Education, as a social agency, may have different purposes according to different theorists. From a Marxist perspective, education and the school system prepare children for the labor industry. As he argues in Das Kapital “In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.”
It may be viewed as a way to strengthen the capitalist system by constructing a false consciousness to some extent too. Karl Marx has been brutally critical of the political aspect of education.
“I have been in many schools, where I have seen rows of children doing absolutely nothing; and this is certified as school attendance, and, in statistical returns, such children are set down as being educated.”
Although education is an important part of socialization, in most cases, it internalizes the oppressive rules in children’s minds and prepares them for industrial services. Marx placed full blame on the government for requiring the education of working children only with the greatest reluctance and with as many loopholes in its legal requirements as possible. (Small, 1982)
“We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination.
education of the future is to be found in the factory system.”
Marx did bring up an optimistic view on the true purpose of education-
This will be an education that, in the case of every child over a certain age, will combine productive labor with instruction and physical culture, not only as a means for increasing social production but as the only way of producing fully developed human beings.
Marx believed that education should consider all the activities that help people develop personally, as these activities are influenced by ongoing societal changes.
References-
Marx, Karl. 1996. Das Kapital. Edited by Friedrich Engels. Washington, D.C., DC: Regnery Publishing.
Small, Richard. 1982. “Work, Play and School in Marx’s Views on Education.” The Journal of Educational Thought (JET) / Revue de La Pensée Éducative 16(3): 161–173. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/23768316]
samha's table 