A plethora of research has provided compelling evidence that the education system does not operate on a purely meritocratic basis."Īt its heart, structural functionalism argues that social stratification - that is the sorting of individuals into lower and high socio-economic status groups - occurs through a meritocratic system which rewards talent and hard work, irrespective of an individual's ascribed characteristics. In particular, the approach fails to account for how many ascribed traits, like socioeconomic background, gender, and race, appear to be so important in determining life outcomes. People who are at the lower ends of the educational and socioeconomic spectrum are there because they fill necessary places there - and because they did not meet the qualifications for higher placement.Īs you may imagine, structural functionalism is not without its critics, and many criticisms are well-founded. Social inequality, in other words, exists because it is functional in society. On the contrary, they believe it is inherent to the functional system. …Structural functionalists do not believe that inequality is non-existent. The school is functionally related to the workforce because it assigns people to their roles based on achievement, skills, and capability… In this way, school prepares young people for their roles as adults…Adults’ later placement in the workforce is a reflection of how much they achieved and how successful they were in their schooling. It is within schools that children are assessed in a standardized universalistic way that does not take their social background characteristics into account…Schools level the playing field so that children are assessed on the basis of merit - how they are judged is based only on how they perform on a standardized set of goals regardless of social background. " Structural functionalism is a body of theories that understand the world as a large system of interrelated parts that all work together…The school plays a central role in bridging individuals to society. Pages 20 - 21 of the textbook includes the following text:
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