The Marxist Perspective on Education

Question 1

Describe Karl Marx’s two-class system of capitalism

Answer 1

• The capitalist class (bourgeoisie): are the minority class. They’re the employers who own the means of production (land, factories, machinery, offices). They make profit by exploiting the labour of the majority (WC)
• The WC (proletariat) are forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists since they own no means of production and have no other source of income. So, work under capitalism is poorly paid, alienating, unsatisfying and, something which workers have no real control

Question 2

Describe the effects of the two-class system

Answer 2

• Creates the potential for class conflict. If workers realise they’re being exploited, they may demand higher wages, better working condition or even the abolition of capitalism itself.
• Marx believed that the proletariat would unite to overthrow the capitalist system and create a classless, equal society.

Question 3

Outline how is the potential for revolution contained?

Answer 3

• The bourgeoisie control the state, and therefore schools. Marxists see education as functioning to prevent revolution and maintain capitalism
• Schools form part of the socialisation process which ensures conformity to an ideology which deflects attention away from the reality of exploitation practiced by the dominant classes. Marx refers to this as false consciousness

Question 4

What are the two ‘apparatuses’ that serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power?

Answer 4

• Althusser argues there’s the:
• The repressive state apparatuses (RSAs): maintain rule by force or the threat of it. Include the police, courts and army. When necessary, they use physical coercion to repress the WC.
• The ideological state apparatuses (ISAs): maintain rule by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs. Include religion, media and education.

Question 5

What are the two functions of education as an ISA?

Answer 5

• Althusser argues it is a agency of repression.
• Reproduces class inequality: transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of WC pupils in turn
• Legitimates class inequality: produces ideologies that disguise its true cause. Ideologies persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and that their subordinate position in society is deserved. They accept this, they’re less likely to challenge or threaten capitalism

Question 6

Describe views that have revised Marx’s theories in the light of social change

Answer 6

• Bernstein’s argues children are socialised at an early age to view knowledge itself as property or a commodity to be stored, saved and privately invested
• Deschoolers, Illich and Freire, argue that schools socialise children by emphasising certain modes of coercion and compliance. Included in the qualities learned at school are subornation, dependence, conformity, competitiveness and fatalism

Question 7

Outline Bowles and Gintis’ argument

Answer 7

• Capitalism requires a workforce with the kind of attitudes, behaviour and personality-type suited to their role as alienated and exploited workers willing to accept hard work, low pay and orders from above
• Education in a capitalist society reproduces an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable

Question 8

Describe Bowles and Gintis’ study

Answer 8

• From their own study of 237 New York high school students and the findings of other studies, they conclude that schools reward precisely the kind of traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker. e.g. students who showed independence and creativity tended to gain low grades, while those who showed characteristics linked to disciple and obedience
• From this evidence, schooling helps to produce obedient workers for capitalism and stunts and distorts student’s personal development

Question 9

Describe the correspondence principle

Answer 9

• Reproduces inequality
• Bowles and Gintis argue that there are parallels between schooling and work. Both are hierarchies, with headteachers/bosses at the top making decisions/orders, and pupils/workers at the bottom obeying.
• The relationships and structures found in education mirror to those in work

Question 10

Give examples of the correspondence principle

Answer 10

• Alienation through lack of students’ education control. Workers’ lack of control
• Students reward system. Promotion for workers
• Hierarchy is taught to be obeyed

Question 11

How does the correspondence principle operate in school?

Answer 11

• Through the hidden curriculum, lessons that are learnt in schools but aren’t directly ‘taught’.
• Schooling then prepares WC pupils for their role as the exploited workers for the future.

Question 12

Give an example of how the hidden curriculum influences us (workforce)

Answer 12

• Produces a workforce of uncritical, passive and docile workers
• Punishment for lateness, disobedience, challenging authority
• Rewards for good behaviour, doing, 100% attendance

Question 13

Give an example of how the hidden curriculum influences us (hierarchy)

Answer 13

• Encourages acceptance of hierarchy
• Must obey teachers in class if not there is interference from head of years or departments which can carry out harsher punishments

Question 14

Give examples of how the hidden curriculum influences us (motivation)

Answer 14

• Teaches pupils to be motivated by external rewards (grades)
• Good grades translates money
• Pupils encouraged to do independent work, same in the work force

