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Sociological function of schooling

University of the People

UNIV5010 Education in Context: History, Philosophy, and Sociology

Stephen King, Instructor

February 10, 2021

Education is one of the most important pillars of modern society. Since humankind

exists, knowledge has been passed from generation to generation, beginning in an informal way

sharing techniques and strategies for hunting and survival. Then it transformed into what we see

nowadays as a formal structured system that put in our hands and minds tools, knowledge, and

the way to use them for social development. To get deeper into this idea, it is essential to

understand some concepts.

According to the RAE (Spanish Royal Academy, 2014), a system is a collection of things

that are related to each other and they refer to a particular entity in an organized manner; taking

this statement, it can be inferred that an education system is the collection of all social, political,

economic and organizational factors that interact each other giving an identity to each one of

them in an organized manner. Focusing on the social aspect of education, the writer considers

that the general purpose of education is the same worldwide, which is the transmission of

theoretical and empirical knowledge that allows the student to become an integral and productive

part of society he or she interacts, that means, education is meant to teach us the things we need

to know to do the best we can in the role we have in society.

In order to achieve that, educational systems have different ways to transmit to the

students the social knowledge they need to be a healthy and active member of society. In recent

years, educational experiences during young ages are being considered more important and

essential. Núñez, P., and Litichever, L. (2015), affirm that the school experience is understood as

a personal, social and institutional construction since it comprises the relationships, meanings,

action logics, and strategies through which students and teachers are constituted in their

integration to a school space with various institutional action logics.

In the context of the author of this assignment, to present the school experience of the

students, a series of facets and dimensions capable of dealing with their multiple determinants

and influences are differentiated, contrasting the representations and justifications of the students

based on social origin, type of family, gender, place of origin, type of center, and educational

performance.

Some of the clearly observable examples in this context are: educational results, that is,

failure, success, abandonment, processes of exclusion, rejection, resistance, resignation,

expressive and instrumental identification in relation to perceptions, school trajectories and their

opinion about their abilities and talents, their perceptions and justifications with regard to school

options, their motivations and expectations in the short and medium-range, their behavior and

their social relationships in the classroom and in the center, their consideration of the curriculum,

knowledge and school tasks, their assessment of teaching models and ideal types of students,

thinking about equal opportunities and social mobility through studies, their assessments of

families (affective climate, school support and styles of educators), perceptions about the rest of

their classmates, identification processes by gender, type of friendships, group formation, their

opinions about their place of residence, neighborhoods as places of stigmatization, among others.

Therefore, education is always carried out within social life. Educating and educators

meet in a social context, outside of which any relationship between people is unthinkable. The

educational function is also a form of communication, a modality of interaction, which postulates

a social situation. All the education process occurs, in fact, not only in a social context but also

within the greater society, since it configures all the elements that constitute the various social

contexts. The social aspect of education may consist of a system of institutions in which human

relationships are verified that communicate cultural patterns to individuals, and education is
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preparing people to fit nicely into that complex social structure and play particular social roles

such as members of more than one institutional group.

For Arnove, R. F. (2013), culture, which represents the dynamic aspect of the social

structure and constitutes the soul of social institutions, becomes the very object of education,

formed as the necessary means that society has to transmit and develop that culture. Expressed in

a general way, to educate is to culturalize. It is necessarily about offering, when not injecting, a

culture that is the spiritual atmosphere that a society breathes and produces.

Particular educational contents are of an evident social nature; thus, professional training,

political initiation, the cultivation of civic and community sense, the teaching of courtesy, etc.,

and even content reputed to be more personal such as ideological or moral convictions, artistic

taste, values or judicial criteria.

In the book, The School as a Means of Developing a Social Consciousness and Social

Ideals in Children, Dewey (1976) affirm that education has a special responsibility on making or

changing social interactions and mentality into a more positive one giving the students ideas of

nationalism, democracy, inclusion, that can help them to be socially efficient. In the book

Democracy and Education, Dewey (1976) he considered that:

“social efficiency means neither more nor less than the capacity to

share in a give and take of experience. It covers all that makes one’s

own experience more worthwhile to others, and all that enables one

to participate more richly in the worthwhile experiences of others”

(p. 127). (Dewey, J; 1976)

Meaning that, for him, social efficiency focuses more on letting people develop their

potential by sharing experiences with others, and like this, citizens gain awareness in several

topics, making them efficient members of the society, increasing the levels of social

development by being active and functional individuals.

Additionally, in the same book Democracy and Education, Dewey (1976) stated that an

important element of society is its culture. If we want to achieve social efficiency, we must

achieve as well cultural efficiency through education. For him, educating people about their past

and their traditions can help them to identify with their heritage as well as the vital role they had

in the past, creating meaningful learning, motivating them to participate, and contribute to the

present society. Furthermore, he affirmed that for students to achieve social tolerance and trust,

students should develop international mindedness, which is open to the belief and values of other

countries, creating an interaction in which different societies can also learn from each other.

In resume, after all the discussion above it can be agreed that the purpose of education is

to accompany girls and boys as they enter our society and enable them to improve it. Of course,

there are powers, interest groups, and individuals who have other goals in education: making

money, indoctrinating, leading the way, etc., but these are not aims of schooling but rather an

instrumentalization of education in the service of frequently unspeakable objectives.

References

Arnove, R. F. (2013). Comparative education: The dialectic of the global and the local. Lanham,

MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Dewey, J., & Boydston, J. A. (1976). Democracy and Education. The middle works, 1899-1924.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J., Boydston, J. A., & Burnett, J. R. (1976). The School as a Means of Developing a

Social Consciousness and Social Ideals in Children, 1899-1924. Carbondale: Southern

Illinois University Press.

Litichever, L., & Núñez, P. (2015). Radiografías de la experiencia escolar: Ser joven(es) en la

escuela. Grupo Editor Universitario.

Real Academia Española: Diccionario de la lengua española, 23.ª ed., [versión 23.4 en línea].

Retrieved March 03, 2021, from https://dle.rae.es