Marxism

Marx

The Capitalist Class (bourgeoisie) - minority class

The Working Class (proletariat) - forced to sell their labour power

education as functioning to prevent revolution and maintain capitalism

Althusser

Ideological state apparatus

• the repressive state apparatuses - maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by force or the threat of it

• the ideological state apparatuses - maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs

performs two functions:

• education reproduces class inequality by transmitting it from generation to generation, by failing each successive generation of working-class pupils

• Education legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true cause

Bowles and Gintis

education system used to reproduce an obedient workforce that will accept inequality as inevitable. schools reward precisely the kind of personality traits that make for a submissive, compliant worker

correspondence principle operates through the hidden curriculum

myth of meritocracy - the education system legitimates class inequalities

Willis

learning to labour ‘lads’ study

Criticism

Postmodernists - today’s post-fordist economy requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by marxists, education now reproduces diversity