Education Essays – Educational Lottery

Is it truly the harder you work the further you get in instruction or is it an “ educational lottery ” whereby your academic hereafter is pre-determined before birth?

Abstraction

This paper aims to look at the extent that the instruction system in the UK can best be regarded as a meritocracy based on difficult work and diligence or a societal lottery whereby pupils are channeled into socially pre-determined functions and degrees of accomplishment. In order to organize my research in a manner that is commensurate with methodological and expositional unity I will try to prove my hypothesis through a typical thesis-antithesis-synthesis construction ; detailing foremost the history environing province instruction, secondly the assorted strains of Liberal teaching method that assert its meritocratic character and thirdly how Marxist and Neo-Conservative theory refutes this and positions province run instruction as a mechanism of societal control and work force filtering.

Throughout I will put these theoretical impressions into a current political context utilizing a assortment of beginnings that includes informations refering the sum of preschool topographic points available to kids in interior metropolis and hapless countries, the educational disparities between the races and genders and the degrees of Higher instruction support that is allocated by organic structures such as the AHRC. I will besides do usage of the many authorities documents and paperss that have been published since 1997.

Introduction: State Run – State Issues

The Introduction to this paper will concentrate on the peculiar jobs and issues that arise when instruction is inducted into the province. The modern instruction system, in Britain, can be said to hold begun with theElementary Education Actof 1870 ( Haralambos and Holborn, 2004 ; Curtis and Boultwood, 1967 ) , it was this Act that foremost advocated a system of school boards that oversaw the course of study and teaching method of local schools and led finally to theFisher Actof 1918 that made school compulsory ( McKibbin, 1998 ) .

The recent authorities paperssYoung person Matters( 2005 ) and the model for theNational Skills Academy( 2005 ) represent what is a changeless hostility in British pedagogical policy ; on the one manus asseverating the primacy of a Liberal educational foundation and on the other the demand to bring forth a work force for all the assorted degrees of employment strata. This subdivision of the paper will analyze this hostility as it manifests itself in current authorities thought, pulling on these two recent policy paperss every bit good as other cardinal beginnings ( Salisbury and Riddell, 2000 ; Cole, 2000 ; Smithers and Robinson, 2000 ; Levinson, 1999 ) .

It is hoped that this debut will give a house anchoring in current Government policy and will besides supply a stable footing for the treatment to come.

Chapter One: The Liberal Ideal

This chapter will supply the thesis component of my paper and will take the signifier of an expounding upon Liberal educational theory and how it is reflected in the modern system. In many ways the Government’sYoung person Matters( 2005 ) papers can be seen as an entry point into such Broad theory that centres around impressions originally developed by John Dewey in the early portion of the 20th century ( Dewey, 2005 ; Dewey, 2000 etc. ) .

This point of view non merely asserts the intrinsic value of instruction but besides sees advancement as a merchandise of difficult work and diligence irrespective of gender, category or race ( DfES, 2005: 9 ) . Commensurate with this argument is the review of the three-party system of instruction that comprised of grammar, secondary modern and proficient colleges and that formed the footing of the work of Halsey, Floud and Anderson ( 1961 ) .

In order to prove such theories I will analyze Government statistics on non merely exam consequences ( DfES, 2004 ) but besides the National Curriculum appraisals ( DfES, 2005 [ Provisional ] ) , Student Loan information ( DfES, 2005 ) , Higher Education Grants ( DfES, 2005 ) and a host of other Government published documents that assert the proliferation of what I have termed the ‘Liberal Ideal’ . This chapter aims, through a treatment of Broad policy, to foreground the extent that current instruction system does so intend that the harder you work to foster you acquire.

Chapter Two: The Education Machine

This chapter aims to take a contrary place to predating one and therefore supply the antithesis to the thesis. Through an expounding of the theoretical model of Marxism and Conservatism I will measure the extent that the British instruction system is designed to ease the proliferation of an political orientation that places the creative activity of a work force above the wants of single pupils to stay in instruction. Under such a impression, the instruction system does so go a lottery, based upon pre-determined factors like category, race and gender.

