EVAL:
Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy
requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists.
o Postmodernists argue that education now reproduces diversity, not inequality
Marxists disagree with one another over how reproduction and legitimation take place:
o Bowles and Gintis take a deterministic view – assume all pupils have no free will and passively accept
indoctrination.
o However, Willis argues that pupils are not brainwashed, he shows how pupils may resist the school and yet how
this still leads them into w/c jobs.
Willis romanticises the ‘lads’, portraying them as w/c heroes despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes.
Marxists take a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores all other kinds.
Feminists argue Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact that schools reproduce not only capitalism, but patriarchy too.
Postmodernists criticise Bowles and Gintis correspondence principle on the grounds that today’s post-Fordist economy
requires schools to produce a very different kind of labour force from the one described by Marxists.
o Postmodernists argue that education now reproduces diversity, not inequality
Marxists disagree with one another over how reproduction and legitimation take place:
o Bowles and Gintis take a deterministic view – assume all pupils have no free will and passively accept
indoctrination.
o However, Willis argues that pupils are not brainwashed, he shows how pupils may resist the school and yet how
this still leads them into w/c jobs.
Willis romanticises the ‘lads’, portraying them as w/c heroes despite their anti-social behaviour and sexist attitudes.
Marxists take a ‘class first’ approach that sees class as the key inequality and ignores all other kinds.
Feminists argue Bowles and Gintis ignore the fact that schools reproduce not only capitalism, but patriarchy too.
