function of value education

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16.2 Sociological Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

• List the major functions of education.
• Explain the problems that conflict theory sees in education.
• Describe how symbolic interactionism understands education.

The major sociological perspectives on education fall nicely into the functional, conflict, and symbolic interactionist approaches (Ballantine & Hammack, 2009). Table 16.1 “Theory Snapshot” summarizes what these approaches say.

Table 16.1 Theory Snapshot

The Functions of Education

Functional theory stresses the functions that education serves in fulfilling a society’s various needs. Perhaps the most important function of education is socialization . If children need to learn the norms, values, and skills they need to function in society, then education is a primary vehicle for such learning. Schools teach the three Rs, as we all know, but they also teach many of the society’s norms and values. In the United States, these norms and values include respect for authority, patriotism (remember the Pledge of Allegiance?), punctuality, individualism, and competition. Regarding these last two values, American students from an early age compete as individuals over grades and other rewards. The situation is quite the opposite in Japan, where, as we saw in Chapter 4 “Socialization” , children learn the traditional Japanese values of harmony and group belonging from their schooling (Schneider & Silverman, 2010). They learn to value their membership in their homeroom, or kumi , and are evaluated more on their kumi ’s performance than on their own individual performance. How well a Japanese child’s kumi does is more important than how well the child does as an individual.

A second function of education is social integration . For a society to work, functionalists say, people must subscribe to a common set of beliefs and values. As we saw, the development of such common views was a goal of the system of free, compulsory education that developed in the 19th century. Thousands of immigrant children in the United States today are learning English, U.S. history, and other subjects that help prepare them for the workforce and integrate them into American life. Such integration is a major goal of the English-only movement, whose advocates say that only English should be used to teach children whose native tongue is Spanish, Vietnamese, or whatever other language their parents speak at home. Critics of this movement say it slows down these children’s education and weakens their ethnic identity (Schildkraut, 2005).

A third function of education is social placement . Beginning in grade school, students are identified by teachers and other school officials either as bright and motivated or as less bright and even educationally challenged. Depending on how they are identified, children are taught at the level that is thought to suit them best. In this way they are prepared in the most appropriate way possible for their later station in life. Whether this process works as well as it should is an important issue, and we explore it further when we discuss school tracking shortly.

Social and cultural innovation is a fourth function of education. Our scientists cannot make important scientific discoveries and our artists and thinkers cannot come up with great works of art, poetry, and prose unless they have first been educated in the many subjects they need to know for their chosen path.

Figure 16.1 The Functions of Education

Schools ideally perform many important functions in modern society. These include socialization, social integration, social placement, and social and cultural innovation.

Education also involves several latent functions, functions that are by-products of going to school and receiving an education rather than a direct effect of the education itself. One of these is child care . Once a child starts kindergarten and then first grade, for several hours a day the child is taken care of for free. The establishment of peer relationships is another latent function of schooling. Most of us met many of our friends while we were in school at whatever grade level, and some of those friendships endure the rest of our lives. A final latent function of education is that it keeps millions of high school students out of the full-time labor force . This fact keeps the unemployment rate lower than it would be if they were in the labor force.

Education and Inequality

Conflict theory does not dispute most of the functions just described. However, it does give some of them a different slant and talks about various ways in which education perpetuates social inequality (Hill, Macrine, & Gabbard, 2010; Liston, 1990). One example involves the function of social placement. As most schools track their students starting in grade school, the students thought by their teachers to be bright are placed in the faster tracks (especially in reading and arithmetic), while the slower students are placed in the slower tracks; in high school, three common tracks are the college track, vocational track, and general track.

Such tracking does have its advantages; it helps ensure that bright students learn as much as their abilities allow them, and it helps ensure that slower students are not taught over their heads. But, conflict theorists say, tracking also helps perpetuate social inequality by locking students into faster and lower tracks. Worse yet, several studies show that students’ social class and race and ethnicity affect the track into which they are placed, even though their intellectual abilities and potential should be the only things that matter: white, middle-class students are more likely to be tracked “up,” while poorer students and students of color are more likely to be tracked “down.” Once they are tracked, students learn more if they are tracked up and less if they are tracked down. The latter tend to lose self-esteem and begin to think they have little academic ability and thus do worse in school because they were tracked down. In this way, tracking is thought to be good for those tracked up and bad for those tracked down. Conflict theorists thus say that tracking perpetuates social inequality based on social class and race and ethnicity (Ansalone, 2006; Oakes, 2005).

Social inequality is also perpetuated through the widespread use of standardized tests. Critics say these tests continue to be culturally biased, as they include questions whose answers are most likely to be known by white, middle-class students, whose backgrounds have afforded them various experiences that help them answer the questions. They also say that scores on standardized tests reflect students’ socioeconomic status and experiences in addition to their academic abilities. To the extent this critique is true, standardized tests perpetuate social inequality (Grodsky, Warren, & Felts, 2008).

As we will see, schools in the United States also differ mightily in their resources, learning conditions, and other aspects, all of which affect how much students can learn in them. Simply put, schools are unequal, and their very inequality helps perpetuate inequality in the larger society. Children going to the worst schools in urban areas face many more obstacles to their learning than those going to well-funded schools in suburban areas. Their lack of learning helps ensure they remain trapped in poverty and its related problems.

Conflict theorists also say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum , by which they mean a set of values and beliefs that support the status quo, including the existing social hierarchy (Booher-Jennings, 2008) (see Chapter 4 “Socialization” ). Although no one plots this behind closed doors, our schoolchildren learn patriotic values and respect for authority from the books they read and from various classroom activities.

Symbolic Interactionism and School Behavior

Symbolic interactionist studies of education examine social interaction in the classroom, on the playground, and in other school venues. These studies help us understand what happens in the schools themselves, but they also help us understand how what occurs in school is relevant for the larger society. Some studies, for example, show how children’s playground activities reinforce gender-role socialization. Girls tend to play more cooperative games, while boys play more competitive sports (Thorne, 1993) (see Chapter 11 “Gender and Gender Inequality” ).

Another body of research shows that teachers’ views about students can affect how much the students learn. When teachers think students are smart, they tend to spend more time with them, to call on them, and to praise them when they give the right answer. Not surprisingly these students learn more because of their teachers’ behavior. But when teachers think students are less bright, they tend to spend less time with them and act in a way that leads the students to learn less. One of the first studies to find this example of a self-fulfilling prophecy was conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson (1968). They tested a group of students at the beginning of the school year and told their teachers which students were bright and which were not. They tested the students again at the end of the school year; not surprisingly the bright students had learned more during the year than the less bright ones. But it turned out that the researchers had randomly decided which students would be designated bright and less bright. Because the “bright” students learned more during the school year without actually being brighter at the beginning, their teachers’ behavior must have been the reason. In fact, their teachers did spend more time with them and praised them more often than was true for the “less bright” students. To the extent this type of self-fulfilling prophecy occurs, it helps us understand why tracking is bad for the students tracked down.

Research guided by the symbolic interactionist perspective suggests that teachers’ expectations may influence how much their students learn. When teachers expect little of their students, their students tend to learn less.

ijiwaru jimbo – Pre-school colour pack – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Other research focuses on how teachers treat girls and boys. Several studies from the 1970s through the 1990s found that teachers call on boys more often and praise them more often (American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, 1998; Jones & Dindia, 2004). Teachers did not do this consciously, but their behavior nonetheless sent an implicit message to girls that math and science are not for girls and that they are not suited to do well in these subjects. This body of research stimulated efforts to educate teachers about the ways in which they may unwittingly send these messages and about strategies they could use to promote greater interest and achievement by girls in math and science (Battey, Kafai, Nixon, & Kao, 2007).

Key Takeaways

• According to the functional perspective, education helps socialize children and prepare them for their eventual entrance into the larger society as adults.
• The conflict perspective emphasizes that education reinforces inequality in the larger society.
• The symbolic interactionist perspective focuses on social interaction in the classroom, on school playgrounds, and at other school-related venues. Social interaction contributes to gender-role socialization, and teachers’ expectations may affect their students’ performance.

For Your Review

• Review how the functionalist, conflict, and symbolic interactionist perspectives understand and explain education. Which of these three approaches do you most prefer? Why?

American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. (1998). Gender gaps: Where schools still fail our children . Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation.

Ansalone, G. (2006). Tracking: A return to Jim Crow. Race, Gender & Class, 13 , 1–2.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2009). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Battey, D., Kafai, Y., Nixon, A. S., & Kao, L. L. (2007). Professional development for teachers on gender equity in the sciences: Initiating the conversation. Teachers College Record, 109 (1), 221–243.

Booher-Jennings, J. (2008). Learning to label: Socialisation, gender, and the hidden curriculum of high-stakes testing. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29 , 149–160.

Grodsky, E., Warren, J. R., & Felts, E. (2008). Testing and social stratification in American education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34 (1), 385–404.

Hill, D., Macrine, S., & Gabbard, D. (Eds.). (2010). Capitalist education: Globalisation and the politics of inequality . New York, NY: Routledge; Liston, D. P. (1990). Capitalist schools: Explanation and ethics in radical studies of schooling . New York, NY: Routledge.

Jones, S. M., & Dindia, K. (2004). A meta-analystic perspective on sex equity in the classroom. Review of Educational Research, 74 , 443–471.

Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality (2nd ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom . New York, NY: Holt.

Schildkraut, D. J. (2005). Press “one” for English: Language policy, public opinion, and American identity . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Schneider, L., & Silverman, A. (2010). Global sociology: Introducing five contemporary societies (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

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1 Philosophy, Value, and Education

• Published: October 2014
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An exploration of the idea of education and values associated with the practice of education, this chapter investigates whether some of these values are internal to the practice. Education is neither a quality of character, like a virtue, nor is it a particular relationship, like friendship. It is a human activity involving a large number of participants, and a culture and civilization-specific tradition of its own. Within the core strand of the meaning of ‘education’, education is an intrinsically worthy activity; also, the activity or practice of education has goods that are internal to it, the pursuit of which requires the exercise of the virtues. To think of value education as separable from other streams of education involves a profound misunderstanding of the concept of education. Education, as a process and a practice, is impregnated with value.

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Value Education: Meaning, Importance, Benefits

Academic education and value education are virtually intertwined; hence, they are equally important. Without the former, nobody will be able to learn skills such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. One cannot secure a good job or manage even the simplest daily essentials if they do not know how to behave properly with others.

Understand Value Education

Meaning of value education.

Considering Value Education as a compound word, the separate definitions of both the terms “value” and “education” are presented. This leads to the definition of Value Education as the process of transmitting values to the pupils.

According to K. H. Imam Zarkasy, Value Education is an educational action or the conveying of knowledge on the measurement of morality, and showing the difference between what is bad and good for living in society.

The various aspects of Value Education include Moral Education, Civic Education, Citizenship Education, Environmental Education, Religious Education, and Spiritual Education.

Educators worldwide have initiated various steps, packages, projects, and discussions at their respective levels for promoting values.

Some names that could be mentioned here include:

• Holistic Approach to Education
• Global Education
• Value-Based Education (VBE)
• Democratic Education
• Character Education
• Home School System
• Alternative Education
• Philosophy for Child (P4C)
• Islamization of Knowledge (IOK)
• Moral Education
• Project/Problem-Based Learning (P2BL)
• TLC (Teaching and Learning Center)
• Anchored Instruction
• Interdisciplinary Approach
• Enquiring Minds
• Living Values Education Programme (LVEP)

Importance of Value Education

The importance of balancing material and moral values.

Everything a person does has little meaning and will not serve them well. Therefore, for our welfare, as well as that of others, both academic excellence and value education must be combined.

Even during good times, the finer things in life, such as a high reputation, fame, and money, can make a person arrogant unless they know how to use money and power correctly. The absence of these very attributes can destroy their glory and honor.

If we possess many talents, wealth, power, or fame in life, we must learn to use them wisely so that both ourselves and others may find happiness by leading a life guided by both moral values and material riches.

Addressing Global Challenges Through Value Education

World citizens are facing numerous problems, including terrorism, drug addiction, poverty, and overpopulation.

Hence, it is necessary to instill moral values in the curriculum because education is a highly effective weapon to combat these evils and find solutions. “Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in their hand and at whom it is aimed” (Joseph Stalin).

Shaping the Future Through Education

We know that today’s children are tomorrow’s citizens. If we provide a good education to today’s children, the future of the next generation will be well-informed. Education is the key to solving all types of these problems .

Embracing Modernity with Moral Values

We are living in a modern century, and therefore, we must use science and technology in the proper way. It is not difficult for us to address all the issues related to non-moral or valueless matters. The primary objective of this study is to instill moral values in schools and colleges.

The Transformative Power of Education

Education possesses the genuine power to help learners shape their minds and manners accordingly, thus enabling the attainment of academic excellence in a fruitful and perfect manner.

Manifestation of Values

We see that Value Education has two aspects to be judged and appreciated, and these two are worth making life and living (1) useful and (2) satisfactory.

It is highly abstract and qualitative, and at the same time, relative in the context of the individual’s culture, creed, acquired belief, conviction, attitude, etc. “Many men, many minds,” and so there are astronomical varieties and kinds of value concepts of education among the peoples of the world.

Literary Illustrations of Value Differences

Now let us cite some examples from some celebrated works.

For instance, the classical playwright Shakespeare’s two characters in his famed drama “ The Merchant of Venice ” exhibit two sorts of values of a single thing – money.

To one protagonist, Antony, the value of money, so to say, lies in sacrifice to ameliorate the sufferings of the poor and the distressed, whereas his counterpart, Shylock, treats the same for multiplying it by usury practices if needed, heartlessly.

Though these two characters are literary creations, they actually represent the two characters of society that have existed since the creation of man, so to speak.

Diverse Cultural Perspectives on Values

Again, the story of Hatemtaye is a unique example that shows how a good soul was ready to have his own head chopped off for his poverty-stricken killer who came to kill him (Hatemtaye) to claim the prize money. According to blood, culture, education, belief, or religion, people of the world are contradictorily and even contrarily different and varied.

For instance, a Jewish, a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim, and even an Atheist express their distinct attitudes, manners, and behaviors that are not necessarily similar in respect of, say, greetings, eating habits, drinking, clothing, and observing ceremonies.

Contrasting Economic and Political Systems

To a Communist, a state is the master of the people, and each citizen of the communist country has to work for the welfare of the state according to their capability, and in return, the state will provide them with provisions according to their necessity.

As a result, the value of a person is determined by their physical strength and food, minus their soul, which survives on spiritual nourishment. In a capitalist country, earnings and spending have no moral or humanitarian constraints.

Philosophical Approaches to Values

Pragmatic thoughts and hedonistic philosophy are now influential in world politics. According to naturalists, an individual can get the greatest value out of life by harmonizing their life as closely as possible with nature.

Pragmatists deny the existence of ultimate eternal values and believe that all values are subjective and relative to humans.

They think that values constantly develop through the interplay between fresh personal experiences and cultural influences. Values like truth are rooted in and derived from their source; this is the belief of essentialists.

Spiritual Perspectives on Value

According to perennialists, not only knowledge but values are grounded in a teleological and supernatural reality. To them, beauty is the highest value in aesthetics, and speculative reason is the highest value in ethics.

They focus on teaching ideas that are everlasting, seeking enduring truths that are constant, as the natural and human worlds at their most essential level do not change. Sufis seek to gain spiritual illumination through deep meditation and attain an inner vision of the truth.

The Global Need for Value Education

So we see that with respect to politics, the forms of dictatorship, kingship, jingoistic nationalism, blood, territory, and color-based nationalism have been treated as useful and beneficial by the leaders of these categories.

Thus, the peoples of the present world are divided into several warring groups that now measure their power, prestige, and superiority based on their arms race and atomic energy. This means that the peace observed by these warring peoples is based on the balance of terror, not on the balance of goodwill.

This crucial global situation urgently requires Value Education. Changing such conflicting mindsets and behaviors, especially among the big powers, depends fundamentally on infusing education with morality, ethics, humanity , and other elements of Value Education.

A Critical Look into Value Education

Value Education is a very recent subject, considered for inclusion in general education courses, which had once been deeply rooted in early education. The average person dreams and believes that the primary aim of education is to meet the needs of parents facing socio-religio-economic and moral pressures.

Parental Aspirations in Education

Thus, we see that a farmer wants his son to become an expert in leading a farming life, a businessman hopes his son becomes a successful businessman capable of facing competition in this field, and similarly, a university teacher desires his child to become a distinguished intellectual figure, and so on.

All these notions of various parents or guardians express the desire to provide their children with better opportunities in life through education than they themselves have had.

Religious Foundations of Early Education

However, the history of education in the past shows that in ancient India, Europe, especially England, places of worship initially established common schools that accepted holy scriptures from people of different religions, making religion the core of moral training.

Shift Towards Secularism: The Renaissance Impact

This practice continued until the advent of the Renaissance between the 14th and 15th centuries, marked by the exploitation of science, technology, land discovery, economic resources, and other factors that significantly influenced human thinking, emphasizing pragmatism in life and society.

It diminished the importance of belief in God, religion, and divinity, rendering them almost insignificant and worthless.

Prominent Voices Against Religious Institutions

For instance, an American scholar named Thomas Pine expressed his personal viewpoint in his article ‘Profession of Faith’ in a manner that sophisticatedly disregarded religion.

He stated, ‘I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life,’ asserting his belief as ‘My mind is my own church.’

Furthermore, he opined that ‘All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish (i.e., Muslims), appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit (F.B.G & A.P.H, 1974).’

Such a dismissive attitude toward God and religion is also evident in the views of individuals like Karl Marx , Darwin, and Einstein.

The Rise of Secular Societie

As a result, this godless perspective has transformed the current education system into one that is secular in both content and spirit. It has made belief in God and religion a personal matter of optional belief and ritual in society, including in state life and governance.

There is a belief that non-religious people demonstrate higher scores in acts of generosity and kindness, such as lending their possessions or offering a seat on a crowded bus, compared to religious individuals.

All these examples advocate that a society without God and with non-religious beliefs tends to perform better acts of service and goodwill for the community as a whole.

Consequences of a Godless Society

Hence, a secular society established through godless education has gained more ground than one influenced by religion. In such a society, a person’s life is seen as reaching its final and absolute end in death, with all their deeds, both good and bad, having no consequences in their future life or the next world.

