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REVIEW ESSAYLyn Yates aa La Trobe UniversityPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

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© DISCOURSE Vol. 7, No. 2, April 1987

REVIEW ESSAY

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RADICAL SOCIOLOGYOF EDUCATION?

Lyn YatesLa Trobe University

Capitalist Crisis and Schooling: Comparative Studies in the Politics ofEducation

Rachel Sharp (ed.) 1986Melbourne: Macmillan. Pp. xxxiii + 272 $29.95 (cloth), $17.95(paper)Capitalist Crisis and Schooling, a new collection of comparativestudies in education edited by Rachel Sharp, announces itself as animportant book. It promises in its introduction at least the following:an agenda for the redirection of radical sociology of education; amodel of how to do and present comparative education; an answer tothe question, "What are the most important features of schooling incontemporary society?" And it does indeed contribute something toall these areas — though it does not entirely carry through the agendait sets itself, and it by no means answers the many people working ineducation today who consider the agendas should be other ones.

In the introduction of Capitalist Crisis and Schooling, Rachel Sharpsets the book in context. In the early 70s Bowles and Gintis (1976) hadsparked a new direction for interpreting and researching education,but today there is a new orthodoxy about the problems with theirwork (over-determinism, functionalism, lack of attention tocontradiction and agency, etc.) and an unsatisfactory emergingconsensus about kinds of work to replace it:

Super-subtle theoretical modifications, reformulations, qualifications andrectifications intertwine with ad hoc, unsystematic and unrelated researchprograms which have failed to provide a cumulative enriching frameworkthat that might further both the understanding and the transformation ofsocial reality, (p.xiii)

In relation both to liberal critiques of radical theorizing as dogmarather than empirically validated truth and to radical and reformist

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work which has focussed on the culture of schooling, Sharp wants toreassert an economic primacy thesis. She wants to demonstrate thatcertain traditional Marxist concepts are still the key to understandingand acting to change education and society, but in doing this to alsotake account of the debate of the past 15 years. On the one hand thismeans giving some detailed empirical validation for the argument andon the other explaining why the current thesis is to be supported giventhe criticisms which have been made of the earlier work of Bowles andGintis.

Sharp's argument is that the central concept for understanding whathappens in schooling should still be "the materialist primacy thesis",locating schooling within a theory of capitalism as a mode ofproduction, and that the seminal text for such an understanding isMarx's Capital. Of particular relevance to understanding schooling arethe following aspects of capitalism: the need to reproduce labourpower (both ideologically and in terms of skills); the fact thatcapitalism has an essential dynamic of a "contradictory trajectory",namely a dynamic of capital accumulation which leads to crises(overproduction, surplus labour populations, etc.) which in turnrequire intervention in order to provide a more appropriate set ofconditions to allow accumulation to be regenerated; the fact thathistorical materialism is also a theory of the production of classes andclass struggle, so that reproduction is never inevitable. Finally, eachcountry will have a particular history and constraints 'produced out ofprevious modes of resolving class disputes between capital andlabour'.

The theory just outlined is said to explain the "invariant features"and "key structuring principles" of the school-society relationship indifferent countries; however, empirical studies are required tounderstand the specifics of a particular national situation. Moreover,it is argued that a set of such studies of different countries providesthe empirical demonstration of the thesis itself, since it will show thestructured variation which demonstrates the principles at work inrelation to different given historical conditions.

The nine case studies of different capitalist countries included in thebook, then, are attempting to show certain commonalities at work inthe structuring of education in the face of contemporary "capitalistcrisis". The commonalities include attempts to depict crises ofcapitalism and the economy as crises of schooling (via rhetoric aboutstandards and attacks on progressivism); attempts to shift the costs ofthe reproduction of labour in schools from the State and in generalaway from capital at the expense of the subordinate classes (forexample, by "privatization"); attempts to reconstitute schoolingselectively to better meet the needs of capital (including for example anew vocational emphasis, and a new selective funding of variouseducational institutions, especially in higher education, according to

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their immediate economic utility). In the process, States in the variouscountries are shown to be undermining previous apparent autonomiesand traditions of educational systems, because in the new economicconditions the liberal face of schooling (on whom Bowles and Gintisand radical sociology of the early 70s had concentrated their critique)is no longer seen to be sufficiently functional.

What Sharp wants to stress too in the conclusion is that

The operation of the law of value generates structural constraints on socialactors within this mode of production which produce common outcomesirrespective of myriad conflicting volitions, and negotiations of theindividual people concerned, (p.265)

Moreover, in response to the multitude of critics of deterministaccounts waiting in the wings, Sharp argues that the point of heraccount is not that the result is inevitable, but that the focus of actionshould not be schooling but "the capital relation" itself.

