For Marxists, what is the main function of the education system?
For Marxists, the main function of the education is to maintain capitalism and prevent revolution.
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Which Marxist theorist wrote about the two ways the state maintains capitalism?
Althusser (1971) wrote about how the state maintains capitalism.
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How does the state maintain capitalism?
The state uses repressive state apparatuses, which use force or the threat of it, and ideological state apparatuses, which control people's beliefs and values, to maintain capitalism.
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How does the education system maintain capitalism?
The education system reproduces class inequality by transmitting it to each suucessive generation, and it legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies which convince workers that inequality is inevitable.
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Which Marxist sociologists studied schooling in capitalist America, and what did they find?
Bowles and Gintis (1976) studied New York high school students and found that schools reward personality traits that make for an obedient worker, such as punctuality.
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What is the correspondence principle?
The correspondence principle refers to the parallels between schools and workplaces, such as hierarchy, alienation, extrinsic satisfaction and competition.
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What is the hidden curriculum?
The hidden curriculum is the things pupils learn at school through everyday workings of the school without being directly taught, which transmits the parallels of the correspondence principle.
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How does the hidden curriculum maintain capitalism?
The hidden curriculum prepares working-class pupils for their role as exploited workers, reproducing the workforce and perpetuating inequality.
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What is the myth of meritocracy?
The myth of meritocracy is the ideology which legitimates class inequality by disguising the fact that the main factor determining life outcomes is not ability, but class background.
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How does the myth of meritocracy maintain capitalism?
The myth of meritocracy convinces the working-class that the ruling class earned their position by outperforming them in fair competition at school, which persuades the working-class to accept inequality as legitimate.
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According to Bowles and Gintis (1976), how does education justify poverty?
Education justifies poverty through the 'poor-are-dumb' theory of failure, which blames poverty on the individual for not working hard enough at school, rather than capitalism.
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How would you evaluate the correspondence principle?
Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence principle because today’s post-Fordist economy requires students to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one Marxists describe.
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How would you evaluate the view that the working-class accept inequality as legitimate?
Marxists such as Willis (1977), disagree with Bowles and Gintis’ deterministic view that pupils passively accept indoctrination as it fails to explain why pupils reject the school’s values.
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What did Willis (1977) study?
Willis (1977) studied a group of 12 working-class boys who resisted indoctrination into the myth of meritocracy.
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How did the boys resist indoctrination into the myth of meritocracy?
The boys formed a lads' counter culture which rejected the schools values by flouting its rules e.g. by drinking, smoking and disrupting and truanting class.
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What does Willis (1977) compare the lads' counter-culture to and why?
Willis compares the lads' counetr culture to the shopfloor culture of male manual workers as they both see manual work as superior and intellectual work as effeminate.
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What does this counter-culture destine the boys to?
The lads' counter-culture destines the boys to perform the low-paying, low-skilled jobs in poor conditions that capitalism needs someone to fill.
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Why does the lads' counter culture destine the boys to this role?
The boys do not expect satisfaction form work and can find ways to cope with the boredom of unskilled labour. Additionally, their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualificati
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How would you evaluate Willis (1977)?
Critics argue that Willis (1977) romanticises the 'lads' as working-class heroes, despite their anti-social behaviour, and his study of 12 boys is unlikely to be representative of other pupils’ experiences.
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How would you evaluate the Marxist view of the role of education?
Morrow and Torres (1998) criticise Marxists for taking a ‘class-first’ approach that ignores how education legitimate all other kinds of inequality such as ethnicity, gender and sexuality.
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Other cards in this set
Card 2
Front
Which Marxist theorist wrote about the two ways the state maintains capitalism?
Back
Althusser (1971) wrote about how the state maintains capitalism.
Card 3
Front
How does the state maintain capitalism?
Back
Card 4
Front
How does the education system maintain capitalism?
Back
Card 5
Front
Which Marxist sociologists studied schooling in capitalist America, and what did they find?
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