Introduction
- Education is a lot more than academic learning; it is what creates our social roles and personal development and prepares us for the future.
- According to functionalism, education is a structured system whose function is to maintain social stability and to prepare a person for his or her place in society (Siti Wasilah, 2023).
- Education for the pragmatist is an active and experience-based process that can be achieved through problem-solving and real-world application.
This presentation, therefore, examines the two faces in education in terms of how four key experiences in my past education, classroom as a family, reward systems, student growth emphasis, and the preparation for life, mirror these two perspectives and shaped me in my growing years.
Functionalism and the Classroom as a Family
- The basis of functionalism is that education is a structured system in which social norms, values, and behaviour are reemphasised to guarantee a stable and continuous society.
- Real-world activity requires discipline, cooperation, and respect for authority. Schools teach manners, and schools are miniature societies (Yasmin, Muhammad and Siddiqui, 2021).
- This philosophy was certainly evident in my education: one way was that the classroom was set up like a family.
Naturally, the teacher, in their position as a parental figure, would have carried their role not only delivering academic content but also enforcing rules, providing emotional support, and providing a sense of order. Students were expected to fill specific roles: some were attuned to leadership, others more supportive in the class. This setup created a sense of belonging, responsibility and cooperation that functionalists say is necessary for social harmony.
For example, in my classroom, peer mentorship was encouraged to initiate, so older or more academically advanced students were matched with younger or struggling classmates to assist them with their work. Functionalists believe that education is necessary to create social cohesion and interdependence between people, which would help them communicate with others in real life. The structured environment offered a predictable and stable setting and allowed them to develop a feeling of security and routine.
While this yielded unity and the bridge between the teacher and students, there was a hierarchical approach that raised students to perform and conform to certain norms; the teacher reigned supreme. It provided a hierarchy with discipline and structure, but it did not leave much room for individual expression or challenging authority. This environment was comfortable for some students as it provided clear expectations, but others could have been restricted or unable to question the system.
Pragmatism and the Reward System
- As a philosophical approach to education, pragmatism aims at learning by experience, problem-solving, adaptability, and not just memorizing the content (Eko Ariwidodo, 2023).
- This implies that education needs to prepare students for real-life challenges through sound, practical engagement with learning.
- In Golden Time, students earned weekly rewards for being able to engage in extra fun, non-structured activities, but only if they had met various academic requirements.
If a student needed extra help learning reading, phonics, or math, they would spend that time doing practice with that Teaching Assistant instead of having fun. This system supported the pragmatist idea that learning should be experiential and personal: those who needed more time found that learning those skills was based on the idea that education should adapt to individual needs.
In my schooling, this was evident in the reward system, where participation in things like Golden Time or Show and Tell depended on academic achievement. From the standpoint of pragmatism, this approach was good as it centred on developing crucial skills via indoctrination rather than via passive learning. Where pragmatists like John Dewey argued that students needed to cultivate their weaknesses through hands-on, direct practice, which is what it meant to be falling behind rather than simply being told that they were falling behind. Real-world consequences were also added to this system, allowing students to learn that the rewards for effort and persistence work in adult life, too, and that same sort of lesson.
While it was personalized, it also made people with continual misses feel like they were outside Golden Time. Some might have felt this was the motivation, if not encouraged, being that their efforts were not always acknowledged as their peers. At the same time, this also made a hierarchy of achievement, with some students having privileges and others being made public about their struggles.
Its limitations notwithstanding, this reward system embodied pragmatism’s commitment to experience-based learning and affirmed education’s duty to prepare students for their real-life challenges. It elucidated that education is a process holding effort, flexibility, and engagement interchangeable as constants for advancing and thriving.
Functionalism and Student Growth Being Emphasised
- Education is regarded as a functional system by the proponents of functionalism, whose view assumes that education has a structure and helps maintain social stability by equipping students with knowledge, skills, and value to become productive members of a particular community.
- In this perspective, education is a key function to continue the students´ growth in a continuous way from an academic and social point of view (Akour and Alenezi, 2022).
- In my own educational experience, I observed how progress, development, and the notion of learning as a journey, not as an endpoint, were heavily emphasised.
