marxist

• Althusser

  state apparatus 

  repressive state apparatus

  • Control achieved by use of force eg. Courts, police, army
  • Maintain the position of the Ruling class by force
  • They use physical coercion to repress the working class

  ideological state apparatus

  • Controls people's ideas, values and beliefs eg religion, education, media
  • Maintain the rule of the bourgeosie by controlling ideas
  • Teachers
  • Thought control
• Althusser

  Ideological State Apparatus

  schools making up part of the apparatus 

  • Reproduction of classInequality from generation to generation
  • failing each successive generation of working class pupils
  • legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its intent of brainwashing students
  • function of ideology is to Internalise and accedt the view that they are subordinate and Inequality is inevitable.
  • If they accept these ideas they will be unlikely to challenge capitalism
• Bowels and Ginitis

  Correspondence principle - there are parallels between school and work - the procedures in school mirror those in work

  • operates through the hidden curriculum (the lessons we learn in school)
  • eg uniform and set lesson times preparing for workplace

  Cohen 1984

  • Youth training schemes serve capitalism by teaching young workers the attitudes and values needed to become obedient workers
• Weekend agenda

  key study

  • Studied 237 New York High School students - concluded schools reward traits that make a submissive worker 
  • school do this to reproduce the next generation of obedient workers

  meritocracy as a myth

  • Bowles and Gintis see the education system as a "giant myth-making machine"
  • says reward is connected to the family income + class background not effort
  • Meritocracy is used to justify the rewards given to middle class students, making it seem fair in a competitive system
  • The working class will then be less likely to challenge this view
• Willis

  • according to willis, working-class children are aware of their inequality
  • pupils resisted the ideology by smoking, truanting, drinking misbehaving
  • a counter- school- culture was formed by the lads' and is characterised by their misbehaviour: examples of: ‘taking the piss' ‘having a laff’
  • the lad's resistance was futile because it means that they will find themselves as still being in inferior parts of society
• Willis

  • traditional marxists (Althusser) are different because schools pass on messages, which are accepted without question, socialises children into capitalism
  • Whereas neo-marxists (willis) say children see through the ideology, but it doesn't mater - the reality is Iow pay work, poverty, oppression, but it doesn’t matter, will happen regardless
• Marxism

  Strengths 

  •   highlights differences of both opportunities + outcomes in school systems
  •   diverts our attention to ideological state apparatus + meritocracy as a myth
  • Willis work lead to further research by Seven / Mac on Ghai and Connolly = reliable
• Marxism

  Weaknesses

  • Postmodernists criticise it as inequality is needed to allow for lower jobs to be occuppied
  • marxists disagree with each other on reproduction of inequality = messy + unreliable
  • Willis glamourises anti-social behaviour + sexism
  • Morren + Torres - criticises class -first approach as they don't highlight inequalities with same importance eg gender + ethnicity