Sociology of Education Compress

Sociology
of Education
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SECOND EDITION
Sociology
of Education
Tomas Boronski
& Nasima Hassan
SAGE Publications Ltd  Tomas Boronski and Nasima Hassan 2020
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To Catherine and Josef
and
To Zulekha Abdul Latif Solkar
CONTENTS
About the authors ix
Acknowledgements xi
New to this edition xiii
1 Sociology and education studies 1
2 Early sociology of education 25
3 Early approaches to sociological research 49
4 Developments in sociology of education 77
5 Critical and radical pedagogies 105
6 Differential educational attainment and the debate about

intelligence 123
7 Social class and social mobility 149
8 Multiculturalism, ‘race’ and power 179
9 Reimagining gender roles 199
10 Inclusion: Disability and special educational needs 219
11 The social construction of childhood 245
12 Education policy 265
13 Young people and pupil voice 293
14 Transformations 317
Index 339
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tomas Boronski is a visiting fellow at the University of East London. He has
worked in the primary, secondary and tertiary education sectors as well as in
higher education. His publications include a book on the sociology of knowl-
edge, as well as articles on the sociology of education, family, inequality and
multiculturalism.
Nasima Hassan, originally from Lancashire, has worked in secondary school

teaching humanities, in teacher training and in strategic management in higher
education. She has worked extensively overseas supporting teachers’ profes-
sional development in India (Bangalore), South Africa (Kwazulu Natal) and,
most recently, in conjunction with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia. She has published chapters on the education
system in South Africa, faith schools and on the schooling experience of British
Muslims. Her doctoral thesis explored the concept of ‘Muslim consciousness’
through a philosophical and political exploration of identity construction.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
SAGE would like to thank the following people whose comments helped to
shape the first and second editions of this book:
Charlotte Barrow, University of Central Lancashire

Shereen Benjamin, University of Edinburgh
Kevin Brain, Leeds Trinity University
Hilary Constable, University of Cumbria
Gill Forrester, Liverpool John Moores University
Jamie Halsall, University of Huddersfield
Yvonne Hill, Bishop Grosseteste University
Sue Smedley, University of Roehampton
Paul Wakeling, University of York
Sophie Ward, Durham University
The authors would like to thank all of those students at the University of East
London (past and present) who provided their invaluable comments on the
early drafts of this book and participated by reflecting on their own higher edu-
cation experience. We are also grateful to all those who read and provided
feedback on the first edition, which has been an essential part of the writing of
this second edition.
The authors would like to thank all of those students and colleagues who
have shaped and influenced their research. Their work in secondary, post-16
and in higher education over three decades has also informed the direction of
this publication. Special thanks to Salma Rehman for her constant support as a
critical friend.
NEW TO THIS EDITION
This second edition brings two new chapters that explore the work of the pioneers
of sociological research methods (Chapter 3) and an examination of the current
debate about class and social mobility in the UK (Chapter 7). Existing chapters
have been fully updated with new discussion on the continuing challenge to
hegemonic northern sociology (Chapter 4), independent and grammar schools
(Chapter 6), the new SEND Code of Practice (Chapter 10), the growth of child
poverty (Chapter 11), and decolonising the curriculum (Chapter 12). Additionally,
all chapters have been supplemented with a new case study feature, as well as
updated reading suggestions and thinking points.
1
Sociology and
education studies
Chapter aims
This chapter will examine sociology in the context of education studies and
compare the sociological contribution to that of psychology and philosophy. It
provides a brief introduction to the role of philosophy as both the mother and
father of all modern academic disciplines, including the foundation disciplines
of education studies. However, it also offers a word of warning about the way
that such disciplines are used and the need to adopt a cautious and critical
approach in our studies as students of education. Finally, there is a brief discus-
sion of how disciplines such as psychology can be enhanced by a recognition
of the social context and dimensions of education.
Key words: sociology, psychology, philosophy, educated, education, sociologi-

