This resource offers a sociological perspective on education, providing essential information crucial for academic success. It covers significant concepts such as role identities, cultural capital, and the New Right perspective.
The class identities of students and the school
Having considered lots of internal factors, sociologists now ask how identities formed outside of school
interact with the school, resulting in success or failure.
Habitus
This word refers to the way people look at life, modes of thinking, tastes and preferences. The habitus of a
group is formed by the way it responds to its position in the class structure.
The habitus of one class is not better than another simply by definition but, the middle-class are better
placed to impose their ideas on the education system and so their habitus becomes more valuable in the
eyes of the school. As French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu puts it “Schools are middle-class institutions.”
This links to his idea of cultural capital. Middle-class students are at an advantage in school because their
habitus is regarded as more valuable.
Symbolic capital and symbolic violence
‘Symbolic capital’ is gained by students who have been socialised into a middle-class habitus, which is
deemed valuable.
Working-class habitus (e.g. clothing, accent) is de-valued and hence a type of ‘symbolic violence occurs’
because the working-class are denied symbolic capital.
The resulting clash can alienate working-class students because they feel pushed into losing their accent
and conforming to a certain appearance.
‘Nike Identities’
Many students feel society looks down on them. They compensate for this ‘symbolic violence’ by creating other
ways of gaining self-worth and status.
One way of doing this is through ‘styles’, a typical example being branded clothing such as Nike. Whatever the style
it will be very different from middle-class students.
This type of styling can also be strongly gendered.
So belonging to a certain group meant wearing certain types of clothes.
If you ‘looked good’ you earned symbolic capital from your group and were probably protected from bullying as a
result.
Naturally this conflicts with the school dress-code and can be seen as threatening. Perpetrators were likely to be
labelled as rebels so the cycle continues.
Louise Archer points out that the school’s middle-class habitus stigmatises the identities of working-class students,
who in turn are struggling to gain recognition in a different way by wearing these styles. This is how they gain
‘symbolic capital’ and self-worth.
This type of styling also illustrates why many working-class students often reject higher education. There are two
reasons for this;
● Unrealistic – only for ‘well-off’ kids, unaffordable, socially isolating
● Undesirable – does not fit in with their ‘habitus’ e.g. a student loan is unlikely to pay for the latest Nike-style
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