The theoretical base for this chapter will be drawn from such surveies as Paul WillisLearning to Labor( 1978 ) , Bowles and Gintis’ surveySchooling in Capitalist America( 1976 ) and the Neo-Marxist theories of Glenn Rikowski ( 1997, 2001 ) . I will besides, nevertheless do some reference of the functionalist ethos ( Durkheim, 1982 ; Giddens, 1971 ; Black, 1961 etc. ) that sees the instruction systems as carry throughing avitaldemand in the economic system of an industrial society by supplying a graded work force ; a construct that can be seen to be reflected in both the Conservative policies of the 1980s and the Blair administration’sNational Skills Academy( 2005 ) .

In order to put such impressions into context I will look in peculiar at the support given to those pupils wishing to go to Higher educational constitutions ( such as the grants awarded to graduate students from organic structures such as the AHRC ) and the Government’s new committedness to supplying non-academic preparation to immature people via the new apprenticeship strategy ( Learning and Skills Council, 2005 ) .

Decisions

My decisions will be drawn from non merely the theoretical base of this paper but besides the research information in the signifier of confirming statistics. The construction I have chosen to construct this paper around offers us ample chance to analyze the theoretical base and the current state of affairs in tandem ; puting the Government’s ain instruction defining policy within the context of sociological theory and the empirical information. It is hoped that it is in the combination of these three elements that I shall be able to to the full prove my research hypothesis and pull worthwhile decisions.

Mentions:

1. Bowles, Samuel and Gintis ( 1976 ) ,Schooling in Capitalist America,( London: Routledge )
   Cole, Mike ( 2000 ) ,Education, Equality and Human Rights, ( London: Falmer Press )
2. Curtis, S.J. and Boultwood, M. ( 1967 ) ,An Introductory History of English Education Since 1800, ( London: University Tutorial Press )
3. Department of Education ( 2005 ) ,Young person Matters, ( London: HMSO )
4. Department of Education, ( 2005a ) ,National Skills AcademyModel, ( London: HMSO )
5. Dewey, John ( 2000 ) ,Experience and Nature, ( London: Capital of delaware )
6. Dewey, John ( 2005 ) ,Democracy and Education, ( London: Digireads )
7. Durkheim, Emile ( 1982 ) ,The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and its Method, ( London: Macmillan )
8. Giddens, Anthony ( 1977 ) ,Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber, ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press )
9. Halsey, A.H, Floud, J and Anderson, C.A ( 1961 ) ,Education, Economy and Society, ( London: The Free Press )
10. Haralambos, M and Holborn, M ( 2004 ) ,Sociology: Subjects and Positions, ( London: Collins )
11. Levinson, Meira ( 1999 ) ,The Demands of Liberal Education, ( Oxford: Oxford University Press )
12. McKibbin, Ross ( 1998 ) ,Classs and Cultures in England 1918-1951, ( Oxford: Oxford University Press )
13. Rikowski, Glenn ( 1997 ) , “Scorched Earth: preliminary to reconstructing Marxist instruction theory” , published inBritish Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 18.Rikowski, Glenn ( 2001 ) ,The Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education, ( London: Tufnell Press )
    Salibsury, Jane and Riddell, Sheila ( 2000 ) ,Gender, Policy and Educational Change: Switching Agendas in the UK and Europe, ( London: Routledge )
    Smithers, Alan and Robinson, Pamela ( 2000 ) ,Further Education Re-Formed, ( London: Falmer Press )
14. Willis, Paul ( 1978 ) ,Learning to Labor, ( London: Arena )

Web sites:

1. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.apprenticeships.org.uk/
2. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.bbc.co.uk
3. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.dfes.gov.uk/
4. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.homeoffice.gov.uk/
5. hypertext transfer protocol: //www.statistics.gov.uk