Marxism in Education in Australia - Coursework Example

RUNNING HEAD: MARXISM IN AUSTRALIA Marxism and education in Australia (Name) (Institution) (Course) (Instructor) (Date of submission) Introduction Although neither Max Weber nor Karl Marx wrote directly about education, their views on society and governance and the theory of class conflict have far reaching ramifications on education. Marx’s views and theories influenced a number of academicians and scholars to publish numerous papers on the issue of education, resource distribution, sociology, politics and economics. One of the greatest influences that Marxism had on the world was the rise of socialism and communism as governance systems. Weber expounded and expanded on the earlier works of Marx more so the theory of class conflict. In the modern world, the relevance of Marx’s works has been questioned. The application of the theory of class conflict has been applied in many cases in the past and its relevance today is debatable. This paper intends to show the significance of this theory in the 21st century in Australia relating to education. According to the Australia Bureau of Statistic (ABS), the variation in literacy levels and quality of education between the non-native Australians and Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders is very huge. Poor education standards among the latter have been blamed for poor living standards among these natives. The quality of life, life expectancy, health and other factors among the natives vary widely from the rest of the non-native population in Australia. This is spite of Australia being one of the leading developed economies in the world. This paper will borrow from a range of literature to show how the theory of class conflict and Marxism remain relevant in Australia with an interest in education variation between natives and non-native Australians. Overview of the theory Born on 5 May 1818 to middle class family in Prussia, Karl Marx led a relatively quite childhood. He studied law at Bonn University and university of Berlin both in Germany though he had shown keen interest in philosophy and literature. During his university days, he took a radical leftist perspective on philosophy, religion, and politics based on criticism of GWF Heigel’s earlier works. Marx differed with Heigel on the latter’s claim that man is spiritual, abstract and objective as a result of his labour efforts. Marx argued that man is a worldly, objective and sentient being that seeks to posses sensuous objects of life expression. One of the key objects that he possesses is his labour power which is the capability to transform the world. To Marx, any person willing to give up this possession suffers spiritual loss. Another key possession under capitalism was land. The possession of land by a small number of individuals thus meant that the rest were forced to suffer spiritual loss by selling their labour power to others in exchange of earnings. This ultimately creates the conflict of classes between those who possess land and those who don’t. Marx views on labour related to his dominating relation between economic status and a society’s past, present and future. This theory is very relevant in the current discussion in the sense that the Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders continue to lag behind in education matters in Australia. Could this be linked to the native’s loss of land to the settlers after the declaration of terra nullius? There is a glaring difference between the native and non-native Australians in terms of social economic status, employment, wealth, income levels, health, education, urbanization and others. These differences have been turned into boundaries of seclusion with the native people on the losing side. Seclusion of the native people was institutionalised from the very moment that the British settlers declared the land terra nullius, land belonging to no one. Such a declaration made the native people foreign in their own land. This gave the settlers a right to exclude and discriminate the native people. The fact that the white settlers took over then native land gave them the major means of production. This set the foundation for creating two sets of social classes, the settler land owners and the displaced natives. The settlers did not recognise aboriginal culture and went ahead to ruin shrines and other holy lands previously used by the natives. This created a sense of bitterness in response, the natives attacked the settlers and where they were overwhelmed, they retreated further into bush lands and forests. The existences of social classes impact upon life chances and opportunities in life which are still evident in modern Australia. Walter and Saggers (2007) capture this concept in the words of Gerth and Mills who said Everything from the chance to stay alive during the first year after birth to the chance to view fine arts, the chance to remain healthy and grow tall, and if sick to get well again quickly, the chance to avoid becoming a juvenile delinquent and, very crucially, the chance to complete an intermediary or higher educational grade (Gerth & Mills 1954, p. 313) A number of studies in Australia have highlighted the plight of the aboriginal people in term of housing, poverty levels and