M. APPLE Ideology, Reproduction...

Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform
Author(s): Michael W. Apple

Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Oct., 1978), pp. 367-387
Published by: University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International
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Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform

MICHAEL W. APPLE
Introduction
Liberal educators have taken a rather optimistic posture on some

aspects of the past 10-15 years of educational reform in the United
States. This is particularly evident, perhaps, in those individuals and
groups who are concerned primarily with curriculum, with the knowledge that gets into schools, and who have either witnessed or participated in the growth of discipline-centered curricula throughout the
country. The position is often taken that school people, scholars, the
business community, parents, and others, all somehow working together,
have set in motion forces that have increased the stock of disciplinary
knowledge that all students are to get. Supposedly, this process of
increased distribution of knowledge has been enhanced by comparatively
large amounts of funding on a national level for curriculum development, teacher training and retraining, and so on. Success may not have
been total-after all, it almost never is-but better management and
dissemination strategies can be generated to deal with these kinds of
problems.
Given this posture, we have tended to forget that, often, what is not
asked about such widespread efforts at "reform" may be more important
than what we commonsensically like to ask. Who benefits from such
reforms? What are their latent connections to the ways inequality may be
maintained? Do the very ways we tend to look at schools and especially
the knowledge and culture they overtly and covertly teach (even ways
generated out of a fairly radical perspective) cover some of the interests
that they embody? What frameworks have been and need to be developed to generate the evidence which answers to these kinds of
questions require? In what follows, I shall outline some approaches for
dealing with these issues, approaches which incorporate some of the
current economic criticisms of schooling but which also respond to the
complex functioning of schools that even some of the analysts of the
political economy of education may tend to gloss over. Only when we can
see this complex functioning, some of which embodies clear economic
The analysis on which this article is based is expanded in Michael W. Apple, Ideology and
Curriculum(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, in press).
@ 1978 by the Comparative and International Education Society. 0010-4086/78/2203-0001$01.72
Comparative Education Review
367
MICHAEL W. APPLE
and cultural contradictions, can we honestly judge the worth of many of

the recent curricular reform effects to change schools in various ways. In
order to do this, we shall have to focus more clearly on two things: (1) the
ideological as well as economic role of schooling in general and the
curriculum within it and (2) the ideological role of the models most
commonly used by educators and policy analysts to understand these
reforms.
Cultural and Economic Reproduction
Many economists and not a few sociologists and historians of education have a peculiar way of looking at schools. They envision the
institution of schooling as something like a black box. One measures
input before students enter schools and then measures output along the
way or when "adults" enter the labor force. What actually goes on within
the black box-what is taught, the concrete experience of children and
teachers-is
less important in this view than the more global and
macroeconomic considerations of rate of return on investment or, more
radically, the reproduction of the division of labor. While these are
important considerations, perhaps especially that dealing with the role of
the school as a reproductive force in an unequal society, by the very
nature of a vision of school as black box they cannot demonstrate how
these effects are built within schools. Therefore, these individuals are less
precise than they could be in explaining part of the role of cultural
institutions in the reproduction they want to describe. Yet, as I shall
argue here, such cultural explanations need to be gotten at; but it
requires a different but often complementary orientation than the ones
these and other scholars employ.
There is a unique combination of elite and popular culture in schools.
As institutions, they provide exceptionally interesting, and politically and
economically potent, areas for the investigation of mechanisms of cultural distribution in a society. Thinking of schools as mechanisms of
cultural distribution is important since, as the late Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci noted, a critical element in enhancing the ideological dominance
of certain classes is the control of the knowledge preserving and producing institutions of a particular society.' Thus, the "reality" that schools
and other cultural institutions select, preserve, and distribute may need
to be particularized, in Mannheim's words,2 so' that it can be seen as a
particular "social construction" which may not serve the interests of every
individual and group in society.
1 Thomas R. Bates, "Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony," Journal of the History of Ideas 36
(April-June 1975): 36.
2
Karl Mannheim, Ideologyand Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1936).
368
October 1978
IDEOLOGYAND EDUCATIONALREFORM
Now it has become something of a commonplace in recent sociological

and educational literature to speak of reality as a social construction. By
this, these scholars, especially those of a phenomenological bent, mean
two things. (1) Becoming a person is a social act, a process of initiation in
which the neophyte accepts a particular social reality as reality tout court,
as the way life "really is." (2) On a larger scale, the social meanings
which sustain and organize a collectivity are created by the continuing
patterns of commonsense interaction of people as they go about their
lives.3 Now this insertion of the social element back into what has
increasingly become a psychological problem in Anglo-Western society is
certainly an improvement over the view of many educators who hold that
the patterns of meanings which people use to organize their lives and
attempt to transmit through their cultural institutions are independent of
social or ideological influences. The notion that there is a "social
construction of reality" is a bit too general, however, and not as helpful as
we might think in understanding the relationships that exist between
cultural institutions, particularly schools, and the framework and texture
of social and economic forms in general. As Whitty succinctly puts it, "the
overemphasis on the notion that reality is socially constructed seems to
have led to a neglect of the consideration of how and why reality comes to
be constructed in particular ways and how and why particular constructions of reality seem to have the power to resist subversion."4 Thus, the
general principle of the social construction of reality does not explain
why certain social and cultural meanings and not others are distributed
through schools, nor does it explain how the control of the knowledge
preserving and producing institutions may be linked to the ideological
dominance of powerful groups in a social collectivity.
The opposite principle, that knowledge is not related in any significant way to the organization and control of social and economic life, is
also problematic, of course, though this may be a surprise to many
curriculum theorists. This is best stated by Raymond Williams in his
critical analysis of the social distribution of culture:
The pattern of meanings and values through which people conduct their
whole lives can be seen for a time as autonomous, and as evolving within its own
terms, but it is quite unreal, ultimately, to separate this pattern from a precise
political and economic system, which can extend its influence into the most
unexpected regions of feeling and behavior. The common prescription of
3 This is, of course, best laid out by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann,TheSocialConstruction
of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1966). The most articulate challenge to the use of such
"phenomenological"formulations in education is found in Rachel Sharp and Anthony Green,
Education and Social Control: A Study in ProgressivePrimary Education (London:

Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1975).
4 Geoff Whitty, "Sociologyand the Problem of Radical EducationalChange," in Educability,
SchoolsandIdeology,ed. MichaelFlude and John Ahier (London: Halstead, 1974), p. 125.
369
MICHAEL W. APPLE
education, as the key to change, ignores the fact that the form and content of
education are affected, and in some cases determined, by the actual systems of
[political] decision and [economic] maintenance.5
Both Whitty and Williams are raising quite difficult issues about what
might be called the relationship between ideology and school knowledge,
yet the context is generally British. It should not surprise us that there is a
rather extensive history of dealing with issues concerning the connections
between culture and control on the Continent and in England. For one
thing, they have had a less hidden set of class antagonisms than the
United States. That the tradition of ideological analysis is less visible in
American educational and cultural scholarship speaks to two other
concerns though: the ahistorical nature of most educational activity and
the dominance of an ethic of amelioration through technical models in
most curriculum discourse.6 The ahistorical nature of the field of
curriculum is rather interesting here. Anyone familiar with the intense
argumentation both within and on the fringes of the Progressive Education Association during its history soon realizes that one of the major
points of contention among progressive educators was the problem of
indoctrination. Should schools, guided by a vision of a more just society,
teach a particular set of social meanings to their students? Should they
concern themselves only with progressive pedagogical techniques, rather
than espouse a particular social and economic cause? Questions of this
type "plagued" democratically minded educators in the past, and the
controversy continues, though in a different vocabulary, to this day.
In fact, as Stanwood Cobb, one of the early organizers of the
Progressive Education Association, stated in a recent interview, many
progressive educators throughout the early decades of this century were
quite cautious about even raising the question of what actual content
should be taught and evaluated in schools. They often preferred to
concern themselves primarily with teaching methods, in part because the
determination of curriculum was perceived as inherently a political issue
which could split the movement.7 Cobb's estimation of the larger structural causes behind these educators' choice of arenas in which to act may
or may not be historically accurate. The fact remains though that, at least
phenomenologically, many educators recognized that the culture pre5 RaymondWilliams,TheLongRevolution(London:Chatto& Windus, 1961), pp.
119-20.
Herbert M. Kliebard,"PersistentCurriculumIssues in HistoricalPerspective,"in Curriculum
TheReconceptualists,
ed. WilliamPinar(Berkeley:McCutchan,1975), pp. 39-50.
Theorizing:
7 Taped interviewgiven at the Universityof Wisconsin--Madison.The necessityfor large-scale
educationalreform movementsto have this cautious penumbraof vagueness is analyzedfurther in
B. Paul KomisarandJames McClellan,"The Logic of Slogans,"in LanguageandConcepts
in Education,
ed. B. Othanel Smith and RobertEnnis (Chicago:Rand McNally,1961), pp. 195-214.
6
370
October 1978
IDEOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM
served and distributed by schools as well as other institutions was not

necessarily neutral. They perceived their own actions as often stemming
from that recognition. Unfortunately, as I noted, these recurring historically significant issues have not informed current curriculum argumentation in the United States as much as they have in, say, England and
France. Yet, there is a growing recognition that schools in advanced
industrial societies like our own may serve certain social classes rather
well and other classes not at all well. Thus, I can think of few areas of
investigation more pressing than that which seeks to uncover the linkages
between meaning and control in our cultural institutions.
While I cannot present a fully worked-out theory of culture and
control at this time (though individuals such as Raymond Williams, Pierre
Bourdieu, and Basil Bernstein have begun such a task),8 I would like to
do a number of things here. First, I will provide a discussion of the basic
framework of assumptions under which the recent work on the relationship between ideology and school experience operates. This will be
compared with the traditions which now predominate in curriculum
research today. I will then take one aspect of the argument about the
linkages between curriculum and ideological and economic structure and
outline some general propositions about it. These propositions
should be seen more as hypotheses than as final proof and will undoubtedly require historical, conceptual and empirical-to
say nothing of
to demonstrate their fruitfulness. These
comparative-investigations
hypotheses will concern the relationship between what curricular knowledge is accorded high status in our society and its economic and cultural
effects. I shall argue that it is difficult to think through the past and
present problems of the form and content of curriculum without
attempting to uncover the complex nexus linking cultural and economic
reproduction together. Let us begin by briefly examining the extant
traditions-as
ideal types-that
tend to provide the assumptive
of
a
deal
of
current
curriculum work.
background
good
The Achievement and Socialization Traditions
A large proportion of educational and curriculum theories and

scholarship today derive their programmatic impetus and their logical
warrant from the various psychologies of learning now available. While
Schwab and others have demonstrated that it is a logical error to attempt
8
See, e.g., Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press,
1973); Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron, Reproductionin Education, Society and Culture
(London: Sage Publications, 1977); and Basil Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, vol. 3, Towardsa
Theoryof Educational Transmissions,2d ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
371
MICHAEL W. APPLE
to derive a theory of curriculum (or pedagogy) from a theory of

learning9- something all too many curriculum theorists still do not seem
to realize-there is another difficulty that is more germane to my own
discussion here. The language of learning tends to be apolitical and
ahistorical, thus hiding the complex nexus of political and economic
power and resources that lies behind a considerable amount of curriculum organization and selection. In brief, it is not an adequate
linguistic tool for dealing with what must be a prior set of curriculum
questions about some of the possible ideological roots of school knowledge. In their simplest aspects, these questions can be reduced to the
following issues: "What is actually taught in schools?" "What are the
manifest and latent social functions of the knowledge that is taught in
schools?" "How do the principles of selection and organization that are
used to plan, order, and evaluate that knowledge function in the cultural
and economic reproduction of class relations in an advanced industrial
society like our own?"'1 These questions are not usually part of the
language game of psychology. Let us examine the conceptual framework,
the board, on which language games of this type are played just a bit
further.
There seem to have been two rather distinct ways educators (and
psychologists, sociologists, and economists) have investigated school
knowledge. One has centered around the issue of academic achievement.
The second has been concerned less with questions of achievement than
with the role of schools as socialization mechanisms,1"
In the academic achievement model, curricular knowledge itself is not
made problematic; rather, the knowledge that finds its way into schools is
usually accepted as given so that comparisons can be made among social
groups, schools, children, etc. Thus, academic performance, differentiation, and stratification based on relatively unexamined presuppositions of
what is to be construed as valuable knowledge are the guiding interests
behind the research. The focus tends to be on determining the variables
that have a major impact on an individual's or group's success or failure
in school, such as the "adolescent subculture," the unequal distribution of
educational resources, or, say, the social background of the students. The
social goal is maximizing academic productivity.
9
Joseph Schwab, The Practical: A Languagefor Curriculum (Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, 1970), and Dwayne Huebner, "Implications of Psychological Thought for the
Curriculum," in Influencesin CurriculumChange, ed. Glenys Unruh and Robert Leeper (Washington,
D.C.: ASCD, 1968), pp. 28-37.
10 I have discussed these issues further in Michael W.
Apple and Nancy King, "What Do Schools
Teach?" CurriculumInquiry 6, no. 4 (1977): 341-58.
" I am drawing on the insightful exposition of these two research traditions in Philip Wexler,
"Ideology and Utopia in American Sociology of Education" (unpublished paper, Department of
Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison), pp. 20-21.
372
October 1978
Unlike the academicachievementmodel, the socializationapproach

