I. Intellectual Marxist and Working Class Views of School

A. Education reform: broader population, longer education, more diverse curricula
B. Democratic, egalitarian philosophy of education
C. Willis, Learning to Labor (1977): School is ideological, imbedded in class and material conditions

1. Qualifications as key to success
2. Buying into ideology entails loss of individuality
3. Marxist argument: schools are part of superstructure, promote interests of dominant capitalist classes
4. But: working class lads don't suffer from false consciousness

a. Openly resist school discipline
b. Try to have a "laff"
c. Deride "earholes"
d. Have remarkable insight into capitalist relations

5. Resistance confirms class status
6. Key question: Why do lads make decisions which entrench their low status?

 

II. The Structure of School Discipline

A. Regulation of time and individual bodies
B. Teachers status: institutionalized, but also rests on moral authority and student compliance
C. Foucault's concept of discipline

 

III. The Lads' Resistance as a Culture

A. Penetration: official ideologies of the school are undercut by lads' perception of objective realities of class
B. Caged resentment, reject regulation of time and bodies

1. Crack jokes
2. Take instructions literally
3. Excuses to be in different places
4. Having a laff
5. Fall asleep
6. Fight: with earholes, West Indian and South Asian students
7. Style of clothing

C. Patterns of behavior = culture

1. Prize individual freedom, enjoyment
2. Hyper-masculinity
3. Sex, money, drinking
4. Work as best means of entry into real world

D. Culture develops through group, not individual
E. Links to outside working class culture, shopfloor culture

1. Have a laff, work less
2. Confrontation
3. Quick witted
4. Practical ability more important than theoretical knowledge

 

IV. Self and Identity: The Creation of Class Culture

A. Success in non-conformity leads to failure in life
B. Class cultures result from specific conditions and struggles

1. Working class people everywhere share attitudes because of common experiences
2. Lads' attitudes become resistance because they have a group (can't have a laff by yourself)
3. Informal culture is local logic which cultivates vision of the world, masculinity, ability vs. knowledge
4. Local logic enables differentiation, development of shared consciousness within the group, but not necessarily extending beyond it

C. Example of non-conformists at other schools: importance of informal cultural group for resistance
D. General model of cultural creation

 

V. The Lads and Marxist Alienation of Labor

A. Lads don't have Weberian calling, work is different from self
B. Marx: alienation of labor as key to capitalist profit
C. Willis: Variability of labor enables alienation
D. Lads hold selves back, resist alienation

 

VI. The Benefits and Price of Resistance

A. Why don't lads see outcome of their behavior?
B. Localized, isolated experience of class consciousness

1. Subculture expresses experience, but doesn't link lads to other lads
2. Subculture leads to presentist orientation, enjoyment, enactment of masculine identities

C. Self-domination: Because of resistance, lads freely give themselves up to manual labor, serves interest of capitalist classes
D. Disillusionment occurs too late, lads are stuck in working class jobs and lives E. General model of cultural creation

 

VII. Evaluating Willis

A. Strength: culture as mediating force between economic structure and individual consciousness and agency

1. Culture explains experience
2. Culture results from labor power
3. Marx's ideas about superstructure, coupled with focus on subjective perceptions, subcultures
4. Cultural production as a form of creativity, not deterministic, not false consciousness: "Social agents are not passive bearers of ideology, but active appropriators who reproduce existing structures only through struggle, contestation, and a partial penetration of those structures" (175)
5. The divide and rule strategy of capitalism: risks of individuality, but ultimately Willis shows that self-damnation reinforces capitalism

B. Concerns

1. General applicability of model

a. 12/600 boys at Hammertown are lads
b. Conformists wind up stuck in working classes too
c. Is this a generalized theory for reproduction of entire working class?

2. Circular reasoning: school as tool of dominant culture because the things it does reproduce class structure
3. Outside, dominant culture seems static. Is it?

 

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu