Page 41 - Flipbook: Sociology Shortcuts Issue 3

Schools project a range of values, from the
idea pupils should work hard to achieve
qualifications to ideas about individual
competition for academic rewards, teamwork
especially in sports, conformity to authority
(not questioning what is being learnt and why
it is necessary to learn it) and achievement on
the basis of merit; pupils “achieve what they
deserve”. In many education systems one
"covert value" is that academic ability, such as
a talent for writing essays, is more highly
valued than vocational ability, such as
bricklaying. Many of these values relate not
just to education but also to the wider social
world, especially that of the workplace.

Bowles and Gintis (2002), from a Marxist
perspective, argue for a correspondence
between school norms and workplace norms:
“Schools prepare pupils for adult work rules
by socialising them to function well, and
without complaint, in the hierarchical
structure of the modern corporation”. This
correspondence theory is evidenced through
school norms like:

� the daily need for attendance.
� always being in the place pupils are
supposed to be at certain times.
� the right of those in authority to give orders
that must be obeyed.

These ideas are backed up by positive
sanctions that include the gaining of grades,
qualifications and prizes, as well as more-
personal things like praise and
encouragement.

On the negative side, schools use detentions,
suspensions and exclusions; failure to achieve
qualifications or gaining a reputation for a
lack of intelligence also function as negative
sanctions, at least from the viewpoint of
teachers, if not always from that of the pupil.

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