Marxist Theory In Education

Marxist theory also helps us further our understanding of the achievement gap. We will interpret the achievement gap through the concepts of ALIENATION, SPECIES-BEING, and CLASS CONFLICT. Although these concepts pertain to critiques on capitalism, they remain useful and revealing to the U.S. education system, as this system itself was heavily influenced by capitalism. For example, there are bells to conduct the school day, grades to track student performance, incentives to outperform your peers, and many other aspects influenced by capitalism. Marxist theory allows us to examine how the organization of the school system either promotes or hinders the achievement gap. We begin with alienation.

Marx defines alienation as the estrangement that

Marx characterizes capitalism as a focus on making money in the most efficient way possible. This efficiency is translated into assembly lines, long work days, pressures to work faster, and many more tactics. Thus, from such tactics, Marx explains how workers experience estrangement from the product, the process, other people, and themselves. For instance, workers are alienated from the product and process when they are stuck doing one job all day. They are no longer knowledgeable of the whole process to make that product, and thus cannot call it their own. They are not making the product for themselves and therefore experience alienation from the product and process. In addition, they are put in competition and hostile environments with their coworkers and bosses, and are stuck at this job that doesn’t realize their full potential. This is how they are alienated from other people and themselves. In a similar way, all these forms of alienation can be seen in the school system. For example, tactics used to make schooling efficient include: tracking, labeling, standardized tests, a banking curricula, and the teacher-student power dynamic. Under these tactics, we can identify students being alienated from the

He believed that this was a natural part of being human. It encompasses the idea that humans are constantly developing with their own creativity and from accessing the accomplishments of past generations. An individual’s species-being was doing what they loved and what mattered to them, all for themselves. I think the education system neglects the species-being. There isn’t an acknowledgement that students learn in different ways or that they may perform best when learning what is important to them. This language offers some support for a social justice awareness curricula in where students of color are able to realize their full potential through a relevant