Paul Willis - learning to labour

1. Criticism of all Marxist
Theories

Overemphasis on class (differential
access to scarce resources)

What about other social divisions
like………….age, ethnicity, gender, dis
ability, sexual orientation

2. Are we all just passive robots?
What about Sociology?
 Sociology classes are teaching you to
see through any possible
indoctrination or ruling class ideology
 It is also teaching you about inequality

This is known as determinism

3. INTERACTIONISM
We need to look at a study which
brings thinking, acting human beings
back in to the picture
 And this brings us to one of the most
famous studies in Sociology
 Paul Willis: Learning to Labour (1977)


4. Do we always believe and act on
what we are told?

5. School pupils might be taught endlessly to:
•
•
•
•
obey rules
to be obedient to teachers
to work hard
to expect punishment if they step out of
line……………………
However as I am sure you have noticed in every
school there are ANTI-SCHOOL SUBCULTURES in
which pupils have little or no regard for rules and who
have no respect for the authority of teachers.
We also do Sociology and Critical Thinking in schools
– subjects designed to question everything and to
accept nothing!

6. Paul Willis
Learning to Labour
•
Provides a major critique of
perspectives (Marxism and
Functionalism)
• Argues that both these theories
are deterministic i.e. they see pupils
as passive.
• Both theories fail to take account
of pupil resistance to the processes
working on them
So brings in INTERACTIONIST
PERSPECTIVE

7. Paul Willis
Learning to Labour
•
recognised that in working
class culture masculinity is
equated with being tough and
doing manual work, doing
schoolwork is seen as
effeminate and inferior

8. What is a counter-culture?
What are the two categories of students that
Willis found?
How do the lads flout the rules?
Why do the lads not want to identify with
school work?
How has their rebellion still prepared them for
work?

9. Why did the ‘Lads’ behave in this
way?
Partly out of rebellion, not
being liked to be told what
to do
 Partly as a coping strategy
for the boredom of
schooling
 So they developed their
own definitions of what
school was about


10. Paul Willis
Learning to Labour
However the coping strategies they
used, although the lads did not realise
this, were also an early lesson into
ways of coping with the boring and
routine type of job they would
ultimately end up in
 Thus even rebellion is reproducing the
right type of workforce needed for the
capitalist system – a workforce who
are uncritical and simply ‘just get on
with it’


11. Paul Willis
Learning to Labour
EVALUATION?
Concentrated solely on White working class
males
 Neglected to study female, ethnic minority, or
disabled students as other groups who maybe
resist the schooling experience
 Only one school and small group of boys so can
we really generalise
 Some people think Willis has romanticised these
lads as ‘working class heroes’ – in reality they
were anti-social and sexist


12. Willis – methodological issues
Conducted unstructured group
interviews to reveal the counter-school
culture of the ‘lads’
 Problems: cannot be repeated so
reliability issues, won’t boys together
just say what the other boys want to
hear? Open to the researcher’s own
biased interpretation
