Marxism

• Marxist perspective on education


  Education based on class division between the bourgeoisie who owns the means of production and the proletariat who are work under the capitalist
• Althusser's ideological state apparatus (ISA)


  Control and order are maintained through the control of people's ideas, values, and beliefs, including the media and the education system
• Functions of the education system (according to Althusser)


  • Reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation
  • Legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause, persuading workers into accepting inequality
• Bowles and Gintis' study


  Schools reward personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker, and do not foster personal development
• Correspondence principle


  Close parallels between schooling and work in a capitalist society, with hierarchies and decision-making structures
• Hidden curriculum


  Lessons that are not directly taught in school, which prepare pupils for the exploitation they will experience as workers
• Myth of meritocracy


  The education system prevents the poor from feeling the inequality by legitimating it and producing ideologies that explain and justify why the inequality is fair, just, and inevitable
• Willis' study: "Learning to Labour"


  Pupils can resist being indoctrinated by the school system, and develop a counterculture that opposes school values and prepares them for unskilled, low-paid work