Assess The View That The Main Function Of The Education System Is To Reproduce And Legitimise Social Inequality
Marxist theories of education rely upon the notion that the education system systematically reproduces the social and cultural values that lead to the privileging of one social class over another. For Marxists, social inequality is the core of capitalism. As Anyon (2011, p. 7) suggests, capitalism is “an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production.” Moreover, capitalism cannot function unless these social inequalities exist.
According to Marxism, the education system perpetuates these inequalities by creating a set of standards which do not have a neutral ideological formation. Regardless of geographic location and emphasis on cultural, social, or ethnic competency, the education system is deeply rooted in a flawed hierarchal system. Critics such as Gramsci comment that ideology is grounded on the concept of hegemony. Hegemony is the idea that domination over certain classes and social groups are determined by everyday processes that make common sense. Adamson (2005, p. 10) comments that, for Gramsci, “Hegemony [] is the process of gaining legitimate consent within the functional universe of civil society, as opposed to simply holding it together through a monopoly on the means of violence.” In this respect, liberal schooling and educational policies create an idea that all children are treated equally within the schooling system. For Marxists, the violence that ordinarily takes place still occurs within the system of education but on a more insidious level. The relevance of this theory is that although violence may not be explicit, educational systems still serve to compound the differences between social classes. This creates a sense of inequality that is later transformed into a more authentic societal difference, recognized by Marxists as institutional discrimination, more precisely maintaining “the advantage for the dominant group while providing the appearance of fairness to others” (Carl 2013).
The difference between educational standards of the rich and the poor cement the idea that individuals are treated differently dependent on their social status. Marxists tend to push this concept further by stressing that the educational system systematically confines the working-classes into thinking that they are naturally subservient. The system does this subtly by idolizing values of wealth, power, and prestige through teachings, demonstrating conflict resolution through violence in history, and emphasizing the credibility of formal education over any other type of learning. Because, according to Marx, the grounds of this inequality is entirely economic and is also endemic within capitalism itself, education can only serve the interests of propagandists who wish to perpetuate the status quo.
Marxism suggests that capitalism in education creates a false set of standards which prioritize middle-class and ruling-class values over working-class values. In short, this is because capitalism is dependent upon whether a class of people possess ownership over the means of production, distribution and exchange. This form of social stratification is central to Marxism and usurps all ideas about race and gender. Education, for Marx, affects the ideology of the everyday by perpetuating values that attempt to hoodwink individuals into thinking that the system offers opportunities for freedom, when in fact the educational system promotes and sustains mass inequality (Sarup 2013, p. 107).
Although it seems to be the defining characteristic of capitalism in developed countries, meritocracy has not gone by the wayside, rather it has been embedded into the British educational system. Hidden beneath the perception that fairness and social mobility is attainable to all of those who further their education, the system molds youngsters of society into the working class demanded by the ruling class. Recent “evidence from social mobility researchclearly indicates that the expansion of educational provision and the increase in educational qualifications of the past 60 years has done little to eliminate social class differences and associated privileges” , yet the majority of the population believes that education is the ticket to higher pay, better jobs, and increased opportunities. The meritocratic values embedded in the British educational system go well beyond the scope of assessing students based on their abilities, because in a society that vainly bolsters equality and fair access to opportunities, the truth remains that society values individuals based on their abilities. Marxists see this inadequacy in the system as another way for the ruling class to set their values at a higher standard than those of lower classes while continuing to keep those values out of reach for the lowest classes.
Of course, inequalities affect the education system, both in terms of classrooms themselves, and in terms of the opportunities offered to people from different backgrounds. The opportunities offered to those individuals afforded access to private schools is considerably greater than the opportunities offered to people who are not given access to those particular institutions. In either case, the access to educational material is limited to the ideal literature perpetuating by the ruling class; literature consisting of opinionated and patriotic political, religious, and economic values essential to the continued perseverance of the ruling class.
