In the language of social sciences, education is defined as "the

transmission of certain attitudes, knowledge and skills to the members of

a society through formal systematic training". Today majority of the
children in every society are expected to be to spend much of their first
18 years of life in school. This was not the case a century ago, when just a
small elite in the developed countries like USA and UK had the privilege of
attending school. In poor countries even today, most young people
receive only a few years of formal schooling. But the social scientists also
differentiate between education and schooling. Education is what the
person has learned, whereby schooling is defined as the amount of time
spent in institution dedicated to educating and which often confers
degrees and diplomas on those who complete a period of enrollment.

Today schooling in low-income nations reflects local culture. But all low-
income countries have one trait in common when it comes to schooling----
there is not very much of it. In the worlds poorest nations, only half of all
children ever get to school at all; in the world as a whole, just half of
children reach the secondary grades. As a result majority of the children in
Latin America, Asia and Africa can not read and write.

High-income nations endorse the idea that every one go to school. For one
thing the workers who use machinery or computers need at least basic
reading, writing, and arithmetic skills. In high-income nations, literacy is
also necessary to carry on political democracy. American president Lyndon
B. Johnson once said that "we have entered an age in which education is
not just a luxury permitting some men and women an advantage over
others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in
this complex, industrialized society..we have truly entered the century
of the educated men and women".

Imagine how illiteracy would affect you! What would you do if you were
unable to read street signs, menus, letters, simple instructions, want ads,
telephone directories, labels, bills and bank statements? What would you
do if you were unable to use calendars, city maps or any guidelines? How
could you become an active participant in the society without reading
skills? In America alone there are 27 million illiterate people, if literacy is
to read only the simplest text and street signs.

Literacy has far reaching implications. It is seen as a process of

consciousness raising aimed at human liberation. It also provides the
foundations for an industrial and post-industrial society.
Apart from literacy, we commonly think of schools as agencies that
provide formal, conscious, and systematic training. But schools teach
more than the skills and the information classified in the academic
curriculum. Whether intentionally or unwittingly, they impart a whole
complex of unarticulated values, attitudes and behaviors-what is termed
as "hidden curriculum". Students not only learn from the official coarse of
study, but from the physical environment of the school, the attitude
teachers and students exhibit towards one another, the social climate and
the organization of the institution.

The behavior constituting the hidden curriculum are modeled by teachers

and reinforced by them in dealing with students. The characteristics
preferred by teachers are those that embody middle-class values and
morality-responsibility, reliability, self-control, efficiency, thoroughness
and emotional stability. These behaviors resemble those of workplace and
marketplace, where the emphasis is on economically ambitious,
materialistic, competitive and conforming behavior. Even the first graders
learn the importance of "getting ahead".

PERSPECTIVES ON EDUCATION

Learning is a fundamental mechanism for adapting to our environment. It

involves more or less permanent modification in behavior that results from
experience. Since learning is critical to social life, societies do not leave it
to chance. Many societies transmit certain attitudes, knowledge, and skills
to their members through formal systematic training-the institution we
call education-where teachers and students carry out their associated
roles. Education is the many side process of socialization by which people
acquire those behaviors essential for effective participation in a society.
Both the functionalist and conflict perspectives are in agreement on the
importance of education, but they differ in their conception of the part it
plays in modern life.

THE FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Schools came into existence several thousand years ago in advanced

horticultural and agricultural societies to prepare a select few for
leadership and professional positions. Until the last century or so, no
society could afford more than a handful of educated people. With the
emergence of large-scale industrial and bureaucratic organizations, came
a need for an abundant supply of literate and educated people. The school
system became a primary vehicle by which a nation's citizens were taught
the three Rs, and the higher education became the custodian of nation's
intellectual capital. Education today is a crucial investment in the
economy and major economic resources. It has also become a major
military resource. Throughout the world, schools are increasingly being
viewed as a branch of the state and as a serving state purposes.

