Willis’ research involved visiting one school and observing and interviewing 12 working class rebellious boys about their attitude to school during their last 18 months at school and during their first few months at work.
Willis argues pupils rebelling are evidence that not all pupils are brainwashed into being passive, subordinate people as a result of the hidden curriculum.
Willis therefore criticizes Traditional Marxism. He says that pupils are not directly injected with the values and norms that benefit the ruling class, some actively reject these. These pupils also realise that they have no real opportunity to succeed in this system.
But Willis still believes that this counter-school culture still produces workers who are easily exploited by their future employers:
The Counter School Culture
Willis described the friendship between these 12 boys (or the lads) as a counter-school culture. Their value system was opposed to that of the school. This value system was characterised as follows:
- The lads felt superior to the teachers and other pupils
- They attached no value to academic work, more to ‘having a laff’
- The objective of school was to miss as many lessons as possible, the reward for this was status within the group
- The time they were at school was spent trying to win control over their time and make it their own
Attitudes to future work
- They looked forward to paid manual work after leaving school and identified all non-school activities (smoking, going out) with this adult world, and valued such activities far more than school work.
- The lads believed that manual work was proper work, and the type of jobs that hard working pupils would get were all the same and generally pointless.
- Their counter school culture was also strongly sexist.
Evaluations of Willis
- Very small sample of only working-class white boys
- Overly sympathetic with the boys