Breaking down the question
The statement is a direct quotation of the Durkheimian view that education exists chiefly to transmit society's norms and values to the young. The command word is Discuss, which requires exposition of the position followed by critical evaluation — you must both explain what Durkheim meant and weigh it against competing perspectives.
Notice the word major function. Durkheim did not claim transmission of norms was the only function of education; he saw it as the central one. A precise answer respects this qualification and situates the claim within his wider theory of moral education and social solidarity.
The quotation invites a functionalist reading, but the discussion should not remain confined to functionalism. The examiner wants to see whether you can bring conflict and interactionist critiques to bear, thereby testing the limits of Durkheim's proposition.
How to approach it
Begin by locating the claim within Durkheim's project. For Durkheim, education is the means by which a society perpetuates itself — the systematic socialisation of the younger generation into the collective conscience. This is not incidental to his sociology; it flows directly from his concern with social solidarity and moral order in modern, differentiated societies.
Develop the exposition in stages:
- Education as socialisation. The school transmits shared norms, values and a sense of belonging to a wider collectivity beyond the family.
- Moral education. Durkheim identified discipline, attachment to social groups and autonomy as the three elements the school instils.
- From mechanical to organic solidarity. In complex societies education also imparts the specialised skills the division of labour requires, alongside common values.
Then evaluate. Talcott Parsons extended Durkheim, casting the school as a bridge between particularistic family and universalistic society. But the conflict tradition — Bourdieu on cultural capital, Bowles and Gintis on the correspondence between schooling and capitalist labour — argues that education transmits the values of the dominant class, reproducing inequality rather than a neutral collective conscience. Interactionists add that classroom labelling shapes outcomes in ways functionalism ignores.
Conclude with a balanced verdict: Durkheim identified a genuine and enduring function, but his consensus assumption underplays whose norms are transmitted and to whose advantage. For fuller grounding, see our notes on education and social change and the profile of Emile Durkheim.
Model answer
Durkheim regarded education as nothing less than the instrument by which a society reproduces itself across generations. His assertion that the major function of education is the transmission of society's norms and values is not an isolated remark but the practical application of his central preoccupation — how social solidarity is sustained in an age of increasing differentiation. To discuss it fully requires both an appreciation of its insight and an examination of its limits.
For Durkheim, the individual is born asocial and must be made social. The family accomplishes the earliest stage, but its scope is narrow and affective. The school extends the process, drawing the child out of the particular bonds of kinship into attachment to the wider society. Education, in his words, is the methodical socialisation of the young generation. Through it the child internalises the collective conscience — the shared beliefs and sentiments that bind a society together — and comes to feel part of a whole larger than the self.
Central to this is moral education. Durkheim argued that schooling instils three elements: discipline, which teaches restraint and respect for rules; attachment to social groups, which cultivates a sense of belonging and altruism; and autonomy, the rational understanding of why rules exist. The classroom, for Durkheim, is a society in miniature where the child first experiences impersonal authority and learns to subordinate private impulse to collective demand. This moral function, more than the transmission of knowledge, is what makes education indispensable to social order.
Durkheim also recognised that education must vary with the type of society. In simple societies bound by mechanical solidarity, education transmits a largely uniform collective conscience. In modern societies characterised by organic solidarity and an advanced division of labour, education must additionally impart specialised skills while preserving the common values that hold a differentiated society together. Thus the transmission of norms coexists with the cultivation of occupational competence.
Talcott Parsons developed this functionalist lineage. He saw the school class as a bridge between the particularistic, ascriptive world of the family and the universalistic, achievement-oriented world of adult society. The school socialises children into the value consensus and allocates them, through meritocratic assessment, to appropriate roles. Here Durkheim's insight is generalised into a full theory of socialisation and role allocation.
Yet the proposition attracts serious criticism. The conflict tradition contends that education does not transmit the values of society in the abstract but the values of the dominant class. Pierre Bourdieu argued that schools reward the cultural capital of the privileged, presenting class-specific dispositions as universal culture and thereby reproducing inequality while appearing neutral. Bowles and Gintis, in their correspondence principle, held that schooling mirrors the hierarchical relations of capitalist production, transmitting obedience and punctuality suited to a docile workforce. On this view the norms transmitted are not the collective conscience of a consensual society but the ideology of a stratified one.
Interactionists raise a further objection. By focusing on system needs, Durkheim overlooks the negotiated reality of the classroom, where teacher expectations and labelling shape pupils' careers in ways that consensus theory cannot capture. Feminist scholars add that the norms transmitted have historically reproduced patriarchal roles.
On balance, Durkheim identified a real and enduring function. No society dispenses with the task of moral and cultural transmission, and modern debates over citizenship education and value formation vindicate his emphasis. But his consensual framework assumes a shared value system that critical sociology has shown to be contested. The decisive question is not whether education transmits norms and values — it plainly does — but whose norms, in whose interest, and with what consequences for equality. Durkheim's claim is therefore a profound half-truth: correct in its identification of the function, incomplete in its neglect of power.
Examiner's perspective
The best answers demonstrate that Durkheim's statement is an application of his solidarity theory, not a stray observation. Weaving in moral education — discipline, attachment, autonomy — signals genuine familiarity with the primary texts rather than textbook summary.
Examiners look for a clear evaluative arc. A strong script explains the functionalist position sympathetically, extends it through Parsons, and then subjects it to conflict and interactionist critique, closing with a reasoned judgement. Candidates who merely list perspectives without integrating them into an argument score lower.
The most common pitfall is treating the quotation as self-evidently true and writing a one-sided functionalist essay. The pivot that distinguishes a top answer is the question whose norms are transmitted — bringing Bourdieu and Bowles and Gintis to expose the consensus assumption. Respecting the qualifier major function also shows careful reading that examiners consistently reward.