Marxist view

• Marxist view of education

  • Reproduces inequalities of the capitalist economic system to legitimise ruling class culture and power
  • Socialises the w/c into a 'culture of failure' so they take up routine and dull work without questioning
• Althusser - role of ideology

  • Education = ideological state apparatus
  • Reproduces class-based inequalities by creating the belief that capitalism is 'normal'
  • Class system is transmitted from generation to generation
  • Legitimises class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise it's true cause
  • Inequality is inevitable
• Criticisms of Althusser

  • Schools do reproduce class inequality as m/c overachieve in education and have more cultural capital (Reay) and the 1988 Education Act benefitted them all
  • Connor et al - w/c children less likely to go to university because of fear of debt
  • Giroux - theory is too deterministic as w/c pupils are not all passive and accept everything they are taught
  • Willis Learning to Labour study suggests this
• Bowles and Gintis

  • Meritocracy is a myth
  • Correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum and shapes the workforce by:
  • Producing a subservient workforce
  • Encouraging an acceptance of hierarchy
  • Pupils learning to be motivated by external rewards rather than the love of education
  • Fragmenting school subjects in the same way routine work is
  • End product is a hardworking and docile workforce, too divided to challenge the authority of management
• Criticisms of Bowles and Gintis

  • Willis shows that many pupils do not accept the hidden curriculum in schools and show little respect for teachers/school rules
  • Reynolds claims that much of the curriculum in British schools is not designed to teach either the skills needed by employers or uncritical passive behaviour
  • Giroux argues that working class students do not accept the legitimacy of school and many resist the hidden curriculum and the history of industrial action does not support the idea of worker conformity
• Support for Bowles and Gintis

  • The freedom of teachers has been curtailed by the National Curriculum
  • Education has become more explicitly designed to meet the needs of employers eg. BTECs, work experience and computer courses. Cannot actually prove the hidden curriculum exists
  • Ignores factors such as gender and ethnicity
• Willis - Learning to labour

  • How schools serves capitalism with an interactionist approach
  • Challenges over-deterministic nature of Bowles and Gintis
  • Working class 'lads' see through the false idea of meritocracy that tries to legitimise inequality
  • They create counter-school culture that challenges the schools dominant values
  • Anti-school behaviour guarantees them in dead end jobs
• Willis - Learning to labour

  • 12 working class lads in their final year of school
  • Unstructured interviews and observations
  • Scornful of conformist boys - 'ear'oles'
  • Found school boring and meaningless
  • Smoking, truanting and disrupting classes
  • Rejected school values
  • Actively chose to fail so they can land 'dream jobs' of manual labour in a factory with their friends
  • See manual work as superior and intellectual
  • Education does not always provide workers for capitalism
• Criticisms of Willis

  • Blackledge and Hunt said the sample was inadequate for generalising about the role of education in society - 12 pupils who were all male and non-typical children of the school
  • Ignores full range of subcultures in the school as many pupils fall inbetween total conformity and total rejection