In terms of the argument set out here a number of comments mightbe made, first, concerning how well the book does what it sets out todo, and second, concerning how convincing the case for this overallfocus is.

What Capitalist Crisis and Schooling does achieve in the context ofcontemporary research is to bring issues of the historically-specificcontext of schooling to the fore. What this means is that instead ofsimply doing research which tries to pursue the characteristics of anongoing process (how school represses working-class kids; howworking-class kids resist this; how schooling selects and reconfirms the"ruling class") we are asked to note that the whole form of theinstitution we are dealing with is in the process of change. Across ninedifferent countries there are now serious attempts by the State both todismantle and to re-direct schooling and higher education. In the faceof this we might well re-consider, for example, whether radicalcritiques of schooling are simply feeding the dismantling andprivatization processes. Or again, we might consider whether agendassuch as multiculturalism, counter-sexism, even the democraticcurriculum, have been built on assumptions of ever-increasingresources being devoted to education by the government when, as theevidence in this book clearly suggests, the reverse process is underway.

On the other hand, in terms of the case spelled out in itsintroduction, this book, as its preface acknowledges, is a somewhatunfinished account. For example, as is common with so-calledcomparative education, this volume does not contain "comparativestudies", it contains case studies with virtually no comparativediscussion of them. Less than one page of a two page conclusiondraws out common threads, and there is no discussion of thesignificance of the particular circumstances and differences between

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them. Partly because of this, I found it a very difficult book to read.Notwithstanding the editor's contempt for academics who findthemselves overwhelmed by the complexity of social events (a sign ofliberal empiricism), the nine individual narratives here did overwhelmme with a host of facts held together only by the repeated messagethat what the facts evidenced was a structure of capitalism as outlinedabove. More importantly, it seems to me that such presentations failto establish two aspects of Sharp's agenda which were mentioned inthe introduction.

The first of these issues is the problem of facts or truth versusinterpretation versus ideology. In the introduction, Sharp wants to saythat on the one hand "what counts as relevant data can only betheoretically specified. Unfortunately there is no such thing as thehard and palpitating fact completely free of theoreticalcontamination"; but on the other that "Despite this reservation,however, Marxist theory is open to empirical confirmation", (p.xxiii)

And again:

Nor is it a matter of value choice as to whether one can discern keystructurin£ principles. If the latter exist they can be identified through theapplication of a proper scientific method and no amount of liberal wishfulthinking can render them non-existent, (p.xxiv)

Leaving aside the debatable issue of Marxism as science, I wouldwant to say that in a collection of this range, any one reader is likelyto have a very limited base for checking the "facts" presented, andwhat a reader would therefore want is some argument or discussion(either internally in the narratives or in a comparative overview) ofwhy the particular selections here are compelling or "key" ones forthe events and period under discussion. Little of this is done.

What we do get in the book is some convincing evidence that avariety of capitalist countries are now experiencing "crises of capitalaccumulation" and are embarking on major re-organizations of theireducation systems in response to this. This is an extension of Bowlesand Gintis' useful historical work in showing how in one countryapproaches to education in different eras varied according to thecapitalist "needs" of that era. (This aspect of Bowles and Gintis'work, Part III of their book, has been virtually ignored in thebandwagon of critiques of their "correspondence thesis".) What wedo not get sufficiently, as I will go on to discuss in the rest of thisreview, is a sense of whether the interpretations here explain enoughabout the nature of the changes or the possibilities for action.

In the introduction of Capitalist Crisis and Schooling Sharp stressedthat the story of capitalism is not one of automatic reproduction butis one of class struggle. Quite clearly she wants theorizing tocontribute to action for a better society and a better schooling.(Sharp's introduction is highly polemical and likely to offend many

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readers, but it does clearly establish a point she wants to make: thateducational discussion is not some detached and neutral activity, butan activity that matters.) However, with only a few exceptions, thecase narratives presented in the book do not address the material in away that specifically contributes to taking action. They present thestory as one of schooling being re-organized in the interests of theeconomy, sometimes extending this by showing divisions within theState in relation to what best meets the needs of capital, or strugglesby teachers to resist the changes. But only rarely is there a sense ofaddressing teachers as actors or considering what sort of educationpolicy or action or struggle might be progressive rather than regressivein particular historical circumstances. And where this is done,especially by Sharp, it is simply brought in as an aside quite distinctfrom the narrative at hand (see p. 170 of the chapter on France, andher conclusions to her chapters on West Germany, p.67 and England,p.113).

