Louis althusser theory.
Bowles and gintis view on education
Althusser and Education
ALTHUSSER AND EDUCATION Richard Gunn and Adrian Wilding In his ‘Student Problems’, written in 1964, Louis Althusser identifies what he sees as an asymmetry that lies at the centre of university-level teaching.1 The asymmetry concerns the content of what is taught.
In a situation where ‘knowledge [savoir] … exists in a society’, the ‘pupil-teacher, lecturer-student, relationship’ (p. 14) is afflicted by the asymmetry or imbalance that Althusser has in mind. Althusser’s ‘Student Problems’ erects this point into a principle.
‘No pedagogic questions, which all presuppose unequal knowledge between teachers and students’, can be settled ‘on the basis of pedagogic equality’ (p. 14). With this principle in mind, Althusser declares against an ‘“anarchosyndicalist”’ conception of pedagogy (p.
Louis althusser autobiography15) which, if carried through, condemns students to ‘a long time in a half-knowledge’ (p. 15). Althusser reports that 1960s radicals painted graffiti declaring that ‘The Sorbonne