skills

Passing of capitalist skills – Finn

Marxists Finn argued that the real function of the education system is to pass on capitalist skills which keep the social classes segregated.

Finn argues that training schemes such as the youth training scheme (YTS) and apprenticeships are set up to maintain class inequality, preventing social mobility. Although they appear to teach youths particular skill sets needed in employment and provide opportunities for work, many of the apprenticeships that are accessible are in the lowest paid professions and jobs, alongside paying the apprentice relatively low wages. 

evaluation

• Skeggs argues that education reproduces and reinforces a combination of gender and social class inequality. Her study is based on nine years of observations of working-class females on low-level ‘caring’ courses in further education. Skeggs describes two ways in which the courses reproduced class and gender inequalities:

· They encouraged stereotypical feminine qualities such as domesticity and putting others first.

· They emphasised how difficult it is to care properly. They encourage the women to regard their own caring skills as inadequate and to see the expertise of middle-class professionals such as doctors, teachers and health visitors as superior to their own.

As a result, the females come to see themselves both as suited to feminine caring work and as incapable of middle-class professions. This prepares them for low-paid work such as care assistants and also for unpaid women’s work in the home.

• New Right would criticise the work of Finn, arguing the education system has adapted to the current changes of modern apprenticeships, promoting these to all students. They are now more modern apprenticeships in higher professions such as accounting and law.