A closer look at this dire situation of human life, devoid of religion, God, and divinity, reveals that it has occurred rapidly primarily due to the absence of value education in its true and real sense.

Value as the Base of Education

The authors, thinkers, educationists, and philosophers of world renown have been deeply grappling with the strong urge to establish morality as the foundation of all branches of education, which essentially constitutes Value Education.

Historical Perspectives on Morality in Education

Aristotle and later other renowned figures such as Locke, Hume, and Bertrand Russell held the opinion that moral objectives should be incorporated into education to curb humanity’s relentless pursuit of money, wealth, and power.

They believed that without acquiring these elements, life on this mortal earth would lead to a painful and meaningless end.

Life’s Purpose Beyond Materialism

These types of individuals, lacking faith in God or any form of religion, believe that life’s growth occurs here, both in power and wealth, with the ultimate goal of finding fulfillment in this material world.

The Need for Moral Aims in Education

Let us, therefore, critically examine the question: Why should education have moral aims, and how can these aims be implemented?

6 Benefits of Moral Objectives in Education

It is an acknowledged fact that the moral objectives of education have the effective capacity to control humanity’s inclination towards selfish rationality in pursuing personal enjoyment.

Studies on such tendencies or drives demonstrate that:

Achieving Excellence Through Virtue

The cultivation of virtue, the establishment of moral habits or values, allows individuals to achieve the highest quality and excellence in their character.

Philosopher Kant referred to it as ‘a good will,’ a concept acknowledged in all physical, intellectual, and aesthetic aspects of culture that helps individuals attain moral excellence.

The Role of Socialization in Education

Every child should receive proper training for social interaction and friendship. ‘Society is a human creation’ that necessitates socialization and the subordination of the self to uphold the golden rule ‘Live and Let Live,’ which thrives on love, politeness, sympathy, sacrifice, empathy, etc.

Promoting Peace and Prosperity Through Education

To achieve and maintain socio-religious, cultural, economic, and political peace and prosperity, every child should be educated, both in theory and practice, to fulfill these essential societal requirements.

The Growth and Development of Value-Education

Value-Education is a fully developed subject with the laws of growth and development, much like other subjects in the curriculum. It undergoes development through moral judgments, emotional experiences, and cultural activities that motivate learners to acquire moral strength and clarity in their thoughts and actions.

Learners learn and enrich this subject through careful nurturing and guidance provided by wise teachers and parents who embody moral principles in their actions.

Integrating Moral Values Across the Curriculum

The core content of all school courses, whether in Arts, Science, Commerce, etc., should be grounded in moral values and judgments. Learners should engage in thoughtful cultivation of key facts and figures in each subject to promote moral culture and character development.

Practical Approaches to Imparting Moral Values

Schools should incorporate both theoretical and practical approaches to impart moral values . These values can be presented to learners through stories, dramatization of lessons, sketches, drawings, festoons, and various other creative methods.

In essence, the school itself should embody the living values of social life and society as a whole.

Specifically, the values of cooperation, sympathy, dedication, and tolerance should be taught to children in the classroom and within society so that they may realize that true and genuine happiness and benefit in life can be achieved through the practice of these qualities in group living.

The Role of Teachers in Moral Education

Pedagogical applications related to components of values such as morality and ethics should have a profound psychological impact on teachers.

They should receive proper moral training because it is the teachers who must consistently and rationally cultivate moral thoughts and actions. Consequently, children will be capable of acquiring moral insight and feelings with great enthusiasm, inspired by their teachers’ character and personality.

Conclusion: Integration of Academic Excellence and Value Education

Imitating Spenser Herbert, we can safely say that Value Education encapsulates the entire purpose of education, including the inner quality, insight, and volition of children who, through the application of moral virtues in character and behavior, become citizens of good character within a nation.

Mere academic knowledge without a deep foundation in moral and spiritual values will only mold one-sided personalities. These individuals may accumulate wealth and material possessions but will remain impoverished in self-understanding, the promotion of peace, and contributions to social welfare.

To emphasize this fact, Swami Vivekananda said, ‘Excess of knowledge and power, without holiness, makes human beings devils.’

Value Education necessitates academic excellence, especially to equip learners thoroughly with its elements so that they feel confident in implementing these values in their individual and social lives. This is because academic teaching is systematic, and the impact of education is bound to be fruitfully realistic and beneficial.

16.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Define manifest and latent functions of education
• Explain and discuss how functionalism, conflict theory, feminism, and interactionism view issues of education

While it is clear that education plays an integral role in individuals’ lives as well as society as a whole, sociologists view that role from many diverse points of view. Functionalists believe that education equips people to perform different functional roles in society. Conflict theorists view education as a means of widening the gap in social inequality. Feminist theorists point to evidence that sexism in education continues to prevent women from achieving a full measure of social equality. Symbolic interactionists study the dynamics of the classroom, the interactions between students and teachers, and how those affect everyday life. In this section, you will learn about each of these perspectives.

Functionalism

Functionalists view education as one of the more important social institutions in a society. They contend that education contributes two kinds of functions: manifest (or primary) functions, which are the intended and visible functions of education; and latent (or secondary) functions, which are the hidden and unintended functions.

Manifest Functions

There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. Beginning in preschool and kindergarten, students are taught to practice various societal roles. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who established the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as “socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles” (Durkheim 1898). Indeed, it seems that schools have taken on this responsibility in full.

This socialization also involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. In the early days of compulsory education, students learned the dominant culture. Today, since the culture of the United States is increasingly diverse, students may learn a variety of cultural norms, not only that of the dominant culture.

School systems in the United States also transmit the core values of the nation through manifest functions like social control. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Obviously, such respect, given to teachers and administrators, will help a student navigate the school environment. This function also prepares students to enter the workplace and the world at large, where they will continue to be subject to people who have authority over them. Fulfillment of this function rests primarily with classroom teachers and instructors who are with students all day.

Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility. This function is referred to as social placement . College and graduate schools are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to the careers that will give them the financial freedom and security they seek. As a result, college students are often more motivated to study areas that they believe will be advantageous on the social ladder. A student might value business courses over a class in Victorian poetry because she sees business class as a stronger vehicle for financial success.

Latent Functions

Education also fulfills latent functions. As you well know, much goes on in a school that has little to do with formal education. For example, you might notice an attractive fellow student when he gives a particularly interesting answer in class—catching up with him and making a date speaks to the latent function of courtship fulfilled by exposure to a peer group in the educational setting.

The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is complete. Of course, with social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, these networks are easier than ever to maintain. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace and that might not be learned in a homeschool setting.

The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. There is ample opportunity for social and political advocacy, as well as the ability to develop tolerance to the many views represented on campus. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across college campuses all over the United States, leading to demonstrations in which diverse groups of students were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country.

Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most important U.S. values students in the United States learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics as well as athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual.

In the United States, schools also fill the role of preparing students for competition in life. Obviously, athletics foster a competitive nature, but even in the classroom students compete against one another academically. Schools also fill the role of teaching patriotism. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and take history classes where they learn about national heroes and the nation’s past.

Another role of schools, according to functionalist theory, is that of sorting , or classifying students based on academic merit or potential. The most capable students are identified early in schools through testing and classroom achievements. Such students are placed in accelerated programs in anticipation of successful college attendance.

Functionalists also contend that school, particularly in recent years, is taking over some of the functions that were traditionally undertaken by family. Society relies on schools to teach about human sexuality as well as basic skills such as budgeting and job applications—topics that at one time were addressed by the family.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Where functionalists see education as serving a beneficial role, conflict theorists view it more negatively. To them, educational systems preserve the status quo and push people of lower status into obedience.

The fulfillment of one’s education is closely linked to social class. Students of low socioeconomic status are generally not afforded the same opportunities as students of higher status, no matter how great their academic ability or desire to learn. Picture a student from a working-class home who wants to do well in school. On a Monday, he’s assigned a paper that’s due Friday. Monday evening, he has to babysit his younger sister while his divorced mother works. Tuesday and Wednesday, he works stocking shelves after school until 10:00 p.m. By Thursday, the only day he might have available to work on that assignment, he’s so exhausted he can’t bring himself to start the paper. His mother, though she’d like to help him, is so tired herself that she isn’t able to give him the encouragement or support he needs. And since English is her second language, she has difficulty with some of his educational materials. They also lack a computer and printer at home, which most of his classmates have, so they have to rely on the public library or school system for access to technology. As this story shows, many students from working-class families have to contend with helping out at home, contributing financially to the family, poor study environments and a lack of support from their families. This is a difficult match with education systems that adhere to a traditional curriculum that is more easily understood and completed by students of higher social classes.

Such a situation leads to social class reproduction, extensively studied by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He researched how cultural capital , or cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency that helps us navigate a culture, alters the experiences and opportunities available to French students from different social classes. Members of the upper and middle classes have more cultural capital than do families of lower-class status. As a result, the educational system maintains a cycle in which the dominant culture’s values are rewarded. Instruction and tests cater to the dominant culture and leave others struggling to identify with values and competencies outside their social class. For example, there has been a great deal of discussion over what standardized tests such as the SAT truly measure. Many argue that the tests group students by cultural ability rather than by natural intelligence.

The cycle of rewarding those who possess cultural capital is found in formal educational curricula as well as in the hidden curriculum , which refers to the type of nonacademic knowledge that students learn through informal learning and cultural transmission. This hidden curriculum reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and serves to bestow status unequally.

