EDUCATION

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Introduction

When majority of human groups started to emphasize on specialized skills

and knowledge to further understand the cosmos, education became universal
and from then on, was highly esteemed as the commonly accepted means to
achieve societal goals. Recent societies associate superior education with economic
security in the adult life thereby marginalizing academic disciplines that
promote beauty and aesthetics. Educational environment seemed to breed a
collective recognition that being a student is simply a rehearsal to the final role that
will allow us entry into a more spectacular role in the mechanical and functional social
order of wealth accumulation. In the process of acquiring the necessary expertise
and proficiencies, many learners failed to appreciate the promise of scholastic life.
The truths of academic life give us the chance to exist separate from the disturbing
truths of economic arrangements. The academic psyche allows us to celebrate
prolonged infancy in an irresponsible and docile paradise of text and images.
Academic life keeps the exuberant soul away from the serious business of production
and role expectations. But this attitude towards the celebration of scholarly
spectacles was silenced by the invasive logics of capitalism and consumption.

Traditionally, formal education was viewed as an institutionalized and systematic

transmission of society’s accumulated knowledge under the vigilant gaze of a
highly skilled teacher who understands the thought and language of the universe.
Scholarly episodes in the past had been exclusively directed to favored social
categories such as the rich, the whites and the men, but overtime, the
overwhelming demand to make knowledge and skills more accessible to the
majority of the population allowed this wealth of human experiences and discoveries
to spill outside the restrictive walls of the aristocrats. Consequently, knowledge
radically influenced the formation of individual consciousness and collective
identity as advanced by ideologies such as nationalism and democracy to seek
freedom and autonomy specifically during the colonial period.

Paolo Freire (1984) emphasized that education seeks to promote two

essential objectives in the assertion of human potential. The first intention of
education according to Freire, is the creation of specialists and technicians

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integrating the individuals into the logic of the present system. The second is a
more profound and abstract objective of transforming education into an apparatus of
freedom where men and women liberated from ignorance, participates in the creation
and re-creation of the world. He further observed that the present system of education
is dominated by an ill condition known as the narration sickness, where the teacher
becomes the ultimate source of truth and knowledge and the students as passive
consumers or recipients of the teacher’s discourses. With this arrangement, Freire
advances the banking concept of education wherein the students viewed as empty
spaces must be filled with nutritive or digestive education to become healthy agents of
social transformation.

A more recent observation on the trends of postmodern educational dynamics

led Randy David (2002) to elaborate on concepts such as the shut-out syndrome (refers
to the ability of students to mentally block everything they hear inside the classroom)
and simultaneous engagement (shifting from task to task or putting some tasks
on extended hold). He argued that, one of the stubborn challenges that confront
modern universities is the disease of knowingness, an illusion of knowing too much
because much information had been made cheap and accessible as the result of
technological revolutions.

Nature of Education

Historically, education was an isolated province reserved for the elites;

as a consequence, they had the luxury of imposing their world views over those
people who had no words to articulate their own perception and interpretation of the
universe. The pronounced gap between science and common sense led the
privileged few to perpetually dominate human transactions. Thus, it has always been
the primal objective of the population to move away from common sense
and acquire a scientific understanding of the world through tedious and grueling
process of education. Adding to the divisive nature of education is its inherent
hostile character of knowledge formulation through violent departures from previous
academic centers. Mills (1959:13-

14) expressed that:

in every intellectual age some one style of reflection tends

to become a common denominator of cultural life…such
ways of thinking as ‘Newtonian physics’ or ‘Darwinian
biology’…became an influence that reached far beyond
any sphere of idea and imagery…During the modern era,

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 physical and biological science has been the major
common denominator of serious reflection and popular
metaphysics in Western societies.

The consistency and validity of laboratory experiments became the accepted mode of
procedure and the source of intellectual security (ibid: 13). The dominance of physical
and natural sciences in this particular period of human history validates the vision
of Comte’s Law of Three Stages (theological, metaphysical and positivistic). The
transition from modern to postmodern consciousness persuades the individual to
imagine that the void is being filled by scholars who make knowledge a little more
public with the aid of computer technologies.