Functionalists look at how formal education contributes to the operation of

society, and the schooling does this in many ways. As is the case with
their analysis of other social phenomena, functionalist framework examine
the institution of education from the point of view of its contributions to
societal survival. These theorists have identified the following major
functions or survival related consequences of education in the society:

Cultural Preservation and Storage, retrieval and Dissemination: In pre-

modern societies and those in early phase of modernization, education
serves two major survival functions: the preservation and storage of
cultural elements, and retrieval and dissemination of those elements. The
teaching that is carried out in these societies by family and kinship groups
(religious groups as well) is directed to keeping alive in people's minds
important ideas, beliefs and other pieces of information. Whereby in
today's society the knowledge and skills required by contemporary living
cannot be satisfied in more or less automatic "natural" way. Instead, a
specialized educational agency is needed to transmit to the young ways of
thinking, feeling and acting required by rapidly changing urban and
technologically based societies.

Socialization and Social Placement: As societies move through the

modernization process, education acquires additional functions. Their
importance increases with increasing levels of development and its
accompanying social, economic and political changes. For example-as
marriage and family structures and the family's social roles are redefined,
formal educational structures become more heavily involved in the
socialization process. Schools become primary mechanism for inculcating
in young members of society a general knowledge and acceptance of the
established socio-cultural system. For the immigrants in new societies
formal education serves as a major avenue for the assimilation of these
new comers into the system, in return fostering social integration and
national unity. Formal education also imparts to students more specific
knowledge and skills required by changing economic system which is
beyond the ability of the family to teach its members. On the basis of
achievement principles, formal educational attainment becomes an
important mechanism for social placement.

Cultural Expansion and Innovation: Schools create and transmit culture.

Especially at centers of higher education, scholars conduct research that
leads to discovery and changes in our social life. For example, medical
research at medical institutions has helped increase life expectancy, just
as research by sociologists and psychologists helps us take advantage of
our longevity.

Social Transformation and reform: In both modernizing and modernized

societies, whether by intent or by accident, formal education can bring
about social revisions and reforms. It provides its clients )students) a more
comprehensive, sophisticated view of the present, a vision of alternative
possible future, and a detailed knowledge of how social processes work. In
human history revolutions and reforms were the products of educational
institutions. In modern democratic societies, higher levels of formal
education are associated with higher levels of involvement in the political
system.

Social Integration: Functionalists say that the education system functions

to instill the dominant values of a society and shape a common national
mind. Within our country, students learn what it means to be a Pakistani.
We become literate in national language, gain a common heritage, and
acquire mainstream standards and rules. Youngsters from diverse racial
and ethnic backgrounds are immersed within the same culture and
prepared for responsible citizenship. Likewise, the schools are geared to
integrate the poor and disadvantaged within the fabric of dominant
mainstream institutions. But how well the educational institutions are
performing these functions is a debatable matter.

Screening and Selecting: Educational institutions commonly perform the

function of screening and selecting individuals for different types of jobs.
By conferring degrees, diplomas, and credentials for many technical,
managerial and professional positions, it determines which young people
will have access to scarce positions and offices of power, privilege and
status. For many, schools are alike "mobility escalators" allowing gifted
people to ascend the social ladder.

Schools today perform a good many latent functions that may not be
recognized or intended. Like they provide custodial or babysitting service.
Schools are the settings in which students develop a variety of
interpersonal skills, needed for entering into friendship, participating in
community affaires, and relating to others in workplace. Besides, the age
segregation of the students in school environment encourages the
formation of youth subcultures. Finally, formal compulsory education
keeps children and adolescents out of the labor market and so out of
competition with adults for jobs.

