Law abiding tax paying citizens who in turn support

law-abiding, tax-paying citizens, who in turn support the state,
resulting in order, stability and productivity.
• Religion: Society benefits from religion as a result of the teaching of values, norms and
group consensus _. This helps strengthen the integration of society. Religious beliefs
provide guidelines. These guidelines establish general principles and moral beliefs for
the members of society, providing stability and order by acting as moral glue. If these
religious guidelihes are not provided, a divide is created between members of society.
• Media: The _media disseminate information influencing public opinion and operate
in the public interest by reflecting the interests of the audience. Covering many
different stories is an indication that the media understand society and its wide
diversity of culture.
• Power politics: Power is used to achieve collective goals, for example, material
prosperity. Authority, which is linked to power, is usually accepted as legitimate by
the majority to help achieve collective goals. This links with the idea of Parsons,
who believed in value consensus: everybody benefits from a variable sum of power.
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1.3.3
Critique_of functionalism
Despite all of the points listed above in support of the theory of functionalism, there
are a number of criticisms of the functionalist approach to education (Blackledge
&
Hunt, 1985).
The first criticism levelled at functionalism is that the approach encourages the
maintenance of the
status quo
and complacency on the part of society's members . The
system of class or social stratification and its highly differentiated arrangement of role,
status and reward allocation are not questioned. The fact that the education system
gets all people to accept the state of affairs by instilling in learners the universally
accepted values of equality of opportunity , meritocracy and achievement is seen as a
positive outcome. Functionalism does not encourage people to take an active role in
changing their social environment by asking questions about whose values are being
promoted or whose interests are being served, even when change of this nature might
benefit society. Instead, functionalism sees active social change as undesirable because
the various patts of society will compensate naturally for any problems that may arise
(Blackledge
&
Hunt, 1985: 13).
The second criticism of functionalism departs from the observation that most
modern societies are multicultural. The question to consider is how it is possible for
the education system to inculcate in all children a single (universal) set of values with
which all members of the society agree. Is this not a form of indoctrination?