Conflict theorists point to tracking , a formalized sorting system that places students on “tracks” (advanced versus low achievers) that perpetuate inequalities. While educators may believe that students do better in tracked classes because they are with students of similar ability and may have access to more individual attention from teachers, conflict theorists feel that tracking leads to self-fulfilling prophecies in which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations (Education Week 2004).

To conflict theorists, schools play the role of training working-class students to accept and retain their position as lower members of society. They argue that this role is fulfilled through the disparity of resources available to students in richer and poorer neighborhoods as well as through testing (Lauen and Tyson 2008).

IQ tests have been attacked for being biased—for testing cultural knowledge rather than actual intelligence. For example, a test item may ask students what instruments belong in an orchestra. To correctly answer this question requires certain cultural knowledge—knowledge most often held by more affluent people who typically have more exposure to orchestral music. Though experts in testing claim that bias has been eliminated from tests, conflict theorists maintain that this is impossible. These tests, to conflict theorists, are another way in which education does not provide opportunities, but instead maintains an established configuration of power.

Feminist Theory

Feminist theory aims to understand the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education, as well as their societal repercussions. Like many other institutions of society, educational systems are characterized by unequal treatment and opportunity for women. Almost two-thirds of the world’s 862 million illiterate people are women, and the illiteracy rate among women is expected to increase in many regions, especially in several African and Asian countries (UNESCO 2005; World Bank 2007).

Women in the United States have been relatively late, historically speaking, to be granted entry to the public university system. In fact, it wasn’t until the establishment of Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972 that discriminating on the basis of sex in U.S. education programs became illegal. In the United States, there is also a post-education gender disparity between what male and female college graduates earn. A study released in May 2011 showed that, among men and women who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010, men out-earned women by an average of more than $5,000 each year. First-year job earnings for men averaged $33,150; for women the average was $28,000 (Godofsky, Zukin, and van Horn 2011). Similar trends are seen among salaries of professionals in virtually all industries.

When women face limited opportunities for education, their capacity to achieve equal rights, including financial independence, are limited. Feminist theory seeks to promote women’s rights to equal education (and its resultant benefits) across the world.

Sociology in the Real World

Grade inflation: when is an a really a c.

In 2019, news emerged of a criminal conspiracy regarding wealthy and, in some cases, celebrity parents who illegally secured college admission for their children. Over 50 people were implicated in the scandal, including employees from prestigious universities; several people were sentenced to prison. Their activity included manipulating test scores, falsifying students’ academic or athletic credentials, and acquiring testing accommodations through dishonest claims of having a disability.

One of the questions that emerged at the time was how the students at the subject of these efforts could succeed at these challenging and elite colleges. Meaning, if they couldn’t get in without cheating, they probably wouldn’t do well. Wouldn’t their lack of preparation quickly become clear?

Many people would say no. First, many of the students involved (the children of the conspirators) had no knowledge or no involvement of the fraud; those students may have been admitted anyway. But there may be another safeguard for underprepared students at certain universities: grade inflation.

Grade inflation generally refers to a practice of awarding students higher grades than they have earned. It reflects the observation that the relationship between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing over time. Put simply, what used to be considered C-level, or average, now often earns a student a B, or even an A.

Some, including administrators at elite universities, argue that grade inflation does not exist, or that there are other factors at play, or even that it has benefits such as increased funding and elimination of inequality (Boleslavsky 2014). But the evidence reveals a stark change. Based on data compiled from a wide array of four-year colleges and universities, a widely cited study revealed that the number of A grades has been increasing by several percentage points per decade, and that A’s were the most common grade awarded (Jaschik 2016). In an anecdotal case, a Harvard dean acknowledged that the median grade there was an A-, and the most common was also an A. Williams College found that the number of A+ grades had grown from 212 instances in 2009-10 to 426 instances in 2017-18 (Berlinsky-Schine 2020). Princeton University took steps to reduce inflation by limiting the number of A’s that could be issued, though it then reversed course (Greason 2020).

Why is this happening? Some cite the alleged shift toward a culture that rewards effort instead of product, i.e., the amount of work a student puts in raises the grade, even if the resulting product is poor quality. Another oft-cited contributor is the pressure for instructors to earn positive course evaluations from their students. Finally, many colleges may accept a level of grade inflation because it works. Analysis and formal experiments involving graduate school admissions and hiring practices showed that students with higher grades are more likely to be selected for a job or a grad school. And those higher-grade applicants are still preferred even if decision-maker knows that the applicant’s college may be inflating grades (Swift 2013). In other words, people with high GPA at a school with a higher average GPA are preferred over people who have a high GPA at a school with a lower average GPA.

Ironically, grade inflation is not simply a college issue. Many of the same college faculty and administrators who encounter or engage in some level of grade inflation may lament that it is also occurring at high schools (Murphy 2017).

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism sees education as one way that labeling theory is seen in action. A symbolic interactionist might say that this labeling has a direct correlation to those who are in power and those who are labeled. For example, low standardized test scores or poor performance in a particular class often lead to a student who is labeled as a low achiever. Such labels are difficult to “shake off,” which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton 1968).

In his book High School Confidential , Jeremy Iversen details his experience as a Stanford graduate posing as a student at a California high school. One of the problems he identifies in his research is that of teachers applying labels that students are never able to lose. One teacher told him, without knowing he was a bright graduate of a top university, that he would never amount to anything (Iversen 2006). Iversen obviously didn’t take this teacher’s false assessment to heart. But when an actual seventeen-year-old student hears this from a person with authority over her, it’s no wonder that the student might begin to “live down to” that label.

The labeling with which symbolic interactionists concern themselves extends to the very degrees that symbolize completion of education. Credentialism embodies the emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications. These certificates or degrees serve as a symbol of what a person has achieved, and allows the labeling of that individual.

Indeed, as these examples show, labeling theory can significantly impact a student’s schooling. This is easily seen in the educational setting, as teachers and more powerful social groups within the school dole out labels that are adopted by the entire school population.

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Module 12: Education

Functionalist theory on education, learning outcomes.

• Describe the functionalist view on education, including the manifest and latent functions of education

Functionalism

Manifest functions.

There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. Beginning in preschool and kindergarten, students are taught to practice various societal roles that extend beyond the school setting. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who is regarded as one of the founders of the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as “socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles” (Durkheim 1898). Indeed, it seems that schools have taken on this responsibility in full.

This socialization also involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. In the early days of compulsory education, students learned the dominant culture. Today, since the culture of the United States is increasingly diverse, students may learn a variety of cultural norms, not only that of the dominant culture. Conflict theorists, as we will discuss in the next section, would argue that we continue to instill dominant values in schools.

School systems in the United States also transmit the core values of the nation through manifest functions like social control. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Obviously, such respect, given to teachers and administrators, will help a student navigate the school environment. By organizing schools as bureaucracies, much like what is found in the labor market and in other social institutions, schools teach children what is commonly referred to as “the hidden curriculum.” We will expand on this in the following section on conflict theory. This function also prepares students to enter the workplace and the world at large, where they will continue to be subject to people who have authority over them. Fulfillment of this function rests primarily with classroom teachers and instructors who are with students all day.

Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility through allowing individuals of all social backgrounds to gain credentials that will broaden their prospects in the future. This function is referred to as social placement . Colleges and graduate schools are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to the careers that will give them the financial freedom and security they seek. As a result, college students are often more motivated to study areas that they believe will be advantageous on the socio-economic ladder. A student might value business courses over a class in Victorian poetry because she sees business coursework as a stronger vehicle for financial success and for higher placement within the social hierarchy.

Latent Functions

Education also fulfills latent functions. As you well know, much goes on in a school that has little to do with formal, programmatic education. For example, you might notice an attractive fellow student when they give a particularly interesting answer in class—catching up with them and making a date speaks to the latent function of courtship fulfilled by exposure to a peer group in the educational setting.

The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is complete. Of course, with the increase in social media platform use such as Facebook and LinkedIn, these networks established in school environments are easier than ever to maintain. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace and that might not be learned in a homeschool setting.

The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. There is ample opportunity for social and political advocacy, as well as the ability to develop tolerance to the many views represented on campus. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across college campuses all over the United States, leading to demonstrations in which diverse groups of students were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country. Social and political advocacy can take many forms, from joining established programs on international development to joining a particular party-affiliated group to supporting non-profit clubs at your school.

Figure 1. Starting each day with the Pledge of Allegiance is one way in which students are taught patriotism. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Turner/flickr)

Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most characteristic American values students in United States schools learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics or athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual. As such, schools in the U.S. and around the world are teaching their students about larger national ideals and fostering institutions that are conducive to the cultural imprinting of those ideas.

