AQA A-Level Sociology: Class Differences in Achievement - Pupils' Class Identities & the School
Description
All credit goes to the 'AQA A Level Sociology Book One [Including AS Level]'. Any opinions expressed are the opinions of the sociologists mentioned. Author credits: Rob Webb, Hal Westergaard, Keith Trobe and Annie Townend
AQA A-Level Sociology: Class Differences in Achievement - Pupils' Class Identities & the School
Sociologists are interested in how
pupils' class identities formed outside
school interact with the school and it's
values to produce educational success
and failure.
Louise Archer et al (2010) focus on the
interaction between working-class pupils'
identities and school, and how this produces
underachievement.
Pierre Bourdieu: Habitus
Habitus refers to the 'dispositions' or
learned, taken-for-granted ways of
thinking, being and acting that are shared
by a particular social class.
It includes their tastes and preferences about
lifestyles and consumption, their outlook on
life and their expectations of what is normal or
realistic for 'people like us'.
A group's habitus is formed as a response to its
position in the class structure.
Although one class' habitus is not
intrinsically better than another's, the
middle-class has the power to define its
habitus as superior and to impose it on the
education system.
As a result, the school puts a
higher value on middle-class
tastes, preferences and so on.
Because the school has a
middle-class habitus, this gives
middle-class pupils an advantage,
while working-class culture is
regarded as inferior.
Symbolic Capital & Symbolic Violence
Because schools have a middle-class
habitus, pupils who have been
socialised at home into middle-class
tastes and preferences gain 'symbolic
capital' or status and recognition from
the school and are deemed to have
worth or value.
By contrast, the school devalues the
working-class habitus, so that
working-class pupils' tastes are deemed
tasteless and worthless.
Bourdieu calls this
withholding of symbolic
capital 'symbolic violence'.
By defining the
working-class and their
tastes and lifestyles as
inferior, symbolic violence
reproduces the class
structure and keeps the
lower class in their place.
Therefore, there is a clash between
working-class pupils' habitus and
the schools' middle-class habitus.
Consequently,
working-class students may
experience the world of
education as alien and
unnatural.
Louise Archer found that
working-class pupils felt that
to be educationally
successful, they would have
to change how they talked
and presented themselves.
Thus, for working-class students, educational
success is often experienced as a process of
'losing yourself'. They felt unable to access
middle-class spaces such as university and
professional careers.
These middle-class spaces are
seen as 'not for the likes of us'.
'Nike' identities
Many pupils were conscious that society and
school looked down on them. This symbolic
violence led them to seek alternative ways of
creating self-worth, status and value.
They did this by constructing meaningful
class identities for themselves by investing
in 'styles', especially through consuming
branded clothing such as 'Nike'.
Style performances were heavily policed
by peer groups and not conforming was
'social suicide'. The right appearance
earned symbolic capital and approval
from peer groups.
However, it led to conflict with the
school's dress code. Reflecting the
school's middle-class habitus, teachers
opposed 'street' styles as showing 'bad
taste' or as a threat.
Pupils who adopted street styles also
risked being labelled as rebels.
Archer argues that the schools'
middle-class habitus stigmatises
working-class pupils' identities
The pupils' performances of
style are a struggle for
recognition: while the
middle-class see their Nike
identities as tasteless, to the
young people they are a means
of generating symbolic capital
and self-worth.
According to Archer et al, working-class pupils'
investment in Nike identities is not only a cause
of their educational marginalisation by the
school; it also expresses their positive preference
for a particular lifestyle.
Consequently,
working-class pupils may
choose self-elimination or
self-exclusion from
education.
Nike styles also play a part in
working-class pupils' rejection
of higher education, which
they saw as both unrealistic
and undesirable.
It was undesirable
because they would have
to live on a student loan
and this would make it
hard to afford their street
styles that gave them their
identity.
Working-class identity and educational success
Nicola Ingram (2009) did a study of
two groups of working-class Catholic
boys from the same deprived
neighbourhood.
One group had passed their 11+ and had
gone to grammar schools, while the other
group had failed and gone to a local
secondary school.
The grammar school had a strong
middle-class habitus of high
expectations and academic
achievement, while the secondary
school had a habitus of low
expectations.
Ingram found that having a working-class identity
was inseparable from belonging to a working-class
locality. The neighbourhood's dense networks of
family and friends were a key part of the boys'
habitus. It gave them an intense feeling of belonging.
The boys experienced a great pressure to fit
it and this was particularly a problem for
the grammar school boys, who experienced
a tension between the habitus of their
working-class neighbourhood and that of
the middle-class school.
One boy was ridiculed by his peers for
coming to school in a tracksuit on
non-uniform day. By opting to fit in with his
neighbourhood habitus by wearing a
tracksuit, he was made to feel worthless by
the schools' middle-class habitus.
Ingram states that the choice is
between 'unworthiness at school
for wearing certain clothes and
worthlessness at home for not'.
The boy being ridiculed is an example of symbolic
violence, in which pupils are forced to abandon
their 'worthless' (according to the school)
working-class identity if they want to succeed.
Meg Maguire (1997) notes that when
she went to grammar school, "the
working-class cultural capital of my
childhood counted for nothing in this
new setting."
Class identity and self-exclusion
Despite the class inequalities in
education, many more working-class
young people now go on to
university.
However, the clash between
working-class identity and the
habitus of higher education is a
barrier to success.
This is partly due to a process of self-exclusion.
Sarah Evans (2009) studied a group of 21
working-class girls studying for A-Levels and
found that they were reluctant to apply to elite
universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.
The few that did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers and of not fitting in.
Sarah Evans also found that the girls had a strong
attachment to their locality. Only four of the 21 intended
to move away from home to study.
Bourdieu (1984) states that many
working-class people think of places like
Oxbridge as being 'not for the likes of us'.
This feeling comes from their habitus, which
includes beliefs about what opportunities
really exist for them and whether they would
fit in.
Such thinking becomes a part of their
identity and leads working-class students to
exclude themselves from elite universities.
Reay et al (2005) point out that
self-exclusion from elite or distant
universities narrows the options of
many working-class pupils and
limits their success.