Traditional Marxists see the education system as working in the interests of ruling class elites. According to the Marxist perspective on education, the system performs three functions for these elites:
- Reproduces class inequality
In school, the middle classes use their material and cultural capital to ensure that their children get into the best schools and the top sets. This means that the wealthier pupils tend to get the best education and then go onto to get middle class jobs. Meanwhile working-class children are more likely to get a poorer standard of education and end up in working class jobs. In this way class inequality is reproduced
- Legitimates class inequality
Marxists argue that in reality money determines how good an education you get, but people do not realize this because schools spread the ‘myth of meritocracy’ – in school we learn that we all have an equal chance to succeed and that our grades depend on our effort and ability. Thus, if we fail, we believe it is our own fault. This legitimates or justifies the system because we think it is fair when in reality it is not.
- It works in the interests of capitalist employers
In ‘Schooling in Capitalist America’ (1976) Bowles and Gintis suggest that there is a correspondence between values learnt at school and the way in which the workplace operates. The values, they suggested, are taught through the ‘Hidden Curriculum’. The Hidden Curriculum consists of those things that pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the main curriculum subjects taught at the school. So, pupils learn those values that are necessary for them to tow the line in menial manual jobs, as outlined below:
SCHOOL VALUES Corresponds to EXPLOITATIVE LOGIC OF THE WORKPLACE
PASSIVE SUBSERVIENCE OF PUPILS TO TEACHERS corresponds to PASSIVE SUBSERVIENCE OF WORKERS TO MANAGERS
ACCEPTANCE OF HIERARCHY (AUTHORITY OF TEACHERS) corresponds to AUTHORITY OF MANAGERS
MOTIVATION BY EXTERNAL REWARDS (GRADES NOT LEARNING) corresponds to being MOTIVATED BY WAGES NOT THE JOY OF THE JOB
Positive evaluations of the Traditional Marxist Perspective on Education
- There is an overwhelming wealth of evidence that schools do reproduce class inequality because the middle classes do much better in education because they have more cultural capital (Reay) and because the 1988 Education Act benefited them (Ball Bowe and Gewirtz)
- Conversely, WWC children less likely to go to university because of fear of debt (Connor et al)
Negative evaluations of the Traditional Marxist Perspective on Education
- Henry Giroux, says the theory is too deterministic. He argues that working class pupils are not entirely moulded by the capitalist system, and do not accept everything that they are taught – Paul Willis’ study of the ‘Lads’ also suggests this.
- Education can actually harm the Bourgeois – many left wing, Marxist activists are university educated