Formal and Informal Education

Apart from academic knowledge, what else do children learn in school?

There are two types of education pupils go through during their time in school: formal and informal education.

• We will define these two types of education and look at the differences between them.
• Then we will discuss a few examples of each.
• After a little summary of their characteristics, we will include the advantages and disadvantages of both formal and informal education.

Formal and Informal Education: Definitions

The official curriculum is not the only place that provides an opportunity for learning. Children and young adults learn just as much from the socialisation process that happens in school and in their extracurricular activities.

Differences Between Formal and Informal Education

Formal education is taught in the education system, in schools, colleges and universities. All these institutions follow an official curriculum which covers the key lessons in key subjects such as mathematics, grammar and science. Students gain skills, theoretical and practical knowledge and eventually, qualifications.

Informal education happens through the hidden curriculum or outside the education system completely.

It must be noted that primary schools, for example, have a very different hidden curriculum than colleges and universities. However, at both levels, informal education teaches students a lot, often without even realising that they are learning outside the classrooms too.

Examples of Formal and Informal Education

Let us look at a few examples of formal and informal education.

Examples of formal education

Examples of informal education

The hidden curriculum reflects the values and rules of the wider society. It teaches students the skills, abilities, attitudes and work ethic that they will need to fulfil their later roles in society successfully.

Below are some of the most important points students learn about through informal education.

Hierarchy

• Schools and educational institutions are hierarchical.
• In a school, students have the least power, which means they are at the bottom of the hierarchy. Based on their age, students also form a type of hierarchy, on top of which stand the older students.
• All teachers have more power and authority than students; however, there might be a hierarchy within the teaching faculty based on the importance of the subjects they teach.
• At the top of the hierarchy stand the head teachers of each institution.

Hierarchy in schools can be demonstrated by a pyramid. StudySmarter Original

Sociologists argue that this hierarchy within schools resembles the one people experience in wider society, especially in the workplace. At the workplace employees are usually organised hierarchically as well.

Competition

• Students learn to compete in school.
• Sports and physical education, in addition to exams, motivate pupils to reach their full potential by encouraging competition. This competition is a miniature version of the competition for jobs, possessions and status people experience in wider society.
• Educational institutions pass down the values of competition to their students to prepare them for future success.

Social control

Students learn to follow the rules and regulations of schools. They learn to respect their teachers and see them as authoritative figures whose direction they have to follow. This is all part of the hidden curriculum and informal education.

The social control implemented through these rules and behaviour in schools resembles the social control present in wider society. Students learn to accept this social control, as those who try to rebel against it in school face punishment.

Gender roles

Children usually form a gender identity already during primary socialisation in the family, as they are usually given gender appropriate names and are dressed in gender appropriate colours by their parents. They are further influenced to play with gender appropriate toys, which teaches them about their further gender roles in society.

Children and young people are further socialised into specific gender roles during secondary socialisation, which happens partly at school. Sociologists have found a clear link between pupils’ gender and their subject choices, as well as teacher expectations towards them.

Teachers have higher expectations towards girls in terms of behaviour. Girls learn to be well-behaved, hard-working and quiet at school, while boys’ rebellious and anti-school behaviour is much more tolerated by the school authority. Boys might learn that they can get away with a lot in society, while girls are trained to keep up with the rules by restricting their creativity and freedom of speech.

Girls are still expected to be more interested in humanities and art subjects, such as literature or history, and do well in those than in science subjects. Natural sciences, such as biology, chemistry or physics are still seen to be more ‘masculine’ subjects.

Girls are also often excluded from ‘male’ sports activities, such as football, and thus learn to give up the space in the playground for the boys. In this way, girls might learn that men would dominate other fields in life later on, and they have to retreat from those fields.

Football, for example, is still seen as a masculine activity, girls are often excluded from it. Pixabay.com

Advantages and Disadvantages of Formal and Informal Education

Functionalist sociologists see the education system as an important agent of socialisation in children’s lives. They argue for all the benefits of both formal and informal education, including their role in gender role allocation and in education about wider society’s rules and values, not to mention the acquiring of specialised skills for employment later on.

Sociologists who are critical of the school system, however, point to the disadvantages of both formal and informal education. They argue that children spend their schooldays with repetitive, boring and meaningless tasks. Pupils can voice no opinion on what they would like to study or how they would like to organise their days, they just have to accept what was planned for them.

This, eventually, leads to a sense of disillusionment and powerlessness. Students learn to be in contempt of these feelings and with these types of activities.

According to critics of the school system, children spend most schooldays on boring, repetitive and meaningless activities. Pixabay.com

According to Marxist sociologists, schools prepare children for meaningless and boring jobs which will serve the interest of capitalism.

Feminists are critical of the role formal and informal education plays in the socialisation of both boys and girls into traditional gender roles, allocated to them by the patriarchal system.