THE CONFLICT PERSPECTIVE

Conflict theorists say the educational institution reproduces and

legitimizes the current social order. By doing so, it serves some people at
the expense of others. Conflict perspective offers an all together different
picture of formal education in modern societies. According to this, the
institution of education exists to further the interests of those who control
the social structure, not the best interest of the population at large.
Conflict theorists in the Marxist tradition argue that:

Hidden Curriculum. In capitalist societies, the institution of education

forms a societal superstructure, derived from and dependent on the
underlying economic superstructure. Like law, the state, religion and even
the culture itself-formal education in these societies exists to further the
domination of the non-propertied working and middle classes by the
propertied and powerful ruling class. Formal education involves a "hidden
curriculum" that infuses the teachings of basic information and skills with
values, norms and myths supportive of capitalism and capitalists. Thus
formal education acts as a powerful tool in the establishment and
maintenance of a "false consciousness" among the members of the
working and middle classes. From this point of view, if formal education
has any so called functions, its primary function is to preserve an
exploitative status quo by shaping the minds of the exploited.

Political Education. All political regimes have a vested interest in

exercising control over the contents of their society's formal education
process, and all will take steps to do so. To one degree or another, political
socialization takes place in the schools of virtually every modern industrial
nation. Text books in history, literature, and other academic fields may be
chosen by the state on the basis of their contents rather than their merit.
For example, until recently, most history books used in the schools of
America, presented a "white washed" picture of westward expansion of
the U.S in 19th century. The whole sale destruction of the indigenous
Native American cultures was seldom discussed. Most often "Indians"
were depicted as temporary problem encountered by the heroic white
settlers in the process of fulfilling their manifest destiny of taming the
frontiers and developing the continent "from sea to shining sea"

Similarly, until the past few years, the Japanese Ministry of Education
continued to approve only those history books that offered only positive
account of the Japan's military aggression in Asia throughout this century,
especially invasion of China in 1930s and the World War II.

Education and Stratification. For Marx and his followers, education is an

important mechanism for the reinforcement and perpetuation of social
stratification system. In contemporary societies, education is an important
source of attaining a future higher social and economic position. Modern
societies are "credential" systems that feature occupations that
increasingly demand formal certification of competency. In the class room
students compete with each other for grades and other rewards.

In many Asian countries, formal education and educational achievement

have become something of a fetish to people hungry for advancement
and a taste of good life offered by modernized, industrialized social
system.

Even in traditional societies, formal education was reserved solely for the
use of the nobility and other privileged classes. There was no need of
literacy for the peasants and the serfs, who were believed to be too
intellectually inferior to qualify for and benefit from the formal education.
In developing societies, in which only the established upper classes can
appreciate and afford it, education is still reserved for elites. Financial and
other requirements for some universities lie beyond the means of most
lower and working class families, effectively putting the benefits of
graduating from them out of their reach. The academic currency value of
degree from such schools tends to be much higher than that of less-known
institutions. Thus widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

4. Control Devices. Conflict theorists agree with the functionalists that

education draws the minorities and disadvantaged into the dominant
culture. But the system serves the interest of the dominant group by
defusing the threat posed by the minority ethnic groups. In large, conflict
ridden, multi-ethnic society like United States, schools are to
"Americanize" people. Through compulsory education the values of the
dominant group are transmitted to those at the bottom.

5. Productive Capital. Conflict theorists see the research and development

function of the universities quite differently from the functionalists.
Educational institutions produce the technical and administrative
knowledge necessary for running a capitalist order. According to some
reports, there has been "a virtual explosion over the past several years in
the number and variety of university-industry alliances". Universities are
entering research agreements with companies, setting up research parks,
and encouraging the founding of new high-tech businesses at campus.

Functional analysis stresses the way in which formal education supports

the operation of the modern society, but it overlooks the problems
inherent in our educational system and ignores how schooling helps
produce the class restructure in each generation. On the other hand social
conflict theorists overemphasizes the negative role of the education in our
today's world. But we must also agree that no system is perfect and
education like other institution is not free from faults.

Focusing on home background initially, we can look at how material and

cultural factors might affect a childs education.

