Education (Marxism and the Role of Education) Flashcards
Google Slides (28 cards)
Define Capitalism
An economic system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit rather than by the state.
How are ruling class able to hold onto the power?
They control the state.
Louis Althusser : what to elements do the state consist of to help them maintain power?
Repressive State Apparatus
Ideological State Apparatus
What are features of the RSA?
Control through physical force
Uses force to repress the working class
The police, courts and the army.
What are features of the ISA?
Control ideas, values and beliefs
Teaches capitalist ideas
Each ISA transmits a set of ideas which create a false class consciousness. Eg religion, media, education system
What do Marxists think the Education System is?
Ideological State Apparatus
What two roles of education do Bowles and Gintis believe all students conform to?
Reproduction of class system
Legitimation of class inequality
What is the first way reproduction of the class system achieved?
Correspondence Principle (school mirrors the workplace)
What are some aspects of the correspondence principle?
Alienation
Hierarchy of authority
Extrinsic Rewards
What is the second way that a reproduction of the class system is achieved?
Hidden Curriculum
What could be an example of the hidden curriculum?
Studying hard will make you succeed in life.
School rules like uniform you may not always agree with shows how you have to conform to the rules in society.
What is Fordism?
A system of mass production.
What are features that help legitimise class inequality?
Convinces students that inequality is normal
Failure is the fault of the individual, not the capitalist system.
How does the myth of meritocracy legitimise class inequality?
Through the ‘poor are dumb’ theory of failure.
What does the myth of meritocracy blame poverty on?
The individual, not capitalism.
What is some evidence of inequality in capitalist Britain?
A child from a disadvantaged background is 18 months behind when they take their GCSEs.
Only 7% of young people are privately educated in the UK, but they make up 55% of students at Russel Group universities.
Who rejects Bowles and Ginitis’s version of the correspondence principle and why?
Willis as he believes WC students do resist attempts to train them in school and accept the hidden curriculum.
Paul Willis’ study aimed to go undercover and ask the question of what? (1997)
Why working class kids get working class jobs?
What did Willis carry out?
Interviews, group discussions and participant observation on 12 working class ‘lads’.
What is ‘Learning to Labour’ by Paul Willis?
An ethnographic study of a school in Birmingham conducted between 1972 and 1975
What is the marxist theory criticised for putting too much emphasis on?
Focuses too much on class inequality and ignores aspects such as gender, ethnicity and sexuality.
How do feminists criticise the marxist theory?
MacDonald (1980) argues schools reproduce patriarchy as well as inequality.
How do sociologists Morrow & Torres (1998) criticise the marxist theory?
They say they emphasise class inequality too much.
What do post-modernist sociologists Usher and Thompson (1997) argue?
Todays world requires a different kind of labour force.
Post-fordism - the education system today produces diversity