Functions of Education

1. Reinforces collective identity

Socializes the learners into the culture and valuation of the group by constantly
reminding them of the moral obligation and allegiance they owe to the society thereby
making them feel socially significant because they are part of a group.

2. Formation of highly specialized skills

New skills are needed to address the increasing needs of the society, making the school
a distinctive social institution employing specially trained personnel to convey the
knowledge needed for adult roles (Macionis:511). Education allocates
specific roles to people based on scholastic achievements.

3. Knowledge production and innovation

Education above all is the institution that seeks to provide a scientific

appreciation of the universe. For many scholars and academicians, the field of
education is a hostile environment of cerebral combat where old ideas are
challenged and if necessary mutilated by allowing new visions and perspectives to
develop. Through academic research, educational institutions expand our
knowledge and understanding of what was previously unknown and
unfathomable.

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Education from the Conflict Perspective

The Conflict perspective assumes an elitist perspective where it is natural to

emphasize that the collective consciousness and identity present in the
educational system is manufactured by the dominant class. Though cultural elements
are typically products of dialectical relations between the ruling class and the ruled; the
ruling class through its economic or political power, has the advantage to impose its
worldview on a subordinate culture or cultures. Conflict theorists argued that this
imposition may be achieved through legal or political suppression or by
monopolizing the media of communication such the educational system. They
further insist that all this apparatus of controls was built by first creating the psyche of
masters and the oppressed.

The tendency to emphasize on the coercive inclination of the elite class (or state
domination) on the political, economic and cerebral landscape steers the populace to
entirely miss the point that at that same moment when the dominant class decided to
claim the market and the ideological state apparatuses (Louise Althusser’s ISA analysis
articulates how social institutions assign specific roles and promote this consciousness in
a stratified manner), they became agents of cultural production and reproduction. This
arrangement becomes apparent and being maintained by almost all
structural agencies within the society. It is interesting therefore to claim that, the
academic institutions as the architects s of human knowledge, turns into
something far more beyond clever arguments and outstanding theoretical
formulations. Institutions of learning embodying the consciousness of the
dominant class divide the society depending on the economic capability of the
learners.

The diagram below reveals the possible influence of the scholar in constructing
the identity of the dominant class (the learners willing to pay the cost of knowledge) by
providing meanings and symbols. This worldview of meanings and symbols
are commodities not fairly accessible to all who wants to learn. The diagram below
crudely shows this relationship:

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 DOMINANT CULTURE POPULAR MASS
ACADEMIC ELITE/DOMINANT (constructed by the (recipient of social
INSTITUTIONS CLASS ruling class who had valuation crafted by
access to high quality the elite and
education) academics)

Figure I: Educational Institution and the Dominant Class

The simple diagram shows the basic transfer of knowledge and how this process affects
the actors of the society, books or the academe acting as the keepers of meanings
and symbols transmit knowledge to the economically endowed novice who most of
the time belongs to the elite class. The academe then with his legions of fancied
persona configures the mental attitude of the elite. This attitude or way of seeing the
world becomes a habit and eventually institutionalized thus producing the dominant
culture of way interpretation and attribution. The popular mass restlessly becomes
mere recipients of the manufactured archetypes because they were silenced
or muted by the institution itself by teaching false consciousness, which led many of
them to think that the existing social order is natural.

