Education and the School System: Ideological State Apparatus and Its Use in Literature

Abstract

If we wonder how ideology plays a very key role in producing literature in society, Plato’s text “The Republic” can come in handy in understanding this politics. Most people believe that literature and other art forms are mere mirrors of society or just a fragment of the creative imagination of the poet or author. But the process of literary productions is not as simple as that. There are multiple layers of politics involved in how these literary texts come into being, how some texts become a major part of the literary canon, how other texts are lost in time, or further some texts are even subject to bans.  This has a lot to do with the dominant ideologies of the time and place of a literary production.  At one point Marxist ideology had mostly to do with the economic production, but with further interpolations many philosophers and critics were able to introduce Marxist ideology into the realm of literary production.  Plato’s text which is in fact a kind of treatise regarding many political and social concerns goes on and on about how one can produce a kind of proper education among children with the means of prose and poetry, be it fiction or otherwise and music as well.