MARXIST PERSPECTIVE Flashcards
Althusser (1971); Ideological State Apparatus
- Repressive State Apparatuses;
- Maintains the rule of the Bourgeoisie
- Includes institutions such as the police, courts, army… - Ideological State Apparatus;
- Controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs
- Includes religion, the media and the education system
b. Education performs 2 functions: - Reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation
- Legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies
Bowles and Gintis (1976) ; Schooling in Capitalist America
a. Purpose of education is to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
b. Study of 237 New York High school students;
- Schools reward the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker
Correspondence Principle:
- Hierarchy of Authority
- Motivation by external rewards
- Fragmentation of knowledge
- Alienation
- Levels of education
- Competition
Hidden Curriculum:
Becoming accustomed with hierarchy and competition, working for extrinsic rewards…
Myth of Meritocracy
Schools are made to seem meritocratic when there is, in reality, lots of inequalities
Willis (1977); Study of The Lads
a. Used qualitative research methods such as PO and unstructured interviews
b. Studied 12 working-class boys
c. They form a distinct counter-culture against school
d. Similarity between their culture and the shopfloor culture of male manual workers
Evaluation;
a. Post-modernists: Post-fordist economies need schools to produce workers very different to the ones described by Bowles and Gintis
b. Bowles and Gintis; deterministic- passively accept indoctrination
c. Critics of Willis’ The Lads; they are romanticised despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes, findings were also very general
d. Feminists: MacDonald (1980); schools produce patriarchy too, Mc Robbie (1978); females are excluded from this study
