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

4.5 out of 5 stars 81

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Hailed by the New Society as the "best book on male working class youth," this classic work, first published in 1977, has been translated into several foreign languages and remains the authority in ethnographical studies.


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Editorial Reviews

Review

As fresh and challenging as when it was first published, Learning to Labor remains the text to inspire and teach ethnographers, from whatever disciplines,who probe unsentimentally human agency in institutions, political economy, and within the general constraints of modernity. -- George E. Marcus

The unique contribution of this book is that it shows, with glittering clarity, how the rebellion of poor and working class kids against school authority prepares them for working class jobs.No American interested in education or in labor can afford not to read and study this book carefully. --
Stanley Aranowitz

About the Author

Paul Willis is Research Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press; Morningside edition (April 15, 1981)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 226 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231053576
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231053570
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1370L
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 81

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
81 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2009
The two books that have contributed most to the way I think about the social world and what it means to be are Simone DeBeauvoir's The Ethics of Ambiguity and Paul Willis' Learing to Labor. The first one hundred pages of Willis' book are loaded with insights and antidotes to conventional wisdom: Why are working class students often anti-school and generally anti-authoritatian? Because schools ask a great deal in terms of work, conformity, fun foregone, and deference to school officials, but they offer little or nothing in return: working class children are almost certain to become working class adults. Thus, the absence of a basis for exchange generates hostility and resentment. Is that such a bad thing? It's tough on teachers, counselors, administrators, and on students who see reason to conform. But in the 1970's when Learning to Labor was written, a working class life in a British industrial city was reasonably comfortable and had it's own rewards. So from the classroom to the shopfloor was a natural and easy transition to the world of work for the sons of working class fathers.

For readers in the U.S., the absence of interest in upward mobility may seem self-defeating, and may be taken as evidence of family dysfunction. Oddly, however, the families studied by Willis seem supportive and warm; sons admire their fathers and have respect and affection for their mothers; fathers and mothers share their sons' alienation from schooling; and their reasons seem readily interpretable and in no way manifestations of family dysfunction.

The anti-authoritarian students embrace the ethos of masculinity and toughness that provides their occupationally devalued fathers with self-esteem. Sadly this way of valorizing a working class life assures that the British working class will remain suffused with pernicious sexism.

It's easy to romanticize Willis' working class rebels, and he sometimes makes this mistake. Whatever their attractive qualities, however, sexism, racism, and active derision toward same-aged students with a different mind-set are conspicuous characteristics of their way of life.

Perhaps the most troubling question for 21st century readers of Willis' book is what happens to working class students today? The factory floor is unoccupied. Working class jobs have been moved enmasse to third world countries to reduce labor costs. A well-defined social identity and lived culture have been destroyed. Again we see that whatever our position, nothing much is guaranteed. All this is part of the often very painful process of what DeBeauvoir called "disclosure of being in the world."
29 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2011
It has been many years since I read this book in graduate school. I actually bought a new copy for a friend who is a reading instructor and interested in the sociology of learning. Willis' book is a brilliant study of working class British students. It details how these students develop their own society out of a sense of self-preservation. The school system works to keep them in their working class ghettos and the inner society they develop helps them to cope with the inequites they face daily: And will continue to face as adults.

I read this book as I thought about the United States and the severe inequities in our own educational system. There are some very disturbing parallels, and though the study in the book is some years old, I would invite anyone interested in thinking about education in a democratic society to review this book as a starting point for discussion of today's issues.
5 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2021
Though the study is from decades ago, the premise of this book runs true not only in industrial England, but in America as well. Interesting study on how English working lads perpetuate their own condition.
Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2018
Arrived as expected, no time to read it.
Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2014
A must-read for sociologists, particularly those in the field of cultural studies, gender and youth research. Although an older book, it is still very much current.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2017
Context and time matters, so I didn't get as much as I would have liked. No fault to the author.
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2017
Very happy with the book and the service received.
Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2016
Will be using for my Masters thesis

Top reviews from other countries

tracey
5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth a read !
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 14, 2021
Absolutely love this book, been looking to get it for a while so I’m chuffed with my purchase.
One person found this helpful
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sil
5.0 out of 5 stars book s condition
Reviewed in Canada on April 14, 2014
The book is excelent. I alread have red it. A cassical study about school and boys.
But the condition of the books was notso good. It is underlined with orange marker. I dont like that.
Sil
R. Kipling
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2017
Willis study still has currency over 40 years later
One person found this helpful
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 30, 2017
A classic!!
One person found this helpful
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Diane Little
4.0 out of 5 stars Very informative and insightful into the development and process of ...
Reviewed in Canada on October 14, 2014
Very informative and insightful into the development and process of working class kids and their socio-cultural actions in school correlated to their future as working class adults. By using observation and active dialogue, Willis provided first-hand accounts of the counter-culture revolution occurring in British schools.