289
See also: Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Pierre Bourdieu 76–79 ■
Erving Goffman 264–69 ■ Paul Willis 292–93 ■ Talcott Parsons 300–01
THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS
According to Bowles and Gintis,
schools exist to reproduce social
inequalities. Therefore, the best
predictor for a child’s future is the
economic status of parents, rather
than academic achievement or
intelligence. Although the explicit
curriculum is about equality of
opportunity, education’s prime role
is not to teach the skills needed in
the world of work, but to instill into
children the “hidden curriculum.”
Working-class children are
taught their place in society and
learn that qualities such as working
hard, deference, punctuality, and
following orders are prized. These
traits are rewarded, while creativity
and independent thought are
not valued. This maintains the
economic status quo, which needs
industrious, uncritical employees.
Bowles and Gintis claim that
early 19th-century schools in the
US were set up to assimilate
immigrants into the “American”
work ethic. Crucially, there is a
“correspondence” between the
hierarchical social relations within
the school system and those found
in the economic system. The nature
of work also has similarities: pupils
have little control over what they
study and neither do they study for
the inherent value of knowledge;
like workers, they are “alienated.”
Schools teach children that social
inequalities are just and inevitable,
and therefore education can be
seen as a form of social control.
Class matters
In France, Pierre Bourdieu took a
different view and suggested that
the hidden curriculum is achieved
through the cultural reproduction of
knowledge. The dominant class is
able to define its culture and values
as superior and this shapes what is
taught, thus people learn to respect
things perceived as upper class and
deride those considered working
class. For example, working-class
children might be taught that
classical music is superior to
popular music, and that it is too
difficult for them to understand,
whereas middle-class children are
taught how to appreciate it. In a
similar way, middle-class children
are taught the qualities that will
enable them to become leaders. So,
lower-class children face systematic
bias against them in the system.
Many sociologists, such as
British academic Diane Reay,
contend that schools have not
become vehicles for economic
opportunity. The work of Bowles
and Gintis still has much resonance
because there has been little
progress for the working classes
over the last century. The poor are
simply better educated than in the
past. Throughout Western society,
“real” incomes for the poorest have
been falling, inequality has been
increasing, and it is common to
find graduates in low-paid work. ■Samuel Bowles
and Herbert GintisBoth Samuel Bowles, born
in New Haven, Connecticut,
and Herbert Gintis, born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
received doctoral degrees from
Harvard University and they
have since worked extensively
with one another. They were
invited by the US civil rights
leader Martin Luther King
Jr. to write educational
background papers for the
Poor People’s March of 1968.
Much of their work, which has
been described as Marxist,
argues that many social
institutions, such as schools,
are characterized by the
disciplinary exercise of power.
They were both hired in
1973 to join the economics
department at the University
of Massachusetts. Gintis still
works there, but Bowles left
in 2001 to join the Santa Fe
Institute as research professor
and director of behavioral
sciences, and he is also a
professor of economics at the
University of Siena. Recent
collaborations have focused on
cultural and genetic evolution,
asking why large groups of
unrelated individuals gather
together cooperatively.Key works1976 Schooling in Capitalist
America: Educational Reform
and the Contradictions of
Economic Life
1986 Democracy and
Capitalism: Property,
Community, and the
Contradictions of Modern
Social Thought
2005 Unequal Chances: Family
Background and Economic
Success (eds.)The structure of social
relations in education...
inures the student to the
discipline of the workplace.
Samuel Bowles &
Herbert Gintis