Teachers also pushed students about how education is not about completing all the levels in a skill but constant self-improvement; this extends to developing essential skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, and perseverance. The schools had clear milestones of expectations for students to follow, and students were expected to be on track with their progress at his time. We had structured assessments, target-setting exercises and feedback sessions to prove where we had grown in each subject.
My schooling reflected one emphasis on growth in personalized learning targets. Together, teachers and students would iterate to identify places for growth, and all would be on the path to continue learning. Students were encouraged to learn by building upon their past knowledge and increasing their readiness for the next stage. They were constantly told whether they were reading at a higher level, improving mathematical reasoning, or improving their writing skills.
From a functionalist perspective, focusing on student growth was extremely important for social integration. Schools were doing this by measuring progress consistently and establishing new learning goals so that students would be ready for the future, whether it depended on fairer education, the workforce, or the improvement of some life skills. Turning the focus to student growth certainly had its benefits, but it also had some drawbacks. Some students are not all at the same pace, and for some who fell short of where they should be on milestones, it could have felt like a lot.
However, despite this, the functionalist approach to student growth reinforced the concept that education is geared towards preparing people for the needs of society. The education system acts as a mechanism that ensures that students continuously develop their skills, and it functions as an instrument for social stability, workforce preparation and lifelong learning, which shapes how the education process is structured but evolving.
Pragmatism and Preparing for Life
- As an educational philosophy, pragmatism views adaptation and application to real-world and experiential learning (King, 2022).
- The first two sections discuss the argument that the effectiveness of education depends on preparing students for the real world both inside and outside the classroom, where the students should be encouraged to engage in critical thinking, problem-solving, and live with knowledge.
- In my education, I often heard my teachers reminding us that what we learn in school will be useful to our future lives.
It was especially true in math and English, the subjects where the lessons had real-life applications, such as in math, we teach budgeting so you can become responsible for your financial life or in English, we teach public speaking so you can have better communication skills. A Darker Shade of Crimson shows a nostalgic view of John Dewey who believed education involves doing and allowing the students to learn by applying what they learn to information.
Then, there was pragmatism too to shape my education path as it was through group projects and collaborative learning, like real-world teamwork and solving problems. Instead of memorizing facts, we were led to encourage discussions, debates, and hands-on learning to promote the idea that learning was not supposed to be a passive absorption of learning, it should be an active, evolving process.
Conclusion
- Reflecting on my educational journey from the function and the pragmatism perspective, it has become evident how learning experiences can be shaped by different philosophies.
- According to functionalism, this role of education is to enable the rules of social order to be maintained by making a regulated environment where the students will learn to pledge and coexist with the essential skills they will need in their future life in society.
- The classrooms were structured like families, so this was evident in how they structured this type of building, and there was also a strong emphasis on student growth and academic progression.
I was able to undergo an education through reward systems, collaborative learning and practical lessons, where preparation for life after school focused on adaptability, solving problems, and grappling with real-world issues.
At Native Assignment Help, we support students in crafting reflective and theory-based academic assignments aligned with UK university marking criteria. Our expert writers ensure clarity, critical depth, and accurate referencing to help students succeed in complex philosophy and education-based coursework. If you need reliable Assignment Help, our services are designed to meet academic standards with confidence and originality.
References
Akour, M. and Alenezi, M. (2022). Higher Education Future in the Era of Digital Transformation. Education Sciences, [online] 12(11), p.784. doi:https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12110784.
Eko Ariwidodo (2023). An Educational Philosophy Perspective On Teaching in Contemporary Curriculum Development. Andragogi, 11(1), pp.57–76. doi:https://doi.org/10.36052/andragogi.v11i1.325.
King, R. (2022). The Utility of Pragmatism in Educational Research. Creative Education, [online] 13(10), pp.3153–3161. doi:https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2022.1310199.
Siti Wasilah (2023). Education in a Functional Structural Perspective and Conflict Regarding Social Relations in Society. JUPE : Jurnal Pendidikan Mandala, 8(3), pp.902–902. doi:https://doi.org/10.58258/jupe.v8i3.5922.
Yasmin, S., Muhammad, Y. and Siddiqui, M.F. (2021). Character Building of Students: Private Secondary School Principals’ Perceptions and Practices. Global Educational Studies Review, VI(I), pp.103–120. doi:https://doi.org/10.31703/gesr.2021(vi-i).11.
