Teaching Education, Historically, Is Meant

Teaching

Education, historically, is meant to work in favor of a variety of aspects of political and economic needs, which determine the function of education. The function of education has been under debate, however, in more recent years. Sociologists have come up with three main theories that are representative of their perspectives when it comes to education. These perspectives are: the functionalist theory, conflict theory, and interactionist theory. These three disparate theories will be examine in this paper in relation to education and teaching.

The functionalist theory stresses the importance of how education can best work in favor of the needs of society. The functionalist theory is simple to understand in that its main goal is to educate the next generation of individuals. Emile Durkheim was the "father" of the functionalist theory as he viewed education as a way to socialize people into society -- "everyday participation in the social life of the school forms students' habits, values, and skills" (Smelser 450).

Theorist Max Weber was drawn to the topic of education by his analysis of social stratification (Smelser 451), which is essentially what conflict theory is all about. Conflict theory looks at education as a way to keep social classes in their right place -- that is, those with power and higher class keep their positions on top of the social strata and those who are of the lower class will be kept beneath in their roles as subservient workers. Conflict theorists really do not see education's purpose as being all that different from that of the functionalists, but conflict theorists see the educational system as a whole as a way of maintaining the status quo -- that is, everyone stays in their positions of class whether that is a high class or low class; there is no social climbing or movement. Weber postulated that as the 19th century progressed, "university education had become an increasingly useful means to legitimate traditional status honor…" providing this legitimating by "virtue of study in a liberal curriculum that prepared students not for work but for 'the conduct of life'" (451). While the functionalist theory and the conflict theory aren't so different in theory, Durkheim's functionalist theory at least offers a bit more hope for students and it doesn't assume that education is meant to keep people in their place. However, preparing students for life is rather elusive as we can see especially today where the quality of education differs so dramatically from state-to-state and even from zip code to zip code.