Paul Willis’ explanation of why working class kids tend to get working class jobs is that structural forces such as class backgrounds, geographic location, educational attainment, and the job market act through the cultural environment to influence the working class kids into working class jobs. The lads realize that they will never get a job better than manual labor so why should they bother with school. Tragically they only value manual labor jobs so their own culture reinforces their environmental forces.
The lads are a counter school culture who rejects the school’s achievement ideology, subvert teachers and administrative authority, disrupt classes, and mock the ear’oles to whom the lads feel superior.
The ear’oles are the majority who “conform to the roles defined as students, aspire to middle-class occupations, and comply with the rules and norms of the school.” (MacLeod, 19)

The lads respond to school the way they do because they know no matter how hard they try in school, they will still only be able to get the same sorts of jobs their parents have.

I had similar groups such as the lads and ear’oles in my school but they were not as severe as the lads. Most kids tried to get good grades and work with in the school system. People who were like the lads were mostly stoners and they did not care about what they did after finishing school. They were more concerned with getting high. The stoners I knew may have had cultural penetrations but from what I remembered they just cared about, cars, weed, and music. The stoners were in a similar separate group as the lads were to the ear’oles but they did not care about disrupting class or mocking anyone, they just wanted to get high.

The problem with the lads valuing manual labor and patriarchal ideology is that they are perpetuating the social system they are in. They realized that all they will able to do is manual labor and instead of using that knowledge for collective political or social action, they are happy to be manual laborers.

Cultural penetration is the realization of the class structure a person is in and how hard it is to break out of that class. An example from Willis is this, “Their rejection of so much of the content and form of day to day educational life bears on the almost unconscious realization that, as a class, schooling will not enable them to go much further than they already are.” (MacLeod, 19)
I do not think I have a cultural penetration. I know I will never be rich but that’s more of a no-brainer than a cultural penetration.






A life without cheese is hardly a life worth living!