Tom Horan 12/11/16
The book Learning to Labor, How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs explains how Paul Willis followed a group of boys as they passed through the last two years of school and into work. It explains that the boys own background may interfere with the teaching and prevents the realization of the aims of liberal education. Willis explores how their own culture can guide working class boys onto the shop floor. The study of the boys showed how class and gender expressed their refusal to schooling through an aggressive masculinity and disruptive counter-school culture.
Willis argued that the boys formed a distinctive school subcultural group which was characterized by opposition to the values and norm showed throughout …show more content…
Academic work was not an interest or worry for these boys. They did not care to earn themselves qualifications and saw the manual work they were pursuing to be better and more important than the mental work and learning factor. Furthermore, the boys tried to act older than they actually were by acting like adults and that is by living a life of not going to school, smoking, drinking, and having a terrible sexist and racist attitudes.
Learning to Labor has come to be seen in terms of working class studies and is one of the most quoted education books. Its importance is in giving a cultural dimension to already well argued structural issues of poor behavior. It remains topical especially in the view of current media upheaves about the underachievement of boys. Willis evaluated the students, teachers, and parents in a school that was known as a model of successful education in England. He found that the reality of successful …show more content…
Their refusal to cooperate at the school is the same as to the suppression of labor, which is a form of class struggle. The boys can even enter the knowledge of labor as a special commodity which Willis believes that this confirms Marx’s own discovery about labor. Turning to the education system, education exists and acts only on the repetition and reoccurrence of culture. A certain amount of cultural explanation can take place in schools although this can still end in a reproduction of the system. The form of hate and not wanting to try and participate in school shows the strength of boys. What the boys succeeded in doing this is to deny the equivalence of teacher standards. Teachers can offer a route through school for working class boys. Working class culture prefers its own knowledge of reality and most importantly, the reality of the job market. Working class boys are correct to see that most work is meaningless and de-skilled in perceiving the structural nature of employment. We can’t deny the fact that this is still happening around the world even still today in other countries. Class distinction in the education system is widespread. Students from lower working families received less attention from teachers so they tend to be poor
The book Learning to Labor, How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs explains how Paul Willis followed a group of boys as they passed through the last two years of school and into work. It explains that the boys own background may interfere with the teaching and prevents the realization of the aims of liberal education. Willis explores how their own culture can guide working class boys onto the shop floor. The study of the boys showed how class and gender expressed their refusal to schooling through an aggressive masculinity and disruptive counter-school culture.
Willis argued that the boys formed a distinctive school subcultural group which was characterized by opposition to the values and norm showed throughout …show more content…
Academic work was not an interest or worry for these boys. They did not care to earn themselves qualifications and saw the manual work they were pursuing to be better and more important than the mental work and learning factor. Furthermore, the boys tried to act older than they actually were by acting like adults and that is by living a life of not going to school, smoking, drinking, and having a terrible sexist and racist attitudes.
Learning to Labor has come to be seen in terms of working class studies and is one of the most quoted education books. Its importance is in giving a cultural dimension to already well argued structural issues of poor behavior. It remains topical especially in the view of current media upheaves about the underachievement of boys. Willis evaluated the students, teachers, and parents in a school that was known as a model of successful education in England. He found that the reality of successful …show more content…
Their refusal to cooperate at the school is the same as to the suppression of labor, which is a form of class struggle. The boys can even enter the knowledge of labor as a special commodity which Willis believes that this confirms Marx’s own discovery about labor. Turning to the education system, education exists and acts only on the repetition and reoccurrence of culture. A certain amount of cultural explanation can take place in schools although this can still end in a reproduction of the system. The form of hate and not wanting to try and participate in school shows the strength of boys. What the boys succeeded in doing this is to deny the equivalence of teacher standards. Teachers can offer a route through school for working class boys. Working class culture prefers its own knowledge of reality and most importantly, the reality of the job market. Working class boys are correct to see that most work is meaningless and de-skilled in perceiving the structural nature of employment. We can’t deny the fact that this is still happening around the world even still today in other countries. Class distinction in the education system is widespread. Students from lower working families received less attention from teachers so they tend to be poor