The Role Of Education: Marxist Perspective (Part 3) Flashcards
What are the two classes according to marxism?
- The working class (proleteriat)
- The capitalist class (bourgeoisie)
How does education benefit the bourgeoisie?
Education is used to prevent a revolution.
Althusser; The ideological state apparatus - What are the states two elements that serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power?
1.) Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs)
2.) Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs)
What are the 5 values the hidden currciulum teaches?
- )Subservience
- )Motivation
- )Acceptance of hierarchy
- )Fragmentation of knowledge
- )Legitimisation of inequality
1.) The repressive state apparatuses (RSAs)
-Maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it.
-The RSAs include the police, courts + army.
-When necessary, they use force to suppress the w/c.
2.) The ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)
-Maintain the rule of the bourgeoise by controlling people’s ideas, values + beliefs.
-The ISAs include religion, the media + the education system.
According to Althusser what two functions does the education system (ISA) perform?
1.) Reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from gen to gen, by failing each successive gen of w/c pupils in turn.
2.) Legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguises its true cause. The function of ideology is to persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable + that they deserve their subordinate position in society.
Bowles + Gintis; Schooling in capitalist America
-Argue that capitalism requires a workforce with the kind of behaviour suited to their role as alienated + exploited workers willing to accept hard work, low pay + orders from above.
-The education system in capitalist society reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable.
-They found that students who showed independence + creativity tended to gain low grades, while those who showed characteristics linked to obedience + discipline tended to gain high grades.
The correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum
-Bowles + Gintis argue there are close parallels between schooling + work in capitalist society.
-Both schools + workplaces are hierarchies, with head teachers or bosses at the top making decisions + giving orders, and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying (correspondence principle).
-Bowles and Gintis argue that the corresponded principle operates through the hidden curriculum (all the ‘lessons’ that are learnt in school without being directly taught), e.g. simply through the everyday existence of the school, pupils become accustomed to accepting hierarchy + competition, working for extrinsic rewards etc.
-Schooling prepares w/c pupils for their role as exploited workers of the future, reproducing the workforce capitalism needs + perpetuating class inequality from gen to gen.
The myth of meritocracy; The legitimation of class inequality
-As capitalist society is based on inequality, there is always a danger that the poor will rebel.
-In Bowles + Gintis’ view, the education system helps to prevent this from happening, by legitimising class inequalities.
-It does this by producing ideologies that serve to explain + justify why inequality is fair, natural + inevitable.
-Unlike functionalists, Bowles + Gintis argue meritocracy doesn’t exist.
-Evidence shows the main factor determining whether or not someone has high income is their family + class background, not their ability or educational achievement.
-The myth of meritocracy serves to justify the privileges of the higher classes, by making it seem they gained them through success in fair competition at school.
-Helps persuade the w/c to accept inequality as legitimate, + makes it less likely that they will seek to overthrow capitalism.
-The education system also justifies poverty through blaming poverty on the individual rather than capitalism.
Willis; Learning to labour
-Paul Willis’ study (1977) shows that w/c pupils can resist such attempts to indoctrinate them,
-He combines Marxism with Interactionism, and so is interested on the meanings pupils give to their situations + how these enable them to resist indoctrination.
Willis; The lads’ counter-culture
-Willis studied the counter-school culture of ‘the lads’ (12 w/c boys) as they make the transition from school to work.
-The lads form a distinct counter-culture opposed to the school.
-They are scornful of the conformist boys who they call the ‘ear’ oles’ (because they listen to what the teacher tells them).
-The lads have their own brand of intimidatory humour, ‘taking the piss’ out of the ear’oles + girls.
-The lads find school boring + meaningless and they flout it’s rules + values, for example by smoking + drinking, disrupting classes + playing truant.
-For the lads, such acts of defiance are ways of resisting the school.
-They reject the school’s meritocratic ideology.
-Willis notes the similarity between the lads’ anti-school counter-culture + the shop floor culture of male manual workers.
-Both see manual work as superior + intellectual work as inferior.
-This explains why the lads see themselves as superior both to girls + the ear’ oles who aspire to non-manual jobs.
-However, it also explains why the lads’ counter-culture of resistance to school helps the, slot into the very jobs (inferior in terms of skill, pay + conditions) that capitalism need someone to perform: -Having been accustomed to boredom + to finding ways of amusing themselves in school, they don’t expect satisfaction from work + are good at finding diversions to cope.
-Their acts of rebellion guarantee that they will end up in unskilled jobs, by ensuring their failure to gain qualifications.
-The irony for Willis is that by resisting the schools ideology they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform.
Evaluation of Marxist approaches
✅Useful in exposing the ‘myth of meritocracy’. They show the role that education plays as an ISA, serving the interests of capitalism.
❌Postmodernists criticise Bowles + Gintis’ correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force. Education now reproduces diversity, not inequality.
❌Marxists disagree with one another about how reproduction + legitimation take place. Bowles + Gintis assume that pupils have no free will + passively accept indoctrination. While Willis rejects the view that school simply ‘brainwashes’ pupils into passively accepting their fate. He shows how pupils may reject the school + yet how this still leads them to w/c jobs.
❌12 pupils - is it representative?
❌Feminism argues B+G ignore the fact that schools reproduce not only capitalism, but patriarchy too.
CONCLUSION: However, Willis’ work has stimulated a great deal of research into how education reproduces + legitimates other inequalities. For example, Paul Connolly (1998) explores how education reproduces both ethnic + gender inequalities.
