ABSTRACT

If the social control of girls by boys is not to be explained by biology but by politics, as I have suggested in the last chapter, then the question arises as to what this might mean. Obviously, what is not meant is that such behaviour is recommended in the Conservative Party’s manifesto; numerous though their sins are, this is not one of them. Neither do I mean ‘of or affecting the State’ (Concise Oxford Dictionary). As I shall go on to argue, the social control of women by men is much wider than the parameters of state control. What is meant by ‘political’ is simply ‘involving power’. This is hardly new: there is an entire sociological tradition which looks critically at the role of schooling in reproducing power divisions in society. Sometimes empirical studies have set out to discover whether schooling promotes social mobility (Halsey, Heath and Ridge 1980). 1 Sometimes the work has been more abstract in its attempt to theorize the relationship between social divisions in school and those in the wider society. Bowles and Gintis (1976), for example, point to the ways in which authority relations in school ‘mirror’ those to be found in the workplace. Although there has been much debate concerning the best way to characterize the relationships between school and the wider society, the central claim has been that schooling is political in so far as it selects and prepares children for their place in society as adults. More specifically, it is argued that school reproduces the social structure, which in our case is capitalism. There is nothing particularly unusual about this: within any society schools are subject to social policy which attempts to ensure that future citizens are imbued with knowledge, values and beliefs necessary to the maintenance of society (Nicholas 1983). In the light of this we may feel less inclined to have much faith in the ‘indoctrination/education’ dichotomy and although what goes on in Chinese schools tends to be called ‘indoctrination’ (as opposed to ‘education’ in the West), when it comes to it we are all involved in the same business: preparing the young to take their places in the future as conforming citizens.