Neo-Marxism Perspective of Education.

3. NEO-MARXIST PERSPECTIVE OF EDUCATION.

Neo-Marxism is a term used to describe new versions of Marxism. They are new (neo) because they disagree in some way with the original writings of Karl Marx, while still being influenced by them.

Giroux- Neo-Marxism, struggle and relative autonomy.
An example of neo-Marxism applied to education in the work of Henry Giroux (1984). He disagrees with the conventional Marxist approach of Bowles and Gintis.

1. Working-Class pupils do not passively accept everything they’re taught, but actively shape their own education and sometimes resist the discipline imposed on them by school.
2. Schools are sites of ideological struggle for different classes, ethnic, single group but they do not have all the power.
3. The education system possesses relative autonomy from the economic base: that is, it has some independence and is not always shaped by the needs of capitalist economy.

Paul Willis: Learning to labour.

The most influential neo-Marxist study of education is an ethnographic study of a group of boys (or “lads”) in a Midlands comprehensive school in the 1970’s. Paul Willis (1977) conducted the study…