Marxist Perspective

Marxist believe that the main purpose of education is to retain the social inequality within a capitalist society.

French Marxist Althusser saw education as the man Ideological State apparatus. He said it is used to:

1. Pass on ruling class ideology
2. Select people for the different social classes, and equips them with attitudes and behaviour that makes them good, submissive employees. For example, education teaches workers to accept exploitation and always obey managers.

Bowles and Gintis: Schooling and the long shadow of work.

The long shadow of work, is a similar theory to Althusser’s. Bowles and Gintis too say that educations main focus is to reproduce a disciplined and skilled workforce to fuel capitalism. They say this happens in two ways:

1. The school is run similarly to a business through the Hidden curriculum, so children become used to being a good workforce
2. Justifying and replicate social inequality

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