does not necessarilyleaveschoolknowledgeunexamined.In fact,one of
its primaryinterestsis in exploringthe socialnormsand valuesthat are
taughtin school.However,becauseof thisinterest,it restrictsitselfto the
studyof whatmightbe called"moralknowledge."It establishesas given
theset of societalvaluesand inquiresinto how the schoolas an agent of
societysocializesstudentsinto its "shared"set of normativerules and
dispositions.RobertDreeben'swell-knownlittlebook,OnWhatIs Learned
in Schools,can providean excellentexamplehere.12
These approachesare not totallywrong,of course,and have in the
past contributedto our understandingof schoolsas culturaland social
mechanisms,though perhaps not alwaysin the way the approaches
intended. In fact, one advantageof the extended accountsof, say,
socializationby Dreebenand others is that they enhanceour abilityto
illuminatewhatis takenfor grantedas commonsense,as given,for such
an approachto actuallybe acceptedas a cogent explanationat all.13As
such,theypointbeyondthemselvesto the natureof meaningandcontrol
in schools.
Whatthey tacitlyacceptand, hence, fail to questionis importantfor,
on closerinspection,each of these two researchtraditionsis problematic
in its own way.The academicachievementmodel,influencedmore and
morestronglyby managerialconcernsof technicalcontrolandefficiency,
has begun to neglect the actualcontent of the knowledgeitself, thus
failingto take seriouslythe possibleconnectionbetweeneconomicsand
the structureof schoolknowledgeother than to argue, say, the importanceof the "production"
of studentswithstrongdisciplinaryaffiliations
if "democracy
is to be keptstrong,"and so on. The socialization
tradition,
while insightfulin its own way, focuseson socialconsensusand on the
parallelsthatexist betweenthe "given"valuesof a largercollectivityand
educationalinstitutions.It thus ignores to a very large extent the
politicalandeconomiccontextin whichsuchsocialvaluesfunctionandby
which certain sets of social values become the (by whose definition?)
dominantvalues.14Furthermore,both almosttotallydisregardsome of
the latent functionsof the form and contentof the schoolcurriculum.
And this is exactlywhatthe traditionof whathas come to be calledthe
"sociologyof schoolknowledge"wantsto inquireinto.15
"12Robert Dreeben, On WhatIs Learnedin Schools (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968).
13 Michael F. D.
Young, "On the Politics of Educational Knowledge," in Education in GreatBritain
and Ireland, ed. R. Bell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 201.
"14Wexler, p.
21.
For further examination of the roots of this tradition, see Michael W. Apple, "Power and
School Knowledge," Review of Education 3 (January/February 1977): 26-49; and Michael W.
Apple
and Philip Wexler, "Cultural Capital and Educational Transmissions," Educational
Theory27 (Winter
1978): 34-43.
'5
373
MICHAELW. APPLE
The Sociology and Economics of School Knowledge
A fundamentalstartingpointin this thirdand morecriticaltradition

is that articulatedby Young in his argumentthat there is a "dialectical
relationshipbetweenaccessto powerand the opportunityto legitimize
of
certaindominantcategories,andthe processesbywhichthe availability
suchcategoriesto somegroupsenablesthemto assertpowerand control
over others."16Thus, to put it another way, the problematicinvolves
examininghow a systemof unequalpowerin societyis maintained,and
of culture.17The school,
partlyrecreated,by meansof the "transmission"
as a rathersignificantagentof culturaland economicreproduction(after
all, every child goes to it, and it has importanteffects as both a
credentialingand socializinginstitution)becomesan importantinstitution here, obviously.
Like the socializationtradition,the focus of these investigationshas
been on how a societystabilizesitself. Whatis the place of schoolsin
maintainingthe way economicand educationalgoods and servicesare
controlled,produced, and distributed?However,these questionsare
guidedby a more criticalposturethan, say,Dreeben,for muchof these
individuals'commitmentto thisparticularkindof problemstemsfroman
affiliationwith socialistmovements.They begin with somethingbroadly
like a Rawlsiantheoryof justice,that is, for a societyto be trulyjust, it
mustmaximizethe advantageof the leastadvantaged.18Thus,anysociety
whichincreasesthe relativegapbetween,say,richand poorin the control
of and access to culturaland economic"capital"(as recent economic
reportsshowoursdoes, for instance)needsto be questioned.Howis this
inequalitymadelegitimate?Whyis it accepted?As Gramsciwouldput it,
how is this hegemonymaintained?
For many of these researchers,this seeming socialand ideological
stabilityis seen in part"asrelyingupon the deep and often unconscious
internalizationby the individualof the principleswhich govern the
existingsocialorder."19However,these principlesare not perceivedas
beingneutral.They are seen as intimatelyinterconnectedwitheconomic
and politicalstratification.
Forexample,in the American,British,and Frenchanalysescurrently
being done by Bowlesand Gintis,myself,Bernstein,Young,and Bour16
Michael F. D. Young, "Knowledge and Control," in Knowledgeand Control, ed. Michael F. D.
Young (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1971), p. 8.
"17Bourdieu and Passeron, p. 5.
18sI have analyzed the conceptual and political commitments further in Apple, "Power and
School Knowledge."
19 Madeleine MacDonald, The Curriculumand Cultural
Reproduction (Milton Keynes, England:
Open University Press, 1977), p. 60.
374
October 1978
dieu, the individual's underlying perception of the social order of which

