1. Quotable Quotes Functionalist Perspective of Sociology of Education
“Education, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men- the balance wheel of the social machinery”.
Horace Mann, 1891, Educational Reformer

2. Technological Functionalism Burton Clark Educating the Expert Society 1962 (Italics included in the original)
“Greater schooling for greater numbers also has brought with it and evidently implies a greater practicality in what the schools teach and what they do for the students. The existence of children of diverse ability calls forth the comprehensive school, or the multi-school comprehensive structure, within which some students receive a broad general education but others take primarily a technical or commercial training. In short, increased quantity means greater vocationalism… Sorting must take place at some point in the education structure. If, at that level, it does not take place at the door, it must occur inside the door, in the classroom and counseling office…”

3. “Democracy encourages aspiration, and generous admission allows the student to carry his hopes into the school or now principally the college. But there his desires run into the standards necessary for the integrity of programs and the training of competent workers. The college offers the opportunity to try, but the student’s own ability and his accumulative record of performance finally insist that he be sorted out…”

4. Functionalism
“Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the political society as a whole and special milieu for which he is specifically destined.”
Emile Durkheim 1956

5. Human Capital Theodore W
Human Capital Theodore W. Schultz’s 1960 Presidential Address to the American Economic Association titled “Investment in Human Capital”
“By investing in themselves, people can enlarge the range of choice available to them. It is the one way free men can enhance their welfare”
Underdeveloped countries lack in “the knowledge and skills required to take on and use efficiently the superior techniques of production,” they need aid to improve their human capital