Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain

by Gillian Evans

Are schools failing working class children or does working class life present alternative means for gaining social status that conflict with what it means to do well at school? Focusing on Southeast London, this book provides insight into class values and reveals the complex cultural politics of white working class pride.

Genres: Anthropology

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Gillian studied social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies before completing her Master's and PhD degree in the Social Anthropology of Children and Child Development in the Centre for Child-Focused Anthropological Research (CFAR) at Brunel University. In 2006, Gillian published an ethnographic monograph based on her PhD research about the post-industrial docklands of Southeast London, entitled Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain.

Gillian held a Temporary Lectureship at the University of Manchester in 2006 and now holds a Research Council Fellowship from
2007-2012 in the Centre for the Study of Social and Economic Change (CRESC). She is undertaking a long-term ethnographic study of the planning and delivery of the Olympic Legacy in the post-industrial East End of London.

Reviews

[νίκη κωνσταντίνου-σγουρού · Rating 4 out of 5]

[διαβάζοντάς το θυμήθηκα μια δασκάλα σε ένα θεατρικό έργο που πίστευε πως με pva glue και κολάζ λύνονται όλα τα προβλήματα των παιδιών, αλλά σύντομα έμαθε πως «όποιος γεννιέται στον βάλτο, πεθαίνει στον βάλτο»...]

[Paola · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was expecting much more from this book - from the title at least I would have expected a much more thorough analysis of the status of the working class white children in Britain, more along the lines of the in depth analyis a la Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State Of White America, 1960-2010. As it is, this is instead more of a case study. It focuses on Bermondsey, an area of south east London, where the author lives, and specifically on a handful of individuals whose lives the author studies in more detail. But then, even if we accept the (unproven) implicit statement that these are representative of the lives of the working classes in Bermondsey, it is not at all clear whether Bermondsey is in any way representative of other inner city areas of London or the UK.

One other very annoying feature is that the case studies too often become intertwined with the personal development of the author herself: so we discover that in an effort to get closer to her "subjects"

I am coming out of myself; I’m becoming someone whom I don’t even recognise in myself; a woman whom my partner is beginning to be revolted by. The more common I become the less he desires me.

or while trying to get closer to children she observes at school:

At home, meanwhile, I learn with my daughters how to play the Nintendo Pokemon Game Boy games. This is essential because otherwise I cannot take effective part in the dialogues which boys are constantly having at school about their relative progress and strategy in the games. ... Much to my partner’s dismay, I am happy to devote hours at a time to competing against myself to try and complete the challenge which the game sets.

and so on - these frequent forays into the difficulties that the self-defined middle class author has in blending with her working class surrouinding are distracting, irrelevant and really make you wonder whether this is a self analysis book or an academic contribution to the study of the working classes in modern Britain. So though the author does provide some interesting insights, these are too sparse and far between to justify reading this book.

[Leonardo]

describe la cultura de la clase trabajadora de Bermondsey, en el este de Londres.

Desigualdad Pág.138

[aleks ᵕ̈ · Rating 1 out of 5]

thought the book, gillian evans likes to compare her middle-class self to working-class individuals and is somehow still confused on why she doesn’t feel a sense of belonging in working class areas

[Jezz Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were parts of this where I felt that the author lacked the proper anthropological sensibility to be writing on this. It did read sometimes as an auto ethnographical account of being middle class in a working class area. Some bits in the first half frustrated me

The last sections I really enjoyed