Marxist's view on education
- Created by: E456
- Created on: 05-12-17 10:57
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- Marxist's view on education
- conflict theory
- society is based upon conflict between the proletariat (working-class) and the bourgeoisie (upper-class)
- Althusser
- education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working-class pupils in turn
- justifies class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause; the function of ideology is to persuade workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position in society
- repressive state apparatus (RSAs)
- maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or threat of it (e.g. police, army)
- ideological state apparatus (ISAs)
- maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people's ideas, values and beliefs (e.g. religion, mass media)
- Bowles and Gintis
- hidden curriculum
- what we learn from ways in which schooling is organised and carried out, rather than through the formal curriculum
- correspondence principle
- the way that the organisation and control of schools mirrors the workplace in capitalist society
- myth of meritocracy
- meritocracy is an ideology legitimating inequality by falsely claiming that everyone has equal opportunity and that unequal rewards are the 'natural' result of unequal ability
- hidden curriculum
- Willis
- counter-school culture
- the lads flout the school's rules and values as a way of resisting the school and its ideology that working-class pupils can achieve middle-class jobs through hard work
- learning to labour
- the working-class lads are happy to go work at a factory and experience it as their own free choice, while this 'choice' works to preserve their social condition and class oppression
- counter-school culture
- Criticisms
- Postmodernists: education now reproduces diversity not inequality
- Marxists focus too much on class inequality and not other inequalities
- pupils have minds of their own - might not accept these inequalities
- conflict theory
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