Commentary: Social Reproduction and its Transformations: Relationships in Educational Institutions

In the 1960s, the French philosopher Althusser (1969/1980) proposed that the school was the capital social institution working for the reproduction of social relationships at his contemporary historical moment. His reflections on the problem of material and social reproduction of capitalist relations of exploitation addressed a sociohistorical perspective, focusing on how social institutions are constructed out of historical conflicts. The school, as a sort of ideological apparatus, promotes a set of viewpoints on the reality of human social life. At the same time that children, at school, learn skills, techniques and acquire knowledge, they “also learn the ‘rules’ of good behavior,” “rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, “the submission to the rules of the established order” (p. 127) and/or the “ability to manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploitation and repression” (p. 128).