Lesson 3 Conflicting Functions and Processes in • Elaborate on the theories of

Education conflicting functions and

Social Class and Social Stratification processes in education
• Discuss the relationship of
each conflicting function
and process in relation to
education.
• Analyse the theories on social
class and social stratification
• Analyse and relate the
theories learnt to actual life
contexts and the context of
Malaysian schools.

Why This Lesson

This lesson disseminates and discusses the conflicting functions, processes, and inequalities that exist within the
system of education. These theories give insights into social issues such as the growing inequality that exists in the
education system. The lesson facilitates students to examine education as a social institution with a structure
organised around inequality. For some, schooling creates the pathway to a good job and a good future. For
others, schools replicate the inequalities that are prevalent throughout society, rendering many children with less
opportunity for success.

This lesson also describes the basic concepts in the study of class and social stratification. Students will be aware
of sociological concepts to analyse and interpret the world that they live in and learn that inequality is pervasive
and divides society.

Learning about class inequality and the social structural origin of inequality is fundamental to sociological study.
These questions are inherent in this lesson:

• What features of society cause different groups to have different opportunities?

• Why is there such an unequal allocation of society’s resources?

This lesson also includes critical thinking questions (questions for analysis, reflection, and critical thinking) to help
students think further about the implications of the concepts they have learnt and relate them to their own
context.

Conflicting Functions and Processes in Education

1. Education and Inequality

Conflict theory underlines how education perpetuates social inequality. They believe that the educational
system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and
ethnicity. Educational systems preserve the status quo and suppress people of lower status into obedience.

© UNITAR International University 1 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 The fulfillment of one’s education is closely linked to social class. Students of low socioeconomic status are
not given the same opportunities as students of higher status, regardless of how great their academic ability
or desire to learn.

2. Education and Cultural Capital

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu researched how cultural capital or cultural knowledge determines the
experiences and opportunities available to students from different social classes. Members of the upper and
middle classes have more cultural capital than families of lower-class status. The educational system
maintains a cycle in which the dominant culture’s values are rewarded.

Watch this video to better understand how cultural capital impacts a hypothetical student:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DBEYiBkgp8

1. Tests and Inequality

Tests cater to the dominant culture and leave others struggling to cope with values and competencies
outside their social class. These tests can be culturally biased:
• Standardised tests (eg SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) and ACT (American College Test) are norm-
referenced tests used to determine if high school students can be admitted to selective colleges.)
These tests are culturally biased and help perpetuate social inequality. Many argue that the tests
differentiate students by cultural ability rather than by natural intelligence. The test questions may refer
to experiences that are unfamiliar or taboo to the culture of the child being tested. These tests are in
favour of white, middle-class students whose socio-economic status and backgrounds have various
experiences that help them answer questions on the tests.
• IQ tests have been attacked for being biased in 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 people from
a more affluent background who typically have more exposure to orchestral music.

Therefore, to conflict theorists, these tests are another way in which education does not provide
opportunities, but instead maintains an established configuration of power.

2. Education and The Hidden Curriculum

Conflict theorists say that schooling teaches a hidden curriculum, a set of values and beliefs that support the
status quo, including the existing social hierarchy. The practice of rewarding those who possess cultural
capital is found in formal educational curricula as well as in the hidden curriculum.

The hidden curriculum refers to the type of non-academic 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.

© UNITAR International University 2 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 For eg, although no one plots behind closed doors, students perceive and recognise social differences
through interactions with their peers and through the interaction with the teachers during various classroom
activities. (Teachers could unconsciously show bias towards those students from higher economic status).

3. Tracking in Education

Tracking is a formalised sorting system that perpetuates inequalities. It places students on “tracks” eg
advanced versus low achievers. Educators believe that students will perform better in tracked classes
because they are together with peers of homogenous ability and teachers can afford more individual
attention to them. However, conflict theorists state that tracking tends to lead to self-fulfilling prophecies in
which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations. Conflict theorists believe that schools
carry out the role of training students from working-class families to accept and retention of their status as
lower members of society.

