Schools influence on class & gender

Question 1

How does habitus affect pupils class identities?

Answer 1

• Refers to the learner ways of thinking, being and acting that are shared by a particular social class.
• A group’s habitus is formed as a response to its position in the class structure.
• 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 etc —> giving middle class pupils an advantage.

Question 2

How does symbolic capital and symbolic violence affect pupils class identities?

Answer 2

• Schools have a middle class habitus, pupils who have been socialised at home into middle class tastes etc gain symbolic capital or status from the school and they are deemed to have worth or value.
• By contrast, the school devalues the working class habitus so that the working class pupils’ tastes are deemed to be tasteless and worthless.
• Bourdieu calls this withholding of symbolic capital from the working class symbolic violence.
• By defining the working class and their tastes etc as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class system and keeps the lower classes ‘in their place’.
• Due to this clash between the working class pupils habitus and the schools middle class habitus, working class students may experience education as unnatural.
• E.g. Archer found that working class pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they would often talk about how they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves. Thus, for working class students, educational success is often experiences as a process of ‘losing yourself’. They felt unable to access middle class spaces such as university and professional careers which were seen as ‘not for the likes of us’.

Question 3

How do ‘Nike Identities’ affect pupils class identities?

Answer 3

• Many pupils were conscious that society and school ‘looked down upon them’.
• This symbolic violence leading to them seeking alternative ways of creating self worth, status and value.
• They did so by constructing meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in styles, especially through consumer branded clothing.
• Style performances were heavily policed by peer groups, the right appearance earning symbolic capital and approval from peer groups, at the same time leading to conflict with the schools dress code. This is because, ‘street styles’ were opposed from teachers, so they risked being labelled as rebels.
• Nike styles also play a part in working class pupils’ rejection of higher education, which was already seen as unrealistic and undesirable, as it would not ‘suit’ their preferred lifestyle, for example, student loans would mean they would be unable to afford the street styles that gave them their identity.

Question 4

How does working class identity affect educational success?

Answer 4

• Ingram studied two groups of working class Catholic boys from the same highly deprived neighbourhood in Belfast. One group had passed their 11 plus exam and gone to grammar school, whilst the other group had failed and gone to a local secondary school.
• Ingram found that having a working class identity was inseparable from belonging to a working class locality. The neighbourhoods dense networks of family and friends were a key part in the boys habitus, giving them a sense of belonging. In Archers study, street culture and branded sportswear were a key part of the boys habitus and sense of identity.
• However, as Ingram notes, working class communities place great emphasis on conformity, the boys experienced a great pressure to ‘fit in’ and this was a particular problem for the grammar school boys, who experienced a tenion between the habitus of their working class neighbourhood and that of their middle class school. E.g. one boy, Callum, was ridiculed at school for coming in with a tracksuit on, so by opting to fit in with his neighbourhoods habitus, he was ridiculed from the schools m/c habitus.

Question 5

How does class identity affect self exclusion?

Answer 5

• Despite the class inequalities in deducation, many more working class young people now go on to university.
• However, the clash between the w/c identity and habitus of higher education is a barrier to success. This is partly due to a process of self exclusion.
• E.g. Evans studied a group of 21 working class girls studying for their Alevels.
  Evans found that they were reluctant to apply to elite universities such as Oxbridge and the few who did actually apply felt a sense of hidden barriers and of not fitting in. Like Archer and Ingram, Evans also found that the girls had a strong attachment to their locality. E.g. only 4 of the 21 intended to move away from home to study.