(The two chapters in the book which do seem to address their taskmore broadly in terms of the issues I have just raised are Freeland'schapter on Australia and Wexler and Grabiner's on America. Bothprovide stimulating reflections on the movements in these countries ofrecent years, but interestingly they arrive at almost oppositeconclusions. Wexler and Grabiner's work is an attempt to explain andwarn of the dangers of corporatism in the economy and in schooling;Freeland argues that the current Australian form of corporatismshould be provisionally supported as a more progressive step thanlikely alternatives.)

In terms of its own agenda, it seems to me that Capitalist Crisis andSchooling does an important service in reviving a part of Bowles andGintis' insight (the relations of schooling to historically specific formsof capitalism) that has been almost wholly neglected in more microstudies of how the processes of schooling are working. In doing this,it brings together a number of aspects of the current situation (forexample, the attempts to blame schools for unemployment, to cutfunding, to make schools more narrowly vocational) which clearlyhave implications for the approaches research or action might need totake up in this particular context as compared with the early 70s forexample. However, the connections in this latter instance have beenexplored better in Sharp's and Wexler's work elsewhere than they arehere (see Sharp, 1984; Wexler, 1981a, 1981b; Wexler, Whitson andMoskowitz, 1981; Yates, 1986). At the same time, much of thematerial contained in the book is open to many of the charges againstBowles and Gintis which Sharp listed in her introduction (p.x): theoveremphasis on the powers of the economy as unmediateddeterminants of schooling; treating processes of schooling as a blackbox: neglecting the role of lived experience and agency.

So, in terms of directions for radical sociology, I am suggesting that

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Sharp is right in that attention to general questions about the shape ofsociety are important for understanding schooling and for locatingresearch projects and action. But I have suggested that this does notmean that attention to actions of people and processes of schoolingcan be subordinated to the analysis: both need to be taken seriously.

In terms of a second aim of the book, providing a model ofcomparative education, I am sympathetic to Sharp's discussion in theintroduction about the theoretical and discursive nature of the studiesthat need to be done, but I am not sure that what is presented here,though it tells a story with a left flavour, is greatly different in formto traditional work in this area.

In terms of the third of the claims for this volume in theintroduction, its assertion of having the answer to the question ofwhat are the most important features of schooling in contemporarysociety, we need to consider what it offers against some competingpropositions. And here, since this is not a book whose style is likely toendear it to those not already committed to some form of left view ofeducation, I want to look at two competing suggestions in that area ofcontemporary work which the volume fails to address. What I want toconsider here are not simply arguments about where research shouldbe focussed (on the micro-processes of schooling and group culture oron the society as a totality) but arguments concerning the nature ofwhat are the key features of society and directions of educationalconcern.

One particularly prominent approach in recent years to issues of thekey questions for education has been the theorizing about gender. Theview of the contributors to Sharp's volume is clearly that questionsabout gender are subordinate questions of "the capital relation" andthe ideologies and practices needed to support it, and that whatmatters is to create a socialist society. But what the varieties oftheorizing and action being developed in relation to sexism tend toagree on is that sexism is not simply the product of an economicrelationship, nor will it be removed simply by the existence ofsocialism (cf. Sargent, 1981; MacKinnon, 1982; O'Brien, 1984).Ideology as it is produced in schools is seen to be an important areaof investigation and action in its own right. In addition the questionof how the gender inequalities produced by schools relate to the'needs' of capital is by no means settled.

This does not mean that the types of questions raised in Sharp'svolume are irrelevant to this area. Indeed the question of thehistorically-specific social location and constraint on changes is onethat has been largely neglected in work on gender and which mayprovide some valuable insight. But it suggests that Sharp's polemicalintroduction about radical researchers who have lost the way is a littlemisplaced. Radical researchers have given a new serious attention tothe processes of schooling, to ideology in schooling, to the

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development of individuals, not simply because they saw this as thenext step in the light of the criticisms of Bowles and Gintis, butbecause new matters are now felt to be important, and there are newkinds of movements for social change. And Marx's theories, becauseof their own historically-specific location, are seen as a not entirelysatisfactory basis for addressing these new concerns (cf. O'Brien,1984; Martin, 1984).