4. Education and the Quality of Schools

Schools possess different resources, learning conditions, and physical environments, all of which affect how
students can learn in them. Schools are unequal in themselves, and their very inequality helps contributes to
inequality in the larger society. Students attending deprived schools in urban areas face many more
constraints to their learning than those going to well-endowed schools in suburban areas. Thus, students from
the lower SES remain trapped in poverty and its related problems due to the deprivation in education.

Social Class and Social Stratification

1. Social Stratification

Social stratification is the process of dividing people into strata or classes based on their economic status
(income, wealth) and social status (occupation, education, gender, ethnic group, race, and nationality).

Thus, stratification is the relative position of persons within a group, category, geographic region, and
social unit. Social stratification is strongly influenced by social class, which in turn determined one’s
occupation, income, and education. Race, gender, age, region of residence, ethnicity, and national
origin are also factors that determine social stratification.

The word ‘stratification’ comes from the Latin ‘Stratum’ meaning layer. Stratification permeates every
society and is propagated from one generation to another. Stratification is not only influenced by
quantitative differences (income, wealth) but also qualitative ones (attitudes and beliefs). Different
groups in society have different opportunities and unequal access to society’s resources, ie education,
employment, housing, and consumption.

To understand more about social stratification, watch this video carefully:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlkIKCMt-Fs

© UNITAR International University 3 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 The greatest cause for differences in material success is the organisation of society.
All societies seem to have a system of social stratification and they vary in the degree and complexity of
stratification. The level of stratification depends on each society’s structure, history, and institutions.
Stratification is determined by 3 factors:
• Social institutions define certain goods (resources) as valuable.
• The rules governing the allocation of these goods.
• Social mobility and the ability to move between strata. (Open stratification systems are the ones
that allow mobility as opposed to closed stratification systems, like in caste-based societies.)

All social groups and societies exhibit social differentiation.

Status is a socially defined position in a group or society. Groups, organisations, or societies have attributed
different statuses to their members.

Eg: Think of a sports organisation. The players, the owners, the managers, the fans, the cheerleaders, and
the sponsors all have different statuses within the organisation. Together, they constitute a whole social
system, one that is marked by social differentiation.

Status differences can become organised into a hierarchical social system.

Social stratification is a system of structured social inequality, a relatively fixed, hierarchical arrangement
in society by which groups have different access to resources, power, and perceived social worth.

For example, sports are systems of stratification because the groups that constitute the organisation are
arranged in a hierarchy where some have more resources and power than others.

The data below reveal the shocking reality of inequality in the United States:
“Among women heading their own households, 28 percent live below the poverty line (Fontenot,
Semega, and Kollar 2018).

One percent of the U.S. population controls 38 percent of the total wealth in the nation; the
bottom half holds none or is in debt (Rose 2014).

Most American families have seen their net worth decline, largely because of declines in the value
of housing. Households at the bottom of the wealth distribution lost the largest share of their
wealth; those at the top, the least (Pfeffer et al. 2014).

A stark example of social inequality is:

The average CEO of a major company has a total compensation of $13.1 million per year,
including salary and other benefits; workers earning the minimum wage make $15,080 per year if
they work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and hold only one job (www.aflcio.org).” (Anderson, M.L.,
Taylor, H.F. 2020)

© UNITAR International University 4 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 2. Types of Stratification Systems

Stratification systems can be broadly categorised into three types: estate systems, caste systems, and
class systems.

Estate System:
In an estate system of stratification, the ownership of property and the execution of power are
monopolised by an elite class who have almost absolute control over societal resources.

Historically, such societies were feudal systems where classes were differentiated into three basic groups—
the nobles, the priesthood, and the commoners.

Commoners included peasants (farm workers and usually the largest class group), small merchants,
artisans, domestic workers, and traders. The nobles ruled the land and controlled the resources used to
cultivate the land, as well as all the resources which comes from peasant labour.

