Functionalists see society as being similar to the human body. In the same way the body relies on the heart to pump blood round to other vital organs like the lungs and brain. Functionalists see society as being constructed of different inter-dependent components like the family and education.

The functionalist perspective sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation and broadly focuses on the social structures that shape society as a whole.

Functionalism emphasizes the consensus and order that exist in society, focusing on social stability and shared public values. From this perspective, disorganization in the system, such as deviant behavior, leads to change because societal components must adjust to achieve stability.

The functionalist theory of education focuses on how education serves the needs of society through development of skills, encouraging social cohesion and sorting of students. According to functionalists, the role of schools is to prepare students for participation in the institutions of society.

The conflict theory. Conflict theory sees the purpose of education as maintaining social inequality and preserving the power of those who dominate society. According to conflict theorists, schools train those in the working classes to accept their position as a lower‐class member of society.

Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and ethnicity.

Conflict Perspective: A perspective in the social sciences that emphasizes the social, political or material inequality of a social group; critiques the broad socio-political system; or otherwise detracts from structural functionalism and ideological conservativism.

A functionalist’s perspective on education is to have a consensus perspective: examine society in terms of how it is maintained for the common good. A functionalist will put an emphasis on positive aspects of schools such as socialisation: the learning of skills and attitudes in school.

Both of them believe that the society is performing some basic, functional role in human life, whether it is to protect individuals from each other or to prevent harm from outside forces. They acknowledge the need for societies and examine the complex dynamic between individuals and groups.

The main difference between functionalism and conflict theory is that the functionalism states that each aspect of a society serves a function and are necessary for the survival of that society while the conflict theory states that a society is in perpetual class conflict due to the limitation and the unequal …

Functionalism emphasizes the importance of social institutions for social stability and implies that far-reaching social change will be socially harmful. Conflict theory emphasizes social inequality and suggests that far-reaching social change is needed to achieve a just society.

The main primary limitation of the conflict theory is the fact that it overlooks the stability of the society. While societies are in a constant state of change majority of the change is very small and it sometimes goes almost unnoticed.

Weakness: It does not consider the ways in which functions may be performed by other institutions, such as the education system, Rather than by the family.

Consensus versus conflict theories As well as being a structural theory, functionalists regard society as essentially having positive effects on the individual and the wider social group, which is referred to as a consensus view.

Marxism believes that there was a real contradiction between human nature and the way that we must work in a capitalist society. Marxism has a dialectic approach to life in that everything has two sides. Marxism believes that capitalism is not only an economic system but is also a political system.