Understanding Education: A Defence of a Class Analysis

Abstract

This paper outlines the basic features of a class analysis of contem porary schooling. I argue that recent materialist theories of human agency complement radical research about school resistance and provide support for a modified reproduction theory, one which avoids the theoreticist assumptions and determinist implications of conventional versions. In particular, this conjunction of critical theory and social history enables us to explain the class-determined selective and socialising functions of schooling in non-functionalist terms, and without any elitist imputation of 'cultural deficiency'. I defend the force and relevance of this holistic understanding in my treatment of contemporary educational trends and controversies, notably to do with the curriculum and with class and gender relations. Furthermore, I explicate this defence and its policy implications through a critical analysis of the 'progressive' critique Making the Difference by Connell, Ashenden, Kessler and Dowsett (1981). I argue that the likely reproductive consequences of their major recommendations are based upon their abandonment of a class analysis, and that, moreover, this 'silent acceptance' of domi nant politico-economic and ideological determinations and trends serves to provide a 'progressive' gloss to current official consolida tion of a two-class educational system.