Marx and Education

Jean Anyon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136816550
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

There was only one Karl Marx, but there have been a multitude of Marxisms. This concise, introductory book by internationally renowned scholar Jean Anyon centers on the ideas of Marx that have been used in education studies as a guide to theory, analysis, research, and practice. Marx and Education begins with a brief overview of basic Marxist ideas and terms and then traces some of the main points scholars in education have been articulating since the late 1970s. Following this trajectory, Anyon details how social class analysis has developed in research and theory, how understanding the roles of education in society is influenced by a Marxian lens, how the failures of urban school reform can be understood through the lens of political economy, and how cultural analysis has laid the foundation for critical pedagogy in US classrooms. She assesses ways neo-Marxist thought can contribute to our understanding of issues that have arisen more recently and how a Marxist analysis can be important to an adequate understanding and transformation of the future of education and the economy. By exemplifying what is relevant in Marx, and replacing that which has been outdone by historical events, Marx and Education aims to restore the utility of Marxism as a theoretical and practical tool for educators.

1 Neo-Marxism in Education, 1970s – 1980s

DOI: 10.4324/9780203829615-2

My generation came of age in the rebellious 1960s, and that may be one reason that as academics many of us were attracted to a theory that challenged what we had been taught about U.S. society. Rather than focusing on meritocracy, democracy, and patriotism, as our school books had taught us, we focused on what seemed to us structural inequalities—and what we saw as systematic means by which whole groups and cultures (e.g., workers, African Americans, women) were excluded from the American Dream. Radical economists Sam Bowles and Herb Gintis, in a book reviewed in the New York Times in 1976 —Schooling in Capitalist America— were the first neo-Marxists to receive wide attention in education circles. The authors argued that the experiences of students, and the skills they develop in school in different social class contexts (e.g., working-class or wealthy communities), exhibited striking correspondences to the experiences and skills that would characterize their likely occupational positions later. The authors wanted to demonstrate that the major role of the education system was not primarily meritocratic, to propel individuals and groups upward as a matter of course, but was, rather, to reproduce an amenable and differentiated work force. Social class (although race and gender later proved to be also important) determined one’s future economic role. The social class of one’s parents and neighborhood generally determined the kind of schooling one received, and the skills and dispositions learned there predisposed you to a similarly structured economic position in the labor force. In this view, the experience of schooling was as important as, if not more important than, the content of the curriculum to the process by which schools prepare future labor force participants.

Because of this correspondence, education did not seem to be the ‘social leveler’ that Americans had long been taught. Rather, schools tended to reproduce the unequal labor positions that the economic system had created. Bowles and Gintis pointed out that the vast expansion of educational opportunities since World War I (and into the middle 1970s, when they were writing), had not substantially changed the highly unequal distribution of income in society. Moreover, “despite the important contribution of education to an individual’s economic chances, the substantial equalization of educational attainments over the years has not led measurably to an equalization of income among individuals” (8).

As Marx had pointed out, however, institutions and systems are typically contradictory in their effects: capitalism could have both liberating as well as oppressive effects. (The closure of the feudal commons, for example, liberated peasants from their feudal bonds, but in so doing set them free to starve in the developing cities if they could not find work.) Bowles and Gintis pointed out the contradictory nature of education: while the system of schooling certainly functions primarily to legitimate and reproduce inequality, it sometimes produces critics, rebels, and radicals.

Schooling in Capitalist America was widely read and debated by education scholars. Yet Bowles and Gintis had produced little if any empirical data to document their assertions that schools in different social class contexts produce students with skills and dispositions corresponding to their probable future jobs. As a young scholar, I decided their theory was important to examine in school settings, to see if the correspondences they theorized would occur in real classrooms.

Social Class and School Work

The research I conducted in the late 1970s examined work tasks and interaction in the fifth grade in five elementary schools in contrasting social class communities—two working-class schools, a middle-class school, and two highly affluent schools.

The first three schools were in a medium-sized city district in northern New Jersey, and the final two were in a nearby New Jersey suburban district. In each of the three city schools, approximately 85 percent of the students were white. In the fourth school, 90 percent were white, and in the last school, all were white (see Anyon, 1980, 1981, 1983, 1984).

The first two schools were designated working-class schools, because the majority of the students’ fathers (and approximately one-third of their mothers) were in low-paid unskilled or semiskilled occupations, with somewhat less than a third of the fathers being skilled workers. The third school was designated the middle-class school, although because of residence patterns the parents were a mixture of highly skilled, well-paid blue collar and white collar workers, as well as those with traditional middle-class occupations such as public school teachers, social workers, accountants, and middle-managers. There were also several local doctors and town merchants among the parents.

