2.1 Education and Society by having a ‘laff’ and winning a little space from the supervisor, the manager or the teacher. In both settings, though, the challenges to authority never go too far. The lads and workers hope to gain a little freedom, but they do not challenge the institution head-on. They know that they must do a certain amount of work in the factory or risk dismissal, and they realise that the state can enforce school attendance if it is determined to do so. Willis concludes that the lads are not persuaded to act as they do by the school, nor are they forced to seek manual labour. Instead, they actively create their own subculture, which leads them to look for manual jobs. They learn about the culture of the shop floor from fathers, elder brothers and other men in the local community. They are attracted to this masculine, adult world. They see the school and its values as irrelevant to their chosen work.
Capitalism and the counter-school culture Willis claims that in some ways the lads see through the capitalist system, but in other ways they contribute to their own exploitation. He calls their insights into the workings of capitalism penetrations. According to Willis, the lads recognise that ‘the possibility of real upward mobility is so remote as to be meaningless’, that any qualifications they might get will be unlikely to affect their job choices, and that investing time, emotion and energy into school work is hardly worth the effort. The counter-school culture ‘knows’ that meritocracy is an illusion and that the majority of working-class lads will remain at the bottom of the class system. Despite these ‘partial penetrations’ into the nature of capitalism, the lads prepare themselves for manual work at school. The counter-school culture directs them into low-skill employment. And the lads condemn themselves to ‘a precise insertion into a system of exploitation and oppression for working-class people’.
Evaluation of Willis According to Madeleine Arnot (2004), Learning to Labour by Paul Willis ‘has greater, not less, relevance in the current school climate’. First, schools are
increasingly exam-driven, competitive and pressured. Second, the deindustrialisation of Western society and the disappearance of the majority of manual jobs have led to growing uncertainty about occupational futures. These factors might make working-class masculinity and resistance to schools even more relevant today. Willis provides a framework to study and understand the relationship between class, gender, schooling and the economy. He looks at the construction of meaning. He shows how the lads’ definition of the situation has a logic and sense in terms of their class situation and culture, their gender, the priorities of the school and the employment and economic context of the time. As Liz Gordon (1984), states, Willis ‘has provided the model on which most subsequent cultural studies investigation within education has been based’. Nevertheless, Willis has his critics:
››They suggest Willis’s sample is inadequate as
a basis for generalising about working-class education. Willis focused on only 12 students, all of them male, who were by no means typical of the students at the school he studied, never mind of working-class students in the population as a whole.
››They accuse Willis of largely ignoring the existence of a variety of subcultures within the school. They point out that many students came somewhere in between the extremes of being totally conformist and being totally committed to the counter-school culture.
››They question the relevance of Willis’s study in
today’s increasingly de-industrialised society where manual jobs are rapidly disappearing.
In terms of this last criticism, Willis continues to provide a reference point and a benchmark for later research. This can be seen from the title of Michael Ward’s (2015) study, From Labouring to Learning: Working-Class Masculinities, Education and De-industrialisation. This study of working-class young men in South Wales shows that in several respects working-class culture has remained the same despite the disappearance of many traditional working-class jobs – see p.106.
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