Correspondence Theory

Evidence for Bowles and Gintis' argument comes largely from the various ways it is possible to apply their model to different aspects of our education system. As these examples show, it is not particularly difficult to find "correspondences between work and education" at all levels.

However, although this ability to empirically demonstrate correspondences (that is, to provide evidence for the model) is a clear strength, it is also a source of weakness since it is evident that almost anything that happens in the education system can be shown to have a correspondence with the workplace...

In addition, Dennis Wrong ("The Over-Socialised Conception of Man in Modern Society", 1980) has questioned the extent to which people can be seen to be "socialised into conformity" in the way that theorists such as Bowles and Gintis argue. In Wrong's view, this perspective sees people as having no real control over their lives.

This idea is important because Bowles and Gintis suggest that working class youth, in particular, have no real say in (or control over) the process that sifts, sorts and (de)selects them; they are, in short, passive victims of a rigid, highly-structured, system of social interaction.

However, studies such as "Learning to Labour" by Paul Willis have implicitly questioned this view by showing that people may have some understanding of the way they are treated in school. They may either try to resist in various ways or, less obviously perhaps, "actively conspire" with the way they are treated in the education system in order to achieve a desired outcome.

Thus, one criticism is that Bowles and Gintis' analysis neglects to consider the way experience of work itself is a powerful socialising influence in people's lives. In Willis' study, for example, the "lads" he observed were well aware of the type of work they were destined to perform. For them, education was something to be endured as painlessly as possible, mucking about when you could, having a "laff" and generally marking time until you could go to work.

In this respect, a contrary argument might be that the education system, far from producing docile, well-socialised, future workers may actually produce people who are well-aware of the limitations of education and work - people who "see through" the system, for example and either consciously rebel against it or "play the game" until they can escape from school.

In Willis' study, therefore, it is difficult to see how "the lads" experience of education socialised them into an acceptance of the ideology of Capitalism. On the contrary, for the vast majority of people, it is only through the experience of work that people are pressed into ideological submission by the fact that they believe themselves powerless to change anything.

On a different line of thought, although Bowles and Gintis outline a clear correspondence between education and work in modern industrialised societies, it is not clear how Capitalism managed to survive for the 150-odd years in a society such as Britain prior to the creation of a universal system of education.

One answer might be to argue that something like religion served a similar corresponding function, or that the apprenticeship system that operated in the early period of Capitalist development provided the corresponding functions that were subsequently taken-over by education 9but this, once again, could simply illustrate how easy it is to rationalise explanations for uncomfortable facts...).

Finally, there is a tendency to underplay the idea that teachers may be well aware of what is happening within the system and may make conscious attempts to improve the quality of the education their pupils receive. In addition, much "liberal education" is not totally directed towards the specific requirements of the workplace - people are taught the ability to think independently, to question their surroundings, to criticise and so forth.

If the correspondence between work and education is as close as Bowles and Gintis claim, it is difficult to see how these modes of thinking could be allowed to develop.

Thus, it may be less a case of teachers "playing-out their allotted ideological role" as agents of ideological transmission than the fact that many of their pupils realise they are destined for low status work and see little point in learning the kinds of things on offer in the education system.