Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

Review
Author(s): Alexander J. Field
Review by: Alexander J. Field
Source: The Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 275-277
Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/145392
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 Reviews I 275

Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational

Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
Pp. 340.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis's main thesis in Schooling in Capitalist A mer-
ica is that one cannot understand the evolution of the American educational
system without first understanding the evolution of the American economic and
social structure. The implication they draw is that educational reform cannot
succeed in the absence of social and economic reform. This is a provocative
argument which, I believe, is fundamentally correct. The book obviously has im-
portant implications for policy-makers (to say the least) and deserves to be read
carefully by all concerned with the organization of our educational, economic,
and political systems. Readers should nevertheless be aware that the authors
have proceeded rather unevenly in presenting and documenting their arguments.
The first and last sections of the book (chapters 1-2 and 10-11) summar-
ize Bowles and Gintis's critique of the school system and outline their suggested
reform strategy. The charges leveled against the educational system are not
entirely novel: the school system today, as much as yesterday, they argue, rein-
forces and legitimates economic inequality and severely limits the full develop-
ment of human potentialities. Bowles and Gintis do not, however, treat these
phenomena as remediable aspects of a school system which is irrational and
reformable in itself, but rather link them to the requirements of the capitalist
economy within which the school system operates. In order to eliminate aspects
of the school system generally perceived as undesirable, they argue, the capitalist
economy must first be drastically modified to allow for an economic democracy
within the workplace that corresponds to the (at least nominal) political democ-
racy without.
In one of the most forceful sections of the book, the authors clearly part
company with advocates of "free schools" and "educational liberation" as a
strategy of social revolution per se. Besides arguing that such programs by them-
selves will merely produce unhappy workers, they take issue with the theoretical
underpinnings of such a strategy. "Schools cannot be considered repressive mere-
ly because they induce children to undergo experiences they would not choose
to on their own, or because they impose forms of regimentation which stifle
immediate spontaneity. Schools . . . are intrinsically constraining" (p. 272).
The objective, they argue, should not be the elimination of schooling as a
mechanism for social control, but rather the creation of a just and humane
economy for which socialization would be desirable.
In this book the authors have attempted to survey a vast amount of litera-
ture in search of contemporary (chapters 3-5) and historical (chapters 6-9)
evidence in support of their hypotheses. Chapters 3-5 include discussions of the
work of Bowles and Nelson and others on the role of IQ in the reproduction of
economic inequality, and the research of Gintis, Edwards, and others on the cor-
respondence between the personality traits rewarded in school and on the job.
The historical chapters sketch out three major periods of educational reform-the
common school revival, the Progressive model, and the post-Sputnik era- and

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276 I THE JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCES

argue that the educational changes that took place during these periods reflected
important quantitative and qualitative changes in the economic system.
The iron control necessary to maintain command over such a disparate
body of evidence-only a subset of which is described above-is unfortunately
not always evident. It is my impression that the presentation of the contempor-
ary literature suffers less from its absence than does that of the historical, perhaps
because the authors are forced to rely in the historical sections on research in
which they were less directly involved. A major problem in the historical sections
is a tendency to state propositions that ought to be presented as working hy-
potheses as empirical generalizations drawn from vast quantities of historical
research. This contrasts unfavorably with the very carefully worded 1974 Bowles
and Nelson article upon which parts of chapter 2 and most of chapter 4 are
based. That article concluded that even allowing for a high estimate of the
heritability of IQ, the role of IQ in transferring income and occupational
status from generation to generation is small, at least for non-Negro males from
nonfarm backgrounds. The empirical procedures, structure of the model, and
qualifications of the conclusions were carefully specified, making it easy to pin-
point the location of possible disagreements with the analysis.
The standards that govern the presentation of that research do not prevail,
unfortunately, in much of the rest of the book. An examination of the foot-
notes for chapter 6, for example, indicates that 32 out of 71 contain one or
more deficiencies. These include the absence of page or chapter references,
misspelled names of authors, incorrect dates of publication, incorrect titles,
references made to the wrong work of the right author, as well as more serious
errors such as the misreporting of results and the citing of a source in support
of a point when in fact the source contradicts the point, or at least does not
fully support it.
For example, on pages 155-56 the authors claim that shoemakers cast over
half the no-votes on retention of the Beverly High School. In fact, according to
Katz, less than 37 percent of the no-votes were cast by shoemakers. On page 173
the authors describe a decline in attendance rates for the under-20 population in
Massachusetts between 1837 and the 1860 antebellum period. Both Vinovskis
and this reviewer, whom they cite in support of this point, report substantial
increases in attendance rates when using the 4-16 and 5-15 age groups as de-
nominators. On page 227 Bowles and Gintis quote Frank Tracy Carlton, and
refer to his Economic Influences Upon Educational Progress in the United States,
1820-1850. No page number is given, which is understandable, because the quote
is actually from the same author's History and Problems of Organized Labor.
This cavalier attitude toward the reporting and documentation of particular
points (not peculiar to chapter 6) will not help convince those skeptical of the
overall interpretive framework. Capitalism, argue Bowles and Gintis, makes it
difficult for us to take craft pride in our work. Surely the authors had less costly
means at their disposal to illustrate this point.
It is hardly surprising that in a work of this scope there are at times un-
resolved contradictions in the analysis. This shows up in some of the historical
discussion as well as in their interpretation of current political trends, something

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 Reviews 1 277

to which the feasibility of their reform strategy is critically sensitive. This book
was published, after all, in 1976, not 1966. On page 7 they describe the present
as characterized by a mood of "inertial pessimism" in which "many people,
viewing the failure of progressive social movements [turn to] the private pursuit
of pleasure." On page 16, on the other hand, they describe "a nearly universal
striving among people for control over their lives, free space to grow, and social
relationships conducive to the satisfaction of group needs." The authors obvi-
ously hope that their work will influence the relative importance of these two
tendencies, but the success of the reform strategy they propose depends at least
partially on which way the wind is blowing, and on this account the authors
sound neither totally convinced nor convincing.
The scope of this work and the nature of the solutions that it advocates
require that it be judged by the highest standards. The authors deserve credit
for tackling a wide range of problems, many of which are more often than not
left unaddressed by those who claim more limited objectives and produce results
that are, if less interesting, also less subject to criticism. If Bowles and Gintis
have not always been entirely accurate or complete in their interpretation of
research results, documentation, or citation of sources, they have at least made
consistent efforts to credit those from whose counsels they have benefited. Al-
though the feasibility of the radical solution they propose remains problematic,
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have provided us with a provocative work-a
work that will stand as a monument to the disarray in which liberal social and
educational policy found itself at the end of the 1960s.

ALEXANDERJ. FIELD
Stanford University

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