Complete alignment of purposes Essay Example for Free

Complete alignment of purposes Essay Functionalism is the complete alignment of purposes of different sectors of society. This encompasses the inter-dependence of different social attributes to make the society survive (McClelland 1). In terms of schooling in the US, educational institutions serve as the primary educating sector for the population. The main function of schooling is to promote the total knowledge build up of younger individuals so that they may be able to contribute good effects not only to their respective lives but to function as an element for the whole society. More importantly, schooling functions to disseminate what is supposed to be the norms and roles of each individual. In the classroom, the main approach to realize the functional contribution of schools is by using instructors. The teachers have a delegated format of teaching which exposes the students to day to day â€Å"functional† tasks such as participating in discussions, taking examinations and interacting with each other to fulfill a certain goal say for example in completing a group project. Basically, the main advantage of having a functionalist perspective is that each member works for the survival of the system. Although there may be a generic principle in making the mindsets of individuals aware of the natural goal, they can be divided into segments according to their capabilities and possible contributions. In such a way, a functionalist perspective starts to regard the importance of each small parts arriving at a single union of goals for the whole system. However, there are also disadvantages in using the philosophy of functionalism. For one, functionalism reduces the possibility for improvement. Social change may be too difficult to achieve if all of the parts of the system have already accepted their roles and became highly attached to them. The society may then become too static and might face a great dilemma if ever it wants to drastically change itself for the better. Works Cited McClelland, Kent. Functionalism. Grinell. 2000. 29 Jan 2008 http://web. grinnell. edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Functionalism. html.