Most of what we consume in the UK is produced and manufactured abroad, for example, often through Transnational Corporations, or companies which operate in more than one country, such as Shell. As a result of globalisation we have seen a decline in manufacturing jobs in recent years, because these have moved abroad (to countries such as China) and most jobs in the UK are now in the service and leisure sectors.

Cultural Globalisation

refers to the increasingly rapid spread of ideas and values around the globe. This is mainly brought about as a result of the growth of ICT – communications technology which makes it possible to communicate with people in other countries instantaneously. Cultural globalisation includes everything from the spread of music and fashion and consumer products and culture to the spread of political and religious ideas.

Increasing migration

is also part of globalisation – with more people moving around the globe for various reasons. Sometimes this is voluntary, with people moving abroad for work or education, other times it is involuntary – as is the case with refugees from conflicts or climate disasters. As a result of increasing immigration, the UK is now a much more multicultural society than in the 1950s.

Five ways in which globalisation has affected education in the U.K.

1. Increased competition for jobs abroad meant the New Labour government increased spending on education in order to try and give children skills to make them more competitive in a global labour market. New Labour wanted 50% of children to enter Higher Education, although this goal was never achieved.

2. Part of economic globalisation is the establishment of global ICT companies such as Google and Apple. These powerful institutions are now involved in writing curriculums, and online learning materials for various governments around the world. Thus education is increasingly shaped by Transnational Corporations, who make a profit out of providing these services to government. If you have an exam with the edexcell exam board for example, that would have been written by Pearsons (along with your text book), a global corporation.

3. Increasing migration has meant education is now more multicultural – all schools now teach about the ‘six world religions’ in RE, and we have many faith schools in the UK serving Muslim and Jewish students. In more recent years schools have had to respond to increasing numbers of Polish children entering primary and secondary schools.

4. Increasing cultural globalisation challenges the relevance of a ‘National Curriculum’ – what is the place of the Nation State and the idea of a ‘national curriculum’ if we live in an increasingly global culture. It also challenges what type of history and literature we should be teaching.

5. Finally, the growth of global ICT companies and global media more generally challenges the authority of traditional schooling and possibly teachers. What role does a traditional school model have when you can get all your information for free on YouTube, the Student Room and so on….

Signposting and Related Posts

For students of A-level sociology this material is relevant mainly to the sociology of education topic, and it is also relevant to the globalisation aspect of the global development module.

This post should also be of interest to anybody studying education at degree level, trainee teachers and anyone with a general interest in globalisation and social change.

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

Revision notes on globalisation…

If you like this sort of thing and want some more context on globalisation, then you might like these revision notes on globalisation, specifically designed for A-level sociology. 

Globalisation cover

Nine pages of summary notes covering the following aspects of globalisation:

– Basic definitions and an overview of cultural, economic and political globalisation
– Three theories of globalisation – hyper-globalism, pessimism and transformationalism.
– Arguments for and against the view that globalisation is resulting in the decline of the nation state.
– A-Z glossary covering key concepts and key thinkers.

Five mind-maps covering the following:

– Cultural, economic, and political globalisation: a summary
– The hyper-globalist view of globalisation
– The pessimist view of globalisation
– The transformationalist/ postmodernist view of globalisation.
– The relationship between globalisation and education.

These revision resources have been designed to cover the globalisation part of the global development module for A-level sociology (AQA) but they should be useful for all students given that you need to know about globalisation for education, the family and crime, so these should serve as good context.

They might also be useful to students studying other A-level or first year degree subjects such as politics, history, economics or business, where globalisation is on the syllabus.

The Feminist Perspective on Education (UK Focus)

The Feminist perspective on Education

Liberal Feminists celebrate the progress made so far in improving girls’ achievement. They essentially believe that the ‘Future is now Female’ and now that girls are outperforming boys in education, it is only a matter of time until more women move into politics and higher paid, managerial roles at work.

Radical Feminists, however, argue that Patriarchy still works through school to reinforce traditional gender norms and to disadvantage girls – Add in details to the notes below.