he or she is a part provides the locus of understanding. Thus, for
instance, a British commentator on Bowles and Gintis's interesting but
too mechanistic book writes:20 "In the work of Bowles and Gintis
emphasis is given to the importance of schooling in forming the different
personality types which correspond to the requirements of a system of
work relations within an economic mode of production."21 In this way,
for Bowles and Gintis, not only does education allocate individuals to a
relatively fixed set of positions in society-an allocation of positions
determined by economic and political forces-but the process of education itself, the formal and hidden curriculum, socializes people to accept
as legitimate the limited roles they ultimately fill in society.22
Other similarly oriented scholars take a comparable stance in examining the effect schools may have on the formation of the consciousness of
individuals. Thus, for instance, Basil Bernstein and I have argued that, to
a significant extent, "through education the individual's 'mental structures' (i.e., categories of thought, language, and behavior) are formed,
and that these mental structures derive from the social division of labor."
In France, the investigation of the relationship between cultural reproduction and economic reproduction is being carried out in a parallel vein
by Bourdieu. He analyzes the cultural rules, what he calls the habitus,that
link economic and cultural control and distribution together.23
Bourdieu focuses on the student's ability to cope with what might be
called "middle-class culture." He argues that the cultural capital stored in
schools acts as an effective filtering device in the reproduction of a
hierarchical society. For example, schools partly recreate the social and
economic hierarchies of the larger society through what is seemingly a
neutral process of selection and instruction. They take the cultural
capital, the habitus, of the middle class, as natural and employ it as if all
children have had equal access to it. However, "by taking all children as
equal, while implicitly favoring those who have already acquired the
linguistic and social competencies to handle middle-class culture, schools
take as natural what is essentially a social gift, i.e., cultural capital."24
Bourdieu asks us, thus, to think of cultural capital as we would economic
20
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schoolingin CapitalistAmerica (New York: Basic, 1975).
MacDonald, p. 309. This piece also provides a number of interesting criticisms of Bowles and
Gintis's reliance on a correspondence theory.
22
John W. Meyer, "The Effects of Education as an Institution," AmericanJournal of Sociology53
(July 1977): 64.
23
MacDonald, pp. 34-47; see also, Apple and King (n. 10 above); and Bourdieu and Passeron
(n. 8 above).
24
Roger Dale, Geoff Esland, and Madeleine MacDonald, eds., Schooling and Capitalism: A
SociologicalReader (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 4.
21
375
MICHAELW. APPLE
capital.Just as our dominanteconomicinstitutionsare structuredso that

thosewho inheritor alreadyhaveeconomiccapitaldo better,so too does
culturalcapitalactin the sameway.Culturalcapital("goodtaste,"certain
kinds of prior knowledge,abilities,and languageforms) is unequally
distributedthroughoutsociety,and thisis dependentin largeparton the
division of labor and power in that society. "By selecting for such
properties,schoolsserve to reproducethe distributionof powerwithin
the society."25
For Bourdieu,to understandcompletelywhatschoolsdo,
who succeedsand who fails, one must not see culture as neutral,as
necessarilycontributingto socialprogress.Rather,one sees the culture
tacitlypreservedin and expectedby schoolsas contributingto inequality
outsideof these institutions.
Behindthese points,hence,is an argumentwhichstatesthatwe shall
have to recognizethat, like poverty,poor achievementis not an aberration. Bothpovertyand curricularproblems,suchas lowachievement,are
of the organizationof economic,cultural,and sociallife
integralproducts
as we knowit.26(I shallhave more to say aboutseeing manycurricular
problems,such as achievement,as "naturallyproduced"by our institutions shortly,when we consider further the formal corpus of school
knowledgein the next sectionof thisanalysis.)
Givenargumentsof thistype,then,whatis it thatthisthirdtraditionis
basicallysaying?
The assumption underlying most of the "reproduction"theories is that
educationplaysa mediatingrole betweenthe individual'sconsciousnessand
society at large. These theorists maintain that the rules which govern social
behavior,attitudes,morals and beliefs are filtered down from the macrolevel of
economic and political structuresto the individualvia work experience, education processes and family socialization. The individual acquires a particular
awareness and perception of the society in which he lives. And it is this
understanding and attitude towards the social order which [in large part]
constitutehis consciousness.27
bothknowledgeand people.In essence,

Schools,therefore,"process"
the formaland informalknowledgeis used as a complexfilterto process
people, often by class;and, at the same time, differentdispositionsand
values are taught to differentschool populations,again often by class
(and sex and race). In effect, for this more criticaltradition,schools
latentlyrecreateculturaland economicdisparities,though this is certainlynot whatmostschoolpeopleintendat all.
25
Ibid.
26
R. W. Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p.
27
MacDonald,p. 60.
219.
376
October 1978
Let me pause here to clarify one thing: This is not to maintain that
either culture or consciousness is mechanistically determined (in the
strong sense of that term) by economic structure. Rather, it seeks both to
bring to a level of awareness and to make historically and empirically
problematic the dialectical relationship between cultural control and
distribution and economic and political stratification.28 Our ordinary
taken from the achievement and socialization
perceptions-ones
are bracketed. The "cognitive interest" underlying the
models-hence,
research program is to look relationally, if you will, to think about school
knowledge as being generated out of ideological and economic conflicts
"outside" as well as "inside" education. These conflicts and forces set
limits on (not mechanistically determine) cultural responses. This requires subtlety, not appraisals which argue for a one-to-one correspondence between institutional life and cultural forms. Neither all curricula
nor all culture are "mere products" of simple economic forces.29
In fact, I want to note a critical caveat at this point. There is an
obvious danger here, one that should not go unrecognized. To make the
actual "stuff' of curriculum problematic, to hold what currently counts as
legitimate knowledge up to ideological scrutiny, can lead to a rather
vulgar brand of relativism. That is, to see overt and hidden curricular
knowledge as social and historical products ultimately tends to raise
questions about the criteria of validity and truth we employ.30 The
epistemological issues that might be raised here are not uninteresting, to
say the least. However, the point behind these investigations is not to
relativize totally either our knowledge or our criteria for warranting its
truth or falsity (though the Marxist tradition has a long history of just this
debate, as the controversy between, say, Adorno and Popper documents;
we have much to learn from the epistemological and political issues raised
by this debate, by the way).3 Rather, as I just mentioned, the
methodological dictum is to think relationally or structurally. In clearer
culture and economics interpenetrate and act
"28The two-way nature of this relationship-how
on each other in a dynamic fashion-is best examined in Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," New Left Review 83 (November/December 1973): 3-16.
29 Ibid.; see also the final
chapter, "Aspects of the Relations between Education and Production,"
Bernstein (n. 8 above).
30 Michael F. D. Young, "Taking Sides against the Probable," Rationality,Education and the Social
Organizationof Knowledge,ed. Chris Jenks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), pp. 86-96; and
Michael W. Apple, "Curriculum as Ideological Selection," ComparativeEducation Review 20
(June
1976): 209-15.
31 See,
e.g., Albrecht Wellmer, CriticalTheoryof Society(New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), esp.
chap. 1; see also the discussion of the position taken by the French Marxist philosopher of science,
Louis Althusser, in Miriam Glucksmann, StructuralistAnalysisin
ContemporarySocial Thought(London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974). Though it may be difficult to deal with "proving" critically oriented
social assertions using the positivist tradition, this does not mean that empirical documentaion of
aspects of the problem is inconsequential. This is nicely argued in Connell (n. 26 above).
377
MICHAEL W. APPLE
terms, one should look for the subtle connections between educational
phenomena, such as curriculum, and the latent social and economic
outcomes of the institution.
These points are obviously similar to those often associated with the
critical theorists of the Frankfurt school, who have argued that the
context in which we perceive social facts, the general way we conceptually
organize our world, may hide the fact that these seemingly commonsensical appearances serve particular interests.32 But these interests cannot
merely be assumed; they need to be documented. In order to lay some of
the foundation of this documentation, we shall need to turn to some of
the hypotheses that I mentioned earlier, I would suggest. We shall need to
explore how cultural distribution and economic power are intimately
intertwined, not just in the teaching of "moral knowledge" as in some of
the reproduction theorists, but in the formal corpus of school knowledge
itself.
On the Problem of High-Status Knowledge
The discussion in the previous sections of this analysis centered on the