cal imagination, disruptive experiment, inductive, deductive, theory formation,
evidence, hypothesis, grand theory, middle-range theory, classical theory.
Introduction
This book is about education. More specifically, it examines education from a
sociological perspective and provides you with an insight into the ways in
which sociology can help us to understand some of the key debates in educa-
tion today, as well as to challenge some of the things that are taken for granted
and often go unquestioned. As students of education, you can probably identify
a variety of debates and trends in education that currently attract media and
academic attention. However, it is just as important to identify those things we
are so used to accepting that they go unnoticed or unchallenged but can, none-
theless, have a significant impact on society. For some critics of the education
system, there are a variety of generally accepted assumptions that they might
question, such as the notion that our elected politicians should decide how our
children need to be educated, that children should be tested on a regular basis
and labelled with relevant degrees of success or failure, that schools are the best
places to ‘educate’ children, that adults always know what is best for children
or that children must acquire certain knowledge to be defined as ‘educated’.
These are just some of the issues that you, as education studies students, should
be thinking about.
Thinking critically, however, does not necessarily mean thinking negatively,
but it does mean challenging accepted wisdom and taken-for-granted assump-
tions that might seem, at first sight, to be unimpeachable. It also means being
open-minded about conventional practices and being prepared to discuss them
2 Sociology of Education

in a reasoned and academic way rather than on the basis of prejudice or merely
personal opinion. Many of us find it very difficult and even stressful to do this
because it may undermine our most strongly held views. Some social commenta-
tors and writers may seem to say things that sound eccentric or completely
unacceptable. In the 1960s, for example, John Holt (1969) suggested that chil-
dren should be able to choose what they wished to study rather than to be told
what they must know. In 1970, Ivan Illich (1971), a colleague of Holt’s at the
Centre for Intercultural Documentation (CIDOC) in Mexico, suggested that
schools are places that inhibit learning and should be replaced by ‘learning
webs’ and ‘skill exchanges’, which can be used by all freely and voluntarily.
Schools, Illich claims, are places of control and forced learning that merely cre-
ate social division and inequalities. More recently, Richard Dawkins (2006)
suggested that religious teaching in some faith schools amounts to ‘child abuse’.
This is a particularly contentious claim at a time when many faith communities
are attempting to set up their own schools, and both main parties have been
supporting and encouraging faith schools in their schools policies.
Thinking point 1.1

Identify a value, belief or principle you hold very strongly. This might be reli-
gious, cultural or a common-sense assumption. Think of some of the challenges
or opposing views to it. Is it easy to take these opposing views seriously or to be
open-minded about them? Try to reflect on your feelings.
It may be a good idea to read Dawkins (2006) or Illich (1971), or at least
discuss what you have read, with others on your course. Study groups are a
good way to share ideas and reflect on the meaning and significance of new
and challenging subjects.
A sociological imagination
The key question here is what does sociology have to offer these debates and
controversies? At a very basic level, it could be said that such challenges to some
of our most strongly held assumptions can act like a ‘disruptive experiment’
(Garfinkel, 1967) forcing us to re-examine the foundations of these beliefs and,
perhaps, identify some of their flaws and weaknesses. At a more academic level,
it is often said that to appreciate the full potential of sociology we must first
develop a sociological imagination. This is a term coined by C. Wright Mills
(1959), an American sociologist, who claimed that sociology encourages us to
Sociology and education studies 3

take a deeper look at every-day events and aspects of our society, and to make a
point of challenging the familiar things we tend to take for granted.
In his introductory text on sociology, Giddens (1989) uses the example of a
cup of coffee to tease out the ways in which we can imagine a cup of coffee.
For example, a cup of coffee is not merely a hot drink, it has a history: coffee
is a product of colonial contact and (often unfair) international trade, and it is
a legal drug; coffee can bring people together: ‘Let’s meet for a coffee’, ‘I’m
having a coffee morning’; or it can denote a lifestyle – coffee table, coffee table
book, skinny latte.
Thinking point 1.2

