PasteIn this essay I am going to argue that South Africa’s education minimises or perpetuates the gap between the poor people and the people that are privileged in life and have money. According to our research education does minimises the gap between the rich people and people that live in poor circumstances. We am going to use the functionalist theory to support our point. In the past, in the apartheid years South Africa’s government implemented the Bantu Education (Baard & Schreiner, n.d). It was one of South Africa’s most unpleasant laws. Bantu Education worked in the interest of the white people. It denied black people to get the same education like the white people got. They got the best education and the best professions. Back then there were inequalities when it is to education, but today the system has changed. Today there is equality and the Functionalists theory will support our point the best.
” The Bantu Education Act, 1953 (Act no.47 of 1953, later renamed the Black Education Act, 1953) was a South African segregation law which legalised several aspects of the apartheid system. It major provision was enforcing racially separated educational facilities”. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 had the educational development of all black South Africans under the firm grip of the National Party (NP) government. This meant that the government had complete control of what was being taught at schools, endorsing and perpetuating the ethos of apartheid. This ensured that graduating black learners would have skills that would aid the economy, notably in terms of their cheap, exploitable labour. The Minister of Native Affairs in 1953, Hendrik Verwoerd, noted that there would be ”no place for Africans above the level of certain forms of labour”. Bantu Education was made compulsory for all young black pupils, and although literacy rates did improve, the quality of education provided to these learners was sub- standard in comparison to the education programmes that their white counterparts enjoyed.
Despite of the fact that South Africa experienced Bantu education, a very unpleasant law, it still manages to forge ahead. There is a school deep in the green fields of rural Limpopo called Mbilwi Secondary School. It is a huge school, with roughly 2000 pupils, almost 400 of whom are in grade 12. There are 60 to 65 children in a class. Unbelievably this school returns some of the best mathematics and science marks in the country. The grade 12 pass rates is around 99% and almost 95% of the students attending at Mbilwi Secondary pass mathematics and science with a bachelors pass. This is a highly functioning school. It functions not because of additional resources or the governing body. This school functions because the headmaster is passionate and dedicated and the teachers equally so.
Functionalism is the analysis of social phenomena in terms of their effect on other phenomena and on the sociocultural system as a whole. According to functionalists the role of an organisation in society is keeping the social body working correctly. (Thompson, 2008) They focus on all the benefits and positivity education can bring. The functionalist perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of society by focusing on how each part influenced by other parts. Functionalist believes for example, the increase in single parent and dual- earner families has contributed to the number of children who are failing in school, because the parents have become less available to supervise their children’s homework. However the conflict theory looks at education from a negative view. Emile Durkheim is the founder of the functionalist theory and according to him the central role of schooling is to keep the people in society together and as a result social unity and harmony are created. According to him, education is a social fact. He believed that the focus of education is depending on the society’s notion of an ideal man. He says ‘For each society, education is the means by which it secures, in the children, the essential conditions of its own existence’ .Social unity means that we are all united and equal. This also means that there is not a big gap between the rich and the poor. Talcott Parsons developed Durkheim’s ideas. He said just like the heart is important for the human body to function properly, education is significant to the well-being of the society. Furthermore he states that education plays an important role in moulding the social being. This covers religions, beliefs, moral beliefs and traditions. He goes further by saying education is a basic component of the social body which is the society. The statement Talcott makes he is actually saying that if the heart is not working the human body will die. The same goes for society, if there is no education, society will be messed up. Unemployment will take over and as well as poverty.
According to Marxists, the system of education provides the needs of the capitalists. Schools, learn children norms and values, suitable for working in a capitalist society. It prepares children, for their future role in the employment industry. However according to Karl Thompson (2015) Marx see the teaching system as functioning in the interest of the ones that are in power. According to his perspective in education, the system performs three purposes for these elites. The elites are those in power. The first function is that it reproduces inequality. Secondly, legitimates class unfairness and lastly it functions in the interest of the capitalist bosses. Reproduction of class inequality is when the rich pupils get the greatest education and then they get inferior class jobs. The working class children that gets inferior standard of education and end up in inferior class jobs. Well, we are totally against that. If you work hard and get the same marks as the rich pupil you can end up in the same job as that pupil. If you do not work hard and get lower marks then it is understandable that you end up in a worker class job.
According to Karl Thompson (2008) the legitimation of class discrimination means that your money determines how good an education you will get. We are against this statement, because there are good examples in the world of people who grew up in poor circumstances and had no money or education. Somehow they ended up as the most educated people in the world. A good example is out late president, Nelson Mandela.
