The Marxist perspective on education

• Traditional Marxists


  See the education system as working in the interests of ruling class elites
• Education system functions


  • Reproduces class inequality
  • Legitimates class inequality
  • Works in the interests of capitalist employers
• Reproduction of class inequality


  Class inequalities are carried from one generation to the next
• Legitimation of class inequality


  The 'myth of meritocracy' - people believe the system is fair when in reality it is not
• Teaching the skills future capitalist employers need


  Correspondence between values learnt at school and the way the workplace operates
• School values


  • Passive subservience of pupils to teachers
  • Acceptance of hierarchy (authority of teachers)
  • Motivation by external rewards (grades not learning)
• Corresponding work values


  • Passive subservience of workers to managers
  • Authority of managers
  • Being motivated by wages not the joy of the job
• There is an overwhelming wealth of evidence that schools do reproduce class inequality
• The existence of private schools is strong supporting evidence for Marxism
• A disproportionately high number of people in elite professions were privately educated
• The theory is too deterministic according to Henry Giroux
• There is less evidence that pupils think school is fair
• Neo-Marxism: Paul Willis


  Pupils are not directly injected with the values and norms that benefit the ruling class, some actively reject these
• Counter-school culture


  • Felt superior to teachers and other pupils
  • Attached no value to academic work, more to 'having a laff'
  • Objective was to miss as many lessons as possible
  • Valued non-school activities over school work
• The disadvantage gap among pupils by GCSEs has remained almost level since 2007/08
• Disadvantaged students achieved on average 3 grades less across their best three subjects at A-level or BTEC compared to non-disadvantaged students
• Disadvantaged students were more less likely to take the more prestigious A-levels and more likely to take BTECs
• There is an education attainment gap of around 28% at GCSEs when we compare the poorest students with the rest
• The disadvantage gap has remained almost level since 2007/08 despite the results of all students improving significantly
• Disadvantaged students were more less likely to take the more prestigious A-levels and more likely to take BTECs, the later being correlated with lower wages compared to A-levels later on in work, suggesting that the education system reproduces class inequality overall
• Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds are much less confident than students from higher socio-economic backgrounds that they have caught up with lost learning caused by the Tory government's chosen policy of locking down schools during the pandemic
• Children from Independent schools were less likely to change their career aspirations due to covid compared to children from state grammar or independent schools
• Children from the most deprived areas were more likely to change their career aspirations because of Covid than those from the least deprived areas
• Exposure to elite peers from elite educated families increases the probability of a student themselves enrolling for elite education
• The 'enrolment to elite universities effect' is twice as much for rich students compared to poor students
• Elite-peers do more to reinforce the reproduction of class inequality than to encourage social mobility
• Correspondence principle


  The idea that the norms and values pupils learn in school correspond to the norms and values which will make it easy for future capitalist employers to exploit them at work
• Schools produce a subservient workforce
• Schools


  • Produce a mass of uncritical, passive and docile workers, perfectly suited to drudge labour in factories
  • Reward personality traits like perseverance, consistency and punctuality over creativity, aggressiveness and independence
• Schools


  • Are hierarchical organisations where pupils have little say over what they learn or how the school day is organised
  • Expect pupils to obey the authority of teachers
• Motivation by external rewards


  Pupils are taught to be motivated by the qualifications they will receive at the end of school, rather than the 'joy of learning' itself
• Work in capitalist societies becomes alienating and exploitative</b>
• Fragmentation of subjects at school


  Learning is split up into different academic subjects rather than being holistic, corresponding to the fragmentation of the workforce in later life
• The idea of 'motivation by external rewards' has some relevance today in explaining why people put up with soul destroying jobs for a wage
• Meritocracy


  The idea that it is solely the ability and effort of the individual which determines the qualifications and the job they get, rather than their class background
• Marxist sociologists Bowles and Gintis argue that capitalist societies are not meritocratic
• Being born into a middle class family


  Middle class children benefit from material and cultural capital which give them an advantage in both school, and in the job application process, which gives them an unfair advantage compared to working class children
• The education system disguises the fact that economic success runs in the family, and that privilege breeds privilege
• Bowles and Gintis reject the functionalist view that education is a meritocracy
• Intelligence Quotient (IQ)


  A measure of intelligence