Reproducing Society

In reproducing a society, there is much more schools do beyond the productive network. There are also religious, ethical, sexual and racial attitudes reproduced. And attitudes toward authority, toward society. These attitudes are normally structurally useful to capitalism: if they were not the dynamics of the structure would tend to eliminate them.

But such attitudes can often be in contradiction with the continuance of capitalist society. Another important contradiction lies between the teaching of skills and the social cohesive function. In teaching someone to use a gun, one cannot be entirely sure this skill won't be used against the social order. In teaching someone to write, one perhaps will not predict they won't end up writing for Salient [?]

And what about the ideal of education? That it's passing on a body of knowledge from generation to generation and encouraging criticism? In part, this is reinforcing class values, for knowledge is rarely for the people - its for a small, normally ruling elite. Beyond that, this argument dovetails into the critique of liberal schooling. The second part of Marxist theories of education.