general political, economic, and conceptual arguments that those people
interested in the problem of ideology and curriculum have focused upon.
It compared this critical tradition with the current achievement and
socialization models predominant in the field. I should now like to take
one aspect of the relationship between cultural distribution and economic
power and explore it further. I want to employ this critical framework in
order to engage in some speculations about how certain knowledgeparticularly that knowledge which is considered to be most prestigious in
schools-may, in fact, be linked to economic reproduction. In essence, I
want to begin to think through some of the issues associated with the
distribution of knowledge and the creation of inequality that people like
Bourdieu, Bernstein, Young, and others have sought to raise. At the
forefront of our minds, I think, should be Bourdieu's point that I noted
in the last section. If you want to understand how cultural and
economic/political forms work in tandem, then think of both as aspects of
capital.
In order to delve into the connectionsbetween these forms, I shall be
using the language of cultural "transmissions," in effect treating cultural
artifacts and knowledge as if they were things. However, the notion of "as
if" must be understood as exactly that, as a metaphor for dealing with a
much more complex process in which, say, students do not merely take in
32
Ian Hextall and Madan Sarup, "School Knowledge, Evaluation and Alienation," in Society,
State and Schooling, ed. Michael Young and Geoff Whitty (London: Falmer, 1977), pp. 151-71.
378
October 1978
information, cultural attributes, etc., but rather they also transform (and
sometimes reject) these expected dispositions, propensities, skills, and
facts into biographically significant meanings.33 Thus, while the act of
treating knowledge as a thing makes for ease of discussion, a methodological simplification if you will, it needs to be understood as just such a
simplifying act. (The fact that it is usually considered a thing in our
society does, of course, point to its reification as a commodity in advanced
industrial societies.)34
Once again, one of Michael F. D. Young's arguments is helpful as a
beginning here. He states that "those in positions of power will attempt to
define what is taken as knowledge, how accessible to different groups any
knowledge is, and what are accepted relationships between different
knowledge areas and between those who have access to them and make
them available."35 Though this is not always or even necessarily a
conscious process of manipulation and control, and hence may be a bit
overstated, it does raise the issue of the relative status of knowledge and
its accessibility. For within this statement is a proposition that might entail
something like the following. The possession of high-status knowledge,
knowledge that is considered of exceptional import and is connected to
the structure of corporate economies, is related to and in fact seems to
entail the nonpossession by others. In essence, high-status knowledge "is
by definition scarce, and its scarcity is inextricably linked to its instrumentality."36
This is an exceptionally critical point and needs to be gone into a bit
further. I have argued that schools do not merely "process" people but
that they "process" knowledge as well. They enhance and give
legitimacy
to particular types of cultural resources which are related to
unequal
economic forms. In order to understand this, we want to think about the
kinds of knowledge that schools take as the most important, that
they
want to maximize. I shall define this as technical knowledge, not to
denigrate it, but to differentiate it from, say, aesthetics, physical grace,
and so on. The conception of the maximization of technical
knowledge is
See the articles by Hugh Mehan and Robert MacKay in Childhoodand Socialization, ed. Hans
"33
Peter Dreitzel (New York: Macmillan, 1973), and Linda M. McNeil, "Economic Dimensions of Social
Studies Curricula: Curriculum as Institutionalized
Knowledge" (doctoral thesis, University of
Wisconsin-Madison,
1977).
34 Whitty (n. 4 above).
35 Michael F. D. Young, "An Approach to the Study of Curricula as Socially
Organized
Knowledge," in Young, Knowledgeand Control.There are interesting parallels here between the work
of Young and Huebner in their joint focus on curricular
accessibility (cf. Dwayne Huebner,
"Curriculum as the Accessibility of Knowledge," mimeographed
[paper presented at the Curriculum
Theory Study Group, Minneapolis, March 2, 1970]).
36 Bernice Fischer, "Conceptual Masks: An
Essay Review of Fred Inglis, Ideology and the
Imagination,"Review of Education 1 (November 1975): 526; see also Hextall and Sarup, pp. 151-71.
379
MICHAEL W. APPLE
a useful principle, I think, in beginning to unpack some of the linkages

