Marxism

Capacity for Change

Marx's philosophy is central to bona fide education because the latter must be based upon trust that students' cognitive abilities are not just so many [Page 489]words and ideas that have little or no correspondence to what is being described, if not mastered. In these postmodernist times, many philosophers and educators insist that words and ideas are just opinions that are not connected to what is talked and thought about. In their view, people are reduced to participating in dominant discourses based on power, not on any superior correspondence to what they seek to describe.

As a philosopher, Marx belongs to a tradition whose contributors hold that systematic inquiry enables people to understand systemic and structural phenomena. Marx believed that finding underlying structures assists in understanding the everyday occurrences that people experience. Similar to other humanists, Marx placed human beings and their welfare at the center of his concerns.

Although some charge that Marx was a determinist, he viewed history as open to human volition. In fact, his version of “historical materialism” can be described quite simply. If people make their own histories through human agency—perhaps neither under conditions of their own choosing, nor just as they like—then this position, or fact, is relevant to contrasting claims made in today's society and schools. The radical conservative claim is that whatever conditions people face, it is possible and necessary to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. A radical determinist view—perhaps epitomized by B. F. Skinner—asserts that environment is everything; in other words, there can be no successful agency or volition against these odds.

Marx's middle position is useful to educators who realize that environment, social class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and other factors make it difficult for some students to succeed, in contrast to others who have inherited advantages. These teachers understand that the school and society must become level playing fields. Some of them act on their convictions both within the schools and out in the larger society.

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