... control the workforce, the owners of the means of production" (Haralambos and Halborn) The first way in which education functions is to provide Capitalists with a workforce who has the personality, attitudes and values which are most useful to them. If Capitalism is to succeed it requires a hard-working, docile, obedient and lightly motivated workforce, which is too divided and fragmented to challenge the authority of management. Bowles and Gintis argues that the education system helps to achieve these objectives largely through the hidden curriculum - It isn't the content of lessons and the examinations which pupils take which are important, but the form that teaching and learning take and the way the schools are organised. The hidden curriculum consists of these things that pupils learn through the experience of attending school, rather than the things they learn from the formal National curriculum. According to Bowels and Gintis the hidden curriculum shapes ...

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