EDCURSEC 700, Assignment 1

Madelaine Gravatt 1177801

EDCURSEC 700 Assignment 1

Rich in the cultural capital of New Zealands Eurocentric schooling system,
I have had a privileged educational experience due to my social, cultural
and

economic

positioning.

My parents came from rural, working class families and through education
did very well for themselves. My Dad grew up in Dargaville but went on to
gain a PhD at Oxford University on scholarship, creating a family myth of
pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. I therefore grew up with a view of
poverty in which the causes for poverty were primarily bad decisions
made by those affected (Swalwell, 2013). I grew up very unfamiliar with
poverty, it was alien to me and occurred over there, not in my sphere of
existence. I was instilled with a belief that no matter what your situation,
you could achieve anything if you put your mind to it, unaware of the
structural barriers that play an important role in constructing possibilities
and realities.
I grew up in Henderson, West Auckland, in a primarily Maori, Pasifika and
elderly Pakeha community. Instead of the primary school closest to us, I
went to Titirangi Primary School as it was more affluent and had more
children who looked like me. Part of the way through primary school, my
parents decided to move to central Auckland when my Dad got a better
job. This was largely so my brother and I could go to a better school. My
parents did not want me to go to Kelston Girls as they thought it was too
rough and that I would get pregnant before I was 18. Dads new income
meant we had broken into middle class and therefore needed the house,
suburb and schooling to reflect this. This follows Thrupps (2007) assertion
that the middle class access predominantly middle class school settings
and the likely advantages that those kinds of school contexts bring (p.
257). Effectively we moved from a brown neighbourhood into a white one
and became part of the privileged white middle class.
We moved to Mt Eden so my brother and I could to be in the illustrious
Grammar zone. That the Grammar Zone was such a strong pull to my

EDCURSEC 700, Assignment 1

Madelaine Gravatt 1177801

parents is a result of the current neo-liberal educational policy on zoning

whereby schools can draw their own zones to exclude poorer areas,
benefiting the middle class by maintaining inflated house prices and
keeping the school affluent (Thrupp, 2007). My parents choice to move
house in order to secure access to more prestigious schools reflects the
assumption that high decile and quality are intertwined, as well as the
perception of certain schools as a means of social reproduction or mobility.
Wanting the best for their children, my parents wanted us to attain what
Marginson calls positional good (Thrupp, 2007), that is a relative
advantage for jobs, social standing, income and so forth. Since advantage
is relative, it therefore means that others would be disadvantaged in
comparison. My parents wanted me to have better access to networks of
power and better pathways to tertiary education, which they (rightly) saw
that Epsom Girls Grammar, a decile 10 school, offered. This proved true
for me as my high achieving peers pushed up my achievement and when
it came to planning pathways for after high school, it was the expectation,
not the exception, that my friends and I would be going to university. As
peers can be a powerful influence on student choices and motivation, this
certainly made it easier for me to apply myself and focus on achieving at
school

and

university.

When we moved to Mount Eden halfway through primary school, I felt out
of place in the city school at first, but after a few years I no longer felt
like I fitted in with my westie friends. By the time I had reached high
school, I easily fitted into the hetronormative, middle-class, white
demographic of Epsom Girls Grammar. Drawing on the theory of Bourdieu
(2011), my ease at belonging and succeeding at high school was because I
was rich in the cultural capital of the school. My positioning as a middleclass Pakeha meant that I was fluent in the ways of talking, acting,
socialising, language practices, values, styles of dress and behaviour that
were valued by the dominant cultural group. As McLaren (2006) explains,
Students from the dominant culture inherit substantially different cultural
capital than do economically disadvantaged students, and schools
generally value and regard those who exhibit that dominant cultural
capital (which is also usually exhibited by the teacher) (p. 218).
Furthermore, as well as belonging to the dominant ethnicity and social

EDCURSEC 700, Assignment 1

Madelaine Gravatt 1177801

class, I also was rich in the cultural capital of education. Both my parents
had university degrees and had been teachers and so had grown up in a
family that highly valued and understood what was needed to succeed in
education. This gave me what Lareau (1989) refers to as the homeadvantage, whereby I was privileged due to family resources and the
positive relationship between my parents and the school.
When I was at Epsom Girls, the ethnic composition of the school was
majority Pakeha, followed by Asian, which was reflected in the ethnicity of
teachers and upper management. Maori language and culture was only
used at prize giving or cultural performances and was otherwise absent
from teaching and learning. This school also had a strong hetronormative
culture (Carpenter & Lee, 2010). For example, you could only take a girl to
the school ball as your date if you signed a form declaring that you were
lesbian, however to take a male you did not have to sign a form declaring
you were straight. This was also reflected in the highly feminised Hidden
Curriculum (Lynch, 1989) of the school that taught students that in order
to succeed as a female you needed to look nice, be polite, passive and
composed.
As a Decile 10 high school, the school was orientated to benefit the middle
class. This bias was reflected in the curriculum and content delivered, as
well as in the composition of the Board of Trustees. Perhaps more telling is
that class and social inequalities were not taught at school. This served to
maintain the hegemony of Pakeha culture because students were not
taught to question the prevailing values, attitudes and social practices of
the dominant society, to which most students belonged. As McLaren
explains, Schools reproduce the structures of social life through the
colonisation (socialisation) of student subjectiveness and by establishing
social practices characteristic of the wider capitalist society McLaren 215.
As a teacher, it is important I am conscious of my positioning as I initially
feel most comfortable with those whose cultural capital most closely
resembles my own. I therefore may spend more time with these students
when teaching, thus maintaining middle-class advantage. It is important

EDCURSEC 700, Assignment 1

Madelaine Gravatt 1177801

that I am critically aware of this potential bias and constantly inquire, who
am I teaching for?.

EDCURSEC 700, Assignment 1

Madelaine Gravatt 1177801

References

Bourdieu, P. (2011). "The Forms of Capital" (1986). In I. Szeman, & T.

Kaposy (Eds.), Cultural Theory: an anthology [ ] (pp. 81-93). Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell.
Carpenter, V. M., & Lee, D. (2010). Teacher education and the hidden
curriculum of heteronormativity. Curriculum Matters, 6, 99-121.
Lareau, A. (1989). Home advantage. Philadelphia: Falmer Press.
Lynch, K. (1989). The hidden curriculum: reproduction in education, an
appraisal. Wiltshire: Redwood Burn.
McLaren, P. (2006). Life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in
the foundations of education (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Swalwell, K. M. (2013). Educating activist allies: Social justice pedagogy
with the suburban and urban elite [<br />]. New York: Routledge.
Thrupp, M. (2007). Education's 'inconvenient truth': persistant middle
class advantage. Waikato Journal of Education, 13, 253-269.