Caste System:
One’s place in the stratification system is an ascribed status meaning it is a quality given to an individual
by circumstances of birth. The hierarchy of classes is rigid and static in caste systems and is often preserved
and enforced through formal law and cultural practices that hinder free association and movement
between classes.

Examples are the system of apartheid in South Africa and the caste system in the Hindu culture.

The caste system in the Hindu culture:

The Indian Caste System is a perfect example of the stratification system. Caste is a hereditary social
group where a person’s rank and rights are decided by the caste he is born into. For instance, the Hindu
religion has castes that range from Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Sudra. A person’s caste permits
one to inherit the status and function of their parents. The Brahmins are the highest caste, and they are
entitled to all the resources and amenities which the lower caste person isn’t allowed to. People are
denied access to important resources solely because of their caste. This creates a lot of division and
conflict in Indian society.

Class System:
Stratification exists also in class systems, but a person’s position in the class system can change according
to what the person can achieve. Class depends to some degree on achieved status, defined as status
that is earned by the acquisition of resources and power, regardless of one’s origins. Class systems are
more open and flexible than caste systems because the position is not strictly determined by birth,
although the class into which one is born can still matter in terms to access to resources.

Class is the social structural position that groups possess in relation to the economic, social, political,
educational, and cultural resources of society. Class determines the access individuals have to these
resources and puts groups in differing strata of privilege and disadvantage.

Each class has members with similar opportunities who have the affinity to share a common way of life.

© UNITAR International University 5 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 Class also includes cultural aspects which shape language, dress, mannerisms, taste, and other
preferences.

Slavery:
The most closed and rigid stratification system is slavery or the ownership of people.
Slavery began ten millenniums’ years ago, after agricultural societies developed, as people made
prisoners of war to labour on their farms. Many of the ancient countries of the Middle East, including
Babylonia, Egypt, Persia, China, and India owned slaves. Slavery was rampant in ancient Greece and
Rome, and thousands of slaves were used for their trade economies. Most slaves in ancient times were
prisoners of war or those who owned debts.

In the 1500s Portuguese and Spanish who colonised Brazil and the Caribbean islands made slaves of
thousands of inhabitant Indians. The English, the French, and other Europeans also brought African slaves
into the West, and by the 1800s they had captured, transported, and enslaved 10–12 million Africans to
the New World; almost 2 million of them perished during the journey (Thornton, 1998).

Slavery is the most deplorable event in American history. It ended with the Civil War but continues to have
negative repercussions for African Americans and the rest of American society.

Slavery is still in existence in parts of Africa, Asia, and South America. There are still an estimated number
of tens of millions of slaves in these parts of the world.

Today’s slaves include (a) men prisoners of war in ethnic conflicts; (b) girls and women captured in
wartime or kidnapped from their neighborhoods and forced into prostitution or sex slavery; (c) children
traded by their guardians to become child labourers; and (d) indebted workers who are abused and
even tortured and too terrified to leave (Bales, 2007; Batstone, 2007).

In groups of four, discuss and answer these questions: Present your answers to the class. (Questions for
analysis, reflection, and critical thinking.)

1. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Discuss this statement in relation to the
conflict theory in sociology.
2. Consider the environment in which you live. Can you name the life displays that denote social class?

© UNITAR International University 6 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir

 3. The diagram above depicts The Pyramid of Capitalist System, a 1911 American cartoon caricature
critical of capitalism, copied from a Russian flyer of 1901. How would you interpret this caricature in
relation to social stratification?

4. Conflict theorists see the education system as a means by which those in power stay in power. Discuss
with reference to the illustration above. You should also relate your discussions to the Malaysian school
system.

References:
Anderson, M.L., Taylor, H.F. (2020). Sociology the essentials. (10th ed.). Cengage Learning
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/alamo-sociology/chapter/reading-conflict-theory-on-education/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DBEYiBkgp8&t=126s
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.jpg
https://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/education/education-social-stratification-and-inequality/31374

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© UNITAR International University 7 Prepared by: Azian Abdul Kadir