Schools both reproduce inequality and generate resistance to it

Evidence

Fourth, though the school system has effectively served the interests of profit and political stability, it has hardly been a finely tuned instrument of manipulation in the hands of socially dominant groups. Schools and colleges do indeed help to justify inequality, but they also have become arenas in which a highly politicized egalitarian consciousness has developed among some parents, teachers, and students. The authoritarian classroom does produce docile workers, but it also produces misfits and rebels. The univer­ sity trains the elite in the skills of domination, but it has also given birth to a powerful radical movement and critique of capitalist society. The contra­ dictory nature of U.S. education stems in part from the fact that the im­ peratives of profit often pull the school system in opposite directions. The types of training required to develop productive workers are often ill suited to the perpetuation of those ideas and institutions which facilitate the profitable employment of labor. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Confirms the anti-determinism thread running through works like Hall’s Cultural Studies — institutions reproduce power but also host its critique. — connects to: Classrooms either reproduce or resist systems of oppression through education. — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 332; Schools replicate workplace dominance hierarchies to produce a docile labor force. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1120; Differentiated schooling reproduces rather than abolishes class divisions (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Differentiated schooling reproduces rather than abolishes class divisions #corroborates (0.92)
• Schools serve as the machinery that manufactures differentiated intellectual strata #corroborates (0.88)
• Merely resisting school can reproduce the class system it aims to escape #complicates (0.85) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1062
• Doing well in school can be coded by minority peers as betraying one’s culture #exemplifies (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1300
• Resistance to oppression also creates social categories of difference #expands (0.78)
• School choice worsens inequality when access prerequisites are unequal #exemplifies (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 957