Bourdieu: Education and Cultural Reproduction

Perhaps the most illuminating way of connecting some of the themes of these theoretical perspectives is through the concept of cultural reproduction (Bourdieu 1986, 1988; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). Cultural reproduction refers to the ways in which schools, in conjunction with other social institution, help perpetuate social and economic inequalities across the generations. The concepts direct our attention to the means whereby, via the hidden curriculum, schools influence the learning of values, attitudes and habits. Schools reinforce variations in cultural values and outlooks picked up early in the life; when children leave schools; these have the effects of limiting the opportunities of some, while facilitating those of others.

The modes of language use identified by Bernstein no doubt connect with such broad cultural differences, which underlie variations in interests and tastes. Children from lower- class backgrounds, and often from minority groups, develop ways of talking and acting which clash with some dominant in schools. Schools impose rules of disciplines on pupils, the authority of teachers being oriented towards academic learning. Working- class children experience a much greater cultural clash when they enter schools than those from more privileged homes. The former find themselves in effect in a foreign cultural environment.

Children spend long hours in schools. As Illich stresses, they learn much more there than is contained in the lessons they are officially taught. Children get an early taste of what the world of work would be like, learning that they are expected to be punctual and apply themselves diligently the tasks which those in authority set for them( Web and Westergaard 1991).

Willis: An Analysis of Cultural Reproduction

A celebrated discussion of cultural reproduction is provided in the report of a fieldwork study carried out by Paul Willis in a school in Birmingham (1977). Although the study was conducted more than two decades ago, it remains a classic sociological investigation.

The question Willis set out to investigate was how cultural reproduction occurs- or, a she puts it, ‘how working-class kids get working-class jobs’. It is often thought that, during the process of schooling, children from lower-class or minority backgrounds simply come to see that they are not clever enough to expect to get highly paid or high status job in their future work lives. In other words, the experience of academic failure teaches them to recognize their intellectual limitations; having accepted their ‘inferiority’, they move into occupations with limited carrier prospects.

As Willis points out, this interpretation does not does not conform at all to the reality of people’s lives and experiences. The ‘street wisdom’ of those from poor neighborhood may be of little or no relevance to academic success, but involves as subtle, skillful and complex a set of abilities as any of the intellectual skills taught in schools. Few if any children leave school thinking ‘I’ m so stupid that it’s fair and proper for me to be stacking boxes in a factory all day.’ If children from less privileged background accept menial jobs, without feeling themselves throughout life to be failures, there must be other factors involved. Willis concentrated on a particular boys ‘group in the school, spending a lot of time with them. The members of the gang, who called themselves ‘the lads’ were white; the schools also contained many children from West Indian and Asian backgrounds. Willis found that the lads had an acute and perspective understanding of the school’s authority system - but used this to fight that system rather than work with it. They saw the schools as an alien environment, but one they could manipulate to their own ends. They derived positive pleasure from the constant conflict – which they kept mostly to minor skirmishes – they carried on with teachers. They were adept at seeing the weak points of the teachers’ claims to authority, as well as where they were vulnerable as individuals. In class, for instance, the children were expected to sit still, be quiet and get on with their work. But the lads were all movements, save when the teacher’s stare might freeze one of them momentarily; they would gossip surreptitiously, or pass open remarks that were on the verge of direct insubordination but could be explained away if challenged. The lads recognized that work would be much more like school, but they actively looked forward to it. They expected to gain no direct satisfaction from the work environment, but were impatient for wages. Far from taking the jobs they did – in tyre fitting, carpet laying, plumbing, painting and decorating – from feelings of inferiority, they held an attitude of dismissive superiority towards work, as they had towards school. They enjoyed the adult status that came from working, but were not interested in ‘making a career’ for themselves. As Willis points out, work in blue collar settings often involves quite similar cultural features to those the lads created in their counter school culture – banter, quick wit and the skill to subvert the demands of authority figures when necessary. Only later in their lives might they come to see themselves as trapped in arduous, unrewarding labour. When they have families, they might perhaps look back on education retrospectively, and see it – hopelessly – as having been the only escape. Yet if they try to pass this view on to their own children, they are likely to have no more success than their own parents did.