Education shapes not only the individual but also the society made up of individuals. In this lesson, we examine the relationship between education, sociology and the sociology of education, the manifest and latent functions of education, why a teacher should know the sociology of education, and the relationship between education and social phenomena such as social control, social change, social mobility, population and culture.

What will you learn in this episode?

• Explain the relationship between education, sociology and the sociology of education
• Distinguish the manifest and latent functions of educational institutions
• List the reasons why a teacher needs to know the sociology of education
• Define the mechanisms of social control (norms, traditions, customs, values, laws)
• Explain the external and internal sources of social change and their relationship with education
• Distinguish horizontal and vertical social mobility with examples
• Explain the relationship of population and culture with education

Summary of this episode

Education and society

Education is responsible for meeting the expectations and needs of society and for raising people with the qualities society seeks. Education takes shape according to the social, economic, political and cultural conditions of a society and greatly influences our social behavior. For this reason, there is a close relationship between education, which aims to change human behavior, and sociology, which studies the causes and consequences of human behavior through scientific methods.

Thinkers have defined education in different ways. Among these definitions, Durkheim's approach, which explains education as the influences exerted on people by the physical and social environment, gave education a social character and established the link between education and sociology. From a sociological perspective, education is an action carried out by adults upon younger generations; it transmits cultural heritage and equips young people with the ideas, traditions and rules that make it easier for them to adapt to society.

Manifest and latent functions of education

In contemporary societies, education has two types of functions: manifest and latent. Its manifest functions are transmitting society's cultural heritage to new generations, enabling individuals to enter a profession by providing vocational knowledge and skills, fostering the habit of rational thinking, making it possible to evaluate the natural and social environment according to scientific principles, and contributing to the advancement of science. Helping individuals attain a higher status, protecting them from harmful habits and providing suitable work and social opportunities are counted among the latent functions of education.

The school is a small-scale model of society. The knowledge, skills, attitudes and values acquired at school are carried into everyday life, and human relationships at school are also an important source for learning about social life.

Sociology and the sociology of education

Sociology is the discipline that studies relationships among people from a scientific perspective and investigates the regularities of social interaction in society. The term sociology was first used by Auguste Comte and popularized by Herbert Spencer. In the Ottoman period, sociology was known as “içtimaiyat,” and it began to be taught as a university course during the Second Constitutional Era.

The sociology of education is the discipline that emerged from sociology's examination of educational topics and problems with its own methods and perspective. According to Emile Durkheim, regarded as its founder, social institutions are like riverbeds; children are shaped within them and flow on from there. The sociology of education examines the social sources of educational thought and policy, the relationship of educational institutions with the social structure such as the economy and the political order, the structure and functioning of educational institutions, the social relationships arising from educational activities, and factors affecting education such as the family and socioeconomic status. It is also seen as a tool of social development, a way of analyzing the social dimension of educational aims, the study of the socialization process and a discipline used in teacher education. Socialization is the preparation of the individual for social life and their integration with the society in which they live.

Knowing the sociology of education is important for a teacher for the following reasons: by getting to know the backgrounds students come from, the teacher understands them better; grasps the social functioning of the school; can organize varied classroom activities by understanding group behavior and group work; recognizes the country's current educational problems and contributes to developing solutions; and helps shape education policies.

Social control and education

Societies seek to maintain social order in order to sustain their existence. Social control is the set of systems a social group uses to ensure social order and to prevent deviation from the rules governing social relations. The tools of social control are norms, values, traditions, customs, written rules and laws.

A norm is a system of rules with sanctions that guides individuals and specifies what is right and wrong; it determines where a behavior begins and ends. Official, written norms are called laws. A tradition is a pattern of behavior with binding force that is respected because it has been handed down from the past and is passed from generation to generation, such as the henna night or offering refreshments to those who visit a newborn baby. A custom is the habit of doing something as it has always been done, such as greetings, rules of etiquette and dressing in a certain way in certain places. Values are the standards that define good and bad, beautiful and ugly, and give meaning to culture and society, such as justice, peace, love, respect, tolerance and compassion. Values may vary from society to society and form the basis of many norms. In contemporary societies, the binding force of traditions, customs and norms has weakened, and legal rules and laws have become more decisive in social control.

Education is a powerful tool of social control. Young people learn social norms and the consequences of not following them through education; by defining the limits of individual behavior, education enables people to act with the consequences in mind.

