Bowles and Gintis Analyze Education And U.S. Economy

The American educational system is incapable of bringing about social equality, Samuel S. Bowles, assistant professor of Economics, said yesterday.

Herbert M. Gintis, assistant professor of Economics, who spoke with Bowles to a group of 50 in Gutman Library, said that "radical economic change is necessary" for a solution to problems like poverty, racial prejudice and political and economic inequality.

Bowles and Gintis rejected the traditional view of education in a Marxian analysis of the political economy of education. The problems of education are essentially due to the "repressive and autocratic nature of the economy," Gintis said. The last 50 years show the failure of education in promoting economic equality, he added.

Education fails to have an equalizing influence because it is attached to an economic system that does not evaluate people on their academic achievement, Gintis said. Instead, he said, one's economic status is determined by one's race, "behavior, social class identification, dress and style."

Schools are responsible for creating the highly stratified, hierarchical nature of the modern economy. They accomplish this by establishing a corresponding system of social relations. "Education selects and generates personality traits, primarily the ability to give and take orders," Gintis said.

Bowles and Gintis's speech was the first of four scheduled at the Graduate School of Education on the political economy of education this year. They are being sponsored by the X-150 collective of the Ed School.

Both Bowles and Gintis have been denied tenure, and are leaving Harvard at the end of this year. Last year Bowles attributed his and Gintis's tenure denials to "political considerations."