Paul Willis Learning To Labour

capital of Minnesota Willis Learning To tire outMuch has been compose in the affable sciences with regard to the role the pedagogics formation plays at bottom our indian lodge. Early investigations into the sociology of instruction tended to be written deep down the functionalist tradition with brotherly thinkers such as Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons composing their theories within this mannequin. This perspective often viewed the education system as necessary for sustaining efficient sparing growth and for creating a meritocratic society a society where the most talented and able individuals drop demonstrate by means of the social hierarchy according to their declargon mightiness. However, in recent grades, social scientists hurl found the redness perspective more multipurpose in intellect the connection between education, society and the economy. This perspective in general retards society as creation a identify of spotion between assorted comp alls with education be more or less other battle do main(prenominal) where this passage of arms is acted bring protrude. The main function of education then in this context is to run to reproduce the ride force. however more classicly that the education system favours and will benefit one social group over a nonher namely the dominant and ruling class over the subordinate. This is perhaps a crude oversimplification of the Marxist case but it is important to have or so arrest of this perspective with regard to education as this is the domesticatemanian context in which Learning to Labour (1977) was undertaken. It is within this perspective that practically of this essay will focus, as indeed it is the theoretical framework that capital of Minnesota Willis is writing from. The aim of this paper is to critically engage with the themes and perspectives make uped by Willis in his groundbreaking study on the sociology of education.Before we go on to discuss Learning t o Labour it is perhaps important to start with some understanding of what came before so as to highlight how Willis findings broke new ground and pushed the debate roughly education forward. Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) were writing just before Willis and their shape up was very similar in that the thrust of their thesis was concerned with how education prep atomic number 18s pupils for their prospective roles within the labour market. However, their theories were very much formulated around the notion of direct reproduction and because of this they have exposed themselves to the usual criticisms of economic determinism. Willis offers a more sophisticated explanation. Although he acknowledges the existence of conflict within education he does not quite sh be Bowles and Gintis view that thither exists a straight forward relationship between education and the economy. For Willis, teachs ar not nearly as successful in churning out a docile workforce as Bowels and Ginti s suggest. There is al panaches the hazard for shield. The lads of Learning to Labour have managed to see through with(predicate) the ideological potentiometer screen of the initiate and reject it, while at the same snip creating their own counter-school civilization. The education system then is not simply a site for cultural reproduction but also a site of production in that it has quite unintentionally created factors (in this case the counter-school glossiness) which are not particularly unspoiled for the reproduction of capitalism.The school used by Willis is determined in a working class housing estate in an industrial town in the Midlands. Willis toilsome his study on a group of 12 low-class boys whom he followed through their last year of school and into the first few months at work. Willis soon found that these boys, who he referred to as the lads, had a distinct attitude towards their teachers and the school. Willis observed that they had developed their own u nique culture which was diametrically opposed to the value system of the school. This counter-school culture of the lads blatantly rejected the authority of the school and ascribed no value to academic work and saw no use in the gaining of qualifications.Now it is important to understand what Willis means by the counter-school culture. The acknowledgement of an emergent counter-culture within the school is not in itself new (see Hargreaves, D. 1967) but what is signifi patois about the way Willis uses this idea is that he examines the counter-culture within its wider social context. He quite bright observes that the counter-school culture is not accidental, nor its style quite independent, nor its cultural skills unique or special and that it must be understood within the larger framework of lying-in culture, particularly in relation to shopfloor culture. For Willis, the counter-school culture is rich with symbols and signs of foe against the formal zone of the school. The lads h ave, in a symbolic act of sabotage, modify the value that the school espouses and created their own value system which is in obstreperous opposition to the institution. This opposition is mainly countenanced through style, Willis notesIt the counter-school culture is lived out in innumerable small ways which are special to the school institution, instantly prize by the teachers, and an almost ritualistic part of the daily fabric of behavior for the kids. (Willis, P. 197712)The counter-school culture is a very masculine domain where overt discriminatory and racist views are quite frequently expressed. The lads continually search out weakness in others and are skilful at undermining the authority of the teachers without it boiling over into outright confrontation. The conformist students are the lads main tar irritate after(prenominal) the teachers. The lads feel superior