“Some comparative principles of educational stratification” by Randall Collins (1977)

In this article Collins outlines two main theoretical perspectives on educational stratification: functionalist and neo-Marxist theories.

Functionalist theories—contribution of education to the integration and productivity of society

Neo-Marxist—weapon in the struggles for domination that make up the phenomenon of stratification.

Collins argues that there is no empirical validation of functionalist approaches to education. “A close look at the evidence indicates that schooling does not supply specific technical skills as functionalists contend.” p. 2.

He sketches three versions of Marxist views of education: 1) Marx—free and universal mass education in order to eliminate class differences in educational access and attainment. 2) Althusser who argues education’s role in social reproduction. 3) Bowles and Gintis and education for the production of a compliant labor force.

Collins states that his approach is Weberian and considers the struggle between multiple groups for domination, for economic advantage and for prestige. He extrapolates Weberian categories of class, party, and status to come up with three lines of societal division: economic, organizational-political, and cultural. He also combines this with a Durkheimian approach which sees education as an agent of “moral socialization and hence the secular equivalent of religion in modern society.” [I should incorporate Durkheim more directly into my paper on social interactions.]
“Durkheim shows that participation in rituals—whether religious, political, or educational—promotes group identification, and that myths or symbols that are the focus of rituals become marks of membership in distinctive social groups and the referents of moral legitimacy.… in its overgeneralized form, the Durkheimian theory simply asserts that education integrates entire undifferentiated societies…”

In this article Collins uses comparative historical approaches to study educational stratification.

There is an interesting history in this article of the birth of the modern secular school system. Collins traces its beginnings to Prussia in the 17th and 18th centuries. England only built a public school system as late as 1870.

“In general any strong, centralized state or church tends to be bureaucratically organized…such a state or church provides demand for education…can provide a market for education…state influence on education is fairly strong when examinations are required for entrance to government office…the state is most deeply involved in education where it requires school attendance…

“capitalists interest in using education to ensure labor discipline may have been a force behind the development of mass, compulsory education in some of these countries, but it was not the central motive…the safer generalization is that bureaucratic states impose compulsory education on populations which are seen as potential threats to state control, and that those economic classes which are influential in the state will help define the nature of the “threat”.

“The various kinds of demand for education—practical, status-group, and bureaucratic—may be viewed more broadly as part of a cultural market in which social actors simultaneously attempt to attain certain goals. The interest of government in bureaucratic control over particular classes may mesh with the interest of these very classes in improving their cultural attainments for the sake of status…eg. there is a symbiosis between government concern for compulsory educational indoctrination of the modern masses and some interest in status mobility on the part of those masses. The interest of capitalists in ensuring labor discipline adds yet another demand to this market…as does the interest of a particular ethnic group in maintaining its opportunities vis-à-vis other ethnic groups.”

“the extent to which education develops in different societies and historical periods varies according to the nature of their cultural markets. Abstractly we may see that cultural markets require a common currency and independent sources of supply and demand for cultural goods…a common cultural currency derives from an elite culture, which has undisputed dominance because it legitimates a wealthy and powerful group….the supply of cultural goods…is determined by the availability of teachers, of material resources for schools…of methods for producing…books and writing materials…The demand for cultural goods is determined by the number of individuals of groups who feel there is a potential payoff from education and by the economic and political resources they have to make their demands effective…the desire for training in the culture of a status group has been a stronger source of demand for formal education…”

Collins, R. (1977). Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification. Havard Educational Review, 47(1).