marxist views on education

• Marxist theories on education

  • Bourdieu studied social class reproduction and how cultural capital (cultural knowledge that helps someone navigate a culture) affects the opportunities available to students from different social classes
  • Members of the upper and middle classes generally have more cultural capital than families of lower class status
  • The dominant culture's values seem to always be rewarded in the educational system
  • Teaching and tests are generally geared towards the dominant culture, so other students can struggle to identify with values outside of their social class
• Social class reproduction


  • The type of rewarding more with cultural capital is found in the hidden curriculum, which is the type of non-academic knowledge that someone learns through informal learning and the passing on of culture
  • Marxism says that hidden curriculum reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and unequal status
• Setting/Streaming


  • Where students are sorted into classes by ability, this makes inequalities worse
  • Teachers may argue students do better in those classes because they are with students of similar ability and get more individual attention
  • Marxists think that this setting leads to self-fulfilling prophecies where students live up or down to the teacher's and social expectations
• Marxist view on the role of schools

  Schools play the role of training working class students to accept and retain their position as lower members of society
• Wealthier students access better or more resources than others (Lauren Tyson)