The dark side of schooling

http-//www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/2l3kyt/the_far_side_of_the_moon_and_earth_taken_by/

School is the principal socializing institution ubiquitously glorified as the place for intellectual and physical growth. Obviously, the benefits of schooling aimed at knowledge provision and preparation for life in larger community could be hardly rejected. Yet, along with all the positive attributes, school can have a sinister side. Three leading alternative theories of reproduction, correspondence and perpetration cast doubts upon idealistic education embodying the system with equal opportunities regardless of differences in physical traits, class, race and gender. Questioning the existing tenets about the univocal power of schooling, they suggest that education may sometimes exacerbate rather than ameliorate the inequalities of status quo.

 

https-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltvgaGFYsk8

Broadly speaking, reproduction theory refers to reproducing the hierarchical imbalances across classes and generations (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). A noted sociologist Basil Bernstein (1975) refers to schools as “reproducers of inequality” (p. 104) where pedagogy implicitly conveys the tenets and ideology of dominant culture. This suggests that monopoly over education generally belongs to the more advantaged upper class developing higher intellectual skills, and therefore getting dominant social positions, whereas the students from less successful families are convinced it is their fate to follow and blindly serve the ruling class (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). The dark side of schooling reflecting life with limited opportunities for change and liberation eventually erodes the benefits of public education available to everyone in equal shares.

http-//www.wowhd.co.uk/blog/2010/08/04/are-you-too-busy-to-hear-it-all/

As its name suggests, the correspondence theory posits that mass formal schooling prepares students to occupational and social roles in correspondence with the existing order (Bowles & Gintis, 1976). The school becomes “a primary sorting mechanism of youth” (Fitz, Davies & Evans, 2005, p. 109) which creates submissive production line workers by indoctrinating rule-following, direction-taking, docility, punctuality, passive acceptance, professional and civic consciousness (Althusser, 1971; Giroux, 1980). By doing the same tasks in the same way, where the sound of the bell ring itself reminds the sound signaling the beginning and end of the shift in factories, the children are prepared to be adequate candidates for standardized monotonous work.

          

https-//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltvgaGFYsk8

The evil of education reaches the apogee in the perpetration theory. Unlike the other two theories, it disregards the skills acquisition, stressing instead the importance of institutional order. To uphold constant control, schools need to take punitive and disciplinary stance. In this light, they are viewed as the citadels of physical and psychological violence. In essence, perpetration theory postulates mass education intensifies violence. Historically, the teacher has had the right to punish the students either physically or verbally, which made teacher-students relationships predominantly imbalanced (Harber, 2002). What is more important, such views impact out-of-school public perception. This nurtures “an expectation that child-rearing and punishment should go hand-in-hand” (Harber, 2002, p. 11). School violence not only contradicts the progress of individuality, but also contravenes basic principles of human rights.

            The radical critics of mass formal schooling claim education can bring not only the positive universal good – it can also harm. Although these theories look at education from a different angle, all of them resemble Orwellian anti-utopian story with no break in the clouds, and therefore they were widely criticized in academia.

Reproduction theory has received considerable criticism due to the increased degree of social mobility (Giroux, 1980). These days it is no longer easy to use parental occupation as a predictor of social success because of new labor market demands and wider educational opportunities. The opponents of correspondence theory could call the idea that schooling and correspondence to occupation form a criminal couple at least disputable. It is the primordial aim of education to educate and prepare to future jobs (Giroux, 1980). The theory focusing on salient aspects of school violence pessimistically portrays teacher-student connection like prisoner-jailkeeper relationship, in which only the teacher has the bludgeon (Harber, 2002). Contemporary education contradicts those beliefs. Sharing widely supported tenets of student-centered approach, these days it aims at supporting emotional and physical well-being of students.

Education is believed to serve public needs. Some theories may stay in conflict with this belief, viewing the school as anti-developmental structure hammering inequality, obedience and violence. Possessing no real autonomy from the overall social structure, schools may perform as places for domination of the more powerful over the less powerful. Schools can contravene the fundamental ideas of individuality in their denial of human being as unique and indoctrination of compliance and conformism. In wrong hands education can be used as a tool of oppression.

References

Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: notes towards an Investigation, in L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: New Left Books.

Bernstein, B. (1975) Class, Codes and Control: Vol. 3, Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. (1976) Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books).

Fitz, J., Davies, B., & Evans, J. (2005). Education Policy and Social Reproduction: Class Inscription & Symbolic Control. Routledge.

Giroux, H. A. (1980). Beyond the correspondence theory: Notes on the dynamics of educational reproduction and transformation. Curriculum Inquiry,10(3), 225-247.

Harber, C. (2002). Schooling as violence: an exploratory overview.