between cultural capital and economic capital.37
Our kind of economic system is organized in such a way that it can
create only a certain amount of jobs and still maintain high profit levels
for corporations. In essence, the economic apparatus is at its most
efficient when there is a (measured) unemployment rate of approximately 4%-6% (though we know that this is a notoriously inaccurate
measure to which must also be added both the issues of much higher
rates for blacks and of high levels of underemployment). To provide
useful work for these individuals would require cutting into acceptable
rates of return and would probably require at least the partial reorganization of so called "market mechanisms" which apportion jobs and resources. Because of this, it would not be a misplaced metaphor to describe
our economic system as naturally generating specifiable levels of underand unemployment.38 We can think of this model as one which is
primarily concerned with the maximization of the production of profit
and only secondarily concerned with the distribution of resources and
employment.
Now a similar model seems to hold true when we think about
knowledge in its relationship to such an economy. A corporate economy
requires the production of high levels of technical knowledge to keep the
economic apparatus running effectively and to become more sophisticated in the maximization of opportunities for economic expansion.
Within certain limits, what is actually required is not the widespread
distribution of this high-status knowledge to the populace in general.
What is needed more is to maximize its production. As long as the
knowledge form is continually and efficiently produced, the school itself,
at least in this major aspect of its function, is efficient. Thus, certain low
levels of achievement on the part of "minority" group students, children
of the poor, and so on can be tolerated. It is less consequential to the
economy than is the generation of the knowledge itself. Once again,
production of a particular "commodity" (here, high-status knowledge) is
of more concern than the distribution of that particular
commodity. To
the extent that it does not interfere with the production of technical
" The principle that schools serve to maximize the production of technical knowledge was first
noted by Walter Feinberg in his provocative chapter, "A Critical
Analysis of the Social and Economic
Limits to the Humanizing of Education," in HumanisticEducation: Visionsand Realities, ed. Richard H.
Weller (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1977), pp. 249-69. My analysis here is indebted to his own.
38 Andrew Hacker, "Cutting Classes," New YorkReview
of Books 23 (May 1976): 15. Hacker notes
that at full employment our economy can usefully
employ only about 43% of the work-age
population. It is not profitable to employ more than that. "Some of the unnecessary 57% become
housewives, college students, or retire on moderate pension. Others, however, must settle for a
lifetime of poverty because the economic system offers them no alternatives."
380
October 1978
knowledge, then, concerns about distributing it more equitably can be

tolerated as well.
Thus, just as in the "economic market place" where it is more efficient
to have a relatively constant level of unemployment, to actually generate
it really, so do cultural institutions "naturally" generate levels of poor
achievement. The distribution or scarcity of certain forms of cultural
capital is of less moment in this calculus of values than the maximization
of the production of the particular knowledge itself.
This, I think, goes a long way in explaining the economic role of the
debate on standards and open enrollment at universities. It also clarifies
some of the reasons school and curricula seem to be organized toward
university life in terms of the dominance of subject-centered curricula
and the relative prestige given to differing curricular areas. This relationship between economic structure and high-status knowledge might also
explain some of the large disparities we see in levels of funding for
curricular innovations in technical areas and, say, the arts.
The structure-of-discipline movement provides an interesting example of a number of these points about power and culture. The disciplinecentered approach was not a serious challenge to the traditional view of
curriculum; rather, it was an argument that a particular commodityhere academic' knowledge-by
a particular community was not being
"marketed"
in
schools.39
Even when it was accepted by most
effectively
school people as the most important curricular knowledge and was given
large doses of federal support to assist its adoption in schools, competing
power claims were evident about what was to be high-status knowledge.
For instance, substantial funding was given to mathematics and
science curriculum development while less was given to the arts and
humanities. This occurred then and still occurs now for two possible
reasons. First is the question of economic utility. The benefits of maximizing the production of scientific and technical knowledge are easily visible
and, at least at the time, seemed relatively noncontroversial. Second,
high-status knowledge appears to be discrete knowledge. It has a (supposedly) identifiable content and (again, supposedly) stable structure40
that are both teachable and, what is critically important, testable. The arts
and humanities have obviously been seen to be less amenable to such
"31Geoff Whitty and Michael F. D. Young, "The Politics of School Knowledge," TimesEducational
Supplement(September 5, 1973), p. 20.
40 This is an empirical claim, of course, and is falsifiable. There are a number of educators and
scientists who would take issue with such a simplification of science and mathematics (see,
e.g.,
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1970]).
What aspects of scientific "paradigms" are stable is being argued right now (see Imre Lakatos and
Alan Musgrave, Criticismand the Growthof Knowledge [London: Cambridge University Press, 1970],
and Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding[Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1972]).
381
MICHAEL W. APPLE
criteria, supposedly because of the very nature of their subject matter.

Thus, one has a twofold, nearly circular proposition working here.
High-status knowledge is seen as macroeconomically beneficial in terms
of long-run benefits to the most powerful classes in society; and the
socially accepted definitions of high-status knowledge preclude consideration of nontechnical knowledge.
It is important to note the stress on macroeconomic considerations.
Obviously, television repair is a subject which, if learned well, may
provide economic benefits to its user. However, the economy itself will
not be unduly impaired if this is not accorded prestige status. In fact, if
Braverman's analysis is correct-that our economic structure requires
the continual division and breaking down of complex skills into less
complex and more standardized skills-economic control may be helped
by the lack of prestige given to such craftsmanship. The same does not
seem to hold true for technical knowledge.41
We have two levels working here again. The constitutive or underlying social and economic rules make it essential that subject-centered
curricula be taught, that high status be given to technical knowledge. This
is, in large part, due to the selection function of schooling. Though this is
more complex than I can go into here, it is easier to stratify individuals
according to "academic criteria" when technical knowledge is used. This
stratification or gouping is important because not all individuals are seen
as having the ability to contribute to the generation of the required
knowledge form (as well as partly because of the structural requirements
of the division of labor, of course). Thus, the cultural content (legitimate
or high-status knowledge) is used as a device or filter for economic
stratification,42 thereby enhancing the continued expansion of technical
knowledge in an economy like ours, as well. At the same time, however,
one might expect that, within this constitutive framework, educators
would be relatively free to respond (or not to respond) to more immediate economic pressures, such as career education and so forth.
In short, one major reason that subject-centered curricula dominate
most schools, that integrated curricula are found in relatively few schools,
is at least partly the result of the place of the school in maximizing the
production of high-status knowledge. This is closely interrelated with the
school's role in the selection of agents to fill economic and social positions
in a relatively stratified society.
With Young, I have suggested here that some of the relations among
Harry Braverman, Laborand MonopolyCapital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).
The close relationship between academic curricula, the distribution of scarce resources, and
the labeling and tracking of high school students is documented in James E. Rosenbaum,
Making
Inequality (New York: Wiley, 1976).
41
42
382
October 1978
IDEOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM
who controls rewards and power in a society, the patterns of dominant

