SOC224H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Cultural Reproduction, Solar-Powered Desalination Unit, Medieval University
Document Summary
Structural functionalists and selection: functionalists also theorized about how schools serve a sorting & selecting function. Schools provide a common culture in societies that were growing increasingly diverse & complex. Schools would function as transmitters as modern values like universalism, democracy & meritocracy. Students would be taught a common culture in which individuals aspired to get ahead, to champion universalism & to uphold meritocracy. How students learn this common culture rather than teaching these values overtly, schools actually taught them through their very form & operation. By treating all students equally before common rules, schools embodied the values of universalism. The structure of modern schooling functioned by implicitly displaying modern values through its very organization. Talcott parsons: to socialize - parsons reiterates durkheim"s ideas, to allocate - schools have a function in allocating who does what. The term "allocate" is a neutral term in contrast to terms like "selection".
