Karl Marx and His Theory

While reading about Marxist theory and education, I became intrigued about Karl Marx and Marxist theory as a whole. I found the attached article that gives a brief background on the theorist that I thought would be helpful for those of you in class that may have as little knowledge as I do about this guy.
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-marx.htm

The article briefly touches on his life, his thoughts on social classes and their struggle, his ideas behind the communist manifesto, but most importantly for us his "Relevance to Knowledge and Education".

The last section of this article makes the point that the educational system in Marxist Theory is not a "sinister plot by the ruling class" but instead it is a product and part of the infrastructure of a "superstructure" based on the ideas and ways of the class in power. My initial thoughts and the ones that led me to search for more information on Marxist Theory were that it was not clear to me whether Marxists really supported Marxist Theory or that they simply saw society in this way; whether it was good or bad. It seemed to me that to be a Marxist and to support this theory, you would have to be a member of the upper classes in power. In the initial Marxist society that I had envisioned , the members of the lower classes or those suppressed by the upper classes, see everything as a conspiracy for the upper classes to keep their power. The article clarified to me under the "Relevance to Knowledge and Education" section, that I may have been wrong in my thinking: "institutions of society like education were reflections of the world created by human activities and that ideas arose from and reflected the material conditions and circumstances in which they were generated". There is a possibility for the lower classes to become the dominant one but for this process to take effect, circumstances have to change and the new class in power will have to make their values and ideas the dominant ones in society.