Pupil's Class Identities And The School

What does habitus refer 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 about what is normal or realistic for ‘people like us‘.

What is a group’s habitus formed as a response to?

Its position in the class structure.

Can one class’s habitus be better than another’s?

Although one class’s 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 higher value on middle-class tastes, preferences and so on.

What type of habitus does school have?

There is a link to Boudieu’s concept of cultural capital, because the school has a middle-class habitus, middle-class pupils have advantage, while working class culture is regarded as inferior.

What does the middle class habitus of schools mean for middle class pupils?

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,

What does the middle class habitus of schools mean for working class pupils?

The school devalues the working-class habitus so that working-class pupils’ tastes are deemed to be tasteless and worthless.

Boudieu calls this the 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 classes ‘in their place‘

What is there a clash between?

Working-class pupils’ habitus and the school’s middle-class habitus. As a result, working class students may experience the world of education as alien and unnatural.

What did Archer find?

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 if often experienced as a process of ‘losing yourself‘. Thy feel unable to access ‘posh‘ middle-class spaces such as university and professional careers, which were seen as ‘not for likes of us‘.

What did archer find that many working class pupils were conscious of?

That society and school looked down at them. This symbolic violence led them to seek 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 consuming branded clothing such as nike.

For working class pupils, what was wearing brands a way of doing?

‘Being me‘: without them they would feel inauthentic. Pupils’ identities were also strongly gendered; for example, girls adopted a hyper-heterosexual feminine style.

Who were style performances heavily criticised by?

Peer groups and not conforming was ‘social suicide‘. The right appearance earned symbolic capital and approval from peer groups and brought safety from bullying.

What did working class pupil identities lead to conflict with?

The school’s dress code. Reflecting the school’s middle-class habitus, teachers opposed ‘street‘ styles as showing ‘bad taste‘ or even as a threat. Pupils who adopted street styles risked being labelled as rebels.

What does Archer argue?

That the school’s middle-class habitus stigmatises working-class pupils’ identities. Seen in this light, 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.

What do Nike styles also play a part in?

Working class pupils’ rejection of higher education, which they saw as both unrealistic and undesirable.

Unrealistic because it was not for ‘people like us‘ but for richer, posher, cleverer people, and they would not fit in. It was also seen as an unaffordable and risky investment.

Undesirable because it would not ‘suit‘ their preferred lifestyle or habitus.

According to Archer et al., what is the working class pupils’ investment in ‘Nike‘ identities?

It is not only a cause of their educational marginalisation by the school, it also expresses their positive preference for a particular lifestyle. As a result, working-class pupils may chose self-elimination or self-exclusion from education. Not only do they ‘get the message‘ that education is not for the likes of them, but they actively chose to reject it because it does not fir in with their identity/way of life.

What does Archer’s study largely deal with?

The relationship between working-class identity and educational failure, however, some WC pupils do succeed.

What did Ingram study?

Two groups of WC Catholic boys from the same highly deprived neighbourhood. One group had passed their 11 plus exam and gone to grammar school while the other failed and went to a local secondary school. The grammar had a strongly middle-class habitus of high expectations and academic achievement, while the secondary school had a habitus of low expectations and low expectations of its underachieving pupils.

What did Ingram find?

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. As in Archer’s study, street culture and branded sportswear were a key part of the boys’ habitus and sense of identity.

What does Ingram note?

That 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 tension between the habitus of their working-class neighbourhood and that of their middle-class school.

Despite the class inequalities in education, what do many working class pupils now go onto?

University. Even here, 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.

What did Evans study and find?

A group of working class girls from south London comprehensive studying for their A-levels. They were reluctant to apply to elite universities such as Oxbridge and that the few who did apply felt a sense of hidden barriers.

According to Boudieu, what are working class attitudes of places like Oxbridge?

They think of them as ‘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 part of their identity and leads working-class students to exclude themselves from elite universities.

Like Archer and Ingram, what else did Evans find?

That the girls had a strong attachment to their locality. For example, only four of the 21 intended to move away from home to study. As Reay points out, self exclusion from elite or distant universities narrows the options of many working-class pupils and limits their success.

What do studies like those of Evans, Ingram and Archer show?

A consistent pattern of a middle-class education system that devalues the experiences and choices of working-class people as worthless or inappropriate. As a result, working-class pupils are often forced to chose between maintaining their working-class identities or abandoning them and conforming to the middle-class habitus of education in order to succeed.

What do studies on both internal and external factors show?

That in order too understand class differences, we cannot look at external and internal factors in isolation from each other, because in reality, they are often interrelated.

What are some of the different ways internal and external factors coexist?

• WC pupils habits and identities formed outside of school may conflict with the school’s MC habitus, resulting in symbolic violence and pupils feeling that education i s not for the likes of them.

• WC pupils using the restricted speech code (an external cultural factor) may be labelled by teachers as less able, leading to self-fulfilling prophecy.

• Poverty - an external factor may lead to bullying and stigmatising by peer groups - an internal process within school. In turn, this may lead to truanting or failure.