Pupils' class identity

Bourdieu

Habitus - 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. The school has a middle-class habitus, this gives middle-class pupils an advantaged, while working-class culture is regarded as inferior.

Symbolic capital and symbolic violence

schools devalue the working-class habitus so that working-class pupils’ tastes are deemed to be tasteless and worthless.

Bourdieu calls this ‘symbolic violence’, by defining working-class habitus as inferior, symbolic violence reproduces the class structure and keeps the lower classes ‘in their place’.

Archer - working-class pupils felt that to be educationally successful, they would have to change how they talked and presented themselves.

‘Nike’ identities

constructed meaningful class identities for themselves by investing heavily in ‘styles’ especially through consuming branded clothing.

the right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying.

led to conflict with the school’s dress code.

also plays a part in w/c pupils’ rejection of higher education:

• unrealistic: because it was not ‘for people like us’ but for richer people and they would not fit in

• undesirable: because it would not ‘suit’ their preferred lifestyle or habitus.

Ingram

working-class Catholic boys

the boys that went to the grammar school experienced a great pressure to ‘fit in’, experienced a tension between the habitus of the working-class neighbourhood and that of their middle-class school.

Evans

group of 21 working-class girls

they were reluctant to apply to elite universities and the few who did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers and of not fitting in, they also had a strong attachment to their locality