values, and the organization of cultural capital can best be uncovered by
focusing on the stratification of knowledge. It would not be illogical to
claim that, based on what I have argued here, generally, any attempt to
make substantive alterations in the relationship between high-status and
low-status knowledge, by, say, making different knowledge areas equal,
will tend to be resisted. This would also probably mean that attempts to
use different criteria to judge the relative value of different curricular
areas will be looked on as illegitimate incursions, as threats to that
particular "order."43
Examples of this are not difficult to find in the area of evaluation. For
instance, the usual way one evaluates the success of curricula is by
employing a technical procedure, by comparing input with output. Were
test scores raised? Did the students master the material? This is, of
course, the achievement model I described earlier. When educators or
policy analysts want to evaluate in another, less technical way, by looking
at the "quality"of that curricular experience or by raising questions about
the ethical nature of the relationships involved in the interaction, they
can be rather easily dismissed. Scientific and technical talk in advanced
industrial societies has more legitimacy (higher status) than ethical talk.
Ethical talk cannot be easily operationalized within an input/output
perspective. And, finally, "scientific" criteria of evaluation give "knowledge," while ethical criteria lead to purely "subjective" considerations.
A current example might be helpful here. After massive reanalysis of
studies relating schooling to mobility, Jencks, in Inequality,concluded that
it was quite difficult to generalize about the roles schools
play in
one's
chances
at
a
better
future.
he
it
increasing
Thus,
notes, might be
wiser to focus less on mobility and achievement and more on the
quality
of a student's actual experience in classrooms, something with
strangely
(though pleasantly) Deweyan overtones. However, Jencks's argument
that we must pay greater attention to the quality of life within our
educational institutions had its roots in ethical and political considerations and was dismissed rather readily. His criteria for
making that
statement were perceived as being illegitimate. They had little
validity
within the particular set of language games of which evaluation
partakes
and, hence, are accorded little status.44
"3Young,
"An Approach to the Study of Curriculum," in

Young, Knowledgeand Control, p. 34.
Habermas's analysis of how purposive/rational or instrumental forms of

"44
language and action
have come to
dominate our consciousness is illuminating here (see Jurgen Habermas,

Knowledgeand
Human Interests [Boston: Beacon, 1971], and Michael W.
Apple, "The Process and Ideology of
Valuing in Educational Settings," in EducationalEvaluation: Analysisand Responsibility,ed. Michael W.
Apple, Michal Subkoviak, and Henry Lufler, Jr. [Berkeley: McCutchan, 1974]). We would want to
trace the growth in status of purposive/rational forms of action within the concomitant
growth of
particular economic systems. Raymond Williams's corpus of work provides essential models for this
kind of inquiry (see The Long Revolution [n. 5 above] and The
Countryand the City [n. 8 above]).
383
MICHAELW. APPLE
Notice something else about what this insistence on technical criteria

does. It makes both the kinds of questions raised, and the answers given
to them, the province of experts, those individuals who possess the
knowledge already. In this way, the relative status of the knowledge is
linked to the kinds of questions deemed acceptable, which in turn seems
to be linked to its nonpossession by other individuals. The form of the
questions becomes an aspect of cultural reproduction since these questions can only be answered by experts who already have had the technical
knowledge distributed to them. The stratification of knowledge in this
case again involves the stratification of people, though less on an
economic level here.
Hegemony and Reproduction
All of this is quite involved, obviously, and rather difficult to untangle,

I know. While our understanding of these knotty relationshps is still
tentative, it does raise anew one of the questions to which I referred earlier.
Given the subtle connections in this process of the generation of cultural
as well as economic reproduction, how and why do people accept it?
Hence, the question of hegemony, of ideological stability, that is raised by
the reproduction theorists emerges once more.45 For it is here that the
research of Bowles and Gintis, Bernstein, Bourdieu, and others on the
social reproduction of the values, norms, and dispositions transmitted by
the cultural apparatus of a society offers part of an explanation. One
form of reproduction (through "socialization" and what has been called
the hidden curriculum) complements another (the formal corpus of
school knowledge), each of which seems to have ties to economic
stuff
inequality. It is in the interplaybetween curricular knowledge-the
we teach, the "legitimate culture"-and the social relations of classroom
life that the reproduction theorists describe, that we can begin to see
some of the real relations schools have to an unequal economic structure.
Again notice what I am saying, for it constitutes part of an argument
against the conspiracy theories so popular in some revisionist critiques of
schooling. This process of reproduction is not caused (in the strong sense
of that concept) by an elite group of managers who sat, or now sit, around
tables plotting ways to "do in" their workers at both the workplace and
the school. While such an account may accurately describe some aspects
of why schools do what they do,46 it is not a sufficient explanation of the
"45Reviews of some of the relevant research on the question of hegemony can be found in David
W. Livingston, "On Hegemony in Corporate Capitalist States," SociologicalInquiry 46, nos. 3 and 4
(1976): 235-50, and Connell (n. 26 above), chap. 7-10.
"46
Barry Franklin and I have documented part of this in a recent paper which examines the
historical linkages between social and economic ideologies and the dominant modes of curriculum
organization and selection (see Michael W. Apple and Barry Franklin, "Curricular History and Social
Control," in CommunityParticipationin Education, ed. Carl Grant [Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1978]).
384
October 1978
nexus of forces that actually seem to exist. I am arguing, instead, that,

given the extant economic and political forms which now provide the
principles upon which so much of our everyday lives are organized, this
reproductive process is a "logical necessity" for the continued maintenance of an unequal social order. The economic and cultural unbalance
follows "naturally."47
This may make it hard for educators such as ourselves to deal with the
problem. We may, in fact, have to take seriously the political and
economic commitments that guide the reproduction theorists. Serious
educational analysis may require a more coherent theory of the social and
economic polity of which we are a part. While I have explored cultural
mechanisms here, it is just as essential to remember Williams's points that
neither culture nor education are free floating. To forget that is to
neglect a primary arena for collective action and commitment.
Some of this economic concern is summarized by Henry Levin. In a
review of the effects of large-scale educational interventions by the
government to try to reduce economic inequality through reforms in
curriculum and teaching, he concludes:
Educational policies that are aimed at resolving social dilemmas that arise out of
the basic malfunctioning of the economic, social and political institutions of the
society are not amenable to solution through educationar policy and reform. The
leverage available to the most benevolent educational reformer and policy
specialist is limited by the lack of a constituency for change and the overwhelming
momentum of the educational process in the direction of social reproduction of
the existing polity. And, there is a deleterious result in our efforts if educational
attempts to change society tend to direct attention away from the locus of the
problem by creating and legitimating the ideology that schools can be used to
solve problems which did not originate in the educational sector.48
Yet once again, we must be cautious of this kind of approach, for it

