Education plays a very important role in the process of individual socialization. The social significance of education lies in giving social members specific cultural connotations, making them understand and accept the social order under this cultural background, and at the same time improving their quality and ability. School education is an effective social and cultural process. On the one hand, it gives people a definition of culture; On the other hand, it provides a valuable social resource for individuals-academic diploma, and through this resource, it has an important impact on the differentiation of social members.
First, the function of school education.
The formulation of school education system, the choice of educational content and the creation of educational environment are closely related to the political, economic, cultural structure and value system of society. Since the end of19th century, sociologists and educators have begun to study the relationship between education and society and the social function of education, thus creating the sociology of education. Scholars believe that education is not only an important driving force to promote social development, but also has the functions of realizing individual socialization, effectively integrating society and making choices according to social division of labor.
School education mainly undertakes such functions in the process of individual socialization: First, the socialization of knowledge. The knowledge of humanities, natural sciences and various social life in modern society has shown an increasingly rich trend, and families are no longer qualified for the responsibility of teaching and educating people mainly through systematic and scientific school education in traditional society. Second, the socialization of values and behaviors. Personal value judgment of society is mainly accomplished through school education, which enables people to distinguish between good and evil and between right and wrong. At the same time, the correct values are used to guide individuals to abide by social behavior norms, and students are trained to be models in line with social order, so as to realize effective integration into society. Third, the socialization of ideal goals. Through school education, individuals can take the goal that the interests of the whole society are consistent with their own wishes as their ideal, and learn how to achieve the goal through learning. Therefore, school education is not only to impart knowledge to students, but also to have a potential impact on students' behavior and attitude choice.
Second, the theory of education and social stratification
The theory of social stratification has always attached great importance to the relationship between education and class formation. Both Marx and Weber regard education or technical qualification as the standard to divide class structure.
Important basis. Wright thinks that two kinds of resources are very important in capitalist society, namely organizational assets and qualification skills. Wright believes that education or technological capital is the basis of class exploitation. Giddens, a British sociologist, believes that under the conditions of market economy in capitalist society, the specific forms of market ability are: ownership of means of production, qualification certification in education and technology, and power of manual labor. Here he emphasized the role of skill level in class differentiation. Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital holds that culture is a kind of capital, and its distribution in the population depends on different classes. This distribution can be attributed to the relationship between educational achievements and cultural practice-the ability to participate in cultural practice is obtained through educational experience. Bourdieu believes that the role of the education system in the bourgeois society at this stage is equivalent to the legalization of other social order forms and the role of privileged inheritance in other social forms. In modern times, the owners of bourgeois privileges have to resort to college qualifications to prove that they have both ability and political integrity and to confirm their exploitation privileges.
Education is the main carrier of social civilization transmission, and human modernization, as an advanced form of social civilization, undoubtedly bears great social functions in its realization. Collins, daniel bell and others all believe that in the future social stratum structure, education will be the screening standard of social and economic beneficiaries, technical ability will be the condition of actual power, higher education will be the means to acquire technical ability, and technical ability will be the primary condition for recruiting members of major social institutions. In the so-called "post-industrial society", power and status should develop according to the logic of the rule of capable people, and its social order will be based on the principle of giving priority to educated capable people. "
Third, the influence of education in the real social stratification.
Education cannot directly benefit individuals unless society has a system that can be used to turn education into resources. Under the macro background of "educational society", academic qualifications and diplomas become the intermediary of exchange relationship. In the real China society, the concern about academic qualifications is better than the concern about practical knowledge and ability. Social employers' application for talents with scarce resources is based on academic qualifications and the reputation of a school or major with the same academic qualifications. All these objectively guide people's educational concept. From the school education in our country, especially the higher education, we can see that most people compete in advance in order to obtain academic diplomas, to obtain jobs with considerable income in the future, and to gain a favorable position in social stratification.
Diploma education represents a person's education level, and vocational participants with higher education are more likely to get better jobs from employers. Occupation is related to education level, and occupation is an important standard to measure class status. Blau and Duncan believe that in the modern society where social division of labor and specialization are very developed, the division of economic and political power is based on professional differentiation. This view has been widely used in western social stratum analysis. Because the market is the main allocation means, the distribution of labor resources depends on the market mechanism, and most of people's economic interests are realized through professional channels.
Education is not only closely related to a person's income interests, but also closely related to many other market interests, such as prestige, leisure, welfare and so on. In modern society, the opportunity of upward mobility through education is far greater than that through occupation. Receiving a certain education and obtaining the corresponding academic certification is the basis for individuals to participate in modern social life and create and share the fruits of social development. Failure to enter the field of education means that they will be marginalized by society or organizations. The essence of people's pursuit of equal educational opportunities is to seek equal opportunities to participate in social life, otherwise it will form educational isolation and be blocked in creating and sharing social achievements.
Fourthly, the thinking behind the positive correlation between education and social stratification.
While education provides equal opportunities for social members to flow to the upper class, many people excessively pursue the utilitarian value of education and regard educational products as a kind of "crazy consumption", but seldom care about the essential significance and intrinsic value of education. People's educational consumption behavior is inevitably irrational, which leads to a sharp rise in the price of academic qualifications in the labor market. As a result, the number of people with higher education has increased, while the level of education income is declining.
In fact, the acquisition of academic qualifications can only be achieved through long-term tempering and strict screening. In the reality of rising academic qualifications, the bubble phenomenon of education is inevitable. The bubble of education is because the consumption demand of education exceeds the supply of limited educational resources, which leads to the growth of educational resources far behind the growth of educational scale, resulting in a large number of inefficient or even invalid educational diplomas, which in turn leads to the general credit crisis of diplomas. The credit crisis of education diploma not only destroys the balance among the four elements in the ecosystem of education development, but also damages the sustainable development of education. It also leads to the distortion and disorder of personal human capital signals marked by academic qualifications, which increases the risk of human investment in the labor market and dampens the investment desire of employers.
With the transformation of social structure, the social stratification model based on identity system is being replaced by the differentiation model based on study and occupation, which has a positive role in promoting the realization of educational equity. We should not only see the close relationship between education and individual social status, but also put forward the basic quality requirements for education in the system, eliminate the bad factors that easily lead to the imbalance of educational development ecosystem, and make the differentiation of social structure more reasonable and tend to benign development.