Inside factors - Pupil Subcultures Flashcards
Hargreaves
Selection of streams was closely related to behaviour, top streams were rewards for behaviour, more they conformed to this and achieved well.
Lower stream boys felt unable to achieve high status in teacher’s eyes, sort alternative status from peers, anti-school subcultures promoted anti-school and anti-attainment attitudes
Mac an Ghail
‘The making of men’ study
Range of subcultures within a school - noted from working class backgrounds generally followed their father into traditional working class, manual labour job roles.
‘Macho lads’ = boys their ability to perform heavy, physical, manual labour work became a way for them to shape their working class identity.
De-industralisation led to the macho lads to face a crisis of masculinity
Decline of these traditional, manual labour roles of the working classes saw a shift towards more part-time roles, office based and traditionally suited the lifestyk=les for women’
Majority of these working class boys did not have the academic qualifications needed in order to move into new working class job roles
Resulted in most cases that women become the breadwinner of working class household as the lack of focus for boys in education
Willis
Study ‘ learning to labour’ - these ‘lads’ formed a distinctive ‘counter -school sub-cultural grouping’ characterised by opposition to the values and norms perpetuated throughout the school.
This disaffected boys felt superior to more conformist pupils, known as ‘ear oles’
Little interest in academic work, prefer to amuse themselves at best with various deviant behaviour e.g. ‘having a laff’ became the main objective of the school day.
Tried to identify with the adult, non-school world by smoking, drinking and expression of strong racist and sexist attitudes.
Saw manual work as superior to mental work
Behaviour in school relates to the behaviour they adopted in their work life later.
‘Shop floor’
Counter school culture helped prepare them for the boredom and monotony of the work
Adopted similar distraction techniques such as joking around, only taking enough care to avoid being scaled in the workplace.
Lads displayed strong hegemonic masculinity - saw education as pointless and not relevant to the jobs they thought they were destined for
Felt they were destined to follow their father’s footsteps and their position in the labour market.
Working class boys who underachieve in school are more likely to form anti-school subcultures or find alternative academic work e.g. sports etc.
