Ideology and education

Abstract

The notion of ideology can be understood as a set of representations and rules which set and prescribe beforehand what one should be and how one should think, act, and feel. In order to impose the particular interests of the ruling class, this corpus produces an imaginary universality. The effectiveness of ideology depends precisely on its ability to produce a collective imaginary within which individuals can locate, identify themselves and, thus, by such self-recognition, unwittingly legitimize social division. Its consistency is linked to a logic of gap and silence about its own genesis, that is, about the social division of classes. The anteriority of the corpus, the universalization of the particular, the internalization of the imaginary as something collective and common, and the consistency of lacunar logic make ideology be a logic of dissimulation (of the existence of contradictory social classes) and a logic of concealment (of the genesis of social division). From the analysis of some recurring themes in educational discussions, this essay intends to assess to what extent the educational discourse, marked largely by the competence rule, conceals some ideology.