The Effects of Education as an Institution

TLDR

Education is traditionally viewed as a socializing force, but recent critiques frame it as an allocation system that shapes success and failure, reshaping populations by creating elites and redefining rights and obligations. The study explores the institutional effects of education as a legitimation system. The authors suggest comparative and experimental studies to investigate these effects. The findings show that education’s effects as a legitimation system are a special case of a broader macrosociological theory.

Abstract

Education is usually seen as affecting society by socializing individuals. Recently this view has been attacked with the argument that education is a system of allocation, conferring success on some and failure on others. The polemic has obscured some of the interesing implications of allocation theory for socialization theory and for research on the effects of education. But allocation theory, too, focuses on educational effects on individuals being processed. It turns out to be a special case of a more general macrosociological theory of the effects of education as a system of legitimation. Education restructures whole populations, creating and expanding elites and redefining the rights and obligations of members. The institutional effects of education as a legitimation system are explored. Comparative and experimental studies are suggested.