Role of education in society - Marxism

Marx - Marxism

Society that is based on class division and capitalist exploitation.

The capitalist class (or bourgeoisie) are the minority class that own the means of production (land, factories, offices and the state) and make their profits by exploiting the labour of the working class majority (or proletariat).

The working class have no choice but to sell their labour power t the capitalists as they own no means of production on their own - so they have no other source of income. As a result, the working class under capitalism is poorly paid and unsatisfying - which the workers have no real control over.

This can create potential for class conflict as if workers realise they are being exploited, they will demand higher wages and better working conditions, and may even abolish capitalism by uniting to overthrow the system.

However, capitalism is able to continue because the bourgeoisie controls the state.

Ideological State Apparatus - Althusser

Althusser believed that the state is made up of two apparatuses that serve to keep the bourgeoisie in power:

The repressive state apparatus (RSAs) - maintains capitalism and the rule of the bourgeoisie by force and threats through the police, courts and army. If necessary, they will use physical force to repress the working class.

The ideological state apparatus (ISAs) - maintains capitalism and the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling peoples ideas, values and beliefs through religion, the media and the education system.

Althusser - education as an ideological state apparatus

• It reinforces class inequality by transmitting from one generation to another by failing each generation of working class pupils.

• It justifies class inequality by producing ideologies that persuades the working class to accept that their inequality is inevitable and that they should accept their subordinate position in society.

By accepting these ideologies, they will be less likely to challenge capitalism.

Bowles and Gintis - schooling in capitalist America

Bowles and Gintis argue that capitalism requires workers who are willing to accept hard work with little pay and orders from the bourgeoisie. The role of the education system in capitalist society is to reproduce obedient workers.

e.g - in a study of 237 New York high school students, compliant and disciplined students were more likely to get higher grades than creative and independent students.

Therefore, schooling helps to produce the compliant workers that capitalism needs to function.

Bowles and Gintis - correspondence theory

School can mirror the workplace in many different ways through a hidden curriculum that can prepare working-class pupils for their potential role as an exploited worker in the future:

• Hierarchy of authority in school (head teachers, deputies, teachers and students) parallels with the hierarchy of authority in the workplace (e.g managers, supervisors, workers).

• Alienation through a lack of control over education (the content, timetabling) reflects the alienation of workers (managers get to decide their conditions).

• Fragmentation and compartmentalisation of knowledge with unconnected subjects reflects meaningless tasks in work.

• Competition and division in class (to come to the top of the class) reflects competition and division in the work (through differences in pay.

Bowles and Gintis - myth of meritocracy

Meritocracy means everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve, and rewards are based on ability and effort - which is what is promoted at school.

Bowles and Gintis argue this does not exist in the workplace - the main factor determining whether someone achieves and has a high income is their family and class background - not their educational achievement.

The ‘myth of meritocracy’ justifies the privileges of the higher class and justifies poverty, leading those who are in poverty to believe that they were only poor because they didn’t work hard enough. 

This reconciles workers to their exploited position - making them less likely to rebel against the system.

Bourdieu - reproduction of class inequalities

1) The education system justifies class inequalities in capitalist societies.

2) Each social class has its own set of ideas / cultural framework of good tastes and bad tastes on either art, TV, books etc known as a ‘habitus’

3) This habitus is picked up through socialisation in the family

4) The dominant class (in this case the middle class) has the power to reflect its own habitus in the education system - so educational knowledge is not of society as a whole, but rather of the dominant class

5) Those of the dominant class will have an educational advantage as they have access to the culture.

6) This advantage is known as ‘cultural capital’

7) Success is based on the possession of cultural capital.

8) Pupils from lower social classes are likely to not possess cultural capital - so their failure in education is inevitable as they do not have an advantage.

9) This allows for higher-class pupils to stay into the same class they were born into and to take on higher social class positions as adults, and is the opposite for lower-class pupils.

10) The education system legitimises and reproduces class inequalities from one generation to the next.

Willis - learning to labour

Working class boys rebel against the education system as they find it boring and meaningless

This leads them smoke, drink and disrupt classes

They reject the school’s meritocratic ideology that W/C pupils can achieve M/C jobs through hard work

This creates an ‘anti-school subculture’

However, they are still likely to fail in school - so the system still wins

They still learn skills that help them in W/C work - known as ‘shopfloor culture’ as both cultures see manual work as superior and intellectual rather than inferior and effeminate

This anti-school subculture leads them to be in inferior jobs that capitalism needs, such as:

• Finding ways to amuse themselves due to boredom in schools means they do not expect satisfaction from work and find ways to cope with unskilled labour

• Acts of rebellion guarantee they will end up in unskilled jobs

Evaluation

• Marxism takes a ‘class-first’ approach, which ignores other inequalities such as gender and ethnicity

• Postmodernists argue Marxism is outdated. The economy is now post-Fordist (Fordism is a production line factory work). Therefore, Bowles and Gintis theories are no longer relevant.

• Willis rejects the view that school simply ‘brainwashes’ people into accepting their fate as he shows how students resist the education system yet still end up in W/C jobs

• Bowles and Gintis’ approach is too deterministic as they assume pupils have no free will and passively accept these ideologies they are taught