Marxists view on education Flashcards
Marxists perspective on education
Marxists see education as a means of social control. Which encourages young people to accept their position and not to do anything to upset the current pattern of inequality in power, wealth and income.
Education reproduces existing social class inequalities. It does this through the impression that those who fail in education do so because of their lack of ability and effort and they only have themselves to blame.
Therefore people are encouraged to accept their position they find tgenseves in.
Althusser
Main role of education in a capitalist society is to reproduce an efficient and obedient workforce.
Althusser argues that to prevent the working class from rebelling against their exploitation, the ruining class must try to win their hearts and mindsets by persuading them to accept the ruling class ideology. Process of presuasion is carried out by a number of ideological status apparatus, such as the family,media,law,religion and finally the education system.
The education system is part of the ideological state apparatus, which spreads ruling class ideology and ensures that the proletariat are in a state a false class consciousness.
The bourgeois maintain power through the repressive state apparatus (police and army)
Education performs this ideological role through formal education and other aspects of school life, such as the hidden circular.
Former education such as history lessons teach us about British history, we get a very biased view. Britain is great and other countries make mistakes. (Germany, USA)
Outside formal curriculum, education teaches us about heirschy, respect for authority, obeying the rules.
Ideological status frustration
Family, media, law, religion and the education system.
Yt vid on Althusser
Bowles’s and Gintis
Identified a correspondence between school and the workplace.svjool and work both involve uniform, strict time-keeping, hierarchy, rewards and punishments
Prepares students for life in a capitalist system.
“Work casts a long shadow over school”
School exists in the long shadow of work. This means that schools ultimately preparing students for work. The education system needs reproduce the labour power.
It dies this through the use of tehbbudden cirriculam. For example schools operate like the work place. Rules about dress and working hours. The correspondence principles is taught through the hidden cirriculam.
They see meritocracy as a myth and believe achievement is education is the result of social class.
Video on Bowless and Gintis.
Pierre Bourdieu
Each social class contains its own culture framework, which he calls habitus.
The habits is picked up through socialisation in the family. The dominant class has the power to impose its own find it easier to relate to habitus in the education system, what counts as educational knowledge is actually the values of the dominant class.
Teachers often have middle class habitus too, so will find it easier to relate to students who have this.
Those who do well in education to do so because the can assess the dominant class culture and therefore possesscultureccapital.
Pupils from lower classes do not possess this so their failure in education is inevitable.
However the dominant ideology is that success and failure in the education system is meritocratic based on an individual’s hard work. So those who succeed are seen as being worthy of a higher position in society
Yt vid on bourdieu
Ivan illlich
Schools are represetice institutions which promote conformity and encourage students into passive acceptance of existing inequalities and the interests of the powerful, rather than encouraging them to be critical and to think fir themselves
Schools do this by rewarding those who accept the schools regime with qualifications and access to higher education.
Illich suggests the only way to deal with this is to abolish schooling all together. - deschooling
New Marxists Paul Wills - learning to labour
-wills uses Marxists ideas, but with an interactionist approach
Willis recognises that schools do not produce a willing and obedient workforce. Most schools have examples of pupils who do not obey teachers and can be disruptive.
Willis studied a group of twelve working class male pupils (the lads) from a working class council estate in Wolverhampton in the 1970s
The lads developed an anti social subculture which placed very little value on school values. The lads main priority was to free themselves of control from the school and to have a ‘luff’ they wanted to get money to impress their friends and wanted to show off their masculine characteristics through manual labour.
Wills found similarities between the counter school culture and the workplace culture of make lower class jobs,such as sexism, a lack of respect for authority and an emphasis on having a ‘law’
Therefore wills suggests that schools are not directly preparing the sort of obedient and docile labour required by capitalism
. Young working males are not forced into low paid work, but they actively choose this by bei)g part of the snti-social subculture
Video on Willis
Criticism of the Marxists perspective on education
Lack of detailed research. Pupils are not always passive recipients of education and sometimes show little regard for teachers authority and school rules. As shown in Paul Willis study.
Ignores the influence of formal curriculum. Some subjects encourage critical thinking and work related bourses still have low status in school.
The perspective is deterministic because it suggests people have no choice available
Similarities between functionalists perspective and Marxists perspective
Both see schools as legitimising social inequality
Both are macro theories concerned with the structural relationship
Both see education as serving the needs of the econom.
Both see education as a powerful influence on students.
Differences between functionalists and Marxists perspective
Functionalist is a consensus approach, where Marxists is a conflict approach
Functionalist believe schools are meritocratic. Marxists do not.
Criticisms of the Marxists and functional perspective
Pay too little attention to other forms of socialisation
Don’t consider that some students do not react to schools in the same way.
Both exaggerate the link between school and the economy.
