The Imprint of Business Norms on American Education By Dameon V ...

inner pedagogic structure in schools using what he labeled “educational knowledge codes” (p. 202). He theorized knowledge codes being arranged from organized social structures of external agencies that classify and transmit them to schools, which in turn transmit them to students. These codes reflect an ideation of power and social control.

Arguably, the missing link is that Bernstein (1971, 1996) did not account for “how it is that power relationships penetrate the organization, [and achieve the] distribution and evaluation of knowledge through the social context” (Karabel & Halsey, 1977, p. 71). However, considering Bernstein’s analysis in his seminal work Class, Codes and Control: Vol. 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission (1977), I find that he actually presupposed that power penetrates education in varying degrees by virtue of the changing strengths of what he referred to as the “collection codes” (theoretical boundaries) that are embedded in the transmission processes of educational knowledge between a teacher and a student. Yet, Bernstein did not analyze the relationship between the kinds of power techniques and the ontological ideologies that may also penetrate education beyond his conceptions of the social middle class. Though Bernstein (1977) recognized that the “new middle class” is a product of the “scientific organization of work and corporate capitalism” (p. 127), he did not extend this realization into an exploration of the potential sources of power that may generate social class—the social origin of power.

This is where the work I have done is valuable. I have reconstructed Bernsteinian “educational knowledge codes” within the context of the education system—specifically, in my case study of two high schools—while showing how conceptualizations of modern economic power relations penetrate schools. I endeavor to highlight a more straightforward consideration of power relations by addressing the potential ideologies of power (origins) accompanied by specific modalities of capitalistic power inserted into education.

It is here that one must consider various conceptions of power. There are many definitions of power.¹German sociologist Max Weber (1962) offered that power is “that opportunity existing within a social