Education in the Postmodern Period

The movement towards academic convergence is the consequence of the

recent academic progression stirred primarily by the postmodernist principles. The
postmodern influence promoted various academic wanderings allowing its practitioner
to become an intellectual drifter. The emergence of diverse theoretical and
methodological stance permits the practitioner to transcend intellectual boundaries.
After decades of polarization; suffering and flourishing from the discoveries,

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re-discoveries and dissatisfaction from his previous designs, the craftsman
acknowledges his own inadequacies and strongly demanded liberation from the
rigid canons of his previous allegiances. Postmodernism challenges the learner to
become a pathfinder, toolmaker or a craftsman by bravely creating new ways of
perceiving existing orders of theories and methods. It suggests that academic
disciplines should flourish from the discontent of its practitioners by initiating
academic battles that will ultimately abolish the Absolutes and liberate its
practitioners from the monstrosity and tyranny of the Old School. Student of the
postmodern era is compelled to create a new language that articulates the
graceful destruction of grand models that restricts creative understanding and
expression. The student is provoked to be consumed by the impulse and passion for
discovery and encourages him to abandon his colleagues and acquaints
himself with new and unknown orbits as disordered as the human
imagination (Nisbet, 1970). He thinks with immense ferocity and passion that
the conventional practitioners who are unwilling to find new meanings may not accept
his products of detached formulations.

Postmodern education seems to promote the mutiny of paradigms

and recognizes the tremendous limitations endured by present scientists in the
accumulation and exhibition of social facts. The student is conditioned to
think that the new knowledge is a consequence of intellectual hostilities and has the
tendency to connect and divide associates. By gazing and agitating the unknown
mindscapes, he becomes an intellectual mercenary ruthlessly annihilating doctrines,
constantly decentering the center, arranging and rearranging the confidence of
dogmas, breaching the security and chains of the hierarchies, disassociating the
associates. The learner then appears to be a demented but clever masochist who
desires to suffer and twist his soul in all directions. This is what Weber (1946) calls
strange intoxication:

And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to

speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his soul
depends upon whether or not he makes the correct
conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well
stay away from science. He will never have what one may
call ‘personal experience’ of science. Without this strange
intoxication, ridiculed by every outsider; without this passion,
this ‘thousand of years must pass before you enter into life
and thousands more wait in silence’ – according to whether
or not you succeed in making this conjecture; without this,
you have no calling for science and you should do
something else. For nothing is worthy of man as man unless
he can pursue it with passionate devotion.

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The fundamental objective of the learner is to abandon the intellectual security of the
hierarchies because frequent application and validation of existing techniques and
perspectives allows these grand narratives with their inherent constraints and
impositions to consume the student and eventually rob him of the excitement of
a constant on-going search.

Latent Functions of School

Youth transition

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paolo Freire:1970)

Freire reiterated that the lack of education perpetuates the oppressor-oppressed

relationship. The individual’s inability to understand and articulate one’s interaction with
the cosmos makes the being silent (culture of silence) and predisposed to
accommodate a false consciousness that oppression is not something that one must
overcome. On the other hand, a meaningful cognition of the social world allows the
individual being to slowly tread towards autonomy and freedom. Interestingly, the
oppressed that lacked the words to express one’s narrative feels insecure and is
horrified by the idea of freedom, they fear to embrace freedom and power. While the
oppressor on the one hand who had everything in its disposal to comprehend the
process of history making fears to lose freedom and power captures the relationship by
employing false generosity or humanitarianism to keep the oppressed dependent on
their kindness and goodwill.

Student-Teacher Interaction Pattern

Freire further observed that the present educational system ushers to the
creation of the phenomenon he labeled as narration sickness where the teacher is
engaged in a monologue and at all times the center of consciousness inside the
lecture halls. Both the student and the teacher seems to enter into silent understanding
that the student is an empty space that needs to be filled (banking concept of
education) by digestive or nutritive education.

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 Freire clarified the two dimensions of the “word” to allow the learner to
appreciate that action (first dimension) and reflection (second dimension) must be
integrated (praxis, the integration on word and action) since without action mere
verbalism, empty words without reflection mere activism. Moreover, the educator must
make it known to the learners that limit-situations are not the impassable boundaries
where possibilities end, but the real boundaries where all possibilities begin; they are not
the frontier which separates being from nothingness, but the frontier which separates
being from being more.