can lead us back to viewing schools as little black boxes. And that is what
we rejected at the outset.
Some Concluding Questions
I want to stop here, knowing full well that much more could be and
needs to be said about the topics I have raised. For example, in order to
go further with the relationship between high-status knowledge and an
"external" social order, one would have to inquire into the history of the
concomitant rise of new classes of social personnel and the growth of
new types of "legitimate" knowledge." These issues obviously require
Williams, The Long Revolution (n. 5), pp. 298-99.
Henry M. Levin, "A Radical Critique of Educational Policy," Occasional Paper of the Stanford
University Evaluation Consortium, March 1977, mimeographed (Stanford, Calif.).
49 Basil Bernstein has made some intriguing inroads into this area in his "Aspects of the
Relations between Education and Production" in Bernstein (n. 8) (see also, Nicos Poulantzas, Classes
in ContemporaryCapitalism[London: New Left Books, 1975]).
47
48
385
MICHAELW. APPLE
much more thought to be given to the conceptual problem of the

dialectical relationship between cultural control and social and economic
structure. How does each affect the other? What role does an educational
system itself play in defining particular forms of knowledge as high
status? What role does it play in helping to create a credentialing process
based on the possession (and nonpossession) of this cultural capital, a
credentialing system that provides numbers of agents roughly equivalent
to the needs of the division of labor in society? These questions imply
something important, I think, for this relationship is not a one-way street.
Education is both a "cause" and an "effect" here. The school is not a
passive mirror but an active force, one that also serves to give legitimacy
to the economic and social forms and ideologies so intimately connected
to it.50 And it is just this action which needs to be unpacked. Rather than
asking whether large-scale attempts at educational and curricular reform
contribute to greater "success," it might be more appropriate to ask
"success for whom?"51 If certain kinds of cultural capital are seen as
important, who actually benefits from its distribution, accumulation,
production, and increased legitimacy? We may find that the institutional
and curricular reforms in which educators place so much hope may be
part of a subtle and interconnected set of structural relations that are
aspects of economic and cultural reproduction. Because of this I have
argued that a serious appraisal of educational reform needs to be
grounded in an analysis of the complex relationships among knowledge,
ideology, economics, and power. I have suggested a number of questions
and hypotheses about these relationships, as well, especially those dealing
with the connections between economic and cultural capital.
Questions of this type are not usually asked in curriculum, of course.
However, we need to remember that these concerns are not something
totally new to the discourse surrounding American education. In fact, we
must not see this kind of sociologically and economically inclined curriculum scholarship as being an attempt to carry on any so-called
"reconceptualization" of the curriculum field, though that name has been
applied to some recent analysts of power and school knowledge.52
Rather, the questions which guide this work need to be seen as having
rather deep roots in the curriculum field, roots we may have unfortu50 See the interesting essay by John W. Meyer (n. 22 above). Randall Collins's
attempt to
articulate a theory of cultural markets ("Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification,"
Harvard Educational Review 47 [February 1977]: 1-27) is also of some assistance here. It is a bit
conceptually confused, though (see my reply to him in Harvard Educational Review 47 [November
1977]: 601-2).
"51See, e.g., Rolland G. Paulston, "Social and Educational Change: Conceptual Frameworks,"
ComparativeEducation Review 21 (June/October 1977): 285.
52
William Pinar, ed., CurriculumTheorizing:The Reconceptualists(Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975).
386
October 1978
nately forgotten, given the ahistorical nature of education.

We need only to recall what stimulated the early social reconstructionists in education (Counts; Smith, Stanley, and Shores; Brameld; and
so on) to begin to realize that one of the guiding themes in past
curriculum work has been the role schools fulfill in the reproduction of
an unequal society. While these individuals may have been much too
optimistic in viewing schools as powerful agencies in redressing this
imbalance, and while a number of them ultimately backed away from
large-scale structural alterations in our polity,53 the principle of examining the linkages between cultural and economic institutions is a valued
part of our past. It is time to make it our present and future as well.
"53
Walter Feinberg, Reason and Rhetoric: The Intellectual Foundations of TwentiethCenturyLiberal
Educational Policy (New York: Wiley, 1975).
387

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What is the main topic discussed in the article?

What is the main topic discussed in the article?

What questions does the author suggest need to be asked about educational reforms?

What questions does the author suggest need to be asked about educational reforms?

Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform

Author(s): Michael W. Apple

Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform

Liberal educators have taken a rather optimistic posture on some

Comparative Education Review

and cultural contradictions, can we honestly judge the worth of many of

Now it has become something of a commonplace in recent sociological

Education and Social Control: A Study in ProgressivePrimary Education (London:

IDEOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM

served and distributed by schools as well as other institutions was not

A large proportion of educational and curriculum theories and

Comparative Education Review

to derive a theory of curriculum (or pedagogy) from a theory of

Unlike the academicachievementmodel, the socializationapproach

Comparative Education Review

The Sociology and Economics of School Knowledge

A fundamentalstartingpointin this thirdand morecriticaltradition

dieu, the individual's underlying perception of the social order of which

Comparative Education Review

capital.Just as our dominanteconomicinstitutionsare structuredso that

educationplaysa mediatingrole betweenthe individual'sconsciousnessand

bothknowledgeand people.In essence,

Comparative Education Review

The discussion in the previous sections of this analysis centered on the

Comparative Education Review

a useful principle, I think, in beginning to unpack some of the linkages

knowledge, then, concerns about distributing it more equitably can be

Comparative Education Review

criteria, supposedly because of the very nature of their subject matter.

IDEOLOGY AND EDUCATIONAL REFORM

who controls rewards and power in a society, the patterns of dominant

"An Approach to the Study of Curriculum," in

Habermas's analysis of how purposive/rational or instrumental forms of

dominate our consciousness is illuminating here (see Jurgen Habermas,

Comparative Education Review

Notice something else about what this insistence on technical criteria

All of this is quite involved, obviously, and rather difficult to untangle,

nexus of forces that actually seem to exist. I am arguing, instead, that,

Yet once again, we must be cautious of this kind of approach, for it

Comparative Education Review

much more thought to be given to the conceptual problem of the

nately forgotten, given the ahistorical nature of education.

Comparative Education Review

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