The document discusses the functionalist perspective on education. It states that functionalism views society as a living organism where education plays an important role in socialization and reaching consensus. Schools develop people who fit into and perpetuate society rather than change it. Education contributes to society's survival by producing educated citizens who can function in today's social world. It also socializes students and teaches them skills, civic values, and their place in society to maintain social order.

1. FUNCTIONALISTPERSPECTIVEON
EDUCATION
DS3004 / DS3019 / MPU 32113 – GENERAL
SOCIOLOGY
• Kee Li Jun, 00011903
• Bernice Loh Zi Teng, 00015380
• Loo Yen Yin, 00015816
• Su Yee wah, 00015345
• Brenda Chong Shi Yi, 00011203
• Lee Fei Wen, 00014891
Lecturer: Ab Rahman bin Mohd Yusof

2. Functionalist Perspective on Education
• Society as a living organism in which each part of the
organism contributes to its survival (Schaefer, 2011)
• Society is held together by consensus.
• Education as one crucial aspect of socialization, plays
an important role in reaching consensus.

3. Functionalist Perspective on Education
• Education contributes to the survival and
perpetuation of modern societies.
• Schools are developed to produce people who fit into
the society, but not people who set out to change it
(Hughes and Kroehler, 2008).
• People who are uneducated cannot survive in today’s
social-based world.

4. IMPORTANCE OF PRIMARY EDUCATION
Making new friends
• Meeting new pupils from different background
Develops listening ability
• Children acquire the concept of sharing and turn
taking
Develop self confidence and set personal goal
• when children receive recognition and
encouragement from their teachers
Motivation
• socially and emotionally healthy.
Eager to try new things
• become more serious with their
schoolwork and they keep progressing
in their academic development.

5. Active
• give children opportunities to release their
surplus energies
Think critically
• exams
Making on decision
• Learning how to make personal decisions
Poor Primary Education
- high level of illiteracy
- bad habits and behaviors
- poor habits of studying
- lack of skills and knowledge
- unethical

6. HEALTH AND EDUCATIONAL LEISURE
• Helps develop a growing
body
Health education – to teach
the pupils about their body.
Sports – keeps the body
strong to prevent diseases.
• Nurtures and enriches the
mind
Music/art classes – passion-
based classes help pupils to
relax in the midst of
studying.
Talent – endorse new
talents to the pupils.
MANIFEST FUNCTION

7. FUNDAMENTAL PROCESSES
• Reading, writing, oral skills, and mathematics.
• Secondary education implements the basic knowledge learnt
by the students in primary education and tests their thinking
skills.
• E.g: students have to manipulate math
formulas to suit their question criteria,
or mastering another language with
different intonations.
MANIFEST FUNCTION

8. VOCATION
• Skills required for the working world
• E.g: presentation skills, computer usage.
• Secondary education helps the pupils gain these skills
more professionally as they have more equipment and
facilities than primary education institutions.
MANIFEST FUNCTION

9. CIVIC EDUCATION
• Secondary education teaches the students about
geography, the constitutional rights, and social civic
duties.
• This education makes the students realize about the
dependence of one society with another society.
• Also teaches the students their social responsibility and to
be a ‘good Samaritan’.
MANIFEST FUNCTION

10. BUILDING ETHICAL CHARACTER AND SELF WORTH
• Builds ethical character
Students learn how to
interact with different
people (i.e: the opposite
sex, elders)
Secondary education
educates and reinforces the
students’ discipline and
respect
• Encourage self worth
Students are encouraged to
choose whatever field of
interest they want to pursue
Being good at something
increases the student’s self-
worth
The students are more
confident that they can
contribute to society
LATENT FUNCTION

11. CONCLUSION
• Secondary education teaches the students about their
respective places in society.
• Maintains order and welfare among the educated
citizens.
• Preparing the students intellectually for their tertiary
education and the working world.

12. Importance of Tertiary Education
 Individual
• Yields monetary benefits
• -gateway to better paying jobs which improve an individual's quality of life.
• Able to invest for the future
• -fulfillment of self-actualization needs .
• -wider opportunity of career choices .
• Well-respected in most communities
• -higher chances of being head-hunted and appointed to positions of authority.
• Expand their knowledge and skills
• -express their thoughts clearly, grasp abstract concepts and theories, and
increase their understanding of the world and their community.

13. Society and country
• Increase national productivity
-improve living standards.
-increase a country’s ability to compete and participate fully in the globalization
process.
• Support knowledge-driven economic growth strategies and reduce poverty
-training a qualified and adaptable labor force.
-generating new knowledge.
-providing the capacity to access the existing global knowledge.
• Supporting construction of democratic and socially cohesive societies
-improvement of the public institutions.
-support for the national innovation system.
• Values, attitudes, and ethics
-foundation of the social capital necessary for constructing healthy civil societies
and cohesive cultures.

14. Functionalist Perspective on Education
• Emile Durkheim established functionalist theories.
• The societies work hand in hand with other social
institutions.
• Talcott Parsons used Durkheim’s theory, considered
education is a key component of the social body.
• Promote stability and develop integration.
Emile Durkheim Talcott Parsons

15. Functionalist Perspective on Education
• Functional prerequisite.
• Passing on the society’s culture from generation to
generation through hidden curriculum.
• Schools = a ‘society in miniature’.
• Secondary agent for socialization, provide a bridge-liked
medium for family and society.
• Provide trained and qualified labour force.
• Meritocracy and role allocation.

16. CONCLUSION
• Functionalists, use education as part of their
observations, as a whole of society
• Education is the main organ if society
• If a school system works properly, then consequently a
society will function properly as well.
• In modern society, people
have to be basically skilled
• Education is important for job
opportunities and specialized
careers