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Neo-Marxist Research

Neo-Marxist curriculum studies is a field of inquiry concerned with the complex connections between broad, economic structures and inequalities and the everyday production of school knowledge. Often called the “new sociology of education,” neo-Marxist research in curriculum studies explores how class inequality is “naturalized” through the school curricula. That is to say, it is concerned with how official school knowledge or curricula is complicit in the reproduction of class inequality. The earliest, most important work in this field emerged from the United Kingdom (e.g., the work of M. F. D. Young, Geoff Whitty, and Basil Bernstein) and France (e.g., Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron) during the mid-1970s before becoming more pronounced in the United States during the 1980s (e.g., Michael Apple and Jean Anyon). In many respects, neo-Marxist curriculum studies was a response both to dominant structural-functionalist models of schooling (e.g., Émile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons) as well as more orthodox Marxist ones (e.g., Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis). The current rising tide of neoliberalism and its attendant, global economic stratifications and inequalities has brought renewed attention to this field of inquiry.

Structural-Functionalist and Orthodox Marxist Models of Schooling

Structural-functionalist models of schooling were dominant throughout most of the 20th century. Such models of schooling assumed society a well-functioning, integrated whole. The primary purpose of schooling was to maximize social efficiency by sorting young people according to their ability and potential. The goal was to maximize “human capital”—that is, to use human resources most efficiently to maximize the broad social capacities of the nation-state. The cold war brought these concerns to the forefront during the late 1950s, particularly in the United States. With the USSR's launch of Sputnik in 1957, many were concerned that the United States was falling behind in the sciences, leading to a renewed interest in public education.

These structural-functional notions of education were questioned during the 1970s. In their famous book, Schooling in Capitalist America, Bowles and Gintis argued that schools work to reproduce deeply classed and inherently unfair social relations. More than anything, schools work to “sort” young people into a stratified and deeply hierarchical capitalist system, one that exploits the labor of the working class to the benefit of elites. As Bowles and Gintis famously argued, school reform was largely a hopeless endeavor in a capitalist system. Family income was a far greater predictor of future social class than was IQ or school achievement. As with structural-functional work, schools were treated here as “black boxes.” The particularity of school curricula and everyday teaching and learning practices were not considered important or relevant. The macrolevel perspective exhausted all possible discussions and questions.

Key Scholars

Work in the “new sociology of education” opened this so-called black box, looking at all the ways in which curricula itself worked to effect social and economic reproduction. Much of this work was drawn together in the highly influential volume, Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, edited by Young. This collection included contributions by (among others), Young, Bernstein, and Bourdieu—all of whom would be critical for the field.

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