Marxism

• Reproduction of social inequality (Althusser)

  -Education deliberately engineers W/C failure to create an unqualified factory workforce

  -Private education prepares children of the elite for positions of power

  -Hidden curriculum shaped to assist M/C achievement
• Legitimisation of social inequality (Althusser)

  -M/C has access to more cultural and economic capital which puts them at an advantage

  -Education encourages students to blindly accept capitalist values, through the hidden curriculum
• Correspondence principles (Bowles and Gintis)

  School processes mirror the world of work in order to prepare them for manual labour e.g. obidience, boredom, lack of control
• Myth of meritocracy (Bowles and Gintis)

  Education claims to be meritocratic but schools discriminate in favour of the M/C. The hidden curriculum lowers W/C ambitions.
• Evaluation (Social democratic)

  -Floud and Martin- exaggerate the effect the education system has on W/C achievement

  -Govt. policies such as, comprehensivisation have improved the chances of the W/C
• Evaluation (New Right)

  -Chubb and Moe - fail to see how eduacation has failed all social groups not just the W/C

  -The education system has failed to equip all students with the skills needed to be successful in the global market place
• Evaluation (postmodernism)

  -Fail to acknowledge that education actually reproduces diversity rather than inequality