A sociological imagination is a distinct way of thinking but can take some prac-
tice. You might like to apply it to aspects of education. Try to focus on concepts
such as gender, ethnicity, social norms and social class. Again, you might like to
do this in your study group.
A key aspect of the sociological imagination according to Wright Mills is the

interconnectedness between individual problems and public issues. Individuals
experience particular troubles such as poverty, unemployment or educational
failure. If an individual becomes unemployed, for example, we may expect them
to use their skills and personal qualities to resolve the problem, such as by
retraining and attempting to become more employable. However, when such
private troubles become widespread and transcend the individual and the local
by becoming aspects of the wider society, such as when there is a high level of
unemployment, we have an institutional or social problem in that the individ-
ual’s personal skills, character and qualities are no longer sufficient to resolve the
situation. For Wright Mills, sociology provides the insight that enables us to
make the connection between the individual’s situation, and the wider social
and historical conditions. However, Wright Mills argues that it is often the case
that those in power – policy makers, politicians and business leaders – conceal
these public issues by presenting them as private problems, suggesting that the
problem lies primarily with the inadequacies of the individuals concerned rather
than with the structures within which these individuals exist and act. This can
be seen in terms of the current debates in education such as why certain social
groups or classes ‘underperform’. Wright Mills’s position on the role of profes-
sionals and policy makers is relevant here also because he suggests that many of
those in positions of authority and power tend to focus on the ‘pathological’

traits of those who underachieve, rather than on the way in which politicians
and policy makers organise the education system. The way that working-class
boys are portrayed by politicians provides a good example of this. Responding
to an Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)
report in 2003 on the ‘underachievement’ of boys, the then School Standards
Minister, David Miliband, said:
We have to crack the lad culture that stops too many young boys doing well at
school. This culture tells boys that it is fine to play around and not work hard. But this
harms their chances of doing well, getting their exams and fulfilling their potential.
(David Miliband quoted on the Department for Children, Schools and
Families (DCSF) website (Department for Education, 2003).)
It could be argued that narrowing the issue of inequalities in educational

achievement down to ‘lad culture’ seems to focus too much on the symptoms
when much of the evidence shows that class factors and inequalities play a sig-
nificant role in this process (Ball, 2008; Bolton, 2010; Dorling, 2011; Ipsos MORI,
2010; Jefferis et al., 2002).
A further dimension of the sociological imagination is that it does not merely
accept what are often called common-sense beliefs about society; it encourages
us to collect evidence in order to be able to look for patterns and trends, and to
be able to support our assertions. Evidence, no matter how convincing, rarely
settles any issue because all evidence is subject to interpretation, but it is the
basis upon which any credible claims are made. As a general principle, sociology
is about theory formation using evidence. Such theory formation can be either
inductive, which involves collecting evidence and building a theory on the basis
of this evidence, or deductive, developing a theory from which a hypothesis can
be developed in order to test the theory against the evidence. Whichever
approach is adopted, a logical and methodical procedure is expected, and all
claims and theories should be supported by the evidence or, at least, assessed and
analysed in terms of the data collected. This enables others to check the evidence
and any claims made for themselves. Theories are also believed to enable us to
make generalisations about the world or specific aspects of it, which in itself is a
worthy aim in terms of helping us to understand the world, and it may have
implications for policy making.
The power of theory

A key issue in sociology is what constitutes a theory. Sociology in its classic phase
during the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century was character-
ised by attempts to develop grand theories. This means that sociology was seen
as being able to explain how society works in one single overarching theory.

In addition, there was the belief that, by using modern scientific methods of
research, the ‘truth’ could be ‘discovered’. For example, Marx attempted to develop
a theory of history that he believed was able to provide a comprehensive under-
standing of how society works and changes. Grand theory is also a term first used
by Wright Mills (1959) to describe the systems theory of functionalist sociologists
of the 1950s, such as Talcott Parsons, who, Wright Mills believes, were more con-
cerned with abstract theorising and the function of systems and structures than
with an understanding of the real world. What Wright Mills was identifying was a
trend among sociologists at the time to develop highly detailed and abstract theo-
ries that made little attempt to consider what was really happening in society.
More recently, postmodernists such as Lyotard ([1979] 1984) have pointed to the
dated nature of grand theories that make great claims to have discovered the
‘truth’ about society. Lyotard suggests that the optimism of modernism, with its
pursuit of progress, truth and objectivity, has given way to a postmodern condi-
tion characterised by a general decline in people’s faith in science to bring about
social progress and to solve the world’s problems. In Chapter 4 we will examine
the position of postmodernists on this issue in more detail.
In general, however, the initial optimism that sociology can act as a source of
general ‘truths’ about society as a whole has given way to more modest ambitions.
As Boudon (1991) suggests:
it is hopeless and quixotic to try to determine the overarching independent variable