The lower classes are more likely to suffer from material deprivation at
home which can hold children back in education because of a lack access
to resources such as computers, or living in a smaller house means they
would be less likely to have a quiet, personal study space. In extreme
situations, children may have a worse diet and a colder house, which
could mean illness and time off school. According to Gibson and Asthana,
the effects of material deprivation are cumulative, creating a cycle of
deprivation. This would suggest that home background influences a childs
education.

Also, the amount of money one has and the type of area one lives in
affects the type of school a child can get to. Richer parents have more
choice of school because they are more likely to have two cars or be able
to afford public transport to get their children to a wider range of schools.
Also, house prices in the catchment areas of the best schools can be up to
20% higher than similar houses in other areas richer parents are more
able to afford to move to these better schools. At the other end of the
social class spectrum, those going to school in the most deprived areas
may suffer disruptions in school due to gang related violence. All of this
suggests that location, which is clearly part of your home background in
the broader sense of the word, is a major factor in educational
achievement.

Cultural deprivation also has a negative effect on children at home.

Bernstein pointed out that working class children are more likely to be
socialised into the restricted speech code and so are less able to
understand teachers at school compared to their middle class peers who
speak in the elaborated speech code. The classes are also taught the
value of immediate rather than deferred gratification, and so are less
likely to see the value of higher education. In these theories, home
background influences children all the way through school.

Although the concept of cultural deprivation is decasdes old, more recent

research suggests it is still of relevance. Fensteins (2003) research found
that lower income is strongly correlated with a lack of ability to
communicate, while research by Conor et al (2001) found that being
socialised into poverty means working class students are less likely to
want to go to university than middle class students because they are
more debt conscious.

Cultural Capital Theory also suggests that home background matters to an

extent this theory argues that middle class parents have the skills to
research the best schools and the ability to help children with homework
and to intervene in schools if a child falls behind (as Dianas research into
the role of mothers in primary school education suggested). However,
cultural capital only advantages a child because it gets them into a good
school suggesting that it is the school that matters at least as much as
home background. There wouldnt be such a fuss over, and such
competition between parents over schools if the school a child went to
didnt have a major impact on a childs education!

In fact, one could argue that probably the most significant advantage a
parent can give to their child is getting them into a private school. To take
an extreme case, Sunningdale preparatory school in Berkshire costs
16000/ year a boarding school which confers enormous advantage on
these children and provides personalised access via private trips to elite
secondary schools Eton and Harrow. In such examples, it is not really
home background that is advantaging such children it is simply access
to wealth that allows some parents to get their children into these elite
boarding schools and the schools that then hothouse their children
through a high ethos of expectation smaller class sizes and superb
resources.

Similarly, the case of Mossborn Academy and Tony Sewells Generating

Genius programme show that schools can overcome disadvantage at
home if they provide strict discipline and high expectation.

Although all of the above are just case studies and thus of limited use in
generating a universal theory of what the major cause of differences in
educational achievement by social class might be, many similar studies
have suggested that schools in poorer areas have a lower ethos of
expectation (from Willis classic 1977 research on the lads to Swains
research in 2006). It is thus reasonable to hypothesis that the type of
school and in school factors such as teacher labelling and peer groups
might work to disadvantage the lower classes as Beckers theory of the
ideal pupil being middle class and Willis work on working class counter
school cultures would suggest, although in this later case, Willis argues
that the lads brought with them an anti-educational working class
masculinity, so home factors still matter here.

Finally Social Capital theory also suggests that home background is not
the only factor influencing a childs education rather it is the contacts
parents have with schools and later on schools with universities and
business that are crucial to getting children a good education, and
making that education translate into a good job.

So is it home background or school factors that matter? The research

above suggests home background does have a role to play, however, you
certainly cannot disregard in school factors in explaining class differences
in educational achievement either in my final analysis, I would have to
say that the two work together middle class advantage at home
translating into better schooling, and vice versa for the working classes.