The fourth school was designated the affluent professional school, because the bulk of the students’ fathers were highlypaid doctors such as cardiologists or surgeons; television or advertising executives; successful interior designers; or other affluent professionals. While there were a few families less affluent than the majority (e.g., the families of several professors at nearby universities, as well as several working class families), there were also a few families who were more affluent.

The final school was called the executive elite school. The majority of pupils’ fathers in this school were vice presidents or more advanced corporate executives in U.S.-based multinational corporations or financial firms on Wall Street. Most family money incomes of students in this school were in the top 1 percent of U.S. family income at the time.

There are obvious similarities among United States schools and classrooms. There are school and classroom rules, teachers who ask questions and attempt to exercise control, and who give work and homework. There are textbooks and tests. All of these were found in the five schools. But I identified differences by social class in student work tasks and conceptions of knowledge. These differences did correspond to the likely future job requirements of the children in each school.

The Working-Class Schools

In the two working-class schools, work was following the steps of a procedure. The procedure was usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice on the part of the student. The teachers rarely explained why the work was being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. Most of the rules regarding work were designations of what the children are to do; the rules are steps to follow. These steps are told to the children by the teachers and often written on the board. The children are usually told to copy the steps as notes. Work was often evaluated not according to whether it was right or wrong, but according to whether the children followed the right steps. The following mathematics example illustrates these points.

One of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a one-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a one-inch grid, or that it would be used to study scale. She said, “Take your ruler. Put it across the top. Make a mark at every number. Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on top of every number. Now draw a line from. •” At this point a girl said that she had a faster way to do it and the teacher said, “No, you don’t; you don’t even know what I’m making yet. Do it this way, or it’s wrong.” After they had made the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the scale of one inch equals one mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, “Don’t cut until I check it.”

The fifth grade teachers observed in the working-class schools typically attempted to control classroom time and space by making decisions without consulting the children and without explaining the basis for their decisions. The teachers continually gave the children orders. Rarely if ever did they explain why the children were to do what they were told. Only three times did the investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic “Please,” or “Let’s” or “Would you.” Instead, the teachers gave orders, as in, “Shut up,” “Shut your mouth,” “Open your books,” “Throw your gum away—if you want to rot your teeth, do it on your own time.” Teachers made every effort to control the movement of the children, and often shouted, “Why are you out of your seat?” Often teachers’ demands seemed capricious, and not part of regular school rules or routines.

A dominant theme that emerged in these two schools was student resistance. Although some amount of resistance appeared in every school in this study, in the working-class schools it was a dominant characteristic of student – teacher interaction. There was both active and passive resistance to teachers’ attempts to impose the curriculum. Active sabotage sometimes took place: someone put a bug in one student’s desk; boys fell out of their chairs; they misplaced books, or forgot them; they engaged in minor theft from each other; sometimes they rudely interrupted the teacher. When I asked the children during interviews why they did these things, they said, “To get the teacher mad;” “Because he don’t teach us nothin’;” “They give us too many punishments.” When I asked them what the teachers should do, they said, “Teach us some more;” “Take us alone and help us;” “Help us learn.” Sometimes they seemed pleased to see the teacher get angry, upset.

It is fairly clear that such experiences are highly similar to the type of rote, unrewarding work tasks and disciplinary control typical in working-class jobs across the board. Unskilled industrial workers, clerical personnel, retail salespersons, health care workers—these representing large percentages of jobs in the U.S. — face work tasks and control not unlike what these working-class schools seemed to be preparing their students for. And, understandably, working-class resistance is a familiar presence in such job situations.

Middle-Class School

In the middle-class school, work was getting the right answer. If one accumulated enough right answers one got a good grade. One must follow the directions in order to get the right answers, but the directions often called for some figuring, some choice, some decision making. For example, the children often had to figure out by themselves what the directions asked them to do, and how to get the answer: what do you do first, second, and perhaps third? Answers were usually to be had in books or by listening to the teacher. Answers were usually words, sentences, numbers, or facts and dates; one writes them on paper, and one should be neat. Answers must be in the right order, and one can not make them up.

For example, math involved some choice: one may do two digit division the long way, or the short way, and there were some math problems that could be done ‘in your head.’ When the teacher explained how to do two-digit division, there was recognition that a cognitive process was involved; she gave several ways, and said, “I want to make sure you understand what you’re doing—so you get it right;” and when they went over the homework, she asked the children to tell how they did the problem and what answer they got.