In the United States, schools also fill the role of preparing students for competition in life. Obviously, athletics foster a competitive ethos, but even in the classroom students compete against one another academically. Schools also aid in teaching patriotism. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and take history classes where they learn about national heroes and the nation’s past. The practice of saying the Pledge of Allegiance has become controversial in recent years, with individuals arguing that requiring or even expecting children to pledge allegiance is unconstitutional and as such may face legal challenges to its validity. [1] [/footnote]

Another role of schools, according to functionalist theory, is that of sorting , or classifying students based on academic merit or potential. The most capable students are identified early in schools through testing and classroom achievements. Such students are placed in accelerated programs in anticipation of successful college attendance, a practice that is referred to as tracking, and which has also generated substantial opposition, both in the United States and abroad. This will be further discussed as it pertains to conflict theory, but a majority of sociologists are against tracking in schools because research has found that the positive effects of tracking do not justify the negative ones. Functionalists further contend that school, particularly in recent years, is taking over some of the functions that were traditionally undertaken by family. Society relies on schools to teach their charges about human sexuality as well as basic skills such as budgeting and filling out job applications—topics that at one time were addressed within the family.

• [footnote]Bomboy, Scott (June 2018). "The history of legal challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance". Constitution Daily. Retrieved from https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-latest-controversy-about-under-god-in-the-pledge-of-allegiance . ↵
• Theoretical Perspectives on Education. Authored by : OpenStax CNX. Located at : https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:Q7ShLma2@8/16-2-Theoretical-Perspectives-on-Education . License : CC BY: Attribution . License Terms : Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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Functionalist Perspective on Education

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Functionalists view education as a system that fulfills crucial societal needs. It transmits cultural values and knowledge (socialization), prepares individuals for various roles (social integration), promotes order and stability (social control), and equips individuals with workforce skills (economic development).

Key Takeaways

• Functionalism contends that all of the roles and institutions in a society are essential to its function. Although functionalist ideas have circulated since antiquity, Durkheim was the first to formalize a functionalist perspective on sociology.
• Durkheim considered education to reflect the needs and customs and beliefs of the society providing it. To him, it served an essential function in instilling societal values and socializing children. He also considered education to teach skills essential for establishing the division of labor in society.
• Schultz, another functionalist, considered education to be an investment that people made in themselves in order to gain access to higher-paying and higher-status jobs.

The Functionalist View of Society

Functionalism is what sociologists call a structural-consensus theory. By structural, sociologists mean that functionalists argue that there exists a social structure that shapes individual behavior through the process of socialization.

Functionalists believe that all of the institutions, roles, norms, and so on of a society serve a purpose beneficial, if not indispensable for, the long-term survival of the society.

The theory rose to prominence in the works of 19th-century sociologists who viewed societies as organisms.

Emile Durkheim, for instance, argued that it was necessary to understand the needs of the social organism to which social phenomena correspond (Pope, 1975).

1. Socialization and Social Solidarity (Durkheim)

Emile Durkheim believed that schools are essential for imprinting shared social values into children. The education system meets a functional pre-request of society by passing on the culture and values of society.

This is achieved through the hidden curriculum and PSHE lessons. This helps to build social solidarity as it teaches students the core values of society.

Durkheim discussed the phenomenon of education as a social fact. He considered education social in nature, origins, and functions. He opposed the idea of one perfect educational system for all societies.

Instead, Durkheim argues that education varied in each stage of human civilization because each society must have a system of education corresponding to its own needs and reflecting the customs and beliefs of day-to-day life. Thus, education can be studied through the lens of sociology (Durkheim, 1956).

Durkheim defined education as the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life, intended to arouse and develop in children a number of physical, intellectual, and moral states demanded of them by both the political society as a whole and the special niche of society that he is destined to occupy (Durkheim, 1956).

By this definition, Durkheim believed that education methodologically socialized the younger generation. It did so by performing two major functions in advanced industrial societies – transmitting the shared values of society and teaching the specialized skills for an economy based on a division of labor (Durkheim, 1956).

Education, in Durkheim’s view, created a sufficient amount of homogeneity for society to survive through instilling a sense of social solidarity in the individual. This involves instilling a sense of belonging to wider society, a sense of commitment to the importance of working toward society’s goals, and a feeling that the

Durkheim argued that, to become attached to society, children must feel intimately connected  and committed to the society. He believed that teaching history in particular accomplished this (Durkheim, 1956).

Teaching Social Roles

Durkheim also argued that schools in complex societies teach how people can cooperate with people who are neither their kin nor friends in a way that neither the family or friendship can.

Thus, school is the only institution that can prepare children for membership in wider society by enforcing a set of rules applied to all children.

2. The Division of Labor

Durkheim argued that education’s crucial function in an advanced industrial economy is the teaching of specialized skills required for a complex division of labor .

In traditional, pre-industrialised societies, skills could be passed on through family or direct apprenticeships. This means that formal education in school was not necessary.

However, because factory-based production involves the application of advanced scientific knowledge, years of formal education in schools became more necessary.

Education was also essential to modern societies in Durkheim’s view because social solidarity is largely based on the interdependence of specialized skills.

Just as social solidarity is based on cooperation between people with different skill sets, school serves as an ideal environment for children to learn to work and socialize with people from different backgrounds.

3. Developing Human Capital (Schultz)

Another functionalist perspective on education is that of T.W. Schultz. Schultz viewed the function of education as the development of human capital.

Investment in education benefits the wider economy, as education can provide properly trained, qualified and flexible workforce.

To Schultz, human capital was the acquisition of all of the useful skills and knowledge needed for a deliberate investment. Schultz considered much of the investment that people do to be for human capital.

For example, direct expenditures on education and health, as well as earnings foregone by mature students attending school and workers doing training on-the-job are all examples of human capitals.

In this view, education is an investment in human capital that people make in order to have access to better paying jobs, spend less time in the unemployment market, and make speedier transitions to their desired careers (Wahrenburg & Weldi, 2007).

4. Role Allocation (Davis and Moore)

The education system provides a means to selecting and sifting people into the social hierarchy. In a meritocratic society access to jobs and power, wealth and status are directly linked to educational achievement.

Davis and Moore examined education through the lens of role allocation. They believed that education selects talented individuals and allocates them to the most important roles in society.

For example, the higher monetary and status rewards for those who have the jobs of, say, a doctor or a pilot encourage competition.

Accordingly, Davis and Moore believed that education sifts and sorts people according to their ability (Grandjean & Bean, 1975).

5. Bridge between Family and Society

Parsons believed that schools provide a link between the family and wider society which allows students to move from the ascribed status and particularistic values of the home to the meritocratic and universalistic values of wider society.

Parsons viewed education as being part of meritocracy . In a meritocratic system, everyone has equality of opportunity. Achievements and rewards are based on effort and ability — achieved status — over the situations of how someone was born and raised — acquired status.

Consequently, education instills values of competition, equality, and individualism.

In this view, education is a secondary agent of socialization, creating a bridge between family and society. Within the family, children are judged by the standards of their parents.

However, in wider society, the individual is treated and judged in terms of universal standards that are applied to everyone, regardless of their kinship ties (Parsons, 1937).

Similarly, the child’s status is ascribed, or fixed by birth, in the family.

Meanwhile, status in adult life is, in some part, achieved. Individuals, for instance, achieve their occupational skills. In both cases, it is necessary for children to move from the standards and status of their family to the universal standards and achieve status in society (Parsons, 1937).

School, Parsons argued, prepares children for this transition, representing society in a microcosm. According to Parsons, schools also install the values of achievement and equality of opportunity.

These values have important functions in advanced industrialized societies, which require a motivated and highly skilled workforce.

Both low and high achievers in the school system will see the system as just and fair because status is achieved in a situation where everyone has an equal chance of success (Parsons, 1937).

Criticisms of the Functionalist Perspective on Education

Functionalist perspectives on education have been criticized for several reasons:

General Criticism

Firstly, functionalists ignore dysfunctional aspects of education, such as negative conflict.  Sociologists have also noted that the functionalist view is more applicable in societies with a single dominant and shared culture.

In multicultural societies with, say, different ethnic groups with different cultures and values, it may be difficult to reconcile differences through education.

Furthermore, functionalists tend to assume that education successfully socializes individuals. However, numerous studies suggest that not all pupils conform to the values taught by school.

Marxists have put forth a notable critique of functionalism. Bowles and Gintis (1976), for example, argued that education perpetuated a meritocracy myth — that one’s educational achievements and failures are solely one’s fault and based on the quality of one’s efforts — when, in reality, factors such as race and class heavily influence one’s opportunities and achievement.

Feminists have taken another Marxist idea: that of the hidden curriculum — the idea that schools indoctrinate values not only by what is taught explicitly, but what is taught by the structure of the school itself. They have argued that this hidden curriculum maintains and reinforces patriarchy , not meritocracy (Acker, 1987).

Outside of Marxism, the sociologist Wong criticized functionalism for seeing children as passive puppets of socialization when the process is much more complex and involves teacher-pupil relationships.

There is also, ultimately, a weak link between educational achievement and economic success (Wahrenburg & Weldi, 2007).

Criticism of Durkheim

There are several reasons why scholars have criticized Durkheim’s functionalist perspective on education. For example, postmodernists may criticize Durkheim for his assumption that society needs shared values.

For example, in many countries, such as the United States, it is debatable as to whether or not there is single culture, and there are communities that are largely cut off from the mainstream.

Marxists, meanwhile, have criticized the relationship between school and work. #

While Durkheim sees school as a fundamentally neutral institution that transmits values and skills to individuals in a way that enables economies to function, Marxists have argued that schools teach proletariat children to be passive and submit to authority, making them easier to exploit later in life (Bowles & Gintis, 2011).

