Submitted by: Submitted by jessholliday
Views: 1403
Words: 972
Pages: 4
Category: Societal Issues
Date Submitted: 03/09/2012 03:49 AM
Education in today’s society can be seen as being for a capitalist society and there is evidence for and against this view.
The education system can be seen to underpin the capitalist system. Education trains us for the workforce and it teaches us skills, hopefully, that make us employable which is part of the capitalist system. Also it teaches us to be punctual and to obey rules so we are pliant in the workforce. It teaches us to accept our status in life and stick to the role we are in. The capitalist system shows that there are winners and losers, just like in education.
Marxists see the state as Capitalist dominated and agree that capitalism cannot function without a workforce that is willing to accept exploitation. Louis Althusser (1971) says the stare consists of two elements which serve to keep the bourgeoisie and these are the repressive and ideological state apparatuses. The repressive state apparatuses include police and the army and when necessary use physical force to control the working class. The ideological state apparatuses are the bourgeoisie controlling the people’s ideas, beliefs and values. His theory ensures that working-class pupils will end up in working-class jobs and accept there exploited role.
Bowles and Gintis take this further argue that capitalist requires a work force that has the correct attitude and behaviour for that role and in their view the role of the education system in a capitalist society is too reproduce an obedient work force. After their study in a New York High School they came to the conclusion that schooling helps to produce obedient workers that a capitalist society needs. Bowles and Gintis also brought forward the correspondence principle and the hidden curriculum to where they argue that there is a close parallel between schooling and work with head teachers being like bosses and the workers and pupils at the bottom obeying orders. They put schooling as a ‘long shadow of work’. This is called the...