The role of education - Marxism
- Created by: katiewalters
- Created on: 14-02-15 10:44
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- The role of education - Marxism
- Louis Althusser (1971)
- The education system is an ideological state apparatus
- ISAs maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people's ideas, values and beliefs
- Education system has two main functions
- It reproduces class inequalities by failing each successive generation of WC pupils in turn
- It legitimates class inequality by persuading pupils to accept inequality as inevitable
- The education system is an ideological state apparatus
- Bowles and Gintis (1976)
- Schooling in Capitalist America
- Studied 237 New York high school students
- Found that schools reward precisely the kind of traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker
- The correspondence principle
- There are close parallels between school and work
- Internal structure/ hierarchy e.g. pupils; teachers; principal
- Operates through the hidden curriculum; lessons taught without being 'learnt'
- School prepares WC pupils for their role as exploited workers
- The myth of meritocracy
- Those who fail blame themselves not the system
- Income is determined by your social class not your grades
- An attempt to stop the poor from rebelling against capitalism
- Creates the illusion that the UP gain privileges through merit, which persuades the WC to accept inequality
- Schooling in Capitalist America
- Paul Willis (1977): Learning to Labour
- Studied the counter-culture of the 'lads;
- The 'lads' were 12 WC boys
- The lands find school boring and meaningless
- They flout its rules and values e.g. by smoking; truancy etc
- They reject the school's meritocratic ideology that WC pupils can get MC jobs by working hard
- The lads' counter-culture ensures they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform
- Studied the counter-culture of the 'lads;
- Evaluation
- Postmodernists say B+G's CP is outdated: today's post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different workforce to this. Education now reproduces diversity, not inequality
- Willis showed that pupils are not necessarily passive victims - they resist authority
- Feminists like Macdonald and Robbie say schools reproduce not only inequality, but patriarchy too
- Morrow and Torres (1998) criticise Marxists for taking a class-first approach: ethnicity/gender important too
- Louis Althusser (1971)
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