Marxist

• Ideological State Apparatus (Althusser 1971): state is the means for the bourgeoisie to maintain dominant position. State consists of the repressive state apparatus and the ideological state apparatus
• Repressive State Apparatus (Althusser 1971): maintains state by force or threat using police, courts and army. When necessary they use force to repress the proletariat
• Ideological State Apparatus: Controls peoples ideas, values and beliefs including religion, media and education system
• Ideological State Apparatus in school (Althusser 1971):

  1. Education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it through failing working class' generation on generation
  2. Education legitimates class inequality by producing ideology that disguises capitalism's true cause. Persuades workers to accept inequality as inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position - ensuring proletariat less likely to revolt
• Evaluation of Ideological State Apparatus:

  1. reduces free will
  2. ignores other inequalities
  3. Macdonald 1980: schools also reproduce patriarchy
  4. Althusser accused of being an 'armchair theorist'
• Bowles and Gintis 1976: Role of education system to reproduce an obedient workforce who will accept inequality as inevitable. Study of 237 New York high school students concluding that schools reward personality traits that make students iinto submissive, compliant workers. Students who show creativity and independence tended to have lower grades than those who were obediant and disciplined.
• Correspondence Principle (Bowles and Gintis 1976): relationships and structures within work mirror those within school that are transmitted through a hidden curriculum. Pupils automatically accepting hierarchy/authority, competition and working for extrinsic rewards
• Cohen 1984: youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers values and attitudes needed to serve in a subordinate workforce. Lowers expectations so they will accept low paid work.
• Myth of Meritocracy (Bowles and Gintis 1976): Education system prevents class consciousness by producing explanations for why inequality is natural and inevitable. Education system justifies poverty through 'poor-are-dumb' theory which blames poverty on the individual rather than society.
• Evaluation of Myth of Meritocracy (Bowles and Gintis 1976):

  1. Postmodernists state that marxists describe a different labour force which now produces diversity
  2. Bowles and Gintis take deterministic view that reduces free will
• Learning to Labour (Willis 1977): used qualitative methods in an interactionist method and found boys intentionally misbehaved by smoking and drinking as a way of rejecting the myth of meritocracy. Boys had similar attitudes than those working in manual labour which boys attributed to them being masculine. Willis found it was ironic that by resisting school's ideology, the counter culture ensured they were destined to perform unskilled labour that capitalism needs.
• Willis 1971: rejects the view that school simply brainwashes pupils into accepting their fate but purposefully creates counter culture that leads to working class jobs
• Evaluation of Willis' Learning to Labour 1977:

  1. romanticies working class boys as heroes despite their anti-social and sexist behaviour
  2. extremely small scale of 12 boys thus unrepresentative
  3. ignores other forms of inequality
  4. androcentric