Work tasks did not usually request creativity. Serious attention was rarely given in school work to how the children develop or express their own feelings and ideas, either linguistically or in graphic form. On the occasions when creativity or self-expression was requested, it was peripheral to the main activity, or it was ‘enrichment,’ or ‘for fun.’

The style of control of the teachers observed in this school varied from somewhat easygoing to strict, but in contrast to the working-class schools, the teachers’ decisions were usually based on external rules and regulations, for example, on criteria that were known or available to the children. Thus, the teachers always honored the bells for changing classes, and they usually evaluated children’s work by what was in the textbooks and answer booklets.

It was also the case that work tasks in this school involved more of a conceptual process than in the working-class schools, in that work was less a matter of facts and skills and more a matter of traditional bodies of knowledge or ‘content,’ and students were offered some choice in how they, for example, carried out a math problem. Knowledge was understanding and information from socially approved sources. Good grades were a possession. Information, facts, and dates could be accumulated and exchanged for good grades and college or a job. Knowledge here, however, was not usually connected to biographies or exploratory activities of the learners, and was thus divorced from processes of personal discovery (as indeed it was in the working-class schools as well). There was, however, in this school, the sense of possibility: school knowledge has real value, if one has ‘enough’ of it.

It is apparent that many middle-class jobs involve more decision making, conceptual judgments, and choice than working-class jobs like clerical work or retail sales. The middle-class school, by emphasizing these skills in classes, prepares students for jobs that demand those kinds of skills—jobs like public school teaching, police and fire fighters, low and mid-level management, and other middle income employees.

Affluent Professional School

In the affluent professional school, work was creative activity carried out independently. The students were continually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts. Work involved individual thought and expressiveness, expansion and illustration of ideas, and choice of appropriate method and material. The products of work in this class were often written stories, editorials and essays, or representations of ideas in mural, graph, or craft form. The products of work should not be like everybody else’s, and should show individuality. They should exhibit good design, and (this is important), they must also fit empirical reality. The relatively few rules to be followed regarding work were usually criteria for, or limits on, individual activity. One’s product was usually evaluated for the quality of its expression and for the appropriateness of its conception to the task. In many cases one’s own satisfaction with the product was an important criterion for its evaluation. When right answers were called for, as in commercial materials like SRA (Science Research Associates) and math, it was important that the children decided on an answer as a result of thinking about the idea involved in what they were being asked to do. Teacher’s hints were often to “think about it some more.”

The following activity is illustrative. Each child and his or her family had made a geoboard. The teacher asked the class to get their geoboards from the side cabinet, to take a handful of rubber bands, and then to listen to what she would like them to do. She said, “I would like you to design a figure and then find the perimeter and area. When you have it, check with your neighbor. After you’re done, please transfer it to graph paper and tomorrow I’ll ask you to make up a question about it for someone. When you hand it in, please let me know whose it is, and who verified it. Then I have something else for you to do that’s really fun. (pause) Find the average number of chocolate chips in three cookies. I’ll give you three cookies, and you’ll have to eat your way through, I’m afraid!” They worked sitting or standing up at their desks, at benches in the back, or on the floor. A child handed the teacher his paper and she commented, “I’m not accepting this paper. Do a better design.” To another child she said, “That’s fantastic! But you’ll never find the area. Why don’t you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?”

The teachers often used negotiation to control the class. I rarely heard them yell or scream; they attempted to reason with the children and control them through a process of give and take.

Work tasks in the affluent professional school involved not only conceptual work, but discovery, construction, and meaning making. Individuals were to express themselves in their work.

Jobs in which one is likely to be considered an ‘affluent professional’ include advanced computer designers, high-level positions in advertising, the arts, media; medical doctors, highly paid professors, and other positions in which creativity and use of symbol systems are manipulated and well rewarded. Control is by negotiation with one’s peers and those to whom one reports. The children in this affluent professional school were receiving good preparation for that kind of work.

Executive Elite School

In the executive elite school, work was developing one’s analytical intellectual powers. Children were continually asked to reason through a problem, and to produce intellectual products that were both logically sound and of top academic quality. A primary goal of thought was to conceptualize rules by which elements may fit together in systems, and then to apply these rules in solving a problem. School work helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life.

The following is illustrative. The math teacher taught area and perimeter by having the children derive formulae for each. First she helped them, through discussion at the board, to arrive at A = L × W as a formula (not the formula) for area. After discussing several, she said, “Can anyone make up a formula for perimeter? Can ...