In Althusser’s essay on Lenin and Philosophy, his theories on the state and its institutions are expressed. Althusser, a Marxist, joined the French Communist party in 1948. Although he liked to be identified as a theoretical anti-humanist. Althusser goes into depth on schools, teachers, and the educational system as means of maintaining the ruling ideology. He establishes the school as the dominant Ideological State Apparatus and deems the schools as key to the continued ruling by the elite. He goes on to illustrate how interpellation happens in the classroom among other things.
Althusser divides the state apparatus into two entities. The Repressive State Apparatus (RSA), and the Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The RSA functions primarily through violence and force. It consists of bodies such as the police, the military, and other repressive forces. The ISA functions through ideology, or the implantation of the ruling ideology into the minds of the citizens. The RSA appears to be the dominant entity but, without the ISA, the RSA cannot rule. Marx said “every child knows that a social formation which did not reproduce the conditions of production the same time as it produced would not last a year.” Meaning if ISA’s such as the schools did not implant the ruling ideology into the citizens, then the RSA lacks the ability to control its citizens. A clever example would be police officers. In schools were taught that we are supposed to obey police officers and the badge, and that they held a position of power over us. After such ideology is implemented into us, all the RSA does is give the officer a badge and we acknowledge.
Althusser describes the schools as the dominant ISA. In the schools, children from a “vulnerable” age have the dominant ideology often disguised as something else rammed into their minds so that they may become subject to the ruling ideology. Althusser describes this in a paragraph where most of the pop...