TRANSPOSICIÓN DEL ORDENAMIENTO COMUNITARIO Y PERSPEC- PERSPEC-TIVA CRÍTICA DE LA NORMAPERSPEC-TIVA VIGENTE EN ESPAÑA

In studying education from an economic perspective US economists Bowles and Gintis (1976) broadly took a classical Marxist economic view of schooling in society. They viewed the private ownership of production and financial resources as unequal, in turn giving control of economic activities to their owners and managers, bringing relations of dominance and subordination within the confines of such capitalist enterprises. Bowles and Gintis (1976) contend that the

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powerful position of the owners and managers was not perpetually secure, therefore the long term success of the system depended on (i) a widely accepted ideology justifying the social order, and (ii) a set of social relationships that both validated this ideology through every day experience and fragmented the ruled-over public into mutually indifferent or antagonistic groups. Bowles and Gintis define the dominant aims of schooling as ‘technocratic-meritocratic’, developing the highest level of intellectual capacity to get ahead economically (1976:110).

Within this ideological perspective inequalities of income, wealth and social status were justifiable by their claim that only the ‘most talented’ people in society could fill the highest positions in society. In consequence the hierarchical division of labour was an unconsciously evolved means by which society ensured that the most important positions were

conscientiously filled by the ‘best’ qualified people. By so doing fairness through meritocracy was secured by recognising individuals’ personal abilities, and technical competence secured by equal access to education. Critical of this view, on the grounds that it created an

ideologically-based false consciousness forced upon the working classes, Bowles and Gintis (1976) claim:

It is clear that the consciousness of the workers - belief, values, self - concepts, types of solidarity and fragmentation, as well as models of personal behavior and development - are integral to the perpetuation, validation and smooth operation of economic institutions. The reproduction of the social relations of production depends on the reproduction of consciousness.

(Bowles and Gintis 1976:127)

Applying this theoretical framework to education they assert that:

it tailors the self-concepts, aspirations, and social class identification of individuals to the requirements of the social division of labor.

(Bowles and Gintis 1976:129).

Bowles and Gintis argue that the dominant ‘technocratic-meritocratic’ ideology is reproduced in schools and operates on a correspondence principle. Their contention is that education does not operate through the conscious intentions of teachers and education managers in their day-to-day activities, but through a close correspondence between the social relationships which

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governs personal interaction in the work place and social relationships within the education system. In particular they contend that:

the relationships of authority and control between administrators and teachers,

teachers and students, and students and their work replicated the hierarchical division of labour which dominated the work place

(Bowles and Gintis1976:179).

A further strand of critical curriculum theory is its emphasis of so-called cultural ‘reproduction theory’ through which scholars (e.g. Bernstein, 1973: 71-112; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), broadly argue that society’s education provision reflects cultural knowledge that privileges high culture, its values and its cultural practices. These include for example, cultural forms of language, literary and media experience, theatre-going and the kinds of newspapers read through which cultural knowledge is mediated. Their analysis aligns culturally with Bernstein's theory of elaborated codes. Schooling is seen to have a tendency to legitimate and reproduce home and community cultural practices that align with school knowledge, thereby predisposing some children to successful schooling. Schools may claim to be fair and neutral transmitters of a common culture but come to be seen as active maintainers of social inequality.

Bernstein (1990) concludes that schools help to reproduce social inequality as differentiated by social class, identifying individuals’ ways of knowing and being as cultural ‘codes’. According to Bernstein (1990) children from dominant class families are educationally advantaged by having acquired 'the elaborated codes' by their socialisation through home and community interaction and consciousness (Bernstein 1990). Thereby schools, in turn, legitimate, transmit and

reproduce 'elaborated codes' through which learners are differentially positioned in schools to succeed. For Bernstein class ‘codes’ operate to privilege dominant, class-based forms of social consciousness:

. . . symbolic control is the means whereby consciousness is given a specialized form and distributed through forms of communication which relay a given distribution of power and dominant cultural categories

(Bernstein 1990:134)

23 Bernstein’s theory assumes that,

. . . class reproducing functions would be maintained, even strengthened through the strong linkage of education, symbolic control, and the cultural field

(Bernstein 1990:160)

For Bernstein curriculum theory must address differential class codes through a widening selection of school knowledge and legitimating the cultural knowledge of working class children whose more restricted codes have previously disadvantaged them from the beginning of their schooling.

Bourdieu and Passeron’s definition of school knowledge as a form of ‘symbolic capital’

theorises as a social economy how the interests of powerful social groups are sustained

(Bourdieu and Passeron 1977). They claim that unequal distribution of cultural ‘capital’ tends to reproduce unequal distributions of economic capital, and thereby increase the overall power of elite groups. Traditionally established competencies of the elite class cultures have not only become legitimated but been transmitted unequally by schools. Bourdieu and Passeron further claim that selected curriculum knowledge perpetuates ideologies that are historically

misrepresented and concealed inequalities in the structure of relationships on which social and cultural power have been based. In turn this inequality disguises the contribution of schools to the reproduction of these relations and to the power of dominant groups to influence schooling (Bourdieu and Passeron 1977:112).