What do you think?
Rate this book
Explaining Inequalities in School Achievement: A Realist Analysis
Inequalities in educational opportunity have been a persistent feature of all school systems for generations, with conventional explanations of differences in educational attainment tending to be reduced to either quantitative or non-quantitative 'list' theories. In this groundbreaking book, Roy Nash argues that a realist framework for the sociological explanation of educational group differences can, and must be, constructed. A move to such an explanatory framework will allow us to take into account the social influences of early childhood development, the later emergence of social identities, and the nature of the social class impact of educational and career decision-making. By building on the critical analyses of the theories of Bourdieu, Boudon and Bernstein, this book makes a vital contribution to the current policy and theoretical debate about the causes of educational inequality.
282 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
10 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 28, 2015
In part I can’t entirely respond to this book, as I really don’t know enough about phenomenology or Husserl. The author says that to understand why Bourdieu talks about ‘the cultural arbitrary’ you first need to know some Husserl – and I don’t. Not that I’m not going to let that stop me, of course…
So, what is the cultural arbitrary? According to Nash, Bourdieu believes it is something that middle class people like, something they find easier to learn than working class people do – and so they push that in ‘their’ schools, which, in turn, exclude working class people from education as they do not have such easy access to this cultural arbitrary. Nash thinks there is something in this – he agrees that middle class kids do find lots of the things that happen in schools easier than working class kids do. But Nash says that rather than this stuff being ‘arbitrary’ it is, in fact, necessary. He gives the example of calculus. It isn’t ‘arbitrary’ that we should learn calculus and that this is more highly regarded than what we call in Australia ‘veggie maths’, but rather it is necessary, in the sense that having access to knowledge of calculus gives access to the power of science. This in turn allows our society to function and gives us with all the good things we particularly like – the Internet, flushing toilets, bridges that don’t fall down, that sort of thing – and so to call this ‘the cultural arbitrary’ is, well, perverse.
In saying this Nash is saying that ‘the cultural arbitrary’ is used by Bourdieu as a way to explain ‘symbolic violence’ and, in Nash’s opinion, Bourdieu is wrong. By symbolic violence in this instance Nash believes Bourdieu to be saying that culturally arbitrary knowledge (that just happens to suit the middle class) is used by them to justify their position in society and in so doing to make the working class feel stupid and thus to explain to them why they are worse off than middle class people. Social status becomes merited and this justifies the working class being kept in a lesser position. But, if the cultural arbitrary isn’t arbitrary, then this argument falls. Calculus is necessary and so the middle class being better at it means they actually do deserve better things.
I think this is a really interesting argument – I also think Nash is wrong, but wrong in a worthwhile way, one that deserves to be thought through. Long quote:
“Working-class students, for example, are more likely than are middle-class students to recognise the exchange value of school knowledge as a reason more central to its acquisition than its use value. Working-class families accept the value of skilled knowledge, as for example in craft expertise, within a framework of thought deeply rooted in the realist ontology of material practice. It is in this context that working-class parents and students make their demand for the educational credentials necessary to access vocational courses. The school, of course, responds to that demand as a source of motivation, but in so doing it typically makes little systematic attempt to restructure the students’ view that the curriculum it provides as abstract, theoretical, and intrinsically useless for everyone not intending to be a ‘rocket scientist’. The instrumental concept of knowledge is thus continually emphasised in its exhortations to succeed in gaining its academic credentials. In a subtle irony, schools may thus fail in their educational task not because they give too little emphasis to credentials, but because they give too much.” Pages 201-2
These two ideas are related, I think. So, how do I square this particular circle – do I have to argue that calculus is not ‘necessary’ to show that Bourdieu’s ‘cultural arbitrary’ is not fundamentally flawed?
I think Nash and Bourdieu are talking at cross-purposes. This is what I take Bourdieu to be saying with reference to the Australian education system. This argument is mostly taken from my memory of the work done by Richard Teese in his Academic Success and Social Power: Examinations in Inequality.
As a society we need some people to be scientists. However, most of the people who study science, even to the end of secondary school never become scientists or even ever use any of that knowledge ever again. Mostly, the people who do science are from upper middle class schools or they are the smartest of the working class kids from lower schools seeking a way to a career in science / engineering as their way into the middle class. The middle class kids generally don’t go on to ever do anything else in science. Rather they use the hardest maths and science subjects as proof of academic distinction. They generally go on to study law or medicine – neither of which actually needs extensive knowledge of calculus or complex numbers or the other deeply theoretical mathematical concepts taught in the hardest maths courses. However, what these subject are remarkably good at is social sorting.
How does this work if mathematical knowledge is either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’? Well, highly abstract knowledge – totally divorced from the life experience of students – requires the deployment of lots of social and cultural capital in order to be able to respond to the demands these subjects present. Often it also requires financial capital too – demanding additional tutoring outside of school. Most of this is unavailable to working class kids who are unlikely to have parents who have completed school to the level the students are studying at (and so their parents are unlikely to be able to help), and are certainly less able to afford additional tuition. The teaching available at schools (generally from less able teachers) is all that is available to these kids. This means that social reproduction is best achieved by a highly abstract curriculum that makes unequal demands on students according to their social class. The fact that calculus is ‘necessary’ only makes it better able to justify its inclusion in the curriculum and therefore to similarly justify and 'prove' the ‘merit’ of those with the resources available to them that enable them to succeed as if this was proof of higher innate ability. We are blinded to the advantages and disadvantages the curriculum presents as ‘necessary’.
But what could be more arbitrary than a subject that the majority of those taking it will never use again – other than as a sorting device to prove their ‘innate’ superiority? And what could be more arbitrary than a system that fails the smartest working class children in subjects they are keenly interested in on the basis of making the curriculum aggressively abstract and theoretical without providing the support they would need to succeed? And the attrition rates among working class students in these subjects are staggering and frightening – somewhat comparable to World War One rates of attrition.
Bourdieu’s point was not that we needed to teach more veggie maths as if this would make school 'fair', but rather that if learning calculus is necessary, then we need to find ways to teach it so that people might learn, rather than structuring the subject as a sorting hat designed so as to reproduce the existing social structure.
So, what is the cultural arbitrary? According to Nash, Bourdieu believes it is something that middle class people like, something they find easier to learn than working class people do – and so they push that in ‘their’ schools, which, in turn, exclude working class people from education as they do not have such easy access to this cultural arbitrary. Nash thinks there is something in this – he agrees that middle class kids do find lots of the things that happen in schools easier than working class kids do. But Nash says that rather than this stuff being ‘arbitrary’ it is, in fact, necessary. He gives the example of calculus. It isn’t ‘arbitrary’ that we should learn calculus and that this is more highly regarded than what we call in Australia ‘veggie maths’, but rather it is necessary, in the sense that having access to knowledge of calculus gives access to the power of science. This in turn allows our society to function and gives us with all the good things we particularly like – the Internet, flushing toilets, bridges that don’t fall down, that sort of thing – and so to call this ‘the cultural arbitrary’ is, well, perverse.
In saying this Nash is saying that ‘the cultural arbitrary’ is used by Bourdieu as a way to explain ‘symbolic violence’ and, in Nash’s opinion, Bourdieu is wrong. By symbolic violence in this instance Nash believes Bourdieu to be saying that culturally arbitrary knowledge (that just happens to suit the middle class) is used by them to justify their position in society and in so doing to make the working class feel stupid and thus to explain to them why they are worse off than middle class people. Social status becomes merited and this justifies the working class being kept in a lesser position. But, if the cultural arbitrary isn’t arbitrary, then this argument falls. Calculus is necessary and so the middle class being better at it means they actually do deserve better things.
I think this is a really interesting argument – I also think Nash is wrong, but wrong in a worthwhile way, one that deserves to be thought through. Long quote:
“Working-class students, for example, are more likely than are middle-class students to recognise the exchange value of school knowledge as a reason more central to its acquisition than its use value. Working-class families accept the value of skilled knowledge, as for example in craft expertise, within a framework of thought deeply rooted in the realist ontology of material practice. It is in this context that working-class parents and students make their demand for the educational credentials necessary to access vocational courses. The school, of course, responds to that demand as a source of motivation, but in so doing it typically makes little systematic attempt to restructure the students’ view that the curriculum it provides as abstract, theoretical, and intrinsically useless for everyone not intending to be a ‘rocket scientist’. The instrumental concept of knowledge is thus continually emphasised in its exhortations to succeed in gaining its academic credentials. In a subtle irony, schools may thus fail in their educational task not because they give too little emphasis to credentials, but because they give too much.” Pages 201-2
These two ideas are related, I think. So, how do I square this particular circle – do I have to argue that calculus is not ‘necessary’ to show that Bourdieu’s ‘cultural arbitrary’ is not fundamentally flawed?
I think Nash and Bourdieu are talking at cross-purposes. This is what I take Bourdieu to be saying with reference to the Australian education system. This argument is mostly taken from my memory of the work done by Richard Teese in his Academic Success and Social Power: Examinations in Inequality.
As a society we need some people to be scientists. However, most of the people who study science, even to the end of secondary school never become scientists or even ever use any of that knowledge ever again. Mostly, the people who do science are from upper middle class schools or they are the smartest of the working class kids from lower schools seeking a way to a career in science / engineering as their way into the middle class. The middle class kids generally don’t go on to ever do anything else in science. Rather they use the hardest maths and science subjects as proof of academic distinction. They generally go on to study law or medicine – neither of which actually needs extensive knowledge of calculus or complex numbers or the other deeply theoretical mathematical concepts taught in the hardest maths courses. However, what these subject are remarkably good at is social sorting.
How does this work if mathematical knowledge is either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’? Well, highly abstract knowledge – totally divorced from the life experience of students – requires the deployment of lots of social and cultural capital in order to be able to respond to the demands these subjects present. Often it also requires financial capital too – demanding additional tutoring outside of school. Most of this is unavailable to working class kids who are unlikely to have parents who have completed school to the level the students are studying at (and so their parents are unlikely to be able to help), and are certainly less able to afford additional tuition. The teaching available at schools (generally from less able teachers) is all that is available to these kids. This means that social reproduction is best achieved by a highly abstract curriculum that makes unequal demands on students according to their social class. The fact that calculus is ‘necessary’ only makes it better able to justify its inclusion in the curriculum and therefore to similarly justify and 'prove' the ‘merit’ of those with the resources available to them that enable them to succeed as if this was proof of higher innate ability. We are blinded to the advantages and disadvantages the curriculum presents as ‘necessary’.
But what could be more arbitrary than a subject that the majority of those taking it will never use again – other than as a sorting device to prove their ‘innate’ superiority? And what could be more arbitrary than a system that fails the smartest working class children in subjects they are keenly interested in on the basis of making the curriculum aggressively abstract and theoretical without providing the support they would need to succeed? And the attrition rates among working class students in these subjects are staggering and frightening – somewhat comparable to World War One rates of attrition.
Bourdieu’s point was not that we needed to teach more veggie maths as if this would make school 'fair', but rather that if learning calculus is necessary, then we need to find ways to teach it so that people might learn, rather than structuring the subject as a sorting hat designed so as to reproduce the existing social structure.
Displaying 1 of 1 review