Practice question · Multiple choice
Willis found that his working-class "lads" saw through the school’s promises rather than being taken in by them, and ended up in manual work all the same. Why does that finding complicate the reproduction theories of Bowles and Gintis or of Bourdieu?
Hints
- Ask where the agency lies in each account.
- A theory of moulding cannot easily accommodate people who resist and are reproduced anyway.
Show the answer
B. They explain reproduction by school imposition; Willis via pupils' own refusal.
Why
Both models locate the mechanism in the institution acting on the pupil. Willis relocates it: the lads’ counter-school culture was their own creation, built on an accurate reading of their prospects, and it delivered the outcome the models predict by an entirely different route. Any adequate account has to make room for lucid actors producing their own subordination.
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