Equality And Function Of Education: A Social Analysis

The essay will start with the concept of equality, and the function of education will be discussed from the functionalist and conflict perspectives. The effects of mass schooling, MOI policy, and education reform on social inequality will then be analyzed.

Before going into the discussion, the concept of equality must be elucidated. Equality, in the context of sociology, is achieved, “when all people, even those without high status, wealth, or membership in a privileged group, have an equal chance of achieving a high-socioeconomic status in society regardless of their sex, minority status, or social class” (Gardner, 1984, p.46). In the context of this essay, therefore, the application of equality does not limit to the ‘opportunity to learn’,

For Emile Durkheim (1961[1925]; 2011[1925], cited in Giddens and Sutton, p.871), school plays an important role as a social institution, “a society in miniature” in which children “internalize the social and moral rules that contribute to the functioning of society”. Education socializes children so that they gain an understanding of the social norms and common values, hence they can develop a sense of social solidarity, a value of the collective good. Another function to be highlighted is that children “learn to achieve their status by competing with one another on the basis of a universal set of standards, which applies to everyone regardless of their ascribed status” (Parsons, 1959). In this sense, education allows greater mobility, as disadvantaged groups are given the opportunities to experience upward social mobility through achieving in school and obtaining the kind of occupational status and income that they could never have obtained with their class background without the provision of

On the other hand, language has political and economic value, which the government can make use of to achieve its agenda. The HKSAR government showed determination to impose an MOI policy in 1997 that “sought to promote mother tongue education”, which secondary schools should adopt Chinese as the MOI. However, 100 top-achieving ‘band one’ schools are exempted from the policy. The exemption showed two possible agendas of the government or the dominant class. First, the governments emphasized the economic utility value of education (OUHK, 2017, p.28). Since English is the international language in the global economy, it has an obvious economic utility value (ibid). Second, the MOI policy, which prioritized English learning in the colonial years, is a mechanism of social stratification (Choi, cited in OUHK, 2017, p. 28). The elites in postcolonial Hong Kong have a vested interest in maintaining the superiority of English language in schooling, and the government cannot afford to irk the elites, hence it remains committed to promote