Willis Marxist

• Paul Willis (1977) Learning to Labour


  A study that used a wide range of research methods - including observations and interviews - to try and see education from the children's point of view
• Paul Willis


  • As a Marxist, he was interested in conflict in education and why working-class children went on to do working-class jobs
  • Reached quite different conclusions from Bowles & Gintis
• "The lads"


  A group of working-class boys who were disruptive, misbehaved and had a very negative attitude to education
• Anti-school subculture


  Within this subculture it was "cool" to "mess about" and to fail. It really turned the values of the school on their head.
• Attitudes within the anti-school subculture

  • Truancy
  • Bad behaviour
  • Discriminatory attitudes (racism, sexism, homophobia)
• School as an agent of socialisation

  There was no value consensus - pupils were actively rejecting the norms and values of society
• Pupils' attitude to school and work

  They thought school was boring and pointless and was something they had to endure until they could go to work. They had a similar attitude to work, and got through it using similar techniques: "messing about" and "having a laff".
• Willis' study


  • Used a wide range of research methods (known as methodological pluralism) to try and get as true a picture as possible
  • Suggested the boys may have acted up more to 'show off' to Willis (Hawthorne Effect and Interviewer effect)
• Willis' study suggests that working-class boys actively chose to fail, rather than the system being designed by the capitalist class to have this outcome
• Willis suggested that this ultimately benefited capitalism because there wasn't a meritocracy and instead class inequality was reproduced, and there would not be a revolution because workers had learnt a coping strategy for doing boring, unfulfilling work (having a laff)
• However, it did not produce the productive, docile workers capitalists might ideally like to have working for them
• Marxism is the belief that society is divided into two classes, the bourgeoisie (capitalists) and proletariat (workers)
• The bourgeoise exploit workers by paying them less than they produce
• Capitalism leads to inequality as it creates an uneven distribution of wealth
• The bourgeoisie own the means of production (factories etc.) and exploit the proletariat who sell their labour power to earn money to live.
• Karl Marx believed that eventually the proletariat will rise up against the bourgeoisie and take control of society through a violent revolution
• In the long run, communism will replace capitalism and everyone will share resources equally
• Karl Marx believed that the state exists to protect the interests of the ruling class
• Marx argued that the state is used to maintain social control over the working class through laws such as criminalising protest or strikes
• Marx also argued that the state uses education to reproduce the dominant ideology which supports the status quo