Social reproduction

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Social reproduction describes the reproduction of social structures and systems, usually on the basis of certain requirements in demography, education and the inheritance of material possessions or legal titles (as in the past with the nobility ). Reproduction is understood as the maintenance and continuation of existing conditions. The social structural change is ignored.

A prerequisite for any social reproduction is that children of their own are born in the possibly reproducing social class, social class or even only professional group (think e.g. of artist families). If the number of children is smaller than the number of parents, this alone creates social mobility .

In the context of education , reproduction describes the fact that the education system helps to maintain existing power relations. In educational research, two lines of explanation can be roughly differentiated about the function of education for social change. While the change thesis says that social resources are distributed in a decisive way through the education system, the reproduction thesis does not see education as an independent variable. The education system is completely dependent on the structure of society and its task is merely to legitimize and reproduce the existing social inequalities. Today, these two theses rarely appear in their pure form.

Proponents of the reproduction thesis also assign the term equal opportunities to an ideology that serves to reproduce inequality.

According to Louis Althusser , the education system is part of the ideological state apparatus that serves to reproduce labor .

Systematics

It is traditionally the task of education to pass on the skills and information necessary for the functioning of society to the next generation . As a rule, in addition to knowledge, the status of upbringing is also reproduced, as a historical example: by preparing noble children for their rulership tasks, while peasant children were raised solely in the direction of peasant activities.

The following aspects are counted towards reproduction in educational science:

  1. Socialization , i.e. integration into society;
  2. Qualification , the transfer of knowledge and skills;
  3. Allocation , that is, the assignment to a social group or position;
  4. Selection , the choice of access to education, for example.

These four aspects overlap and work to maintain social structures. Such side effects of upbringing are also known as “ secret curriculum ”.

Social reproduction according to Louis Althusser

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Social reproduction is an important topic in Marxist theories and should not be limited to Althusser and this particular aspect of reproduction. - Tets 3:44 pm, Mar 30th 2008 (CEST)
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According to Louis Althusser, not only is the reproduction of qualifications necessary for the reproduction of labor , but at the same time continuous submission to the rules of the established order, i.e. H.:

"for the workers the reproduction of their submission to the ruling ideology and for the carriers of exploitation and oppression a reproduction of the ability to deal well with the ruling ideology in order to secure the rule of the ruling class also" through the word "

When it comes to restoring the workforce, it is not the case that qualification and submission exist side by side, but rather

"The reproduction of the qualifications of the labor force takes place in the forms of ideological submission" .

Social reproduction after Pierre Bourdieu

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu emphasizes the unconscious and conscious transmission of the individual and class habitus as the basis of social reproduction. It describes the different disposal of social and cultural , or educational capital, as a prerequisite for the transfer of the subtle differences between people with regard to taste, lifestyle and social status . He regards social reproduction as closely determined by individual and social socialization. The person incorporates the expressions of his social class and integrates them individually. For him, social change is rather the exception. Equal opportunities is an illusion .

History (Germany)

The demands of the Enlightenment for freedom, equality and fraternity should be achieved in particular through education, which can achieve almost anything in terms of bourgeois educational ideas . At the same time, with the Enlightenment, there is also a demand for people to submit to social constraints. Immanuel Kant wrote in his famous essay answering the question: What is enlightenment? , from which the much-quoted definition of the Enlightenment as “the exit of man from his self-inflicted immaturity” originates: “argue as much as you want and about what you want; just obey! "

This self-submission finds its equivalent in the meritocratic education system, in which formally only the performance but not the origin should play a role. The educational reformers Wilhelm von Humboldt and Johann W. Süvern were already critical of the concrete implementation of the reforms in Germany after 1812 . While Humboldt aimed for a unified school, the three-tier school system developed. At that time, this separated the students closely at the class boundaries and prepared them for professional careers according to their social origin.

The fact that girls in the 19th century only gained very gradually and limited access to higher education can also be described as “reproduction” in the language used in this article, namely as the reproduction of gender roles. The thought figure “reproduction” can also be applied to the discrimination against linguistic and religious minorities.

In the Weimar Republic , in addition to Otto Rühle , Siegfried Bernfeld in particular also criticized the reproduction of class relationships, since working-class children were excluded from educational privileges. Bernfeld wrote in 1925 in Sisyphus or The Limits of Upbringing : “The economic and social structure of society has its clearly defined framework for this reaction. The organization of education is precisely determined. There is no other way to change anything in it than exclusively by changing this structure beforehand. … The upbringing is conservative. Your organization in particular is. It has never been the preparation for a structural change in society. Always - without exception - it was only the result of the completed ".

During National Socialism , the reproduction of class relations was intensified.

After the end of the Nazi regime by the recommended Allies used Zook Commission to abolish the tripartite school system. It would have helped to promote the subject mentality and elite awareness . In the western sectors, however, the highly selective three-tier school system was retained.

In the Soviet occupation zone , the education system was consistently denazified . The resulting shortage of teachers was offset by the fact that many workers were trained as teachers in a fast-track process. Through this and through the introduction of a single school, it was possible to increase the number of working-class children at universities to such an extent that they corresponded to the percentage of the total population. From the 1960s onwards, the various levels of education largely reproduced themselves again.

Even today the reproductive effect of the education system is criticized. In the Federal Republic of Germany, this criticism is mostly based on the early distribution of pupils to different types of school. This leads to a systematic misjudgment among teachers to the disadvantage of children from lower classes and among migrant children ( IGLU study ). In recent times, attention has been drawn to the lack of care in the afternoons. The PISA study in particular shows that in an international comparison, social permeability in the German education system is very low. A PISA country comparison from 2003 showed that in Bavaria, children of academics compared to children of skilled workers with the same reading and mathematics skills have an almost 7-fold higher chance of attending a grammar school (on a national average, a 4-fold higher chance). The reproductive effect cannot be overcome simply by formal facilitation of access to higher educational qualifications (which are thereby inflationarily devalued) (→ educational paradox ).

criticism

Critics note that ultimately a society in which the chances of life are fairly distributed would not only require the abolition of inheritance law, but also the early, extensive collectivization of the upbringing of small children. Such a society is no less utopian than one that is classless from the outset. These critics therefore preferred terms such as "social permeability" and " equal opportunities " for a constructive critique of the educational system .

See also

swell

  1. ↑ T. Hanf (1975): Reproduction effect or change relevance of education , in: T. Hanf et al. (Ed.), Sozialer Wandel, Volume 2, Frankfurt Fischer Taschenbuch-Verlag, pp. 120-138
  2. ↑ Max Haller (1980): Educational expansion and the development of the structures of social inequality , in: Ulrich Beck, Karl H. Hörning, Wilke Thomssen (ed.): Educational expansion and company employment policy. Current development tendencies in the mediation context of education and employment. Contributions to the 19th German Sociological Congress , Frankfurt / New York: Campus Verlag ISBN 3-593-32665-5 , pp. 21–59
  3. ^ Louis Althusser: Ideology and ideological state apparatus . Sketches for an investigation in: Louis Althusser: Marxismus und Ideologie. Problems of the Marx interpretation, VSA-Verlag, West Berlin 1973, ISBN 3-87975-009-2 , p. 118
  4. ↑ ibid. P. 119
  5. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Answering the question: What is Enlightenment?
  6. ^ Siegfried Bernfeld: Sisyphos or the limits of education 6th edition, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1990, p. 119
  7. ↑ German PISA Consortium (2001): PISA Study , pp. 372 ff, 458 ff

literature

Web links