marxist beliefs in edu Flashcards
Althusser’s beliefs
education is an ideological state apparatus
the next generation is reproduced by failing students from working class families
legitimation
What is legitimation? What is an example of it?
The process of making lies such as the meritocracy appear as truth, which leads to people blaming academic failure on the individual rather than the system
Ex: grade boundaries changing in order to ensure people get U’s every year
Bowles and Gintis’s beliefs on school
school prepares students for work by mirroring the workplace through the correspondence principal and the hidden curriculum
Ex: wearing uniforms (dresscodes), listening to authority, early starts and lunch breaks(shift work)
Bowles and Gintis on meritocracy
the myth of meritocracy: success is not based on hard work and talent (criticises functionalists), instead that it is based on class backgrounds
upper class have an advantage
Bowles and Gintis on role allocation
students who have the best grades are the most obedient, which they are taught through primary socialisation
become obedient workers
Willis’s beliefs
criticises Bowels and Gintis
believes that working class students are aware that they are set up to fail, but don’t passively accept the system
development of a counter school culture that goes against school rules as a way to rebel
self fulfilling prophecy
Learning to labour
Willis observed a group of 12 working class boys
they saw school as oppressive and restrictive, aspiring for manual jobs and developing an anti-school subculture(not doing work, being rude to students/teachers, etc)
the boys still fail, as although they get manual labour jobs, they become “servants to capitalism”
evaluations of learning to labour
small sample size with no variation, lack of female participants
Willis may of romanticised the boys behaviour, rather than seeing them as poorly behaved students who make bad decisions
outdated
evaluations of Marxist beliefs
post modernists: marxism is out of date, we live in a post-class era, the correspondence principal no longer exists
feminists: schools reproduce patriarchy rather than capitalism