  1. Some Radical Feminist Sociologists see concern over boys’ relative underachievement as a ‘moral panic’. Boys have still been improving their achievement in the last thirty years, just not as fast as girls. The Feminist argument is that the focus on education at the moment on ‘raising boys achievement’ reflects a male dominated system panicking at the fact that old patriarchal power relations are starting to break down.

  1. Despite improvements in girl’s education – subject choices still remain heavily gendered, and girls do not seem to be ‘breaking the glass ceiling’.

  1. Feminists would also draw on the above research which suggests that traditional gender norms are reinforced in schools, to the disadvantage of girls.

  1. Recent research suggests that despite girls doing well at school – girls are increasingly subject to sexist bullying, something which is becoming worse with the ‘normalisation of pornography’. Read the extract from Kat Banyard over page for more details and consider how common such incidents are today. Read the extract provided for details

Extract from Kat Banyard’s “The Equality Illusion”

Chapter 2 – Hands up for A gendered Education

While girls are discouraged from using their bodies on the sports field, they often find their bodies at the centre of another unwelcome kind of activity. Chloe was one of the many women and girls I heard from during the course of my research into violence at school. ‘I had boys groping my en masse. It wasn’t just at break times – in class as well. Sometimes they used to hold me down and take it turns, it was universally accepted. Teachers pretended they didn’t notice. I would regularly hang out in the toilets at break time. I felt pretty violated; it made me hate my body.’ Having now left school, Chloe can pinpoint exactly when the sexual harassment began. ‘When my breasts grew. I went from an A to an E cup when I was fourteen.’ It became a regular feature of her school day, mostly happening when the boys were in groups. ‘People would randomly scream ‘’slut’’. One boy told me that he has a fantasy that he wanted to tie me up and viciously rape me. He was a bit of an outcast. But when he said that all the boys were high-fiving him. He got serious street-cred for saying it.’’ Classrooms are training grounds for boys aspiring to be ‘real men’ and girls like Jena and Chloe are paying the price. Humiliating and degrading girls serves to highlight just how masculine boys really are. And so, sexist bullying and sexual harassment are an integral part of daily school life for many girls.

Hayley described to me how some of the boys at her secondary school were using new technologies to harass girls. ‘They try and take pictures with their camera phones up you skirt while you’re sitting at your desk. Nobody knows what to say. They wouldn’t want to provoke an argument.’ Boys also access internet pornography on school computers. Hayley said, ‘in year seven and eight it’s quite common. Even the boys you wouldn’t expect you see getting told off by teachers for it.’ Similarly Sarah remembers pornography being commonplace at her school; ‘Every student was asked to bring in newspaper articles. Many boys saw this as a great opportunity to bring in newspapers such as the Sun, Star, Sport etc and make a point of looking at, sharing and showing the countless page-three-style images. Sarah was ‘extremely upset on a number of occasions when boys who sat near me in class would push these pages in front of me and make comments. Most of the time all the forms of harassment went completely unchallenged; I don’t think (the teachers) ever paid any attention to sexual harassment.’

The consequences for girls who are sexually harassed or assaulted at school can be devastating. Depression and loss of self-esteem are common. If girls experience repeated sexual harassment they are significantly more likely to attempt suicide. In fact the trauma symptoms reported by adolescent girls subject to sexual harassment have been found to be similar to those descried by rape victims. Yet despite the fact that sexual harassment is shown to have a more damaging impact on victims than other forms of school bullying, teachers are less likely to intervene in incidences of the former. Why? The sexual harassment of girls is viewed as ‘normal’ behaviour for the boys. And it is precisely this naturalising of the act, this insidious complacency it elicits, which has enabled sexist bullying and harassment to flourish in classrooms across the world.