Criticism of Parsons

The main criticisms of Parsons’ view on education come from Marxism , and particularly the idea that schools are meritocratic. In reality, even in situations where schools may treat pupils the same way, inequalities within the class structure result in unequal opportunities.

For example, a working-class child may have lesser access to quality education than the child of upper-class parents, especially when the latter provide their kin with services such as tutoring and enrollment in elite educational institutions and preparatory schools.

Ultimately, this results in a widening of pre-existing class inequality, with the parents of the bourgeoisie being able to maintain their hold over intergenerational wealth by giving their children access to stronger economic opportunities through higher educational achievement (Morrow & Tours, 1995).

Acker, S. (1987). Feminist theory and the study of gender and education. International review of education, 33 (4), 419-435.

Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life . Haymarket Books.

Davis, K., & Moore, W. E. (1945). Pp. 47-53 in Class, Status and Power, edited by R. Bendix and SM Lipset.

Durkheim, E. (1956). Education and sociology . Simon and Schuster.

Grandjean, B. D., & Bean, F. D. (1975). The Davis-Moore theory and perceptions of stratification: some relevant evidence. Social Forces, 54 (1), 166-180.

Morrow, R. A., & Torres, C. A. (1995). Social theory and education: A critique of theories of social and cultural reproduction . SUNY Press.

Parsons, T. (1937). Remarks on Education and the Professions. The International Journal of Ethics, 47 (3), 365-369.

Pope, W. (1975). Durkheim as a Functionalist. Sociological Quarterly, 16 (3), 361-379.

Wahrenburg, M., & Weldi, M. (2007). Return on investment in higher education: Evidence for different subjects, degrees and gender in Germany . Johann Wolfgang Goethe Univ., Chair of Banking and Finance.

Value in Education: Its Web of Social Forms

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After introducing a radical notion of social form , with reference to the work of John Holloway and Werner Bonefeld, the chapter indicates how education in contemporary capitalist society is entangled in a web of social forms. The Introduction incorporates a consideration of abstract labor, crucial for an understanding of value in education. The opening section outlines the nature of capital’s social forms . The second part of the article explores some social forms constituting value in education in relation to the general commodity form . Key social forms here include competition, and monetization, amongst others. Section three focuses on labor-power , and its web of social forms. It indicates how labor-power production through institutionalized education spills over into family life and the wider capitalist society. The Conclusion discusses how the social forms examined in the chapter are always forms of class struggle, and how struggles in education can move on to projects making for the dissolution of capital within its society. We must rupture and break this web of social forms, which is made by our labor , and leave the poisonous spider of capital bereft of social sustenance, whilst drawing on the communist impulse in creating alternative forms of life and education.

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In capitalist production, value is incorporated within commodities that are produced in labor processes. However, it is not sufficient just to produce value as an aspect of commodities. Value produced equivalent to, or less than, money capital invested in means of production, raw materials and labor-power falls short of what is required: surplus value . Capitalist enterprises require value over-and-above that invested in the means of production, raw materials and labor-power, for a number of reasons. They will need to invest in the next production cycle (and may have to borrow from banks for this, therefore paying interest), and may seek to expand their production (needing more resources than for the previous production cycle). They have taxes to pay, perhaps rents (e.g. for premises, machinery), insurance, maybe interest on business loans, but most of all they seek to produce profit s. Profits for themselves as owners, or for shareholders, or for private equity investors. The fear of making zero profits drives on human representatives of capital (e.g. company owners, managers) to squeeze as much work out of laborers’ labor-power as possible; labor-power being the living commodity, the only commodity that can create new, additional, value: surplus value . The nature and uniqueness of labor-power as a value-creating social force is explained in more depth later on.

In the Grundrisse , Marx points out that ‘individuals are now ruled by abstractions …The abstraction, or idea, however, is nothing more than the theoretical expression of those material relations which are their lord and master’ ( 1973b , p. 164—original emphasis). Marx’s second point grounds these abstractions as realities in contemporary society. It has already been noted that labor has an abstract aspect in capitalism (abstract labor). We are ruled and oppressed by many other phenomena that have the dual character of being at once concrete (expressing materiality), yet are also abstract and social in capitalism. In capitalism, people are ‘ruled by economic abstractions over which she has no control … [and] … the economic categories manifest social compulsion by real abstractions as natural necessity’ (Bonefeld, 2019 , p. 2—emphasis added). Kurz ( 2016 , pp. 8–22) expands on real abstraction and the abstract aspect of labor (abstract labor) in capitalist society. In capitalism, money is a key example of real abstraction. For Neary and Taylor, ‘money is simultaneously both the most concrete and the most abstract expression of the contradictory relations of capitalist production’ ( 1998 , p. 5). Our everyday lives are shaped by money, both in terms of its concrete materiality (we don’t have enough of the stuff to pay bills, or positively when buying a new pair of shoes), but also as an abstract force hanging over us (fear of debt, bankruptcy etc.). For Simon Clarke, money exists ‘as the supreme social power through which social reproduction is subordinated to the reproduction of capital’ ( 1988 , p. 14, in Neary & Taylor, 1998 , p. 5). Money socially glues us to the reproduction of capital and its society; it makes the capitalist world go round, and we are key players in the drama given our social addictions to money. Interestingly, the concrete materiality of money has become ever more ‘abstract’ historically, with the development of capitalism. Transitions from pure gold and silver to gold and silver coins (which began well before capitalism), to ‘debased’ coinage (including copper and nickel additions), and then paper money, indicates this. The movement from paper money to debit and credit card payment, with ‘contactless’ payment in recent years, eviscerates the materiality of money further still. In the sphere of education, ‘qualification’ in its relation to labor-power production, could be viewed as a real abstraction. To demonstrate this would require another chapter.

A flow ‘is continuous movement’ and ‘Being flows if and only if the twin conditions of continuity and motion are satisfied’ (Nail, 2019 , p. 68—original emphases). Value is ‘not separate from the flows that support it’ (Nail, 2020 , p. 75). That is, it is not separate from its web of social forms. Capital moves says John Holloway; ‘capital is inherently mobile’ ( 1995 , p. 141). Yet capital’s social forms have the effect of congealing or blocking some of these life-flows, but they are not always successful; in one way or another they mostly fail as our richness and variability exceeds these social forms and their manifestation in institutions and constraining roles. Many years ago, I was a production worker in an engineering factory, grinding rough edges off metal blocks. Yet, given the monotony of the work, my mind was relatively free to roam; the flow of ideas . An example from education: primitive socialisation. As education is involved in the social production of labor-power, then each cohort of youth flows through the education system and is subject to this process. In this productive process, ‘Each new generation has to be socialised into capitalist life in general and capitalist work in particular’ (Rikowski, 2015 , p. 37). For more on the notion of primitive socialisation, see Rikowski ( 2015 , pp. 36–8). Thomas Nail explores the concept of flow in depth ( 2019 , pp. 67–96).

Contemporary examples in education would include the current strikes by teachers in schools and university lecturers in the UK. These are about gaining advantages, or at least not suffering material loses regarding pay (when set against inflation), and pensions (for university lecturers). They are not primarily about ending the wage form or wage system, state pensions, or much less capitalism as a whole. In capitalism, workers, including education workers are driven to defend their pay and working conditions in the face of attacks by human representative of capital.

The difference between labor-power aspects and labor-power attributes is explained in Rikowski ( 2002a ).

Simon Frith ( 1980 ) indicates employer criticisms of school leavers’ employability can be traced back to at least the late nineteenth century in England.

The main reasons for value production being weak in schools in England are, firstly, the capitalist state has not created conditions conducive for significant profit-making. For example, the claw-back clauses in contracts linked to targets (e.g. for examination results) need to be weakened (or abolished), and selling off assets (e.g. school playing fields) needs to be made easier, and so on. Secondly, private operators in schools in England need control of significant numbers of schools so economies of scale can be made (e.g. with joint services such as payroll, recruitment and estate management established). This point is being addressed by policymakers through the forced academization process, where schools are taken out of local authority control on the one hand, and the processes of combining schools into Federations and Trusts is encouraged on the other. School ‘brands’ and companies are in formation through these policies.

This section draws material from Rikowski ( 2019a , pp. 160–65).

Remembering that, for Marx, commodities do not have to be ‘hard’, directly tangible and occupying specific space time (e.g. coats and linen—examples that Marx uses in Capital 1977a , pp. 54–75, when pinning down exchange-value and the money form). Theatres, brothels, and musical performances provide services that ‘in the strict sense … assume no objective form … [and] … do not receive an existence as things separate from those performing the services … can be in part subsumed under capital’ and therefore ‘the commodity … has nothing to do with its corporeal reality’ (Marx, 1975 , pp. 166–67, and 171). Services here refers to certain experiences that take a commodity form, and labor that performs these services creates value for owners of brothels, schools, transport services, theatres and so on. It is not easy to find worthwhile characterizations of educational services . As Ng and Forbes note, in relation to HEIs: ‘Service literature tends to view services generally whilst education literature tends to focus on the learning aspect of higher education’ ( 2008 , p. 8). They tend to focus on service quality and the marketization of these services in HEIs, while ignoring them as commodities and their commodification.

For a detailed portrayal of unbundling see McCowan ( 2017 , pp. 735–39).

For more on the insertion of for-profit providers in UK HEIs, see McGettigan ( 2013 , pp. 96–109).