to them because they, opposed the earoles, have not surrendered their independence to the school they a re still able to have a laff.It is this ability of universe of discourse able to have a laff that is a defining characteristic of creation a lad. It also marks them out from the earoles we stooge make them laff, they brush asidet make us laff. For Willis the laff is a multi-faceted implement of extraordinary importance in the counter-school culture and is a vital weapon in the lads arsenal in their continued struggle of the informal (counter-school) over the formal (school). This winning of symbolic and physical space from the school is illustrated further in the way that the lads attend to reach their own timetable. Through wagging off from classes and always trying to get away with doing the least amount of work, the lads have become highly deft in exploiting and seizing control of the formal zone of the school. Cigarette heater and openly drinking have also become valuable symbols of ascension as it further marks the lads out from the school institution and rather show s them as belonging to the larger male working-class world. Indeed Willis draws our wariness to the similarities between the counter-school culture and shopfloor culture. He writesThe really central point about the working-class culture of the shopfloor is that, despite harsh conditions and external direction, people do look for meaning and impose frameworks. They exercise their abilities and seek enjoyment in activity, even where most controlled by other. They do, paradoxically, thread through the dead beget of work a living culture which is off the beaten track(predicate) from a wide reflex of defeat. This is the same fundamental taking hold of an alienating post as one finds in counter-school culture and its attempt to weave a tapestry through the dry institutional text. (Willis, P. cited in Blackledge pass 1985184)When the lads win the end of their final term and the prospect of work awaits them they remain inert to the type of manual unskilled labour they will go on to do. They understand that most manual work in industry is basically the same very little skill is required and offers no satisfaction. The best(p) the lads can hope for is an apprenticeship or clerical work, however such jobs seem to offer little but take a lot. Although the lads might not be able to articulate it, in some respects they do have some understanding of the workings of capitalism. Willis calls these insights penetrations, where the lads have been able to see through the ideological fog created by the capitalist system. An example of this is present in the way that the counter-school culture manoeuvres no value in the advance of qualifications through certificates. The conformist student may be convinced by educations meritocratic faade and the promise of upward mobility but the lads know better, they are aware that a few can make itthe class can never follow. They understand that individual success will not last change the position of the working-class, and that o nly through the collective action of the group will this be achieved. This is articulated by the lads in the way that they place an important emphasis on loyalty within the group, as Willis observes the heart and soul of being one of the lads lies with the group. The group always comes first and the rejection of qualifications is a rejection of the laissez-faire(a) nature of the school, which creates competition between class mates with the proliferation of individual awards through exams. As Willis puts it it is unwise for working-class kids to place their trust in diplomas and certificates. These things act not to push people up as in the formalized account but to maintain in that location those who are already at the top (Willis, 1977128).Although they may have some understanding of capitalism, Willis contends that while some penetrations have been made the lads still have not fully seen through all of capitalisms ideological justifications. They do not possess a masterfu l overview of how capitalism works to exploit them. In some respects the lads are unwitting conspirators in their own exploitation in that they are far too willing to enter the world of manual work and in doing so they enter an exploitative system which will at last hook them. Their attitude towards women and ethnic minorities is also destructive. They serve only to divide the working-class making it that much easier to control. For Willis then, it is quite wrong to picture working-class culture or consciousness optimistically as the vanguard in the wide march towards rationality and socialism.The lads of Learning to Labour may have bring in their own alienation but ultimately it is their own decisions which have trap them in these exploitative jobs. Willis has tried to make it clear that rather than being a site for the reproduction of one dominant ideology the school can be a place where contradictory ideologies come unitedly in conflict. With this study Willis shows us that it is the lads resistance to school, with the forming of a counter-school culture, that has prepared them for their future roles within the labour force. Their indifference to school and their behaviour in class has paradoxically prepared the lads for the manual unskilled work which they will go on to do. So in this sense education does reproduce the labour force required by capitalism. save it is done not straight off and perhaps unintentionally and most importantly of all not without a degree of resistance and struggle.The counter-school culture of the lads, as we have seen, is not beneficial to the reproduction of capitalism, but at the same time it is not particularly harmful. Willis has shown that reproduction is not a simple process with external economic structures manipulating submissive