Postmodern and Late Modern Views of Education – A Summary

The Postmodernist View of Education 

  • Postmodernists stand against universalising education systems – it there is no one truth, then it is not appropriate to have a one size fits all education system.
  • Modernist education is oppressive to many students – students give up their freedom for 11 years in order to learn knowledge which will improve their life chances – this does not work for everyone.
  • Ideas of education which fit with a postmodern agenda include –
  1. Home Education
  2. Liberal forms of education (Summerhill School)
  3. Adult Education and Life Long Learning (because adults can make more of a choice)
  4. Education outside of formal education (leisure)

The Late-Modernist View of Education

  • At an Institutional level education (mainly schools) become a fundamental part of the reflexive institutional landscape of Post-Fordist late-modernity
  • Education policy is one of the things which the New Right and New Labour governments can and have used to ‘colonise the future’ by (a) providing opportunities for reskilling in an ever changing global labour market and (b) to keep under surveillance students ‘at risk’ of future deviance.

Sociological Perspectives on Education Summary Grid

A Level Sociology – Perspectives on Education Summary Grid

A summary of the Functionalist, Marxist, New Right, Late Modern/ New Labour and Postmodern Perspectives on the role of education in society – focusing on Key ideas, supporting evidence and criticisms. (Scroll down for ‘test yourself’ link)

NB grids don’t display particularly well online so I’ve put in two pictures of the grid itself, summarised the content in text form below, and you can buy the pdf colour version itself as part of the ReviseSociology education revision bundle!

The Functionalist Perspective on Education

Key ideas

  • Education performs positive functions for the individual and society:
  • Creating social solidarity (value consensus) through teaching the same subjects.
  • Teaching skills necessary for work – necessary for a complex division of labour.
  • Acting as a bridge between home and society – from particularistic to universalistic values.
  • Role Allocation and meritocracy

Supporting evidence for Functionalism

  • School performs positive functions for most pupils – exclusion and truancy rates are very low.
  • Role Allocation – Those with degrees earn 85% more than those without degrees.
  • Schools do try to foster ‘solidarity’ – Extended Tutorials – (‘cringing together’?)
  • Education is more ‘work focused’ today – increasing amounts of vocational courses.
  • Schooling is more meritocratic than in the 19th century (fairer).

Criticisms/ limitations

  • Marxists – the education system is not meritocratic (not fair) – e.g. private schools benefit the wealthy.
  • Functionalism ignores the negative sides of school –
  • Many schools fail OFSTED inspections,
  • Not all pupils succeed
  • Negative In school processes like subcultures/ bullying/ teacher labelling
  • Postmodernists argue that ‘teaching to the test’ kills creativity.
  • Functionalism reflects the views of the powerful. The education system tends to work for them. (because they can send their children to private schools) and it suggests there is nothing to criticise.

If you need to review this topic in more depth there are more detailed class notes here: The Functionalist Perspective on Education.

The Marxist Perspective on Education

Key ideas

  • Traditional Marxists see the education system as working in the interests of ruling class elites. The education system performs three functions for these elites:
    • Reproduces class inequality.
    • Legitimates class inequality.
    • The Correspondence Principle – School works in the interests of capitalist employers.
  • Neo- Marxism – Paul Willis – A Classic piece of Participant Observation of 12 lads who formed a counter school culture. Willis argued they rejected authority and school and just turned up to ‘have a laff’ (rejecting the correspondence theory). However, they ended up failing and still ended up in working class jobs (so supports the reproduction of class inequality).

Supporting evidence for Marxism

  • To support the reproduction of inequality – Who gets the best Jobs. And there is no statistically significant evidence against the FACT that, on aggregate, the richer your parents, the better you do in education.
  • To support the Legitimation of class inequality – pupils are generally not taught about how unfair the education system is – they are taught that if they do badly, it is down to them and their lack of effort.
  • To support the Ideological State Apparatus – Surveillance has increased schools’ ability to control students.

Criticisms/ limitations

  • There are many critical subjects taught at university that criticise elites (e.g. Sociology).
  • It is deterministic – not every child passively accepts authority (see Paul Willis).
  • Some students rebel – 5% are persistent truants (they are active, not passive!).
  • Some students from poor backgrounds do ‘beat the odds’ and go on to achieve highly.
  • The growth of the creative industries in the UK suggest school doesn’t pacify all students.
  • The nature of work and the class structure has also changed, possibly making Marxism less relevant today.

