The Marxist perspective on education Flashcards
(24 cards)
What are the two elements which Althusser says serves to keep the Bourgeoisie?
Repressive state apparatus and Ideological state apparatus
What does the Repressive state apparatus do?
maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it
What does the Ideological state apparatus do?
maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs
What apparatus is the education system?
Ideological state apparatus
How does education reproduce class inequality?
By transmitting it from generation to generation by failing each successive generation of working-class pupils
How does education legitimise class inequality?
By producing ideologies that disguise its true cause, the function of ideology is to persuade workers that inequality is inevitable
What does Bowles and Gintis believe the role of education is?
Within a capitalist society, the education system reproduces an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable
What personality traits did schools reward?
the traits that would make for a submissive, compliant workforce
What is the correspondence principle?
there are close parallels between schooling and work in a capitalist society as they both have hierarchy
How does the correspondence principle operate?
through a hidden curriculum - lessons learnt in school without being directly taught
What does the hidden curriculum teach?
teaches pupils to become accustomed to accepting hierarchy and competition, working for extrinsic rewards
What is the myth of meritocracy?
That the idea that everyone has equal educational opportunities is not true
What does Bowles and Gintis argue is the main factor in determining whether someone has a high income or not?
Their family or class background
What does the myth of meritocracy justify?
the privileges of the upper class
How does the education system justify poverty?
by blaming poverty on the individual for not being smart enough or working hard enough
What is different between Willis’ and Bowles + Gintis’ viewpoint?
where Bowles + Gintis see education as fairly straightforward process of indoctrination, Willis’ study shows working class pupils can resist indoctrination
What did Willis’ study find?
there are similarities between the lads’ anti school counter culture and the shop floor culture of male manual workers
How does the lads counter culture help capitalism?
helps them slot into the jobs that are inferior in terms of skill, pay and conditions that capitalism needs someone to perform
What do both culture see manual work as?
superior and intellectual work is inferior and effeminate
Why does Willis’ find this ironic?
as by resisting the schools ideology, the lads’ counter culture ensures they are destined for the unskilled work that capitalism needs someone to perform
How do post modernists criticise the Marxist view on education?
Criticise the correspondence principle as today’s post-Fordist economy requires schools to produce a different type of labour force from the one described by Marxists
What do Marxists disagree over?
Bowles and Gintis take a deterministic view which suggests pupils have no free will which fails to explain why some pupils reject the schools values but Willis rejects this view
How do feminists criticise Marxists view?
MacDonald says Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact that schools reproduce patriarchy as well as capitalism
McRobbie points at that females are largely absent from Willis’ study
How do critical modernists criticise Marxists viewpoint?
They criticise them for taking a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores all other kinds