Question 15

Give an example of how the hidden curriculum influences us (low paid)

Answer 15

Cohen argues youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers not genuine job skills, but attitudes and values needed in a subordinate labour force. It lowers aspirations so that will accept low paid work

Question 16

Describe how education is a ‘giant myth-making machine’

Answer 16

• Bowles and Gintis argue meritocracy (rewards based only on effort) doesn’t exist.
• The myth of meritocracy justified the privileges of the higher classes, making it seem that they gained them through succeeding in open and fair competition.
• Helps persuade the WC to accept inequality as legitimate, less likely to overthrow capitalism
• It justifies poverty. Bowles and Gintis describe this as the ‘poor-are-dumb’ theory of failure. Blames poverty on the person as they didn’t work hard enough, rather than capitalism

Question 17

Describe Willis’ study

Answer 17

• Using participants observation and unstructured interviews, Willis studied 12 WC rebellious boys about their attitude to school during their last 18 months at school and during their first few months at work
• He argues pupils rebelling means not all pupils are brainwashed into being passive, subordinate due to the hidden curriculum.
• Criticises traditional Marxism and says that pupils aren’t directly injected with the values and norms that benefit the ruling class, some reject these. They also realise they have no real opportunity to succeed, but Willis still believes that this counter-school culture still produces workers who are easily exploiting by their future employers

Question 18

Describe counter school culture

Answer 18

Willis described the friendship between 12 boys/lads as a counter-school culture. Their value system was opposed to that of the school. Their values was characterised by:
- Felt superior to teachers and other pupils
- Attached no value to academic work, more to ‘laff’
- Objective of school was to miss as many lessons as possible, the rewards for this was statue within the group
- The time they were at school was spent trying to win control their time and make it their own

Question 19

Describe the lads’ attitudes to future work

Answer 19

• They looked forward to paid manual work after leaving school and identified all non-school activities (smoking, going out) with this adult world, and valued such activities far more than school work.
• Lads believed manual work was proper work, and the jobs that hard working pupils would get were all the same and pointless. Their counter school culture was also strongly sexist.

Question 20

Why does the lads’ counter-culture of resistance help them to go into working-class jobs?

Answer 20

• Being accustomed to boredom and findings was to amuse themselves in schools, they don’t expect satisfaction from work and are good at finding diversions to cope with the tedium of unskilled labour
• Their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain worthwhile qualification
• For Willis, the irony is by resisting school’s ideology, the counter-culture ensures that they’re destined for unskilled work that capitalism needs

Question 21

Give evaluation for the Marxist approach (postmodernists)

Answer 21

• Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis’ correspondence principle, as today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a different kind of labour force from one described by Marxists.
• Henry Ford, car manufacturer, realised paying workers good wages would generate demand for the cars he produced - lead to workers being less exploited and ‘buying into’ the Capitalism system.
• They argue education reproduces diversity and there’s now a choice about identify (individualism)

Question 22

Give evaluation for the Marxist approach (between Marxists)

Answer 22

• Marxists disagree with one another how reproduction and legitimation takes place.
• Bowles and Gintis take a deterministic view. They assume pupils have no free will and passively accept indoctrination. Fails to explain why pupils reject school’s values
• But, Willis combines a Marxist and interactionist approaches, he shows how pupils may resist but still end up in WC jobs

Question 23

Give evaluation for the Marxist approach (of Willis)

Answer 23

• Willis’ account of the lads romanticises them, portraying them as WC heroes despite their anti-schools behaviour and sexist attitudes.
• His small-scale study of only 12 boys in one school is also unlikely to be representative of other pupils’ experience and it would be risky to generalise of his findings

Question 24

Give evaluation for the Marxist approach (critical modernists)

Answer 24

• Critical modernists, Morrow and Torres criticise Marxists for taking a ‘class first’ approach that see class as the key inequality and ignores others.
• They argue society is more diverse now and gender and ethnicity is important too. Sociologists should explain how education reproduce and legitimates all forms of inequality, and how the different forms of inequality are inter-related.

Question 25

Give evaluation for the Marxist approach (feminists)

Answer 25

• MacDonald argues, Bowles and Gintis ignore that schools reproduce not only capitalism, but patriarchy too,
• McRobbie points out that females are absent from Willis’ study