Within this essay, I will be examining the view that education re-creates the class system. Theories such as Marxism, Internationalism and feminism, would agree with each other in

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Within this essay, I will be examining the view that education re-creates the class system.

Theories such as Marxism, Internationalism and feminism, would agree with each other in saying that the education system favours the working class, due to ideologies, discrimination, domination and social control.

Marxists Bowles and Gintis’ ‘myth of education’ is a complete attack on the functionalist’s concept of meritocracy. Bowles and Gintis (1976) argued that the meritocratic idea that education offers everybody an equal chance is in fact a myth or a story that all of us jus blindly believe. They believe that the education system works against the ideas of the working classes. In their ‘correspondence theory’ they argued that there was a correspondence between social relationships in the classroom and the work place. By this, they meant that the hierarchies, certificates, and discipline systems that can be found in schools are actually very similar to the world of work. In school you are paid with certificates, where as on the other hand in work you are paid with wages.

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Marxists also argue that education has a cultural reproduction role. Bourdieu has argued that schools, along with the staff that work in them are generally middle-class institutions. Working class children simply do not posses the cultural capital, which are things like the ideas, tastes, values and lifestyle associated with a particular class – required for success in establishments.

This means that middle-class children will generally do better than working class children. This makes school an institution that ensures middle-class dominance from one generation to the next. A sociologist that illustrates this view is, Marxist, Tomlinson says that differences in ...

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