Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He formally established the discipline.

academic and, along with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is considered one of the fathers
founders of that science. He perfected the positivism that he had first conceived.
Augusto Comte, promoting epistemological realism and the hypothetical method
deductive. For him, sociology was the science of institutions, and its goal was
discover structural "social facts". Durkheim was the greatest proponent of
structural functionalism. According to its vision, the social sciences should be
purely holistic; that is, sociology should study the phenomena attributed to the
society as a whole, instead of focusing on the specific actions of the
individuals. This is how he writes "Education, its nature and its role".
At the beginning of the text, Durkheim argues that one should not socialize based on the
observational or logical faults of our predecessors, but they must be taken
as lessons from history. It also mentions that there are certain customs.
that we are obliged to accept, since those who are later affected are the children
due to their lack of the necessary customs and ideas for normal life.

For there to be education, it is necessary for a generation of adults to be present.

and a generation of young people, and an action exercised by the former over the latter.
In every society, a single basis of homogeneity is necessary, which must receive everything.
individual and considering the very division of labor, must be multiple, because it
One could say that there are as many types of education in society as there are different means.
Education varies from one caste to another, nowadays, says Durkheim, we see how the
education varies according to social classes, that of the city is not that of the countryside, that of the
the worker's is not that of the bourgeois. Although all educations are based on a common foundation,
There is no village where a certain number of ideas, feelings, and practices do not exist.
that education should instill in all children indiscriminately, regardless of what
social category to which they belong. Education is one because it involves norms
common for everyone that are general and necessary to be functional. This is both the of
rich like that of the poor, both that which leads to liberal careers and that which prepares
for industrial tasks, its purpose is to establish the different powers in the
awareness.
As a result of this fact, each society creates a certain ideal of man, of what he is
it must be, both from an intellectual and physical and moral standpoint; that this ideal is,
up to a certain point, the same for all citizens; that after a certain point it
difference according to the particular means that every society carries within itself. This ideal to the
one and diverse is what constitutes the pole of education. This has, therefore, for
function to evoke in the child: first a certain number of physical and mental states that
the society to which it belongs considers as not being absent in any of
its members; second certain physical and mental states that the particular social group
also consider as if they should be found in terms of what forms them.
This is how society as a whole and each particular social medium determine
that ideal that education fulfills. Society cannot live if among its members there is not
there is sufficient homogeneity: education perpetuates and reinforces this
homogeneity, pre-setting in the child's soul the essential similarities that
demands collective life. But on the other hand, all cooperation without a certain diversity,
it would be impossible: education ensures the persistence of this necessary diversity,
diversifying and specializing herself. Then the ideal man would be the
place towards which education is directed.
Every society, considered at a specific moment in its development, has a
education system that imposes on individuals. A certain 'ideal of man' is established,
what it must be from the intellectual, physical, and moral point of view. Society cannot
there can be no existence among its members without a certain degree of homogeneity. Education
it reinforces the homogeneity required by collective life, thanks to education 'the being
the individual transforms into a social being.” Although this homogeneity is relative due to
there is a certain diversity due to the division of labor that exists in societies
modern
Durkheim indicates that education is the action exerted by the adult generations
about those who are still not ready for social life. Its purpose is to stimulate and
to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual, and moral states that
the political society as a whole and the special environment to which he is demanded
particularly intended.” Thus, through this definition, it can be affirmed that the
Education consists of a systematic socialization of the young generation.
Each of us can be said to have two beings, one made of all
the mental states that refer solely to ourselves and to the events of
our personal life is the individual being, and the other being is a system of ideas and of
habits that express in us, not our personality, but the group, or the groups
different, of which we are a part; such are the beliefs and moral practices,
national or professional traditions, collective opinions of all kinds, their
The set forms the social being. Constituting this being in each of us is the purpose of the
education
The French also explains that our nature was not predisposed to make us become
in the servers of deities, to worship them and to deprive ourselves to honor them. But instead
it was society that was bringing out from its own bosom those great moral forces before
which the man felt his inferiority. It is necessary that it be added to the being.
selfish and asocial, another, capable of leading a moral and social life. This is the work of the
education, to create a new man.
The previously mentioned creative virtue is a special privilege of education.
humanity is completely different from that of animals and cannot add anything essential to
nature, as it comes for everything, in the life of the group as well as in that of the individual.
On the contrary, in man, the aptitudes of all kinds that social life assumes are
too complex to be transmitted from one generation to another by way of the
Inheritance. It is through education that the transmission is made.
Society shapes individuals according to their needs, with this
It might seem like they suffered an unbearable tyranny. But in reality, the individuals
they are interested in that submission, because the new being that collective action
builds through education within each of us, represents what is best
in us, of properly human. Man is indeed only man when
because it lives in society. The action of this is to enlarge it and make a truly being.
human.
On the other hand, regarding the role of the State, it is written that education is conceived as a
essentially private and domestic. And the natural tendency is to minimize
possible state intervention in the matter. This should serve as an aid and
substitute for families when they are not able to fulfill their duties.
If education has, above all, a collective function; if its purpose is to adapt the
child to the social environment in which he is destined to live, it is impossible for society to
disinterest yourself in such an operation. It is the society that should remember
incessantly to the teacher what are the ideas, the feelings that need to be conveyed
in the child to harmonize him with the environment in which he must live.
Since education is an essentially social function, the State
he cannot be indifferent to her. On the contrary, everything that is education must be,
to a certain extent, subjected to its action.

It does not belong to the State to create that community of ideas and feelings without which it does not
there is society; it must constitute itself, and the State can only consecrate it.
sustain it, make it more aware of the particulars.
Since education is an essentially social function, the State
he cannot disengage from her. Everything that is education must be subjected to the
action of this.
The State must allow the opening of other schools apart from those it directly oversees.
responsibility does not imply that one must remain aloof from what happens in them, but rather that
It must conduct a control. However, it is not responsible for creating a community of
Ideas and feelings, but it must consecrate it, maintain it, make it more aware.
for individuals. Likewise, teachers cannot use their authority to
drag their students along the lane of their personal positions.