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Evaluate the functionalist perspective on the role of education. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim saw the major function of education as the transmission of society's norms and values. He maintained that, society can survive only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities which collective life demands. Without these 'essential similarities', co-operation, social solidarity and therefore social life itself would be impossible. A vital task for all societies is the welding of a mass of individuals into a united whole, in other words the creation of social solidarity. This involves a commitment to society, a sense of belonging and a feeling that the social unit is more important than the individual. Durkheim argues that 'to become attached to society, the child must feel in it something that is real, alive and...

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