Cultural capital is the accumulation of knowledge, behaviors and skills that one can tap into to demonstrate one's cultural competence, and thus one's social status or standing in society.

Teachers label students based on their backgrounds and compare them to an “ideal student”.

In a working class school, an ideal student is about behaviour - quiet, passive, obedient.

In a middle class school, most children are well behaved and so the ideal is based on academic intelligence.

Accused of determinism: Says children have no choice and will always act in correspondence with their label. However this is not always true.

Labelling theory blames teachers for using labels but fails to explain why. Marxists argue that labels are not merely the result of teacers individual prejudices but stem from the fact that teachers work in a system that reproduces class division

Schools focus on these children

Emerged from marketisation, wouldn’t exist without league tables.

Nell Keddie said that those students who are in the top streams, get ‘high status knowledge’.

Lower streams get only lower status knowledge, less complicated language and education.

Ties into labelling theory as lower class students tend to fall into the lower streams, and so the class divide in success is reinforced.

Differentiation - Refers to the way that teachers categorise or ‘differentiate’ between pupils according to stereotypes about ability, appearance etc.

Streaming is a form of differentiation as well as ‘Foundation’ & ‘Higher’ tier exam differentiation.
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Polarisation - this is way that pupils respond to differentiation – moving towards 2 extremes (polar opposites)

In his study of Hightown boys’ grammar school, Lacey found that streaming led boys to create a pro-school or an anti-school subculture

found that boys who had been placed in lower streams were ‘triple failures’: they had failed their 11+, they had been placed in low streams and they had been labelled as ‘worthless louts’. In anti-school subcultures, status went to the boys who had flouted the rules.

Differentiation still existed as teachers continued to label middle class and working class students differently.

Middle class students continued to do better in exams, which suggests that class inequalities continued as a result of labelling alone.

Ingratiation: Teachers pets, embracing of education and

Ritualism: Indifferent in education, may embrace or reject but doesn’t act out, school is just a ritual to them

Retreatism: Doesn’t engage, bit distant from schools, little bit of mucking around etc.

Rebellion: completely rejects education, truant and misbehaved.

John Furlong 1984, observes that many students actually move between these responses.

A concept from Bourdieu
Refers to learned ways of thinking and acting.
Shared by a particular social class, and is the way they behave
Includes tastes and preferences around lifestyle and consumption (fashion etc). They have their own expectations about what is normal about ‘people like us’.
It is formed as a response to one’s position within the class structure.

In contrast, the school devalues working class habitus. Bourdieu calls the withholding of symbolic capital from working class students ‘symbolic violence’. The working classes are kept in their place, maintaining the class structure.

Archer et al found that often working class students had to change the way they talked and presented themselves in order to be successful, potentially losing their identity in the process. University and professional careers were seen as ‘not for the likes of us’.
Students who have been raised into the middle class habitus will enter school with symbolic capital - status and recognition from the school.

Symbolic violence may lead some to choose alternative ways of creating self-worth. Instead they invest heavily in ‘styles’, especially through branded clothing, like Nike.

Styles were heavily policed by peers - the right appearance brought its own symbolic capital amongst the group

Yet, it conflicted with the school’s dress code, which reflected the school’s middle class habitus. These students risked being labelled as rebels.

To the middle class, the ‘Nike’ identity was tasteless, to the working classes they created self-worth

Rejection of higher education
Archer also found that working class students rejected higher education for two reasons:
It was unrealistic, because it was not for ‘people like us’. They believed that they would not fit in. It was also seen as unaffordable
It was undesirable because it did not fit their preferred lifestyle or habitus. They preferred to spend their money on the street styles that gave them their identity and status.
According to Archer et al, working class students have not only been rejected from education, they themselves have actively chosen to reject it because it does not fit in with their way of life.

Studies have shown that white working class students have lower aspirations that ethnic minority students
This is linked to a lack of parental support
Lupton study of working class schools found that it was the white students that had poorer levels of behaviour and discipline, despite the fact that fewer of them were eligible for free school meals.
Brutal street culture also means that young white working class people have to withstand intimidation, and intimidate others. This can often encroach into schools too.

Nearly 50% of ethnic minority children live in low-income families

Ethnic minorites are twice as likely to be unemploy compared to whites

Almost half of pakistani and Bangladeshi workers earn under £7ph

Why are some ethnic minorities at greater risk of material deprivation?:

Living in economically depressed areas
Cultural factors such as Purdah
Lack of language skills
Racial discriminatiion