Marxist perspective Flashcards
Education as an ISA
Althusser
The education system reproduces class inequality by failing each generation of working-class pupils
Education system legitimate class inequality by producing ideologies that hide its true cause, persuading workers to accept inequality as inevitable and deserved so they are less likely to challenge capitalism
Bowles and Gintis
Function of education is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept exploitation by rewarding traits found in these ideal workers such as obedience and punctuality with high grades and punishing creative, independent thinkers with low ones
Correspondence principle and hidden curriculum
Bowles and Gintis
Close parallels between education and working in capitalist society. Hierarchies in school mirror those at work.
The hidden curriculum is all the lessons that are indirectly learnt at school i.e. accepting orders and working for extrinsic rewards
Myth of meritocracy
Bowles and Gintis
Meritocracy does not exist, and those who gain the highest rewards gain them not because they worked the hardest but because they had a better home background. Legitimates inequality by making the working class believe they are working class because they did not try hard enough and makes them less likely to try and overthrow capitalism
Poor are dumb theory
Bowles and Gintis
The education system blames poverty on the individual ‘I am poor cause I didn’t try hard enough’ getting them to accept their situation rather than blaming capitalism
Lads counter culture
Willis study
12 w/c boys formed a counter-culture opposed to the school and resist it by skipping and disrupting class, smoking and drinking.
Saw manual work as superior to non-manual and therefore did not aspire to do well and get an office job
For all the rejection of school, their rebellion ensured they ended up in the working-class jobs that capitalism wanted them in
Evaluation of correspondence principle
Postmodernists argue that today’s economy requires a different workforce than the one described by the Marxists, and education reproduces diversity and not inequality
Evaluation of indoctrination theory
Marxists disagree about how reproduction and legitimation of class inequality take place - criticise Bowles and Gintis for the deterministic view which assumes that pupils have no free will and passively accept indoctrination. Fails to explain why many pupils reject school values
Evaluation of the lads counter culture
Critics argue that Willis’ account romanticises the lads instead of condemning them for their ASBO and sexist attitudes
Also argue that it is unrepresentative as only 12 male students were surveyed
Critical modernist thoughts on Marxist perspective on the role of education
Morrow et al
Criticise Marxists for seeing class as the key inequality when there are others like gender and ethnicity
Argue that sociologists must explain how education reproduces and legitimate all forms of inequality, not just class