that would operate in all social processes, or to determine the essential feature of the
social structure, or to find out the two, three, or four couples of concepts . . . that
would be sufficient to analyse all social phenomena. (Boudon, 1991: 519)
Sociologists now tend to adopt a middle-range approach to theorising (Merton,

[1949] (2007)), which consists of developing a theoretical understanding of a
limited range of sociological problems through the examination of the evidence
within specific contexts. The intention is to make connections between these
different insights in order to build a more comprehensive understanding of soci-
ety, rather than making extravagant claims to have discovered the ‘answer to the
ultimate question of life’ (Adams, 1982).
However, even with these more modest ambitions, sociology has the con-
ceptual power and methods to provide insights that common sense or, indeed,
other disciplines are not able to provide. An excellent example of this is label-
ling theory, which was developed by Howard Becker (1963) to explain how the
preconceptions we have of others can influence their behaviour. What Becker
was attempting to challenge was the idea that all criminals and deviants are
inherently bad and that deviance is essentially an individual act. Instead, he
showed that deviance is as much to do with how situations are defined at a
specific time – in particular, the power of certain groups of individuals to
define these situations – and how certain groups are more likely to be defined

as deviant than others. For example, in the late nineteenth century and early
twentieth century, women who campaigned for the vote and for equal rights
were seen as abnormal, and even as ‘unfeminine’ and exposed to ridicule as
well as criminalisation. The attempt to challenge male patriarchal power and
authority was labelled as deviant. These labels can be seen to have effects that
are independent of the motivations of the so-called deviant.
This is an extremely powerful idea that uses a number of conceptual tools
that enable us to understand the spiral of deviance. However, rather than claim-
ing that this is a total explanation for deviance in society, labelling theorists
suggest that it helps us to understand how certain groups can become criminal-
ised and may embark on a deviant career. Obviously, it cannot explain how
extreme pathological behaviour occurs, nor does it purport to be able to do so.
Moreover, labelling theorists do not claim to be able to explain how power is
acquired and maintained. Nevertheless, the insights that labelling theory pro-
vides us with in the field of crime and deviance clearly have relevance to the
study of education, thus making the kinds of connections Merton was alluding
to. For example, you might like to think about how the labels teachers use to
define children can have an effect on their behaviour.
Thinking point 1.3

Think back to when you were at school. Were there other children who had
particular identities or labels? Can you think of how they might have acquired
those labels? Do you think that such labels may have affected the way they saw
themselves and the way they acted?
A cautionary note
There is, however, a temptation to become seduced by the insights and revela-
tions of a newly discovered discipline, and to see its novel ways of looking at
the world as providing the answer to all our questions. The reality is that no
single discipline can do this. In the case of education, it should be borne in
mind that in order to gain a fuller understanding of this subject, we must be
able to apply the insights of a wide range of disciplines such as philosophy,
psychology and social policy, as well as sociology. This is essentially what edu-
cation studies involves and this is one of its main strengths as it provides a
multidimensional approach to education that enables us to see issues from a
variety of perspectives. For example, a child’s progress through the education

system is affected by their social circumstances; they may have been born with
a certain level of potential but, if this is inhibited by such things as a lack of
opportunity and poor health caused by poverty or discrimination, then the
child may have difficulties in maximising their potential. In addition, educa-
tion and welfare policy will also have an impact on the child, and children in
similar circumstances (Dorling, 2011; Jefferis et al., 2002; Wilkinson and
Pickett, 2009). Indeed, the ‘evidence based politics’ of Wilkinson and Pickett
(2009) takes just such an approach in its application of standardised World
Health Organization (WHO) data on health and social progress to understand
the effects of income inequality on the population.
Thinking point 1.4

