Durkheim, shared culture, and social solidarity

Functionalism is a consensus perspective. It assumes that society depends on a basic level of agreement about norms, values, and goals. From this point of view, education matters because it helps produce the shared culture that makes social order possible.

Emile Durkheim argued that education performs two essential functions. First, it transmits the shared norms and values of society. Schools teach pupils how to behave in groups, why rules matter, and what kinds of conduct are seen as legitimate. This is why Durkheim described the school as a society in miniature: pupils begin to experience disciplined social life beyond the family, where rules are more impersonal and collective.

Second, Durkheim argued that education helps create social solidarity. Shared routines, common rituals, and exposure to a common culture encourage pupils to feel part of something larger than themselves. For functionalists, this matters because modern societies are made up of many different individuals and groups. Education helps weld them into a functioning whole.

Durkheim also connected education to the economy. In simple societies, many occupational skills could be passed directly through the family. In modern industrial societies, however, the division of labour is much more specialised. Schools therefore help train individuals for increasingly specialised roles, making education necessary not just for social cohesion but also for economic organisation.

Parsons, meritocracy, and the bridge from family to society

Talcott Parsons developed Durkheim's argument by focusing on the transition from childhood in the family to adult life in wider society. He argued that school acts as a bridge between these two settings.

Inside the family, children are judged according to particularistic standards. They are treated as unique individuals, and their status is tied to who they are within that family. In wider society, by contrast, people are supposed to be judged by universalistic standards that apply more generally.

The distinction is easier to see directly:

For Parsons, schooling prepares pupils for this shift. The same school rules apply to everyone, and achievement is formally measured through exams and assessments. In principle, this teaches pupils that success should depend on what they achieve, not on their family background.

Parsons therefore saw school as a major agency of secondary socialisation. It teaches pupils the value of achievement and the idea of equality of opportunity. Functionalists argue that this is important because modern societies need individuals to accept impersonal rules and to compete for adult roles through achievement rather than kinship.

Role allocation, the economy, and class structure

Functionalists also argue that education has an economic function. Modern economies depend on a specialised workforce, so schools and colleges help produce the skills, qualifications, and attitudes needed for different occupations.

Davis and Moore took this further by arguing that stratification is functionally necessary. They claimed that some jobs are more important and require longer training, so society must offer higher rewards to attract the most talented people into those positions. Education helps identify, sift, and allocate individuals to these roles.

From this perspective, education is closely related to class structure. Functionalists do not treat inequality as automatically unfair. Instead, they argue that unequal rewards can be legitimate if they reflect differences in ability, effort, and training. In other words, class differences are justified when they result from meritocratic role allocation rather than inherited privilege.

This is a major reason functionalists see education as central to both social order and the economy. Schools do not just pass on values; they also help match people to the division of labour, making economic life more efficient and giving inequality a moral justification through the idea of earned achievement.

Why the functionalist picture is challenged

Functionalism highlights some real features of schooling, but critics argue that it hides conflict and inequality. The sharpest criticism comes from Marxism.

Bowles and Gintis (1976) argued that meritocracy is largely a myth. In their view, education does not neutrally allocate the most able to the most important roles. Instead, it helps reproduce class inequality while making those unequal outcomes appear fair. From this perspective, the relationship between education and the economy is not mainly about serving society as a whole, but about serving capitalism.

Feminists add that functionalists say very little about gender power. A theory built around shared values can miss the fact that education may transmit unequal expectations about masculinity, femininity, subject choice, and authority. Interactionists make a different criticism: they argue that functionalists are too top-down and ignore processes inside schools such as labelling, streaming, and pupil subcultures. These processes affect achievement, but they cannot be explained simply by assuming value consensus.

There are also criticisms of the evidence base behind functionalism. Some sociologists argue that schools promote individual competition through exams rather than collective solidarity. Others point out that qualifications do not always lead neatly to the most highly rewarded jobs, which weakens the claim that education allocates roles smoothly and fairly.

Functionalism therefore remains useful as a macro explanation of what education is supposed to do, but it is much weaker at explaining how power, class, gender, and school-level interactions shape who actually benefits.

Essay Bank

Functionalism is useful because it explains why education matters at the level of the whole social system. Durkheim and Parsons show how schools transmit shared values, build social solidarity, and prepare young people for adult roles, which helps explain the connection between education and social order.

A major limitation is that functionalism treats inequality too positively. Marxists argue that what looks like fair role allocation may actually be the reproduction of class inequality, so the theory can mistake power and privilege for merit.

Overall, the functionalist view is strongest when explaining education's integrative and economic functions, but weakest when explaining unequal outcomes. Education may help socialise and allocate individuals, yet it can do so in ways that also reproduce class, gender, and power inequalities.