Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs

TitleLearning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs
Publication TypeBook
Year of Publication1981
AuthorsWillis, Paul E.
Number of Pages244
PublisherColumbia University Press
ISBN Number978-0-231-05357-0
AbstractA landmark work in sociology, cultural studies, and ethnography since its publication in 1977, Paul Willis's Learning to Labor is a provocative and troubling account of how education links culture and class in the reproduction of social hierarchy. Willis observed a working-class friendship group in an English industrial town in the West Midlands in their final years at school. These "lads" rebelled against the rules and values of the school, creating their own culture of opposition. Yet this resistance to official norms, Willis argues, prepared these students for working-class employment.
Short TitleLearning to Labor