Feminism also has had an important role to play in identifying certain biases in how education is practised in society. Particularly, feminism is broadly concerned about the notion of gender norms practised in the educational system. However, feminism, like post-structuralism, is difficult to quantify in exact terms. Allen (2012, p. 45) notes that feminist post-structuralist education is largely dependent upon the idea of abandoning existing approaches to the study of education. However, similar to Marxism, feminism articulates inequalities within the educational system, but grounds these inequalities on gender rather than on class. In particular, certain norms are promoted in classrooms which routinely discriminate against either gender, including the acceptable attire of girls as opposed to boys, chosen colours and projects to work on and interests of study; all completely ruled by the ideological social norms of each individual educator, making up the larger social institution that fosters learning in developing minds. Although feminism has a reputation for promoting female interests above male interests, contemporary feminist studies articulate how gender is generated by educational establishments, cultures and societies. As Judith Butler (2011, p. 179) puts it, gender is “performative”, in the precise sense that it is socially created across society.
For Judith Butler and others, the educational establishment creates norms through performance rather than because of a genetic proclivity toward the performance of particular acts. Butler (2011, p. 179) argues that gender, even to the level of biology, is performative, because individuals are taught and educated in such a way that exacerbates differences between particular genders and sexualities. Although Judith Butler's arguments are controversial, her feminism provides a distinct contribution to gender studies, in the precise sense that it allows us the opportunity to challenge the various models in which male and female attributes create a sense of inequality throughout society. Obviously, the teaching of such methods in the school system are likely to reproduce a stereotypical idea of what constitutes male and female across the broader society. For Butler, this idea even extends to the concept of biological gender. For her, gender in education is the “subversion of identity”, and is the place where gender ideas, and “gender troubles” are generated.
Studies show that “the ratio of boys to girls in engineering and technology being 5:1Girls are overrepresented in arts courses.”, and “the number of women pursuing teacher training courses exceeds the number of men” .
In the same way that gender norms are promoted in the classroom and throughout the school system, other subtle cues are internalized in the developing mind. Students from different socioeconomic backgrounds internalize psychological, verbal, and non-verbal cues through their peers as well as the educator, who is revered as the ruling class in the classroom setting. These internalizations, often offer the student an insight into the individual that society wants them to become and what is accepted as the norm. Known as labelling theory, this exchange between the dominant figure in the classroom and the student mind, has a profound effect on the student’s representation of themselves and how they fit into society. This same figure of authority has the power to dictate how the student perceives value and ensures that meritocracy is upheld in the same manner as institutional discrimination.
Interactionists agree that “negative and positive labelling respectively of mainly working class pupils in the lower sets and mainly middle class pupils in the higher setshas adverse consequences for the educational prospects of the lower set pupils” . Criticism by Nell Keddie in the 1970 piece titled “Classroom Knowledge” suggests that “teachers chose not to teach the more complex, theoretical ideas to mainly working class, lower set students on the not necessarily accurate assumption that these students would not understand them” , and we can see from the pre-conceived notions of student’s abilities based on their social-economic class that this would have adverse effects on their opportunities for educational achievement; again, feeding back into the institutional discrimination that exists in the British school system, continuing the cycle of poverty, and suppressing the lower class and working people to less valued positions within society.
References
Adamson, W. (2014). Hegemony and revolution. Berkeley: Echo Point Books & Media.
Anon., 2007. A Sociology of Educating. New York: Continuum.
Anyon, J. (2011). Marx and education. New York: Routledge.
Allen, E. J. (2012). Policy Discourses, Gender and Education. New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2011). Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.
Carl, John D. (2013). THINK Social Problems. New York. Pearson.
Earlham Sociology Pages, 2016. How important are labelling theories as explanations of inequalities of educational achievement.. [Online] Available at: http://www.earlhamsociologypages.co.uk/Labelling%20Theory.html
Sarup, M. (2013). Marxism and education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Themelisa, S., 2008. Meritocracy through education and social mobility in post‐war Britain: a critical examination. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(5), pp. 427-438.
