Marxist Views Flashcards
Louis Althusser (1971)
Althusser claims that education has an ideological function. Capitalism uses the education system as a ‘tool’ with which to control people’s hearts and minds. It is a form of ‘brain washing’.
It is, therefore, an ideological state apparatus ( a form of equipment which the government can use to control people’s ideas, and thoughts and win them over to capitalists’ ways of thinking.
Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting capitalists values from one generation to the next. It also legit,mate inequality by producing ideologies that convince people that inequality is inevitable and normal, an that the education system is fair to all.
> In this way Althuuser believes that the education system disadvantages the working class, since it convinces them that their failings in life are totally their own fault.
Bowles and Gintis (1976)
The correspond4ence principle
Bowles and Gintis used questionnaires to study 237 Nnew york high school students about their experiences of education.
> They agree with functionalists that schools prepare pupils to take up positions in the workplace. In this way, there is a close correspondence between school and work.
However, unlike functionalists, they believe that role allocation is unfair in the way that it systematically advantages middle-class students. It is through the hidden curriculum that schools especially working-class pupils for working-class jobs and life.
This happens in the following ways:
Acceptance of hierarchy:
> At school, pupils quickly learn that they must respect those in authority e.g. calling teachers ‘sir’ and ‘miss’ to represent their higher status. This allows teachers to exploit their students and to know their place.
Subservience:
> In learning to be subservient (passive), pupils in a school are trained to accept what they are told. Bowles and Gintis refer to this as the ‘jug and mug principle’: teachers pour knowledge into pupils, who are told to accept what they’re told.
Motivation by external reward:
> The successful exam grade is used as a motivator to comply with rules, work hard and succeed. This mirrors the workplace, where employees turn up each day, working hard in order to receive a paycheck. They do as they are told due to their dependency on their paycheck.
EVALUATION:
> Bowles and Ginits are accused of not spending enough time in schools, therefore they can not see exactly how the hidden curriculum works.
> There are many students who resist the values of the education system and rebel against them in many cases. This goes against Bowles and Gintis’ view as they assume that all pupils ‘oak up’ school values. This challenges their idea that schools merely reproduce a passive, obedient workforce.
Paul Willis (1977)
Willis’s research involved regular observations of 12 working-class boys (‘lads’) in 5 schools in the Midlands. He interviewed them in small groups during their last ear and a half of school, and in the first few months of work.
> Although Marxists, he challenged Bowles and Gintis for the simple relationship they assumed exists between schools and the workplace.
He also highlights how schools are not particularly successful in supporting capitalism.
> The ‘lads’ in Willis’s research actively resisted school in every way. The counter-culture they held included values which turned everything the education system prioritises upside down.
The lads were deviant, and dismissive and failed to prepare for their exams. In this way, it is difficult to see how the school successfully manipulates working-class pupils in the way Bowles and Gintis argued.
The lads did inevitably fail, and they went on to have poorly paid jobs.
EVALUATION:
> Willis is accused of making generalisations based on the experiences of only 12 working-class boys at one school. These results are not truly valid.
> The Hawthorne effect can have an effect as they may be influenced due to the interviewer.
