Conflict Theory and Schools

1
Conflict Theory and Schools
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Conflict Theory

• The driving force behind social and educational
  change in complex societies is the unending
  struggle between different groups to hold power
  and status--e.g. males/females, African
  Americans, European Americans, etc. BUT the basic
  cause of the conflict goes deeper and it is to be
  found in the division between classes in a
  capitalist society.
• TWO IMPLICATIONS OF THIS VIEW (1) people who
  participate in the struggle see it as racial,
  ethnic, sexual, etc., and not as the result of
  the division between classes. (2) the struggle
  may not be visible and thus the participants
  believe that there exist harmony.

3
Further Implications of the Conflict Model

• There is no necessary and direct relation between
  the intent behind an action or policy and the
  social effects of that action--by "social
  effects" the c.t. mean the events whose net
  result is the continuation of the present system
  of domination
• Because the social effects may arise without
  conscious intent, there is no need to suggest
  that the effects are the result of conspiratorial
  action.
• Argument against the Functionalist perspective
  functionalists take the interests and
  perspectives of the dominant social groups in
  society and--consciously or not--elevate them to
  the status of universal norms

4
Marxist Theory

• The relationship between the way we think and the
  way we live the way people think, perceive, and
  feel--their "consciousness"--is related to the
  basic mode of economic production in their
  society
• Conceptual-Ethical-Aesthetic worlds truth, moral
  and ethical value they all depend on the concepts
  that one's culture makes available to them.
  Conceptual changes may occur in a culture.
  However, the changes follow changes in the mode
  of production.
• class consciousness whenever people are related
  in different ways to the means of production, we
  have a class society. In such cases people who
  belong to a class see the world and understand
  their position in it in a certain way. This
  constitutes the class consciousness.

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Marxist Theory and Schools

• Two ways the state serves the ruling class (i)
  through the use of repressive powers -- courts,
  police, army (ii) through developing false
  consciousness in those who are members of the
  subordinate class.
• Ideological State Apparatuses mass media, the
  arts, sports, the church, the family, political
  parties, trade unions, and above all the schools.
  They provide people with compelling reasons for
  doing that which they otherwise might not be
  inclined to do and which is essential for
  maintaining the current system of production
  relations and power.
• In a capitalist society schools will serve to
  reproduce the relations of production that are
  essential to maintaining the dominance of the
  capitalist class. But schools do not reproduce
  the relations of production by (only) reproducing
  the skills that workers need to be laborers.
• While the school in a capitalist system
  reproduces the relations of production, it also
  provides people with the belief that they have
  been given equal chance to succeed (see dominant
  ideology of meritocracy) therefore they accept
  their position in the system.

6
Schooling

• Schooling is a social practice supported and
  utilized by those in power to maintain their
  dominance in the social order.
• The school is an instrument of class domination
  serving to reproduce the workforce and maintain
  class relationships.