ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which Marxist and neo-Marxist writers have dealt with the social class location of teachers. It looks at what may broadly be called the economic determinants of class location, the classic Marxist formulation, as summarized by Crompton, and some of the debate on productive and unproductive labour. The chapter examines that strand of Marxist analysis which regards education as playing a role vital to capitalism in the reproduction of the labour force, and which defines education as part of an ideological state apparatus and teachers as the 'professional ideologues of capitalism'. A fairly basic approach to class definition within the Marxist framework has been to apply the simple criteria of control over the means of production and sale of labour power. Poulantzas' new petty bourgeoisie is caught in ambivalent or contradictory class location. The chapter reveals more about the structural class location of teachers than abstract analyses which assure their collaboration with the state.
