The Marxist perspective on education

• hidden curriculum


  set of subjects and skills taught in schools that are not on the national curriculum
• marxist view on education

  • see education as based on class division and capitalist exploitation
• false class consciousness


  working class are unaware they are being exploited
• surplus value 


  additional value that workers produce but do not get paid for
• ideological state apparatus 


  • which maintain the rule of the bourgeoise by controlling peoples ideas, values and beliefs
  • include religion, the media and the education system
• repressive state apparatus

  • maintain the rule of the bourgeoise by force or the threat of it
  • include the police, courts, arm etc
  • if necessary they use physical coercion (force) to repress the working class
• Bowles and Gintes: correspondence principle

  • suggest that education mirrors the workplace in its organisation, reward systems etc
  • implies we do not have choice or freedom
  • underestimates peoples agencies on how they want to behave
  • schooling prepares WC pupils for their role as the exploited workers in the future reproducing the workforce capitalism needs and perpetuating class inequality from generation to generation
• 'learning to labour' - Willis

  • anti-schools subculture - rejected academic norms and values which opposes the schools ideals
  • resistance to capitalist ideas - chose to fail rather than be moulded into being obedient workers
  • class inequality reproduction - rejection of education led to them working in working class jobs perpetrating class inequality
• classes in capitalist society

  • Ruling class (capitalists, or bourgeoisie)
  • Working class (proletariat)
• capitalist class

  • Own the means of production (land, factories etc)
  • Make their profits by exploiting the labour of the working class
• the working class

  • forced to sell their labour power to the capitalists since they own no means of production of their own and so have no other source of income
  • work under capitalism is poorly paid alienating unsatisfying and something over which workers have no real control
• althusser - the ideological state apparatus

  • the state consists of two elements or 'apparatuses' both of which serve to keep the bourgeoise in power
  • the repressive state apparatus
  • the ideological state apparatus
  • in althussers view the education system is an important ideological state apparatus
  • he argues that the education system performs two functions
  • reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation by failing each generation of working-class pupils in turn and thereby ensuring that they end up in the same kinds of jobs as their parents
  • Legitimates (justifies) class inequality by producing ideologies (sets of ideas and beliefs) that disguise its true cause
  • want the workers to accept that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve to be in this subordinate position in society
• how schools mirror work

  • Alienation in school - pupils' lack control over education
  • alienation in work - workers lack control over production
  • Hierarchy of authority in school: head > teachers > pupils
  • hierarchy of authority in workplace - managers, supervisors etc
  • Extrinsic satisfaction in schools - good grades rather than from interest in the subjects studied
  • extrinsic satisfaction in work - from pay rather than from doing the job itself
  • Fragmentation of knowledge into unconnected subjects
  • fragmentation of work through the division of labour into small tasks
  • Competition and divisions among pupils in schools e.g. to come top of the class
  • competition and divisions in work e.g. differences in status or pay
• myth of meritocracy

  • The claim that education and the world of work are both meritocratic, because everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve.
  • e.g. those who gain the highest rewards deserve them because they are the most able and hardworking.
  • In reality, success is based on class background, not ability or educational achievement
  • The myth of meritocracy helps persuade workers to accept inequality and their subordinate position as legitimate
• evaluation of marxist approaches

  • postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis correspondence principle on the grounds that todays post-fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists
  • argue that education now produces diversity not inequality