Role of education - Marxist

Question 1

Althusser: the ideological state apparatus

Answer 1

State has 2 elements of ‘apparatuses’ both of which serve to keep the bourgeoise in power,

1) The repressive state apparatuses - Maintain the role of the bourgeoise by force or the threat of it this includes police, courts and army.
2) Ideological state apparatuses- ISA’s which maintain the role of Bourgeoise by controlling peoples ideas, values and beliefs.

Education system is an important ISA as it performs 2 functions:

1) Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation.
2) Education justifies class inequality by producing sets of ideas that disguise its true cause.

Question 2

Bowles and Gintis: Schooling in capitalist America

Answer 2

Argue that capitalism requires a workforce with the kinds of attitudes, behaviour and personality type suited to heir role.
They conclude that schooling helps produce the obedient workers that capitalism needs.

Question 3

The correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum.

Answer 3

Bowles and Gintis argue that there are close parallels between schooling and work in capitalist society.
Both schools and workplaces are hierarchies:
Bowles and Gintis show these parallels as ‘correspondence principle’

They argue that the correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum. For example students become accustomed to accepting hierarchy in schools and competition.

In this way, schooling prepares working class pupils for their ole as exploited workers of the future.

Question 4

The myth of meritocracy: the legitimation of class inequality

Answer 4

Because capitalist society is based on inequality, there is always a danger that the poor will feel that this inequality is undeserved and unfair.
- education system helps prevent this from happening by legitimating class inequalities.
Does this by producing ideologies that serve to explain and justify why inequality is fair, natural and inevitable

Question 5

Willis: learning to labour

Answer 5

All Marxist agree that capitalism cannot function without a workforce that is willing to accept exploitation
— as a Marxist, Willis is interested in the way schooling serves capitalism
— Willis argues working-class people can resist such attempts to indoctrinate them

Question 6

The lads counter- culture

Answer 6

The lads counter culture

• Willis studies 12 working class boys as they made a transition from school to work
• the lads form a distinct culture opposed to the school .
• define school boring and meaningless and flout its rules and values & they reject the meritocratic ideology.
• he notes the similarity between the anti-school counterculture & the shopfloor culture of male manual work.

The irony is that by helping them resist schools ideology, the counterculture ensures that they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform

Question 7

Evaluation

Answer 7

Marxist disagree with one another about how reproduction and legitimisation take place.
— critical modernists such as Carlos & Morrow criticise Marxist for taking a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as a key inequality and ignores all other
— critics argue that with this account of the ‘lads’ romanticises them portrays them as working class heroes.