subjects. He is very critical of these structuarlist accounts. As he says brotherly agents are not passive bearers of ideology, but active appropriators who reproduce brisk structures o nly through struggle, contestation and a partial penetration of those structures.Paul Willis ethnographic investigation has been hailed a landmark study by educators and social theorist alike (Giddens 1984, McRobbie 1978). Indeed any detailed discussion on the sociology of education, subcultures or even deviancy within society would seem redundant if there was no reference to Learning to Labour. One writer has remarked that Willis has provided the model on which most subsequent cultural studies investigation within education has been based. However, this does not mean that he is exempt from criticism.David Blackledge and Barry range (1985) take issue with a number Willis conclusions. Firstly they find some of his evidence unconvincing can the lads really be representative of the working-class in general? exclusively the pupils at the school are from working-class families including the earoles (who are clearly in the majority) surely they are more representative of working-class values and attitudes. Blackledge and Hunt argue that the values of the conformist students, with their emphasis on academic work, are as much working-class in nature as those of the counter-culture. To underpin this claim they point to a similar study by David Hargreaves (1967) in which he found a significant delinquent sub-culture breathing in a secondary school. Like the school of Willis study, the pupils where predominantly working-class (their fathers were in manual occupations) and he observed that the school was divided into two sub-cultures the delinquescent and the academic. However, unlike Willis, Hargreaves does note that there can be a blurring of the two categories with some students within the academic group displaying delinquent behaviour from time to time. But more importantly Hargreaves maintains that the attitudes of the academic group are consistent with the values of a large section of the working-class. So in this light Blackledge and Hunt remain unconvinced th at the values of the lads are the same as the working-class as a whole. They also have trouble excepting the simple duality which is at the heart of this study that there exists just two main groups, the lads and the earoles. For them this does not really do justice to the diversity of the real world in that Willis would have us believe in a elongate world in which there are those who want an education, and those who enjoy life. It never seems to occur to him that these pursuits can be combined, and that the person who takes an interest in his or her education is not, thereby, dull, obsequious and a social conformist.Despite these criticisms Learning to Labour has remained an influential and much discussed text. In fact despite being written from a cultural studies perspective its influence is particularly strong within sociology. It is within Marxism that its significance has been most far reaching however. It has encouraged Marxist writers to re-evaluate their approach to the u nderstanding of education paying specific attention to the different factors at play rather of providing simplistic explanations of the role of education within society. Willis is very critical of structuarlist accounts which have a tendency to see subjects as passive bearers of ideology who mindlessly reproduce the status-quo. Willis has given social agents the ability to reject the dominant ideological discourses and to resist in the reproduction of existing exploitative structures. Learning to Labour has sometimes been described as a pessimistic book but I can not booster but bring a corroborative interpretation to the text. It is true that ultimately it is the lads own choices that lead them to some of the most exploitative jobs that capitalism has to offer. But by simply having that choice it does allow for the possibility of change. As Willis himself says there is always the possibility of making practices not inevitable by understanding them. This, I would argue, is the ke y thread which runs through Learning to Labour by understanding the reasons for the forming of a counter-school culture can we bring about positive changes which will be beneficial to everyone and not just the lads.Perhaps Willis is blameful of using too many Marxist terms uncritically. The way he employs the category of social class within Learning to Labour is mayhap a little outdated now. It is not a stable, fixed construct it is more fluid than Willis allows for with an interlinking between race and gender etcetera Similarly at times he is arguably guilty of slithering back into traditional Marxist territory with the idea of the state being subservient to capitalist class is that still (if it ever was) the reality? at heart a globalised world power is more dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of one ruling bloc but instead there are perhaps different organised groups competing for power. Economic and informational flows can freely transcend national boundaries it is argued (Giddens 1994) that globalisation has acted to decentralise power preventing any one group from wielding too much economic and ideological control. However, it is to the conviction of Paul Willis that his investigation has remained relevant and important twenty-eight years after it was first published. It is still considered a model example of ethnographic explore and has encouraged many other ethnographic studies whose emphasis was on style, resistance and cultural symbols (See McRobbie 1978, Hebdige 1979). Indeed, Anthony Giddens (1984) structuration theory which sees subjects as knowledgeable and active agents owes a massive debt to the insights made by Willis in Learning to Labour.