‘Free schools are part of an ongoing policy agenda to liberalize the ‘supply side’ of the school quasi-market system in England’ (Allen & Higham, 2018 , p. 191).

See McGettigan for an excellent account on the UK HEIs fees/loans system ( 2013 , pp. 37–51). For a detailed and participatory account of these students protests, see Neary ( 2020 , pp. 68–80).

As Thomas Nail notes regarding flows of being, it is possible for flows to ‘flow together in a confluence, which is an intersection of two or more flows that intersect’ ( 2019 , p. 86). What is being advanced here is that the various forms of labor-power production described in this section intersect and affect each other’s development and direction. This occurs in the lives of individuals, within their bodies, modes of thought and ideas, and relations with others. These points require development in further work. For more on the confluence of flows, see Nail ( 2019 , pp. 86–96).

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Rikowski, G. (2023). Value in Education: Its Web of Social Forms. In: Hall, R., Accioly, I., Szadkowski, K. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Marxism and Education. Marxism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-37252-0_3

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A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Taclott Parsons’ Perspective on Education

Writing in the 1950s Parsons argued that modern education systems performed two main functions – role allocation and providing value consensus through meritocracy.

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Last Updated on June 5, 2023 by Karl Thompson

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1961) outlined what is commonly accepted as the Functionalist view of education as it relates to modern societies in the late 1950s.

Particularistic and Universalistic Values

Parsons argued that, after primary socialisation within the family, the school takes over as the focal socialising: school acts as a bridge between family and society as a whole, preparing children for their adult roles in society.

Within the family, the child is judged by particularistic standards. Parents treat the child as their own, unique, special child, rather than judging him or her by universal standards that are applied to every individual.

However, in the wider society the individual is treated and judged in terms of universalistic standards, which are applied to all members, regardless of their kinship ties.

Within the family, the child’s status is ascribed: it is fixed by birth. However, in advanced industrial society, status in adult life is largely achieved: for example individuals achieve their occupational skills. Thus it is necessary that the child moves from the particularistic standards and ascribed status of the family to the universalistic standards and achieved status of adult society.

The school prepares people for this transition. It establishes universalistic standards, in terms of which all pupils achieve their status. Their conduct is assessed against the yardstick of the school rules; their achievement is measured by performance in examinations. The same standards are applied to all pupils regardless of ascribed characteristics such as sex, race, family background or class of origin. Schools operated on meritocratic principles: status is achieved on the basis of merit (or worth).

Like Durkheim, Parsons argued that the school represents society in miniature. Modern industrial society is increasingly based on achievement rather than ascription, on universalistic rather than particularistic standards, on meritocratic principles which apply to all its members. By reflecting the operation of society as a whole, the school prepares young people for their adult roles.

Education: Meritocracy and Value Consensus

Parsons argued that a further main function of schools was to socialise young people into the basic values of society. Parsons, like many functionalists, maintained that value consensus is essential for society to operate effectively. In American society, school instils two major values

• The value of achievement
• The value of equality of opportunity.

By encouraging students to strive for high levels of academic attainment, and by rewarding those who succeed, schools foster the value of achievement itself. By placing individuals in the same situation in the classroom and so allowing them to compete on equal terms in examinations, schools foster the value of equality of opportunity.

These values have important functions in society as a whole. Advanced industrial society requires a highly motivated, highly skilled workforce. This necessitates differential reward for differential achievement, a principle which has been established in schools.

Both the winners (the high achievers) and the losers (the low achievers) will see the system as just and fair, since status is achieved in a situation where all have an equal chance. Again, the principles that operate in the wider society are mirrored in the school.

Ultimately Parsons believed that the education system was meritocratic and because of this it created value consensus in an unequal society.

Education and Selection

Finally, Parsons saw the educational system as an important mechanism for the section of individuals for their future role in society. In his words, it ‘functions to allocate these human resources within the role-structure of adult society’. Thus schools by testing and evaluating students, match their talents, skills and capacities to the jobs for which they are best suited. The school is therefor seen as the major mechanism for role allocation.

Evaluations of Parsons

The main criticisms of Parson’s work come from Marxism.

Marxists criticize the idea that schools transmit shared values, rather they see the education system as transmitting the values of the ruling class, as outlined in Bowles and Gintis’ Correspondence Principle .

Marxists have also criticised the idea that schools are meritocratic , arguing that meritocracy is a myth, because in reality, which schools may treat pupils the same, class inequalities result in unequal opportunities.

Signposting and Related Posts 

This post has been written to provide a more in-depth look at the Functionalist Perspective on education, usually taught as part of the education topic within A-level sociology.

This post provides a more in-depth account of the Functionalist Perspective on Education. For a simplified version please see this post .

If you like this in-depth sort of thing then you might also like my post on Durkheim’s view of education .

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Part of this post was adapted from Haralambos and Holborn (2013) Sociology Themes and Perspectives 8th Edition.

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What Is Education? Insights from the World's Greatest Minds

Forty thought-provoking quotes about education..

Posted May 12, 2014 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

As we seek to refine and reform today’s system of education , we would do well to ask, “What is education?” Our answers may provide insights that get to the heart of what matters for 21st century children and adults alike.

It is important to step back from divisive debates on grades, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation—and really look at the meaning of education. So I decided to do just that—to research the answer to this straightforward, yet complex question.

Looking for wisdom from some of the greatest philosophers, poets, educators, historians, theologians, politicians, and world leaders, I found answers that should not only exist in our history books, but also remain at the core of current education dialogue.

In my work as a developmental psychologist, I constantly struggle to balance the goals of formal education with the goals of raising healthy, happy children who grow to become contributing members of families and society. Along with academic skills, the educational journey from kindergarten through college is a time when young people develop many interconnected abilities.

As you read through the following quotes, you’ll discover common threads that unite the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of education. For me, good education facilitates the development of an internal compass that guides us through life.

Which quotes resonate most with you? What images of education come to your mind? How can we best integrate the wisdom of the ages to address today’s most pressing education challenges?

If you are a middle or high school teacher, I invite you to have your students write an essay entitled, “What is Education?” After reviewing the famous quotes below and the images they evoke, ask students to develop their very own quote that answers this question. With their unique quote highlighted at the top of their essay, ask them to write about what helps or hinders them from getting the kind of education they seek. I’d love to publish some student quotes, essays, and images in future articles, so please contact me if students are willing to share!

What Is Education? Answers from 5th Century BC to the 21 st Century

• The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget, 1896-1980, Swiss developmental psychologist, philosopher
• An education isn't how much you have committed to memory , or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. — Anatole France, 1844-1924, French poet, novelist
• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013, South African President, philanthropist
• The object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato, 424-348 BC, philosopher mathematician
• The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education — Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, pastor, activist, humanitarian
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, scientist
• Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life. — Brigham Young, 1801-1877, religious leader
• Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer – into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. — Nancy Astor, 1879-1964, American-born English politician and socialite
• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet
• Education is freedom . — Paulo Freire, 1921-1997, Brazilian educator, philosopher
• Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. — John Dewey, 1859-1952, philosopher, psychologist, education reformer
• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. — George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, scientist, botanist, educator
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, poet
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. — Sydney J. Harris, 1917-1986, journalist
• Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. — Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990, publisher, politician
• No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. — Emma Goldman, 1869 – 1940, political activist, writer
• Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. — John W. Gardner, 1912-2002, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson
• Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer, theologian, poet, philosopher
• Education is the movement from darkness to light. — Allan Bloom, 1930-1992, philosopher, classicist, and academician
• Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. -- Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, historian, professor, attorney
• The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. — William S. Burroughs, 1914-1997, novelist, essayist, painter
• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. -- Robert M. Hutchins, 1899-1977, educational philosopher
• Education is all a matter of building bridges. — Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994, novelist, literary critic, scholar
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. — Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English essayist, poet, playwright, politician
• Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X, 1925-1965, minister and human rights activist
• Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. — Solomon Ortiz, 1937-, former U.S. Representative-TX
• The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. — Plutarch, 46-120AD, Greek historian, biographer, essayist
• Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations. — Bob Beauprez, 1948-, former member of U.S. House of Representatives-CO
• The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home. — William Temple, 1881-1944, English bishop, teacher
• Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. — John Ruskin, 1819-1900, English writer, art critic, philanthropist
• Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete. — Joyce Meyer, 1943-, Christian author and speaker
• Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner , 1904-1990, psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher
• The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others. — Tyron Edwards, 1809-1894, theologian
• Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. — John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35 th President of the United States
• Education is like a lantern which lights your way in a dark alley. — Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1918-2004, President of the United Arab Emirates for 33 years
• When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. — Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism
• Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence . — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, poet
• The secret in education lies in respecting the student. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, essayist, lecturer, and poet
• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. — Maya Angelou, 1928-, author, poet

©2014 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow at Fielding Graduate University and author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers.

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Magazine readers share their thoughts on the value of a college education

The question of whether a degree is still worth the sizable investment strikes a chord in the college & careers issue., educational value.

I was amazed that not a single word in “Is College Still Worth It?” mentioned the value of what is actually learned (April 14). I received a liberal arts education at a private university in the mid-1960s. For me, what made college worthwhile was not just the money I later made from having a degree but the learning experience I had while I was there. It opened my eyes to a wider worldview and exposed me to people and ideas I never would have discovered. My education helped me to become a more thoughtful person than I might have been had I not attended. Nearly every life experience I’ve had since was enhanced by the education I received as an undergraduate.

