Beyond the Correspondence Theory: Notes on the Dynamics of Educational Reproduction and Transformation

Within the last decade various forms of radical scholarship have played an important in stripping schools of the ethical and political innocence attributed to them by functionalist social theorists. Inspired by the dream rather than the reality of liberal democracy, functionalist accounts of schooling echoed the cheery harmony of Talcott Parsons and described schools as socializing institutions designed to provide students with -the values and skills necessary for them to function productively in the larger society (Parsons 1959; Dreeben 1978). Steeped in the logic of consensus and role socialization, functionalist left unexamined questions concerning the relationship of schools to issues of power, class conflict, and social control. Radical critics rejected the apolitical and consensusbased model of the functionalists; instead, they attempted to illuminate the political nature of schooling. They did this by pointing to the that schools played in reproducing the inequities of wealth and power that characterized the existing society. At the core of these critiques of schooling is what can be called a theory of correspondence. The was first formulated by Herbert Gintis (1972) in his critique of Ivan Illich. Since that time, it has been articulated by a number of radical theorists,' and appears to have reached its most elaborate expression in Bowles and Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America (1976). In spite of its many versions, the core of the correspondence remains relatively unchanged. In essence, it represents a model of reproduction, the casual and determining force being the structure, relations, and patterns of the workplace. Broadly speaking, the correspondence posits that the hierarchically structured patterns of values, norms, and skills that characterize the work force and the dynamics of class interaction under capitalism are mirrored in the social dynamics of the daily classroom encounter. Schooling in this view functions through its classroom relations to produce students with the attitudes and dispositions that make them docile and receptive to the social and economic imperatives