Education functions as a key mechanism (functional
prerequisite) through which a new generation of children acquire
the ‘central’ norms, values and culture of their society. This
unites or glues people together by giving them shared values, what
sociologists’ term as a value consensus, through the ‘hidden
curriculum’.
Functionalists see education as a beneficial contribution to an
ordered society; however, conflict theorists see the educational
system as perpetuating the status quo by dulling the lower classes
into being obedient workers.