The Journal of Hunan Resources 12 (Spring 1977):27S-277. Reviews | 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 Bowies and Herbert Gintis’s main thesis in Schooling in Capitalise Amer: 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 requizements of the capitalist economy within which the school system operates. In order to eliminate aspects fof the schoo! 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” 2s 3 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 1Q 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276 | 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 rot 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, perhay because the authors are forced to rely in the histotical 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- ppotheses 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 1Q, the role of 1Q 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 fo¢ 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 nowotes 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 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 asin their interpretation of current political trends, something 10Reviews | 277 to which the feasibility of their reform strategy is critically sensitive. This book ‘was published, afterall, 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 fof 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 feasibity 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 1960. ALEXANDER J, FIELD Stanford University Ww