A second competing claim to be considered against Sharp's analysisis the considerable number of contemporary Marxist analyses whichwant to say that understandings of ideology and culture in post-industrial society are centrally important. Attention to these spherestoday suggests that repressions and areas for action arise in ways notsimply derivable from an analysis of capital accumulation andeconomic crisis, nor from traditional understandings of class conflictand class struggle. In various ways writers such as Marcuse (1964,1972) and Habermas (1971, 1979) and in Australia, White (1979, 1984,1985), Hinkson (1977, 1985) and Johnson (1984) have raised the issueof the significance of the pervasive systems of education and of themedia as interventions and fundamental constructors of the formationof consciousness. These developments, such writers suggest, have amaterial base founded in modern technology and the world economicsystem, but it is a material base which is different from the immediateconcrete relations of exploitation of the 19th century employer/employee. So, from this rather different materialist analysis, thecontent of schooling is seen as important and as a site to be criticallyanalysed and acted on — its importance is not just as a black box thatthings are done to.

The significance of the competing contemporary analyses I have justreferred to in relation to Sharp's volume comes back to the problemof how one could draw from her analysis an agenda for action. Whatdoes "attacking the capital relation" mean? Both the work on genderand the Marxist cultural analyses are attempting to provide somefoundation for saying what moves in schooling might be valuable, andwhat ones require some fundamental opposition. In Sharp's volumetoo we get the occasional glimpse that although schooling aloneshould not be the focus, nevertheless what is done in school is neitherneutral nor irrelevant. But what is it that should be supported andfought for and why? Sharp at times suggests it is "really usefulknowledge" and elsewhere "a common curriculum"; the writers onJapan vote for education as "an arena of discussion, a place for thevictory of human reason"; Wexler and Grabiner want to rescue theidea of public schooling as purveyor of the common culture; Freelandon Australia supports moves towards equality and which mitigateunemployment. All this suggests a somewhat different agenda fromthe further empirical testing of her thesis that Sharp outlines in theconclusion. Nevertheless, the volume has been a timely intervention,

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though a patchy one, in the dabate about directions for radicalresearch.

References

Bowles, S. and Gintis, H., Schooling in Capitalist America, London, Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1976.

Habermas, J., Knowledge and Human Interests, Boston, Beacon Press, 1971.Habermas, J., Communication and the Evolution of Society, Boston, Beacon Press,

1979.Hinkson, J., 'The Emergence of Education as Therapeutic Management of an

Unconstrained Self, PhD. Dissertation, Centre for the Study of Innovation inEducation, La Trobe University, 1977.

Hinkson, J., 'Education: the New Conservatives', Arena 71, 1985, pp. 99-110.Johnson, L., 'The Uses of the Media: An Interpretation of the Significance of the Mass

Media in the Lives of Young People', Discourse, 4(2), 1984, pp. 18-31.MacKinnon, C.A., 'Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for

Theory' in N.O. Keohane, M.Z. Rosaldo, and B.C. Gelpi (eds.) Feminist Theory:A critique of Ideology, Sussex, Harvester Press, 1982.

Marcuse, H., One Dimensional Man (1964), London, Abacus, 1972.Marcuse, H., Counter-Revolution and Revolt, Boston, Beacon Press, 1972.Martin, J.R., 'Bringing Women Into Education Thought', Educational Theory 34(4),

Fall, 1984, pp. 341-353.O'Brien, M., 'The Comatization of Women; Patriarchal Fetishism in the Sociology of

Education', Interchange 15(2), pp. 43-60.Sargent, L. (ed.) Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of

Marxism and Feminism, Boston, South End Press, 1981.Sharp, R., 'Urban Education and the Current Education Crisis' in G. Grace (ed.)

Education and the City: Theory, History and Contemporary Practice, London,Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.

Wexler, P., 'Change: Social, Cultural and Educational', Journal of CurriculumTheorizing, 3(2), 1981a, pp. 157-164.

Wexler, P., 'Body and Soul: Sources of Social Change and Strategies of Education',British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2(3), pp. 247-263.

Wexler, P., Whitson, J. and Moskowitz, E.J., 'De-Schooling by Default: the ChangingSocial Functions of Public Schooling', Interchange, 12(2-3), pp. 122-150.

White, D., 'Structural Unemployment: the Meaning of the Micro-Processor', Arena, 52,1979, pp. 42-48.

White, D. 'Participating in Nothing: New Moves in Education', Arena 68, 1984, pp.79-90.

White, D. 'Education: Controlling the Participants', Arena 72, 1985, pp. 63-79.Yates, L., 'Theorizing Inequality Today', British Journal of Sociology of Education,

7(2), 1986, pp. 119-134.

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