ABSTRACT
Political economy is an expression that predates modern economics. In the 1970s and 1980s, scholars from the critical perspective raised a number of crucial questions about the relationship between education and the economy. In the US context, theorists of social and cultural reproduction such as Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis in Schooling in Capitalist America challenged the conventional wisdom that saw schooling as an equality-promoting device. Public schools are incessantly referred to in mass media and policy as being responsible for preparing the nation for global economic competition and preparing students to compete in the domestic economy. Fordist public schools represented an investment in long-term profit taking by capitalists who could exploit the future labor force. Critical scholars such as Henry Giroux and Stanley Aronowitz emphasized the theoretical limitations of social and cultural reproduction, including the fact that the theories so emphasize domination that the agency of teachers and students appears weak at best.