Students and Criminals: Reformulation of Prison Techniques (Foucault:1995)

Foucault argues that prison and school may not be at all different, both the student and the
criminal are under constant supervision and regimentation. Like the prison, the teachers act as
guards constantly calculating the progress of the student. The mechanism of power in this
arrangement is being regularly monitored by demanding mechanical obedience and to some
extent manipulation by the teacher in the guise of disciplinary measures. Space/location
(supervisory architecture, disciplinary space) is highly significant in this arrangement enhancing
the teacher’s capability of supervising the individuals. Bentham’s Panopticon as mentioned by
Foucault can be noticed in the classroom where the set-up was designed to the advantage of
the teacher giving him the complete gaze and steadfast domination over his students.

Foucault further elaborates that:

The organization of the serial space was one of the great

technical mutations of elementary education. It made it possible
to supersede the traditional system (a pupil working for a few
minutes with the master, while the rest of the heterogeneous group
remained idle and unattended). By assigning individual spaces it
made possible the supervision of each individual and the
simultaneous work of all. It organized a new economy of the time
apprenticeship. It made the educational space function like a
learning machine, but also as a machine for supervising,
hierarchizing, rewarding (147).

May it be in the military or civilian schools, the body is trained to automatically respond to the
desired choreography of the schoolmaster. Maximum efficiency was required, uniform
handwriting was demanded making the body an orderly and mechanized entity completely
devoted to the design of the teaching landscape. Foucault reiterated that:

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 The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores
it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A “political anatomy” which
was also a “mechanics of power”, was being born; it defined how
one may have a hold over others’ bodies, not only so they may do
what one wishes, but so they may operate as one wishes, with the
techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines
(138).

Constant training therefore signifies the automation of the body under the careful observation of
the schoolmaster with its own version of punishments that can be readily disposed if unnecessary
violations occur. Conformity to the standard of the group is daily measured and punishment
calculated through various techniques such as examinations and recitations. The major
difference between the prison and the school is that the school tends to increase the efficiency
of the student while the prison is designed to constrain the criminal and take away some of his
rights.

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Theoretical and Historical Perspectives

Theoretical Perspectives serve as the basis and funnel of sociologists as they

conduct up to date researches. These perspectives contain theoretical concepts which

are used for further understanding of social development, as well as in the fortification

of researchers’ new ideas. Discussed hereunder are different theoretical perspectives

that pave way in the development of sociology of education.

Status Attainment and Social Mobility

Status attainment and social mobility have been influential in the quest of

molding researches related to the structure of the sociology of education. Status

attainment is deep-rooted in Weber’s concept regarding status groups, which are

formed based on ethnicity, occupation, and class. Five prominent sociologists present

their arguments regarding the influence of social attainment and mobility in the field of

education: Max Weber, Pitirim Sorokin, Ralph Turner, Peter Blau and Otis Duncan.

One of the influential sociology theorists, Max Weber, argued that education

system has a dual character in society: “Education allows individual to advance

themselves through meritocratic selection processes, and is also used as mechanism for

social closure: Status groups use education as a means for keeping outsiders from

obtaining access to desirable occupations.”

Expanding Weber’s work, Pitirim Sorokin suggested that “Schools sort and sieve

students into occupations, allowing limited amount of mobility in the society. Thus, the

role of education in society is to determine allocation of scarce resources to individual.”

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Meaning, schools control individuals who would be given opportunities for privileged

occupations. If so, even who are less privileged yet qualified individuals could be given

opportunities to succeed. Therefore, social mobility is attained. The resemblance

between Weber and Sorokin’s is that both agreed that schools aid in the occurrence of

social mobility, either blocking or allowing it.

Another researcher, Ralph Turner argues that, “American mobility involves the

careful, early selection of recruits for advancement to elite status and it is a contest

within all individuals to have equal change in attaining elite status in multiple stages in

education career.” He used cross-national comparison of the educational system

among capitalist countries.