Think of the ways in which a child’s educational progress in life might be affected
by their social background, the historical and political circumstances they grow
up in, as well as the psychological and philosophical ideas that prevail. A great
place to start would be to view the Granada Television series Seven Up (2014).
The series follows the fortunes of 20 children from a variety of social backgrounds
born in 1957. You can find this on the following website: www.youtube.com/
watch?v=1LQZpiSfESE
This clearly makes education studies a very challenging subject, as it requires stu-
dents to develop a strong understanding of a variety of disciplines and to be able
to apply them appropriately to educational issues. In particular, you should become
familiar with theories of learning (psychology), why governments choose to adopt
particular education policies (political studies, social policy), how the education
system has changed (history), how social and cultural factors influence educational
attainment (sociology) and the purpose of education (philosophy). We will now
examine two of the main foundation subjects of education studies – philosophy
and psychology.
The foundation subjects of education studies

Philosophy
Philosophy is the mother and father of all existing academic disciplines; from
physics to sociology, all are essentially the offspring of the philosophy of ancient

times (generally agreed to have been located in Athens between the fifth century
and the first century BCE). There were a number of fundamental questions that
the Ancient Greek philosophers raised and which, to this day, remain key ques-
tions that are addressed by writers, thinkers and academics: What exists? How
do we know something exists? What are such things made of? Is there a purpose
to life? What is the best way to live our lives? How can we discover truth?
Clearly, such questions have links to education and the purpose of education.
One of the most famous dialogues on matters relating to education from the
classical period is Plato’s Republic (c. 380 BCE). A dialogue is a literary form in
which the author creates hypothetical conversations between individual charac-
ters to explore an issue or a philosophical question. Socrates, for example,
features as one of these characters in the Republic, which takes the form of con-
versations about the nature of the ideal society, as well as examining the linked
issues of justice and how education should be organised in such a society. It will
probably come as no surprise to us that Plato suggests that philosophers should
be the rulers of his ideal society – they should be ‘philosopher kings’.
There is a clear link in the Republic between Plato’s concept of justice, as
voiced through Socrates, and his views about who should be educated and the
form this education should take. He envisions a state in which justice involves
everyone knowing their place and carrying out their roles without question.
There are, he believed, clear natural distinctions between human beings; some
have the qualities needed for leadership, and it is these ‘golden’ individuals who
should be selected for philosophical training, and ultimately they may, if suc-
cessful in their studies, become ‘guardians’ or rulers. Through dialectical debate
they come to see the connections between things and know the essence (forms)
of fundamental concepts such as justice and truth. As a result of this training,
the talented few are expected to attain a condition of total knowledge. For Plato,
dialectic is the art of philosophical argument by which knowledge is achieved,
and this is essential for any ruler.
Those who are not chosen to become leaders – the common people such as
traders, craftspeople, labourers and soldiers – would be expected to receive train-
ing in their respective occupations. For such ordinary citizens it is the duty of
the guardians to lead them to the light of truth. They would not have access to
philosophical teaching, nor would they play any part in government, but would
be subject to the rule of the guardians. You may disagree with Plato’s utopia and
his definitions of justice; however, his ideas have had a great influence on gen-
erations of philosophers who have followed him. So great has been the influence
of Plato on philosophy that the eminent twentieth-century philosopher W.N.
Whitehead describes European philosophy as a ‘series of footnotes’ to Plato
(Whitehead, 1979: 39). It was the Socratic Plato who stated that the ‘unexam-
ined life is not worth living’, thereby urging us to think about life as more than
just a series of physical experiences. Plato was, in particular, noted for his beliefs

that knowledge can only be achieved through reason, and that we should not
rely on our physical senses alone to find it.
Thinking point 1.5

