Marxist Perspective on Education
- Created by: xpoppywilliams
- Created on: 25-03-18 22:23
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- Marxist Perspective of Education
- Althusser: Ideological State Apparatus
- Two elements which serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power
- Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) - maintains the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it (including police, courts and the army)
- Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) - maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling the peoples' ideas, values and beliefs (includes the media, religion etc)
- Education performs two functions
- Reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from each generation by failing each generation of w/c pupils
- Legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise true cause - persuades workers that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position
- Two elements which serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power
- Bowles and Gintis: Schooling in Capitalist America
- Schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs
- Don't believe that education fosters personal development - it stunts and distorts students' development
- The Correspondence Principle and the Hidden Curriculum
- Schools and workplaces are hierarchies
- Schooling takes place in the long shadow of work
- Parallels between schools and workplaces as examples of the correspondence principle
- Relationships and structures found in education mirror or correspond to those of work
- Parallels between schools and workplaces as examples of the correspondence principle
- Operates through the hidden curriculum
- Lessons that are learnt in school but aren't directly taught
- Schooling prepares w/c pupils for their role as the exploited workers of the future
- Reproducing the work force capitalism needs and perpetuates class inequality
- The Myth of Meritocracy: the Legitimisation of Class Inequality
- To prevent the w/c from rebelling
- Education system helps to legitimise class inequality
- Produces ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is: fair, natural and inevitable
- Education system helps to legitimise class inequality
- Meritocracy: everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve - rewards are based on ability and effort
- Main factor determining whether someone has a high income in the future - family and class background
- Meritocracy serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes
- Seems as if they gained through success in open and fair competition at school
- Helps to persuade the w/c to accept inequality and makes them less likely to seek to overthrow capitalism
- To prevent the w/c from rebelling
- Schooling helps to produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs
- Evaluation
- Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis - today's economy requires schools to produce a different type of labour force from the one described by Marxists - education reproduces diversity not inequality
- Assume pupils have no free will and passively accept what they're taught
- Fails to explain why many pupils reject school values
- Morrow and Torres - society is more diverse - must explain how education reproduces and legitimates all forms of inequality and how the differences are inter-related
- Madeleine MacDonald (1980) - Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact that schools reproduce capitalism AND hierarchy
- Willis' account of the 'lads' romanticises them - portrays them as w/c heroes
- Anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes
- Small-scale study = unlikely to be representative and is risky to generalise findings
- Willis; Learning to Labour
- Capitalism can't function without a workforce that is accepting of exploitation
- Education reproduces and legitimates class inequality
- Ensures the w/c are slotted into and learn to accept jobs that are poorly paid and alienating
- Education reproduces and legitimates class inequality
- The Lads' Counter-Culture
- Form a distinct counter-culture opposed to school
- Scornful of conformists - call them 'ear'oles'
- Intimidation humour - 'taking the ****' out of the 'ear'oles' and the girls
- Scornful of conformists - call them 'ear'oles'
- Find school boring and meaningless - disregard rules and values
- Acts of defiance = ways of resisting the school
- Reject the 'con' of school's meritocratic ideology - w/c pupils can achieve through hard work
- Acts of defiance = ways of resisting the school
- Similarities between anti-school counter culture and shop floor culture
- Manual work = superior / Intellectual work = inferior
- Counter-culture of school - helps them to slot into the jobs that capitalism needs
- Accustomed to boredom and finding ways of amusing themselves - good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour
- Acts of rebellion guarantee they end up in unskilled jobs - ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualifications
- Accustomed to boredom and finding ways of amusing themselves - good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour
- Form a distinct counter-culture opposed to school
- 1977 study - w/c pupils can resist attempts indoctrinate them
- Group of 12 w/c boys - making a transition from school to work
- Capitalism can't function without a workforce that is accepting of exploitation
- Althusser: Ideological State Apparatus
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