Two sociologists namely Peter Blau and Otis Duncan establish means for other

sociologists to explore on what causes social mobility instead of determining only the

mobility rate. According to them, “Social background influenced occupational

attainment largely through its effects on prior educational attainment.” They

emphasized the connection between social origin and social destination. This denotes

that where you came from (e.g. status of the family) may serve either a hindrance or

way for an individual’s educational attainment.

3 Theoretical Approach

As the social attainment paradigm is becoming influential, three theoretical

concepts in the sociology of education sprouted: human capital, cultural capital, and

social capital. In the early 1960s, Theodore Schultz and Gary Becker, are just two of

many economists that developed the concept of human capital. According to them,

“One could invest in the human capital of individuals just as one invested financial

capital in firm.” This contends that attainment of education led individuals to broaden

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their knowledge and skills. As they acquire more knowledge and skills, this results to

further education which requires large costs (investment). Yet, as they finish schooling,

they would recoup their investment through their salaries. This human capital approach

was important for explaining why individuals and governments were willing to invest

increasing resources in education.

“Individuals from privileged classes were trained from birth to possess cultural

dispositions, attitudes and styles which set them apart from ordinary members of the

society.” That statement elucidates the concept of cultural capital. This established

distinctions in the society, from elite and poor, educated and uneducated, and the like.

This instituted social inequality in both educational and occupational attainment.

During the early 1980s, social capital was developed. James Coleman argued

that, “A focus on human and cultural capital obscured the fact that one of the

greatest resources individuals have is their social relationships. “ Coleman maintain that

the absence that the absence of social capital among public school families

represents a loss of vital resources for students. Otherwise, Private and Catholic school

establishes better communication with the students’ parents which paves way to an

effective monitoring and enforcement of students.

Summary and Conclusion

Education is viewed by the fields of the social science of sociology by the three

sociological perspectives. The first perspective is the Functionalist which viewed

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education in the positive side and in the advantageous side of it. There are numerous

functions considered with this perspective. Education teaches knowledge and skills to

the members of the society, it enhances social mobility of the students for the future

and gatekeeps them, it promotes national unity and plants the seeds of patriotism

within individuals, and it provides custodial care. These are the beneficial functions of

education. The second perspective is the conflict which viewed education in the

negative side and considered the effects of it that’d harm the society. Such conflicts

discussed were that it reinforces social inequality among students, it also imposes

cultural imperialism and it possesses unequal funding among the schools. These were

the conflicts that this argues that made the hoop-holes of education. Lastly, the third

perspective is the symbolic interactionism which focused on the teacher-student

interaction. There were two factors that contributed to this perspective. The first is the

Pygmalion effect and the second is the tracking effect. These are the perspectives that

viewed education on different point of views. Through sociology, education was

thoroughly and accurately observed and evaluated.

The sociologists mentioned earlier stratified factors that influenced an individual’s

educational achievement such as social status, social origin and social destination.

Schools played a critical role in either blocking or facilitating social mobility. Social

inequality is still reproduced by the schools because of the establishment of social

groups. There are three theoretical approaches that are source for development of

concepts applied to the sociology of education: human capital, cultural capital, and

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social capital. What you sow is what you reap. This best explains that richness of

education (seed), both bitter and sweet, are all worth it because of the fruits that one

will sow once he/she will finish his/her education. Education serves as ones investment

for a thriving future. Next approach is the Cultural approach. This pertains to the

environment where we grow, all the tangible and intangible possessions that our

parents passed on to us. This greatly defines our actions and decisions. The third

approach is the social capital approach. This concept articulates how the social

capital of each individual affects the social relationships of each individual, both in

family and community. During schooling, the community and the family are still

responsible in monitoring the child’s behavior and enforcing good morals.

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Schafer,R.T.(2009).Sociology: A Brief Introduction.(8th edition).New York:

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Arum,R.,Beattie,I.R. &Ford,K.(2011).The Structure of Schooling :Readings in

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