Althusser argues that education reproduces class inequality as it instils in children ideologies that legitimate it and disguise its true cause. This causes an acceptance of inequality and persuades workers that inequality is inevitable and that they deserve their subordinate position in society. .
Durkheim also claims that education teaches specialist skills and knowledge that allow individuals to play a part in the social division of labour. By having the necessary specialists skills, this not only promotes social solidarity as production involves the cooperation of many different specialist. It also meets society's economic needs, so New Labour governments have introduced vocational A Levels, Youth Training Schemes (YTS) and apprenticeships to prepare young people for work.
On the other hand, American marxists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argue that as education teaches specialist skills , it also prepares working class students to be submissive in the workplace. It does this by teaching ˜lessons' that are learnt without being directly taught. From their own study of 237 New York students, they concluded that education rewards individuals with the kind of personality traits required if a submissive, compliant worker, while those who showed independence and creativity tended to gain low grades and achievements. These ˜lessons' reproduce an obedient work force that accepts inequality as inevitable. It is able to do this because school parallels the workplace- this is known as the ˜correspondence principle'. One of the ways school mirrors the workplace is in the presence of hierarchies, with head teachers or bosses at the top making decisions and giving out orders and workers or pupils at the bottom obeying. Bowles and Gintis agree that education and schools do not nurture personal development but rather stunts and distorts students' developments.
Post modernist sociologists disagree with Bowles and Gintis ˜correspondence theory' that states that schools mirror the workplace so reproduce an obedient work force.