Marxists such as Herbert Bowles and Samuel Gintis, in Schooling in Capitalist America (1976). They suggested that education form the main role in producing employees, for the workplace. Students learn from attending school, they learn from the principles of the ”Hidden Curriculum” (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008). Bowles and Gintis (1976) suggested that the ”Hidden Curriculum” (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008) learns children authority. In schools there is a system of a hierarchy which controls the authority of the school. By this Bowles and Gintis refers to the set up at school, the head teacher is usually at the top, school teachers will follow. Students are considered at the bottom, because they need to accept authority. This will help the to prepare for employment, accepting authority from employers in the future. Furthermore Bowles and Gintis (1676) suggest that students learn to be motivated by external factors. External factors such as pocket money, allow them to focus on their studies. Highly school students, get their qualifications if the work hard making the more able to get good employment (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008). The last function of the conflict theory is schooling the skills coming capitalist employers need. Bowles and Gintis recommend that there is a correspondence between the principles that you leaned at school and in which the workplace operates. The values that they suggested are taught trough the concealed curriculum which is the hidden curriculum. The concealed curriculum consists of the values that the learners learn though the experience of going to school. By this Bowles and Gintis means that if you are at a rich school you have better experiences than a learner from a poor school. So the student that attends the rich school will be more confident than the poor learner. Then rich learners stand a better chance to get jobs like managers and bosses, but the poor student will be a general worker. We are against it because there is so many people that grew up in poor circumstances but are one the best and riches people. An example of such a person is Oprah Winfrey. She grew up poorly, but worked hard. They had no money for her for an education, but she got sponsors from people who saw the potential in her. Today she is an educated woman and an icon many admire
According to Mooney, Knox and Schacht (2007) the functionalist viewpoint is grounded on the works of Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton. Functionalism describes society as a system of solid parts that works together in peace to maintain a state of balance and social evenness for the whole. A good example is that each of the organisations backs important purposes for society. Household provides a context for reproducing, nurturing and socialising children. Secondly, schooling offers a method to transmit a society’s skills, knowledge and culture to its youth. Thirdly, politics provides a means of leading members of a society. Furthermore, economics provides for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and lastly religion provides moral guidance and an outlet of a higher power.
Education contributes to the maintenance and wellbeing of the society, poor and rich people. It does this by passing on society’s culture. Secondly, socialisation. Thirdly, by providing a bridge between the values that you learn at home which are the particularistic values and the values that you learn in the society which is the universalistic values. Furthermore it does it by providing a trained and qualified labour force and lastly meritocracy.
It passes on society’s culture trough the hidden curriculum. Through education we acquire the essential norms, values and philosophy of society. It bonds people by giving them mutual values. When it came to socialisation Durkheim claimed that schools are a smaller version of the real society. By that he means that school is a smaller version of the society where people work and live in. Talcott Parsons argues how school takes over the primary socialisation role of parents. This means when you are at school your teachers are your parents. Schools are sites of secondary socialisation. The schools provide a link between the values that you learn at home which are the particularistic values and the values that you learn in the society which is the universalistic values (Thompson, 2008). Particularistic values are those given by your parents or family and from these values your status within the family has been ascribed. In contrast, universalistic values are those given to everyone, the same rules apply to everyone. As an individual you are not afforded any special considerations and your status is now not ascribed, but achieved. Therefore you might have a high ascribed status at home, but a low achieved status at school, because you never do any work. Education provides a trained and qualified labour force. Schooling provides society with persons armed with the right skills due to the works society wants. This creates what is termed as the division of labour, whereby the world is fragmented into large number of specialised jobs. As a result inequalities in society are fair and just, everyone is given an equal chance. It is only that some people are hard workers and succeed. The other chooses to be idle, do not do what they supposed to do and then they only have themselves to blame. Hardworking learners become dentists, while the others become binmen. This is known as meritocracy. Davis and Moore states that meritocracy is the idea that people should and are due given by society for their hard labour and efforts.
To conclude South Africa’s education minimises or propagates the gap between the unfortunate people and the people that are fortunate in life and have money. According to our study education does minimises the gap between the rich people and people that live in poor circumstances. We used the functionalist theory to support our argument. We found that during the apartheid years South Africa’s government applied the Bantu Education (Baard & Schreiner, n.d). It was one of South Africa’s most unpleasant laws. Bantu Education worked in the interest of the white people. It denied black people to get the same education like the white people got. They got the best education and the best professions. Back then there were inequalities when it is to education, but today the system has changed. Today there is equality and the Functionalists theory will support our point the best. South Africa’s education has more benefits, therefore South Africa’s education fall under the conflict theory and that is minimises the gap between the rich people and the people that live in poor circumstances.
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