Marxist views on education

• Althusser

  ISA + RSA -

  • he sees education as part of the ideological state apparatus where schools reproduce a false class consciousness
  • it legitimises class inequalities by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause
  • the more successful the ISA is the less the RSA have to do
  • he suggested education prepares students for a life of exploitation
  • he suggested that education reproduces the dominant ideology of the ruling class which ensures the working class are docile and submissive
• ISA criticisms-

  • he is cristisced for his lack of empirical evidence ,his ideas theoretical not evidence based
  • its deterministic many working class students go on to be successful
• Bowles and Gintis

  correspondence principle -

  • school mirrors the workplace through the hidden curriculum
  • they argue that meritocracy is a myth and there is a close relationship between social relationships in the workplace end education
  • encourages acceptance of hierarchy
  • motivated by extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards
  • school is fragmented the same way work is
• correspondence principle evaluations -

  • many studies (Willis ) shows that students do not accept the hidden curriculum -they have little respect for school and teachers
  • if school does mirror the workplace then why are so few students equipped with the skills to go straight to work
• Willis

  learning to labour -

  • Interviews and observations on 12 working class lads
  • he observed them to be anti conformist and against the school ethos
  • he argues that the working class lads seen through the smoke screen of meritocracy that tries to legitimise inequality
  • the lads found school boring and meaningless and would instead have a laff
  • they chose to fail so they could achieve their dream of manual labour jobs
  • education does not produce the ideal workforce and people are not passive puppets to the system
• learning to labour evaluation -

  • Hawthorne effect - lads could have been acting up in Willis presence
  • his sample size was inadequate for generalising the role of education
• post modernist evaluation point -

  • argue that students create their own identity rather than been constrained by structures like class ,encourages diversity not inequality