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Schools routinely provide learning according to students’ social background, thereby perpetuating social HUinequalityUH.
HWealthy School districts have better buildings, state of the art technology, higher teacher salaries, more ancillary programs such as Art and Music and better sports equipment.
Schools serve as a screening device to fill positions of unequal status.
Tracking is a basic screening device - placing of students perceived to have similar intelligence and academic abilities in the same classroom.
Credentialism is the overemphasis on educational credentials for job placement. The result is that many individuals are placed in jobs for which they are overeducated.
Religion is “the opiate of the masses.”
Religion acts as a drug, which keeps the proletariat from rising up against their oppressors.
Religion serves to legitimate the social structure and serves the needs of the elite to oppress the workers.
Religion lulls the workers into a false sense of security.
The Functionalist paradigm describes society as stable and describes all of the various mechanisms that maintain social stability. Functionalism argues that the social structure is responsible for all stability and instability, and that that the social structure is continuously attempting to maintain social equilibrium (balance) among all of the components of society. Functionalism argues that a stable society is the best possible society and any element that helps to maintain that stability must add to the adaptability (functionality) of society. This is a macro-level paradigm that describes large-scale processes and large- scale social systems; it is uninterested in individual behavior.
The Functionalist paradigm does a very good job of explaining the ways in which the institutions of society (the family, education, religion, law/politics/government, the economy, medicine, media) work together to create social solidarity (a social contract in which society as a whole agrees upon the rules of social behavior and agrees, more or less, to abide by those rules) and to maintain balance in society.
Functionalism, or Structural Functionalism, or the Functionalist paradigm describes the elements in society that create social stability FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE . This paradigm, like the Conflict paradigm, is very interested in the structure of society and how it impacts people's lives. However, Functionalism sees the social structure as creating equilibrium or balance. It also describes the various elements of society that maintain that balance. One of its basic premises is that society is structured to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Unfortunately, this perspective ignores minorities and is unable to explain inequality except to say that it must have a social function—it must make society more adaptable—simply because inequality has always existed. Functionalism describes, analyzes, and is interested in any social element that maintains the status quo—keeps things as they are—and maintains social balance between and among all of the institutions of society (the family, education, religion, law/politics/government, the economy, medicine, and media).
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