Beyond Ideological Reproduction

Abstract

This chapter describes how the close connection between power and control that exists between government and the dominant classes which Navarro describes also exists between the school and the groups. It is by blending together economic and cultural analysis, and by focusing on the historical and current mechanisms which allow educators and schools to continue their roles in reproducing the abstract individual, ideological consensus, and hegemony, that these kinds of connections can be made clear. Certainly, we must be honest about the ways power, knowledge, and interest are interrelated and made manifest, about how hegemony is economically and culturally maintained. In general, hegemony does exist and many people do see society's economic, social, and educational institutions as basically self-directing, with little need for their participation and with little necessity for them to communicate and argue over the ends and means of these same institutions.