education outcomes among others. While some studies have attributed the variation in education levels and academic performance to genetics, the availability of learning resources to this particular group of people has contributed significantly to their plight (Atkinson, Taylor, & Walter 2007). Lack of clear institutional and legal method to enable social mobility which enhances life chances have meant that the native Australians are on the losing side again. The stratification of classes in Australia is open and not bounded by cultures or law. As such, movement from one class to the other is possible with education as the most viable vehicle of mobility from one class to the other. However, while education offers hope in terms of socioeconomic status, it might do very little in upgrading one’s social class. While socioeconomic status deals with income and wealth, social class is “rather is a broader concept which encapsulates both objective, material position and subjective understandings, and incorporates the important notion of differential access to power.” Other than the socioeconomic differences between native and non native Australians, there are other observable parameters. Most notable are the proclaimed social status and social class of the two distinct groups. According to Weber, a social class is “a group of individuals who share a similar position in a market economy and by virtue of that fact receive similar economic rewards” (Krieken et al p. 222). This puts the Aboriginal people in one social class. Social status on the other hand according to Weber is evident where “social action is patterned and oriented to social honour, social esteem, and a shared style of life and consumption patterns” (Kalberg, 2005, p. xxix). This means that a social class is made of people who have a common background in the economy. The Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders belong to social class in the sense that historically, they were deemed to own no land at all. In fact their presence and prior occupation of Australia was never acknowledged until later. In terms of status, the same group of people have shared style of life and consumption patterns. In the context of education, the natives have ignored western education on the grounds that it does not recognise their culture and is also taught in a foreign language until later policies that adopted native languages for educational and instructional purposes. Previous governments have commissioned a number of studies on the educational situation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Some of the recommendations from these reports are yet to be fully implemented and hence the current scenario (Behrendt et al). While Sackett, Kuncel, Arneson, Cooper, and Waters (2009) indicate that social economic status has no direct influence on students’ performance in college admissions tests, Glewwe and Jacoby (2000) say that social economic status directly influences the ability of a household to invest in higher education. For the economically challenged households, failure to finance education either through self-finance or borrowing against future human capital leads to persistent poverty across generations. Glewwe and Jacoby (2000) go ahead and say that where borrowing for education investment is constrained, policy makers should target creating subsidies and loans for individuals from economically challenged backgrounds. The Aboriginal people are among the economically challenged with minimal resources to use as collateral for loans. In most cases, land is owned communally thus making it unavailable for personal use. Mclnerney (2008) compared four ethnics groups in Australia among them Aboriginals to understand how their attitude sense of self worth and motivation affected their school attendance and performance. From the study’s findings, Asian and Anglo students perform better in school than Aboriginal and Lebanese students. The negative sense of self worth was a negative predictor for poor performance in mathematics for Aboriginals, Anglo and Lebanese students. The study also revealed that Aboriginal students were more likely to miss classes which partly explain poor performance. Furthermore, the aboriginal students are more prone to negative pressures from parents and peers. In fact, there was little evidence of peer support networks for Aboriginal students which were noted to have a positive impact in the performance and class attendance for Asian students. The research however, did not factor in the role of socioeconomic status on performance, as is the case in Sackett et al (2009) study. Nonetheless, Mclnerney (2008) acknowledges that majority of the Aboriginal and Lebanese students were from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Edwards (2009) thus says one of the best ways that individual universities and the government can do is monitoring the enrolment and performance of students from low social economic status backgrounds. This is important in the sense that improving education levels nationally in Australia is aimed at improving the quality of life and producing a highly skilled workforce to power the economy. Government efforts to address inequality and conflict between natives and non-natives Australian have born marginal results. Coram (2008) writes that the current trend is moving from indigenous inequality to indigenous advantage. The author advocates that the government should embark on initiating policies that work and understand why they work. The government’s efforts to bridge the gap between the natives and non-natives from an educational perspective will only work if the government understands why they work. This means that there is need to understand how improved educational levels among the natives improves for instance their confidence levels and income for them to attain social mobility which mean from one social class to another and from one socioeconomic status to another. In spite of the current efforts by government to improve the education standards among Aboriginal people, the question that arises is; will formal education give the Aboriginal people a new status in society equal to the non-natives? Going by the definition of social status mentioned earlier as determined by “social honour, social esteem, and a shared style of life and consumption patterns”, it is debatable on whether the natives and non-natives can claim to belong to the same social status. This brings into question the efforts by the government on increasing accessibility of higher education to Aboriginal people without first addressing the underlying social issues such as socioeconomic inequality. This is because access to formal education will not automatically eliminate the often reported low confidence levels among Aboriginal students. An OECD (2006), report indicates that initiation of early childhood education is a sure way of alleviating social cultural issues that hinder performance of Aboriginal students academically. ECE education has the capacity to address such issues as low self esteem in society by indoctrinating and enabling young Aboriginal students adopt a different perspective towards life, formal education and non-native Australians. Conclusion From the above discussion, it is apparent that there is a lot that needs to be done in uplifting the lives of Australia’s native people. Views expressed under Marxism are visibly at play in Australia. The loss of the key factor of production that gives rise to different classes and competition for the resource that creates conflict. Nonetheless, it must be understand that conflict under Marxism does not amount to hostility or violence between the different social classes but rather competition for a key resource where one social class has more access to the resource than the other. For this reason, the situation in Australia reflects the ideals of capitalism where is nearly impossible to create an equal society. Thus, it can be confirmed as discussed above that Marxism is still relevant in the modern world and specifically in Australia. References Atkinson, Taylor, & Walter (2007). The urban and regional segregation of indigenous Australians: Out of sight, out of mind? Paper No. 12 Housing and Community Research Unit Behrendt, L., Larkin, S., Griew, R. & Kelly, P., (2012). Department of industry, innovation, science, research and tertiary education. Review of higher education access and outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People final report. Accessed online from, http://www.innovation.gov.au/HigherEducation/IndigenousHigherEducation/ReviewOfIndigenousHigherEducation/FinalReport/whatarewetryingtoachieve.html Coram, S. (2008). Mainstreaming’ indigenous inequality as disadvantage and the silencing of ‘race’ in Australian social, educational and vocational training policy. ACRAWSA e-journal, 4(1), 1-13 Edwards, D. (2009). Forecasting university enrolment and completion numbers for Victoria. Submitted to the HE Expert Panel, Skills Victoria, Department of Innovation, Industry & Regional Development. Victoria Australian Council of educational Research. Glewwe, P. & Jacoby, H. (2000). Economic Growth and the Demand for Education: Is there a Wealth Effect? Paper prepared for presentation at conference on New Research on Education in Developing Countries Center for Research on Economic Development and Policy Reform Kalberg, S. (2008). Max Weber: Readings And Commentary On Modernity. Sydney: Wiley & Sons. Kirby, M., Dec 4th (2012). We need look only to Australia's past to give public education a future. The Sydney Morning Herald. Accessed online from, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/we-need-look-only-to-australias-past-to-give-public-education-a-future-20121203-2ar56.html Krieken, R., Smith, P., Habibis, D., McDonald, K., Haralambos, M. and Martin Holborn, (2000), Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 2nd Edition, Melbourne, Longman. Mclnerney, D. (2008). Personal investment, culture and learning: Insights into school achievement across Anglo, Aboriginal, Asian and Lebanese students in Australia. International journal of psychology, 43 (5), 870–879 Sackett, P., Kuncel, N., Arneson, J., Cooper, S. & and Waters, S., (2009). Does socioeconomic status explain the relationship between admissions tests and post-secondary academic performance? Psychological Bulletin, vol. 135, no. 1, pp.1–22. Walter, M. and Saggers. S. (2007). Poverty and social class. In Carson, B., Dubar, T., Chenhall, R. & Bailie, R. (eds.) Social determinants of indigenous Health. pp. 87 Read More