A good place to start an examination of philosophy is Bertrand Russell’s The
History of Western Philosophy (Russell, 1945). Russell provides a very accessible
summary of the Republic and other dialogues.
You might like to read this section and discuss with your study group Plato’s
ideas about the ideal society, justice and the nature of knowledge. Why should
we be concerned about such issues at all?
Aristotle (384–322 BCE), like his teacher Plato, was also concerned with asking
fundamental questions about life, as well as with finding the causes of all things
and the links between them. Such an ambitious aim has been taken up by other
philosophers over the past two millennia. However, with the huge growth in our
knowledge about the world, both natural and social, philosophy began to
branch out into fields such as theology, natural philosophy and political phi-
losophy, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, ethics, logic and epistemology (theories
of knowledge). Philosophers began to specialise and this eventually led to the
establishment of separate disciplines as we know them today – physics, chemis-
try, biology, psychology, economics and sociology. Each has its own discrete
body of knowledge and particular methods of investigation. With the separation
of these disciplines from their parent discipline, philosophy was left to develop
its own identity and fields of study.
A philosophy of education
The philosophy of education was one such branch of philosophy, which has
continued to exercise the minds of philosophers ever since Plato’s time, with
questions such as how to define education, the purpose of education and how it
should be delivered figuring prominently over the years. However, if we were to
enquire as to what constitutes the philosophy of education, we would be faced
with a variety of answers, because there is no consensus among those who prac-
tise in this field as to what its subject matter should be, what its aims are and the
methods that it should adopt (Carr, 2005). This is problematic for a discipline
that aspires to be taken seriously, but which tends to be recognised more for its

divisions and disputes than its positive achievements. Some practitioners see the
role of the philosophy of education as one of analysing and explaining the
meanings of basic concepts in education: What is education? What is the differ-
ence between education and training? What is an educated person? Known
variously as analytic philosophy (AP), ordinary language philosophy and linguis-
tic philosophy, this branch of philosophy, which gained popularity in Britain
during the 1960s and 1970s, represented itself as being made up of second-order
practitioners concerned primarily with elucidating, defining and clarifying basic
concepts for others who are able then to use such concepts to develop first-order
theories. Such first-order accounts are likely to involve moral or political judge-
ments about such things as the purpose of education or the fairness of the
system. Philosophers in the AP tradition have made a specific commitment to
avoid such tendentious positions and to be purely analytic (Hirst, 1965, 1974;
Peters, 1966, 1973).
Nevertheless, what soon became clear is that AP is no more objective or value-
free than any other discipline. Indeed, much of the work of AP has been
criticised as being an ideologically biased philosophical tradition that supports
and justifies the existing social order. Although analytic philosophers claim to
be objective and value-free in their analysis of education, it has been suggested
by some critics (McLaughlin, 2000) that AP is merely a source of justification for
the prevailing education system of post-war Britain that has resulted in signifi-
cant class inequalities in attainment and continuation rates into higher
education. For example, what analytic philosophers such as Dearden et al.
(1972) have claimed is that education is the transmission of fundamentally
worthwhile activities as taught by the curriculum. The worthwhile activities that
Dearden et al. referred to were essentially the academic grammar school curricu-
lum of the time (Carr, 2005). However, the evidence being collected during the
1960s and 1970s suggested that the liberal education system that analytic phi-
losophers were advocating was, in fact, mainly being accessed by a minority of
middle-class and upper-class pupils, and was being denied to most of the rest of
the population, which tended to end up in secondary modern or technical high
schools where the curricula were far less academic and few pupils progressed to
university (Ministry of Education, 1954).
Tomlinson (2005) provides an excellent summary of the evidence collected
during the three decades since the Second World War after the establishment of
an education system in the UK which was supposed to be meritocratic, but
which was turning out to be one characterised by a wastage of talent (Ministry
of Education, 1959). Such patterns were already clearly discernible from the
1950s when, under the Tripartite System of education, evidence from govern-
ment reports such as the Early Leaving Report (Ministry of Education, 1954)
showed that working-class pupils (Socio Economic Classes 4 and 5 of the
Registrar General’s scale) gained only half the number of grammar school places