Sam Kafrissen

This story asked the wrong question. A more relevant and insightful question would have been “At what cost is college worth it?” The responses could be much different for an annual cost of $30,000 versus $90,000. Another way to approach this issue is to ask at what level of accumulated student debt a college education could be justified on the basis of economic return. Leaving college with a loan balance of, say, $15,000 is much different than $150,000 or more in terms of monthly loan payments and the impact on one’s discretionary spending and ability to build savings.

Daniel Levenson

As a retired educational and vocational counselor, I would advise anyone deciding whether or not to go to college to rely on facts, not opinions. The survey done by the Globe and Emerson College is interesting, but it should not weigh too heavily on that decision. Every individual is different; what is right for one is probably wrong for another. Seek good counseling. There are aptitude tests that can give a good indication of whether one will be successful in various occupations, and interest inventories that can compare your interests to successful people in various occupations.

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There is no consideration of potential job satisfaction, with the focus being exclusively on college cost, loans, and potential earnings. How many of the surveyed cohort might have found a rewarding career in a field unconnected with higher education? I speak as a college dropout; in my junior year, over 50 years ago, I abandoned a scholarship in favor of working. I am now long retired from a successful and lucrative 40-year career as a carpenter, building contractor, and real estate investor, and in retrospect, could not have chosen a more satisfying way to earn a living. Perhaps the emphasis on a college degree usually leading to higher income is driven by the relentless barrage of marketing that has convinced people that their satisfaction with life is achieved only by acquiring more and costlier stuff.

Steven Artigas

Westerly, Rhode Island

To What Degree

Overlooked in this brief article are the many jobs in the building and construction trades (“How Important Is a College Degree in Today’s Job Market?” April 14). Compensation and benefits are excellent, and these jobs are readily available to those who applied themselves in public technical and vocational high schools. In my half-century of commercial bank lending, a majority of my large general and specialty contractor clients entered a building trade directly out of high school. (All this while the parents of other students were driving around “looking at colleges.”) Many of them eventually founded companies that grew impressively in clients and number of employees.

Paul Ricchi

Rumford, Rhode Island

I feel that the writers are making the wrong comparison. One should compare a 22-year-old college educated job applicant with a 22-year-old without a college education. Even a bright 18-year-old high school graduate is unlikely to get hired because of lack of maturity and life experience, whereas a 22-year-old may well be hired despite a lack of a degree. College confers not only four more years of maturity at a critical time in one’s life, but actual experiences (living away from home, making decisions about money and time management), not only advanced education.

Ellen Penso

West Newton

As a manager who often hires new employees, I always look at degrees and years completed, and make rough calculations in my mind, to note who completed their bachelor’s in four years and grad degrees in typical durations. In fact, just the achievement of finishing what one has started I always take as a positive. We know all the posturing, pressure, and challenges that confront young adults; if one has a track record of completing a goal, and by reason handling all the smaller tasks and social pressures to get there, I think the applicant in front of me has, to some degree, what it takes to do the job.

Peter J. Atkinson

CONTACT US: Write to [email protected] or The Boston Globe Magazine/Comments, 1 Exchange Place, Suite 201, Boston, MA 02109-2132. Comments are subject to editing.

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• Japanese Version

Progress Report on Field Testing of Collecting Plastic Containers for Personal and Home Care Products Using a Local Government Collection Route

Aiming to Reduce Costs and Secure Sufficient Material to Recycle

From April 2023 to March 2024, Kao Corporation worked with general recycling business Nakadai Co. Ltd. to conduct field testing for recycling plastic packaging used for personal and home care products in the Japanese city of Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. The one-year program, targeting approximately 1,300 households in the city, collected the packaging using the city’s existing recycling route. Recycling of PET plastic beverage bottles via local government routes for recyclables is already well established, but this field-testing scheme for personal and home care product plastic containers is the first of its kind * . Several similar programs now in effect aim to find answers to the issues experienced in field testing of obtaining sufficient quantities of materials to recycle and reducing the cost of collection to set up a sustainable collection system. Field testing in Satsumasendai is being conducted as part of the Circular Park Kyushu project for a sustainable future and has been incorporated into the city’s SDGs Innovation Trial Support Project. Results of field testing and prospects for the future are described below.

• * According to Kao data as of April 2023.
• News Release from April 2023 Field Testing of a New Collection Scheme in Japan Using Local Government Collection Route to Achieve Horizontal Recycling of Plastic Containers for Personal and Home Care Products

Used plastic containers left in a collection box (left) are stored at a city-owned collection point (right), from where Nakadai collects them once a week for quantity and quality analysis

Description of the Field Testing

Satsumasendai City currently collects recyclables (washed and dried plastic containers for personal and home care products, food packaging and colored food trays) once or twice a month. To facilitate participation, all plastic packaging for personal and home care products, with the exception of tubes, is collected and can be left at local collection points where consumers already drop off other recyclables.

Items Evaluated and Results Obtained

• Ensuring a stable, sufficient supply of containers as a source of materials A total of 715kg of plastic containers was collected from 1,300 households.
• Ensuring quality of recyclables for re-use Only 3% of the total packaging collected was deemed ineligible, and around 90% was high-quality material that had been washed and dried. It is expected that 98% of the material collected will be of acceptable quality suitable for recycling.
• Reducing collection costs to make the scheme sustainable This field-testing scheme has been incorporated into Satsumasendai City’s SDGs Innovation Trial Support Project, which is providing support in the form of coordination with personnel and making available more collection points. Collection costs are shouldered by Kao and Nakadai.

Participants’ Comments

To identify issues with the collection scheme during the field-testing period and gain insights into what could increase motivation to take part, participants were asked to reply to a questionnaire. While respondents agreed that the scheme was valuable in terms of reducing the burden on the environment and making good use of resources, many of them found the requirement to sort, wash, dry and take used packaging to a collection point burdensome. In particular, since the packaging was only collected once every two weeks, respondents brought up the issue of needing to store the containers at home until collection time or felt that it was more convenient to be able to drop them off at supermarkets, etc. any time, pointing to the need for improvement in this area.

Looking to the Future

With these field-testing results in mind, Kao and Circular Park Kyushu, working together with Satsumasendai City, will implement a new scheme for one year, from April 2024 to March 2025, reflecting the insights gained from the questionnaire. Under the new scheme, the plan is to use supermarkets in Satsumasendai as collection points for used packaging. Analysis work and other tasks, conducted so far by Nakadai, will be taken over by Circular Park Kyushu in conjunction with the start of operations by Circular Park Kyushu Co., Ltd. in Satsumasendai. Collection frequency, previously twice a month, will be greatly expanded, which is expected to increase the volume of used containers collected. Collection costs within the scheme as a whole will continue to be studied by the parties involved. In April 2019, the Kao Group established the Kirei Lifestyle Plan, an ESG strategy. Since 2021, the Kao Group has been promoting the Kao Group Mid-term Plan with its vision of “protecting future lives” and “sustainability as the only path.” This field testing for collecting plastic containers addresses one of the Kirei Lifestyle Plan’s leadership actions of achieving “zero waste.” Through this field testing, Kao will continue to examine recycling schemes to expand self-directed participation by stakeholders in each step of the recycling process, from sorting and collection to transport and recycling. The company aims to gain the understanding and support of consumers in particular as active participants in resource circularity, from product selection and use to sorting, collection and recycling of packaging. The Kao Group will continue to integrate its ESG strategy into its management practices, develop its business, provide better products and services for consumers and society, and work toward its purpose, “to realize a Kirei world in which all life lives in harmony.”

• * This news release is a translation of a Japanese-language news release dated April 11, 2024.

About the Kirei Lifestyle Plan

Over the past 130 years, Kao has worked to improve people’s lives and help them realize more sustainable lifestyles—a Kirei Lifestyle. The Japanese word ‘kirei’ describes something that is clean, well-ordered and beautiful, all at the same time. The Kao Group established its ESG strategy, the Kirei Lifestyle Plan in April 2019, which is designed to deliver the vision of a gentler and more sustainable way of living. By 2030, Kao aims to empower at least 1 billion people, to enjoy more beautiful lives and have 100% of its products leave a full lifecycle environmental footprint that science says our natural world can safely absorb. Please visit the Kao sustainability website for more information.

Kao creates high-value-added products and services that provide care and enrichment for the life of all people and the planet. Through its portfolio of over 20 leading brands such as Attack , Bioré , Goldwell , Jergens , John Frieda , Kanebo , Laurier , Merries, and Molton Brown , Kao is part of the everyday lives of people in Asia, Oceania, North America, and Europe. Combined with its chemical business, which contributes to a wide range of industries, Kao generates about 1,530 billion yen in annual sales. Kao employs about 34,300 people worldwide and has 137 years of history in innovation. Please visit the Kao Group website for updated information.

Media inquiries should be directed to:

Public Relations Kao Corporation

• [email protected]

Related Information

Announcing a Roadmap for Reaching Plastic Packaging Net Zero Waste by 2040 and Negative Waste by 2050

Kao launches new ESG Strategy “Kirei Lifestyle Plan” to support consumer lifestyle changes

Kao’s New Challenges for the Future: Accelerating Purposeful Business Commitment with ESG

Kao sustainability website

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