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Chapter4_LabourPowerCultureClassandInstitution-PresentationLBST3302.pptxChapter 4: Labour Power, Culture, Class and Institution
Presented by:
Wilson Ding, Simrit Kambo, Yue Pan, William Jo, Kiki Shin
CHAPTER SUMMARY
In Chapter 4 of Learning to Labour, Paul Willis (1977) provides us with a detailed account and insight into the subculture of ‘the lads’, and notes how their cultural practices reflect similarities in their respective work culture and social positions.
We see how ‘the lads’ have constructed for themselves a “counter-school culture” that effectively reinforces their social position as working-class individuals; and influences their future job prospects and expectations accordingly.
Through their lived experiences and cultural practices, ‘the lads’ have subconsciously adopted values, behaviours, norms and beliefs that superficially reject the formal institutions of schooling, and education, as an expression of subjective freedom.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
As a result, the boys behave in ways that are contrary to the expectations of the conformist students (the ‘ear’oles’), but at the same time, their behaviours and cultural practices serve to benefit the intended capitalist purpose of reproducing an easily accessible working class labour force (i.e. reproduction of labour power dependent of capitalist powers).
“Where the non-conformist might escape the school’s net, they cannot escape the exacting requirements of industry” (p. 92).
“The ‘ear’oles’/ ‘lads’ division is taken by those concerned as a likely future division between skilled/unskilled or white collar/blue collar work” (p. 97).
Subjected to their environment and counter-school cultural practices, ‘the lads’ behave appropriately to their associated labour position and class roles (i.e. working class roles).
“The systematic cultural self-preparation of ‘the lads’ for a certain kind of work marks them out from the ‘ear’oles’, not in terms of school work, but also in terms of expectations” (p. 97).
Willis observes that students are aware of the exploitation of the education system but did not see themselves as victims to the institution. Additionally, rather than buying into the idea of social mobility based on a meritocracy, students are able to demonstrate some form of agency in their behaviours.
Analysis & Thoughts on ‘The lads’:
How Education Contributes to Stratification?
Willis uses 12 white boys in a working class school as a sample and probes into how the process of economic reproduction is made possible by ‘the lads’’ who accept hard manual work. He shows how the school system contributes to this process, which is still prevalent in working class schools. We see that working class ‘lads’ celebrate this seemingly self-indepence and unconformity in their macho working class world of work.
Teaching guide’s tone: Autonomy and Working Class Values
The tonation of authority is strong in the school system. Aside from that, the fifth grade career teacher in Hammertown instills a great load of working class ethics, attitudes and requirements in work which can hinder students’ mentality to strive for a better job.
E.g.: Improper injection of work values in career guide:
“Let me tell you, you have no right at all, not by a long shot, you don’t have a right to anything and the sooner you appreciate that, the better you’ll do. I haven’t the right to expect a good job myself, despite all the training, I don’t have the right to a promotion….I’ve got to work towards it, work to deserve it” (p.91)
E.g.: of the use of the tone of authority:
“...if you’re resentful of authority here, and have a bad attitude towards discipline, it will carry on at work, it will show there and they won’t have time for it...your attitudes at school here now will make it that much harder for you when you get to work” (p.92)
Edit: Wilson Ding
Analysis & Thoughts on ‘The lads’:
How Education Contributes to Stratification?
From these examples, we can see the reasons why ‘the lads’ choose to reject and ignore what they are given in the career lessons - here, work represents “subordinance” , which therefore pushes youth towards “work exploitation” .
2) Resistance and Continuities between ‘Counter-School
Culture’ & ‘Shopfloor Culture’
This particular aspect of school system, leads to the resistance of those who refuse to listen (‘the lads’). Willis understands them as social agents who collude in a system of dominance. Yet, the result is that their alternative subculture is inevitably similar and linked to the shopfloor culture. They seek to escape from schools through transitioning to work, and earning money, to be “real men”.
3) Freedom and Manual Work
Therefore, they do not choose any particular job or career. Due to their academic failure (or lack of interest), they are marginalized, but their subculture prepares them mentally to do (and accept) low-skilled ‘manual work’ that is perceived to be as something of a status symbol that signifies experience and masculinity--an assertion of “freedom” and a “specific kind of power”.
E.g.:
“'the lads' ' experience in the counter-school culture most certainly smoothes their transition
into work and produces appetites which manual work satisfies quite well...”
“...there is an excitement in being able to work with older and tougher people in rough conditions--to survive and be accepted where others would fail” (p. 108) (...)
Analysis & Thoughts on ‘The lads’:
(...)
.E.g.:
“it gets me mad to see these kids working in a fucking office. I just dunno how they do it, honestly. I've got freedom, I've got ... I can get money, it's hard to explain” (p.104)
The school system also reinforces a mentality to do manual work due to its domain in mental work and control of freedom.
“In a strange unspecified way mental labour, henceforth always carries with it the threat of a demand for obedience and conformism...” (p. 103)
‘The lads’ try to resist the controlling authority and seek the expression of freedom in the real world in which they can actually “do real things”-- in the form of giving their labour power to working class jobs.
Education serves the social stratification processes, by imposing working class values through implicit forms of influence with its institutional logic of schools, which arouses youth’s oppositional countercultures.
‘The lads’ react negatively to school conformity and authority which they think offers no concrete opportunities. They claim autonomy and seek financial and mental independence by resorting to hard, manual work. Therefore, they are confronted with a future of manual labour -working class labour- in a structural labour market.
‘The lads’ Attitude Towards Education
Often reject advice around career education
The lads' also reject the idea of qualifications:
“Qualifications for them constitute the practical arm of the power of knowledge as it is institutionally defined” (Willis, 1977, p.94).
Lads believe that they know better and that there is no need for qualifications and education because what really matters to them is “knowing a bit about the world, having your head screwed on, and, pulling your finger out' when necessary” (Willis, 1977, p.94).
They believe more in hands on experience, showing they know it through physicality, versus using an exam to measure their academic standpoint
CRITIQUE
The book critiques careers education as it fails to reach a larger audience of the working-class kids in an effective way.
Ex: A third of all schools have not designated a conversation about careers. The survey concluded that education around careers was not accepted or integrated in the learning by a minority of schools.
FINAL THOUGHTS
All of these resulting behaviours, influenced by ‘the lads’ counter-school culture, are factors to be considered that work to reinforce the current labour process of working class jobs. In a way, the disregard for authority and the education system (acting in a non-conforming matter) results in a mere delusion of resistance against the established institutions that maintain capitalist power and seduces the working class culture—and class consciousness of it—which effectively impacts the overall perspective and behaviours of ‘the lads’.