For more detailed class notes on this topic please see this post: The Marxist Perspective on Education.

The Neoliberal and New Right Views of Education

Key ideas

  • Their policies seem to have raised standards.
  • Created an ‘education market’ – Schools were run like businesses – competing with each other for pupils and parents were given the choice over which school = league tables.
  • The state provides a framework in order to ensure that schools were all teaching the same thing – National Curriculum.
  • Schools should teach subjects that prepare pupils for work: New Vocationalism!

Supporting evidence for the New Right

  • There has been a correlation between the introduction of New Right policies and steadily improving results all through the 1990s and 2000s, right up to the onset of Coronavirus distorted everything.
  • Their policies have been applied internationally (PISA league tables).
  • Asian Countries with very competitive education systems tend to top the league tables (e.g. China).

Criticisms/ limitations

  • Competition between schools benefited the middle classes and lower classes, ethnic minorities and rural communities ended up having less effective choice.
  • Vocational Education was also often poor.
  • There is a contradiction between wanting schools to be free to compete and imposing a national framework that restricts schools.
  • The National Curriculum has been criticised for being ethnocentric and too restrictive on teachers and schools.

For more in depth class-notes please see: The New Right View of Education.

The Late Modern Perspective on Education

Key Ideas

  • Government needs to spend more on education to respond to the rapid pace of change brought about by Globalisation.
  • People need to re-skill more often as – government should play a role in managing this. Schools are also necessary to keep under surveillance students ‘at risk’ of future deviance.
  • New Labour Policies – the purpose of school should be to raise standards, improve equality of opportunity, and promote diversity and equality.

Supporting Evidence for Late Modernism

  • All developed economies have governments who spend large amounts of money on education, suggesting more (not less like Neoliberals suggest) state education is good.
  • It is difficult to see what other institution could teach about diversity other than schools.
  • There did seem to be more equality of opportunity under New Labour rather than under the 2015 Neoliberal/ New Right government.

New Labour’s education policies are probably best described as Late Modern.

Criticisms

  • Postmodernists argue that government attempts to ‘engineer’ pupils to fit society kill creativity
  • Marxists argue that whatever state education does it can never reduce class inequalities – we need to abolish global capitalism, not adapt to it!
  • Late-Modern, New Labour ideas about education are expensive. Neoliberalists say that we can no longer afford to spend huge sums of money on education.
  • See also evaluations of New Labour Policies

The Postmodern View of Education

Key ideas

  • Stand against universalising education systems.
  • See Modernist education as oppressive to many students – especially minority groups
  • Believe the ‘factory production-line mentality of education kills creativity
  • Ideas of education which fit with a postmodern agenda include – Home Education, Liberal forms of education, Adult Education and Life Long Learning and Education outside of formal education (leisure)

Supporting evidence

  • Many people agree that schools do kill creativity (Ted Robinson, and Suli-Breaks)
  • Sue Palmer – Teaching the test has resulted in school being miserable and stressful for many pupils.
  • Do we really want an education system more like the Chinese one?
  • The National Curriculum has been criticised as being ethnocentric (potentially oppressive to minority groups).

Criticisms/ limitations

  • Late-Modernists – we need schools to promote tolerance of diversity.
  • Neoliberalism – we need a competitive system to drive up standards in order to be able to compete in a global free market!
  • Marxists would argue that home education would lead to greater inequality – not all parents have an equal ability – if we leave education to parents, the middle classes will just benefit more, and working class kids will be even further behind.
  • Liberal forms of education may result in the survival of the fittest’

For a more in depth look at this topic: Postmodernism and Education.

Signposting/ Find out More

This post has been written primarily for students revising for their A-level Sociology exams, specifically for the education topic which appears on paper SCLY1

This post focuses only on the knowledge, you also need to be able to apply it! For further help with revising for this paper, you can see my ‘essays and exams page‘ for examples of the kind of questions which may come up and help with analysis and evaluation skills.

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