Bowles and Gintis believe that the hidden curriculum teaches ideology of the social system. It disguises the unfairness of the system and tries to make you accept it. It tries to legitimate inequality and make it seem normal. It makes them experience what Marxists describe as false class-consciousness and that they are not aware of their true identity. They say that the pupils don’t really question the hidden curriculum they just fail in life. The reason why they end up in factories is because they have rejected the messages of the education system.
Willis believes that “the ladz” understanding is to reject the official school culture and construct an alternative known as “having a laff” (laugh was spelt this way because when the students were asked to write down what they do in school they spelt it like this). Willis disagrees with Bowles and Gintis because he thinks that the students who end up in factories don’t see themselves as failures but as successful. When they were in school they had already got some idea in their mind about what career they wanted e.g. work in a factory, their ambition would have then been achieved. Qualifications are seen irrelevant to their needs so they don’t bother to pass the time they “have a laff”. They are proud to be there and are not there because they failed in school like Bowles and Gintis believe, self-fulfilling prophesies although they are confirmed as failure in the schools eyes. They have definitions of success, which consists of “mucking about”, “joking”, “being a rebel” and baiting the conformist students. From this Willis concluded that the hidden curriculum existed but not as Bowles and Gintis insisted, a mysterious that shaped them, school unintentionally prepared students for manual work. Even rebellion is preparing students for manual work, people who will just get on with it. Willis revealed that students are aware of false class consciousness, the working know that it exists but they just except it and see the job as acceptable.
According to Bowles and Gintis the controlling, shaping and forming of students are the responsibility of the school and that the students have no choice in what they do in life. They see the schools relationship with economy is to eliminate the working class children and get them into low skilled jobs as quickly as possible. The system is unfair, it is stacked against them it suits middle class. The students are labelled and put into streams. Keep the upper class students in the upper class jobs.
Willis pointed out that school did not push these working class students into factory jobs. The ladz enthusiastically chose these jobs by acting upon the situation at school thus creating their own reality. The students are put into bottom sets so therefore little is expected from them. Neo-Marxists say that the students deliberately chosen that work because it is the opposite values of the school system. They do not look for individual promotion, job that requires training, qualifications or job satisfaction. In fact their friends will probably follow the same path and end up at the same factory and behave the same way again. They will use the same process and strategies as they did at school to cope with the boredom. When know one is looking they will probably go off for a quick smoke, probably vandalise equipment and be racist.
Bowels and Gintis both realise that meritocracy didn’t exist. They believe that working class students both live and die in the same inner city area. They try there hardest to achieve out of life and do their best but they seem to fail (doesn’t apply for all people).
However, through Willis’ research he interpreted that it’s not that the students are trying to be the best that they can be, it’s that they can penetrate the system. They can see through the system they can see their fate. Through their community and family they can see that they will become unskilled factory workers therefore what do they need qualifications for. They learn from the family. They recognise that the school is biased and against their class and culture. They are both realistic and rational in realising that they are not going to succeed in the education system. They have a realistic understanding of the future.
Compared with Willis, Bowles and Gintis also have a different view on qualifications. Bowles and Gintis believe that the working class students just go to school and try and get some sort of qualification, they just put up with it. They sit there bored in the lesson waiting for the day to finish. They both believe that teachers are like bosses, and pupils are like workers, who will work for rewards (wages and qualifications).
Whereas Willis says that they won’t work for qualifications, they already know what they want to be it doesn’t need qualifications therefore they won’t work. Qualifications are part of the official school culture and that stands for everything that they are not they follow the opposite set of values to mainstream they don’t want them. Bowles and Gintis also say that students will just sit there and put up with it. In actual fact they will just “muck about” they try and entertain each other by “having a laugh”.
There is however some similarities between Bowles and Gintis compared to Willis and this is the emphasis of social class background and origin. Both sociological perspectives argue that social class can determine what income and social status you have. The education system favours white middle class students. For example in history, we learn about slavery and how we treated black people. Also certain tests might ask certain questions about certain people which working class people might not be able to answer anyway due to general knowledge of that subject. Both sociologists are also aware of the inequality in schools like setting and streaming, this automatically labels them and lowers moral.
In conclusion there are major differences between the case studies to that of Bowles and Gintis and Willies. The way each one was carried out has its own advantages and disadvantages. Bowles and Gintis structuaralist method works because it expanded into different area and looked at the whole picture. It also looks at more than one school in more than one community. However, unlike Willis it didn’t go to the foundation and the heart of the actual education system. Bowles and Gintis didn’t even step foot into a school. Whereas Willies did he used an ethnographic approach to study students. He actually went into the school and interacted with the students using an eclectic approach, he used Marxist perspective to explain it all. Bowles and Gintis also said that the students were passive and could be shaped by the education system and could not shape their own reality. Willis views is far more realistic and accurate, saying that they do have the power to do there own thing and that Bowles and Gintis are far too deterministic. Bowles and Gintis in general are claiming that all cultural activity is geared up to class interest, they is why they are structuralists. Whereas Willis didn’t look into social structure that much so he didn’t neglect religious, patriarchal and ethnic interests.
