Assessing the View That the Modern Education System is a Meritocracy

Meritocracy is a functionalist belief that everything in school and work is fair and that anybody can achieve what anybody else can achieve because they are equal in society. It is based on own efforts, which lead to success.

According to functionalists, meritocracy exists in all of society. They believe that modern education and the National Curriculum maintain and perpetuate society in an equal manner. Parsons (1961) believes that in the wider society everyone is treated the same and that your position is determined by your effort and your will to achieve. And so, society is said to be meritocratic, as everybody can achieve if they want to enough. Another sociologist Durkheim (2002) is much more recent but builds on what parsons had to say. Durkheim believes that there are fixed universalistic rules for all and that by having social solidarity (the transmitting of norms and values across society) society is then fair and meritocratic.

Marxists on the other hand believe that there is only the “myth of meritocracy” and that it conceals the truth of the inequality in society. As shown in Item A; some sociologists argue that processes within schools such as the hidden curriculum help to maintain an unequal society. The hidden curriculum is a belief of Althusser (1972) who say that the ruling class maintain control by coercion or force and persuasion (i.e. the hidden curriculum)

Another important consideration though is that pupils backgrounds (like class and ethnicity) play a part in their success. So people of lower economic status or working class students are more likely to underachieve simply because they do not have the books or the money to help them do well (material deprivation). This challenges the idea that functionalists believe in meritocracy as well as the difference in exam results across different areas of the country do.