as might be expected in terms of their representation in the population. It
seemed that the education system in Britain was far from being the fair and
meritocratic system it was supposed to be.
Meritocracy
Meritocracy is a term first used by the social philosopher Michael Young in his
book The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870–2033 (1958), to describe a hypothetical
society in which people are allocated to positions in terms of merit, which
Young defines as ability (or intelligence as measured by such things as IQ tests),
plus effort. Young was speculating about what was believed to be happening in
Britain as a result of the policy of free education introduced after the Second
World War. It was supposed to give equal opportunity to all members of society
who could achieve their full potential, and bring an end to the pre-war system
in which only the middle and upper classes had access to secondary and higher
education, and hence all the best jobs. However, the evidence showed that this
was not happening and that the class inequalities that characterised the pre-war
period were merely being replicated under the new system. Analytic philoso-
phers seemed to show little awareness of these historical and socially contingent
factors in their analyses of education and, as a consequence, began to lack cred-
ibility. Their approach effectively amounted to an attempt to analyse education
without taking account of the realities and context in which the education
system was located.
Reading suggestion
You might read The Rise of the Meritocracy to examine Young’s ideas as well as
the problems he suggests might arise in such a meritocratic society.
Post-analytic philosophy of education

By the 1980s and 1990s, analytic philosophers were starting to reflect on their
position and there was an acceptance of the criticisms as well as an attempt by
some to reconfigure AP to take account of these weaknesses in their approach
(Carr, 2005). McLaughlin (2000) describes this second or ‘later’ phase of AP as a
much broader approach to philosophy of education together with a considera-
tion of educational practice, education policy and the wider social and political
context of education. Others, such as Rorty (1979), developed what has come to

be known as post-analytic philosophy of education. This focuses on providing a
critique of modern philosophy and a challenge to its claim to be able to provide
general principles and truths, something philosophers had long hoped to find.
As we have seen, philosophers since ancient times have placed their faith in the
ability of the philosophical method to reveal ultimate truths such as the mean-
ing of life or what is the best way to live and organise our lives. Rorty proposes
a more modest role for the philosophy of education as one of edification and
pragmatism derived from the work of the American philosopher John Dewey.
For Rorty, truth is essentially that which works in practice.
The challenge of postmodernism

For 2,000 years, a dominant theme in philosophy had been the desire to discover
foundational knowledge. Foundationalism argues that certain beliefs act as the
basis for other beliefs and do not depend on any other prior assumptions or
justifications. Such knowledge, it is suggested, provides the foundations for
‘truth’. So, the intention of analytic philosophy has been the identification of
second-order concepts on which to build first-order theories in an attempt to
create a true understanding of the world. The ideas of Rorty are very much in
line with the more sceptical and challenging approaches to philosophy gaining
ground during the 1980s and 1990s – in particular, the postmodern turn with its
rejection of all truth claims and its critique of the modernist promises of progress
and liberation through rational science. What post-analytic and postmodern
philosophy were doing, therefore, was challenging the age-old mission of phi-
losophy to discover truth and certainty. Other philosophers of education have a
more radical agenda and see their role as one of providing the means of bringing
about social change through education.
Critical pedagogy
Pedagogy relates to the study of the aims and processes of education. In the
relationship between teacher and learner, there is a belief that some kind of
exchange should occur – for example, skills or knowledge. Pedagogy attempts to
examine this process in which, traditionally, the teacher gives and the learner
receives such skills or knowledge. Critical pedagogy has its intellectual roots in
critical theory, which is associated with the work of the Frankfurt School of
Social Research. It is concerned with issues relating to the socialisation that takes
place through family, school and the media. Each society has a dominant world
view or ideology and it is from this point that critical pedagogy starts. In particu-
lar, it focuses on how, and in whose interest, knowledge is produced and passed

