Marxist Perspective Flashcards
Marxist Viewpoint:
They see society and education as based on class division and capitalists exploitation.
Karl Marx:
Capitalist class: minority- employers who own means of production and exploit the working class.
Working class: majority- forced into labour and don’t own means of production.
Bourgeoisie own capital and resources such as land, factories land money used to make profit principle source of income.
Proletariat own no capital just labour power and must sell to bourgeoise.
Capitalist extract surplus value form workers (profit is basically exploitation of workers in a capitalist society).
Althusser: ISA/RSA
Ideological State Apparatus: religion, media and education.
Repressive State Apparatus: police, army and courts.
Althusser Viewpoint:
He believes education ensures the working class fails while presenting education as meritocratic and reproducing and justifying existing class inequalities.
He argues bourgeoisie maintains power by using ISA and RSA to spread bourgeoisie ideology and ensure proletariat are in a state or false class consciousness.
Althusser’s similar viewpoint to Durkheim:
Education serves to teach people norms and values of society to preserve value consensus however these norms and values serves in the interests of the ruling class due to capitalism preventing social change.
Bowles and Gintis: Hidden Curriculum and Correspondence Principle
National Curriculum: makes decisions about what is thought and what is not which impacts the nature value consensus in the education system.
Hidden Curriculum: education system also teaches about hierarchy respect for authority and obeying rules which they argue keep the rich and powerful in their positions and prevent rebellion.
Correspondence Principle: Bowles and Gintis argue conditions of secondary schools have direct correspondence to conditions of working-class labour so called it the correspondence principle.
Examples of Correspondence Principle:
Alienated nature of education and secondary schools whereby students were told what to study on how to study corresponded to alienated labour of working class who were told what to do and how to do it encouraging and accepting hierarchy and authority.
Motivation by external rewards i.e. GCSE qualifications in secondary schools and wage in working class labour.
Fragmentation of subjects ( maths, English, history, science).
Producing a subservient workforce of passive and docile workers (grades awarded realities to personality traits rather than academic ability).
Low grades= creativity, aggressiveness etc.
High grades= perseverance, punctuality etc.
Bowles and Gintis: Myth of Meritocracy
They argue capitalism based on inequality and exploitation- There’s always a risk that the working class and poor may feel the inequality and rebel against it.
They argue meritocracy doesn’t exist due to the main determining factor to success not being effort but class position, income and family background.
The education system disguises this by painting privileged upper class as hard workers, who exceeded with the same opportunities as others.
This helps persuade the working class to accept inequality as it blames them for not achieving due to having the same chances as others.
Myth of Meritocracy Explained:
The education system disguises this by painting privileged upper class as hard workers, who exceeded with the same opportunities as others.
This helps persuade the working class to accept inequality as it blames them for not achieving due to having the same chances as others.
Paul Willis: Learning to Labour
Did a ethnographic study of 12 working class boys and his aim was to uncover how and why ‘working class kids got working class jobs?’
This was due to the lads forming a distinct counter culture opposed to school so ‘took the piss’ and saw education as having a laugh instead of getting the qualifications they needed to do well.
Their approach to school was to survive, do little work as possible and have fun as well as push boundaries i.e. bunking whenever they wanted.
Learning to Labour Explanation:
Willis notes similarity between natural culture in school and the working-class culture manual workers. They both saw manual work as superior and intellectual work is inferior. The irony of this by resenting school they were able to transition seamlessly into jobs inferior in terms of skill, pay and conditions which capitalism needs.
Evaluation Points for Marxism:
- ) Overwhelming amount of evidence shows schools reproduce class inequalities due to middle class doing much better due to working class more likely to suffer form material and cultural deprivation. (+)
- ) There is strong evidence for the reproduction of class inequality if we look at elite jobs, such as medicine and law. High number of people in these professions were privately educated. (+)
- ) The correspondence principle may not be as applicable in today’s complex labour market where employers increasingly require workers to be able to think rather than to just be passive robots. (-)
