Notes on and Reaction to Paul Willis (Sociologist)

Paul Willis - Education, Cultural Production and Social Reproduction
Article by Liz Gordon (British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 5, No.2 1984

Learned a new word today: Intersubjective.
I love the way that these new words pop up and when you type them into a dictionary there are no entries....except on Wikipedia. This is where I got mine from via The Free Dictionary
Basically meaning shared or common meanings. See link for further information.

I learned about some interesting sociological theories focusing on the nature of the reproduction of class through the education system.

In Learning to Labor (Willis) the boys see external restrictions on their freedom but fail to recognize their own internal ‘codes of behaviour’ which are also rules. P. 108

Bordieu (1977) – ‘schools legitmate the dominant culture by presenting as ‘natural’ a form of pedagogy which belongs only to the dominant groups in society’ p. 107

Gramsci (1977) Hegemony is the spontaneous consent given by the great mases of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant group. p.109

Hall, in Apple, (1982) Superstructures (like schools) perform as necessary because on its own the economic system (e.g. capitalism) cannot ensure all the conditions necessary for its own expanded reproduction. p. 109

See further notes in My Work section.