Social change and education

Social structure is not static. Social change is the change in the social order, in the social relations that maintain this order and in the social institutions that shape these relations. External sources of change include environmental changes such as earthquakes, floods, epidemics, climate change and migration; invasion, meaning the takeover of a region by other groups; cultural contact arising from the encounter of different cultures; and diffusion, meaning the spread of an innovation to neighboring societies (such as the spread of the alphabet and numerals). Internal sources are discoveries and inventions and population movements.

Education is one of the institutions most affected by social change; school curricula change in parallel with changes in society. At the same time, education is the factor that spreads, accelerates and strengthens change. It lays the groundwork for change, instills positive values and, by fostering critical thinking, makes it easier to accept new changes. For this reason, education is regarded as the key to and driving force of social change.

Social mobility and education

While physical relocation is generally called migration, social mobility is the movement of an individual or group from one status to another in the social hierarchy. Changes in income level, occupation or lifestyle are examples of social mobility. Social mobility takes two forms. Horizontal mobility is movement between similar statuses while remaining at the same social level; for example, a school principal moving to a management position of a similar level in another institution. Vertical mobility is movement between statuses at different levels and may be upward or downward; an employee becoming a manager in the same institution is upward mobility, while someone who has to close their business and starts working in a lower-level job experiences downward mobility.

The causes of social mobility include demographic factors such as migration and fertility, economic factors such as income and wealth, family structure, new fields of work created by technology, the political structure and education. Individuals who relocate through mobility must adapt to a new environment, and this adaptation takes place through education; for example, vocational courses for people who have moved to a new environment can ease adaptation. In Türkiye, education was for many years the most important factor enabling vertical mobility. Over time, in addition to holding a higher education degree, qualities such as the standing of the school graduated from and foreign language skills also gained importance. Free boarding schools contributed to vertical mobility by helping children from low-income families acquire these qualifications.

Population and education

Population is the total number of people living in a country or region at a given time. The distribution of the population by age, sex and region directly affects per capita income, the number of schools and the number of students in classrooms. Population structure changes through demographic processes such as births, deaths and migration; therefore, schools, classrooms and teachers need to be planned by region. There are also important relationships between population and educational attainment: as education levels rise, health awareness increases, mortality rates fall and family size decreases. In societies with low levels of education, infant mortality is high and life expectancy is low.

Culture and education

Culture is a complex whole that includes the knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, abilities and habits that people acquire as members of society. Every individual born into the world learns their language, environment, eating and dressing habits and values within a particular cultural pattern. Culture is like a mark that distinguishes one society from others; it contains values unique to that society, forms the basis of social solidarity and shapes the development of social personality.

Education and culture are intertwined. One of the basic tasks of education is to transmit society's cultural heritage to younger generations; education is shaped by the cultural structure of society and is a vehicle of cultural change. For example, education in a society that has embraced democracy as a way of life emphasizes creative and critical thinking. After the family and the social environment, the school is the most important institution transmitting culture. The school carries out in an orderly, program-based, purposeful and scientific way the transmission that the family and social environment perform irregularly and randomly.

In short

The sociology of education studies education together with society. Education is a tool of social control; it both reflects and accelerates social change, makes social mobility possible and transmits culture from generation to generation.

Key concepts

• Sociology: The discipline that studies relationships among people from a scientific perspective.
• Sociology of education: The discipline that emerged from sociology's examination of educational topics and problems with its own methods and perspective.
• Socialization: The preparation of the individual for social life and their integration with society.
• Manifest functions of education: Transmitting culture, providing a profession, teaching rational thinking, fostering a scientific outlook and contributing to science.
• Latent functions of education: Conferring status, protecting from harmful habits and providing work and social opportunities.
• Social control: The set of systems a social group uses to ensure social order and prevent deviation from rules.
• Norm: A system of rules with sanctions.
• Tradition: Patterns of behavior with binding force, respected because they have been handed down from the past and passed from generation to generation.
• Custom: The habit of doing something as it has always been done.
• Value: Standards that give meaning to culture and society and define good and bad.
• Social change: Change in the social order, in relationships and in the institutions that shape these relationships.
• Diffusion: The spread of an innovation to neighboring societies.
• Social mobility: The movement of an individual from one status to another in the social hierarchy.
• Horizontal mobility: Movement between similar statuses at the same social level.
• Vertical mobility: Upward or downward movement between statuses at different levels.
• Culture: The whole of the knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, abilities and habits that people acquire as members of society.

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Sources used:
Deveci, H. (2008). Eğitimin sosyal temelleri [Social foundations of education]. In M. Gültekin (Ed.), Eğitim Bilimine Giriş [Introduction to Educational Science] (Unit 2). Eskişehir: Anadolu Üniversitesi Yayınları.

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