on by schools and educators. Critical pedagogy is driven by the aims of critical
theory, which are to investigate the role of social institutions such as schools and
the practices that take place within them, with the intention of challenging the
imposition of dominant ideologies and structures. Critical pedagogy, however,
focuses primarily on the ways in which education can be employed to challenge
the inequalities existing in the educational system. It examines issues of empower-
ment, and seeks more equitable and liberating educational experiences for those
without a voice. The assumption is that a society that excludes groups from eco-
nomic and political participation or that renders certain groups powerless is not
just an unfair society, but also an illogical society that needs to be changed.
McLaren (2003) claims that critical pedagogy involves an examination of the rela-
tionships in schools, the way knowledge is produced and how schools are
organised with the intention of altering them in the interest of the oppressed.
The aim is effectively the transformation of society. This somewhat controversial
role that is proposed for the philosophy of education is not necessarily shared
by other philosophers, but the questions and claims made by critical pedagogy
are certainly worthy of discussion and debate (see Chapter 5).
Thinking point 1.6

Think about the British education system: are there oppressive power relations
and inequalities?
The ambiguous status of philosophy

As we can see, the philosophy of education is a discipline with a variety of
approaches and often incommensurable philosophical traditions (Carr, 2005). In
addition, it has a very ambiguous status in the eyes of politicians and policy
makers, as well as philosophers themselves. Philosophy’s potential value and
relevance have been recognised since the ancients. Plato suggests that knowl-
edge, as opposed to skills, can only come through the study of philosophy. It is
a discipline that leads the ruler to the right decisions and to the greater good.
Aristotle in his Metaphysics writes of the condition of ‘man’ as one of being in
chains and that only philosophy can liberate him. However, for many, including
Plato and Aristotle, philosophy should only be taught to the few.
The teaching of philosophy to a minority of the elite is a tradition that has
been continued into the modern age in Britain, where platonic principles were
adopted by the upper classes in the nineteenth century, and that, some might

argue, persists to the present day. There developed a strong ideology supporting
rule by a ‘golden’ elite over the masses and the maintenance of a highly disci-
plined and patriotic military caste. At the height of the British Empire in the
nineteenth century and early twentieth century, a gentleman who had aspira-
tions to become a member of the ruling elite by becoming a Member of
Parliament (MP), or of joining the civil service, generally attended the University
of Oxford or the University of Cambridge first and studied philosophy rather
than a vocational course. Practical subjects such as engineering were generally
looked down upon. Teaching philosophy to the masses, or indeed anything that
might cause them to reflect on their condition, was strongly resisted. The emer-
gence of radical social theories such as Marxism in the nineteenth century was
even more of a reason for the ruling elite in Britain to be wary of the potential
dangers of philosophy. Ideas such as ‘universal suffrage’, ‘equality’ and, of
course, the agitation for socialist revolution caused great fear, especially as there
were attempts to bring about socialist revolutionary change across the Channel
in France in 1871 during the short-lived Paris Commune, in the German states
in 1848 and in Russia in 1905 and in 1917.
Eurocentric ideas
In July 2007, the then French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, addressed the students
and staff at the University of Dakar in the former French colony of Senegal. In
his speech, Sarkozy spoke of the ‘tragedy of Africa’ (Purtschert, 2010: 1039), by
which he meant the assumption among many politicians and academics that
the relative lack of ‘progress’ in Africa in terms of its culture and economy was
the result of something essentially African. Sarkozy stated that Africa had not yet
‘entered into history’ (Purtschert, 2010: 1039); it had not yet moved from a state
of natural consciousness in which nature dominated its thought, to one where
reflective thinking prevails. The President was actually parroting the ideas of
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and the somewhat ethnocentric
ideas contained in his Philosophy of History ([1824] 2001), in which nature is said
to represent an unchanging system of beliefs and values that hold back progress.
To be part of history, a society or culture needs to move from a natural con-
sciousness to one based on spirit. Spirit represents the process of reflection on
human ideas that leads to a restless desire for self-knowledge.
History for Hegel was driven by the dialectical process involving the conflict
of ideas. Such conflicts result in a resolution (synthesis) leading to a new way of
thinking. The ultimate direction of history he believed is towards truth.
However, because Africa had not made the transition to spirit, Hegel claimed
that the African consciousness was inherently natural and therefore likely to
limit the continent’s progress.

Now we do not need to enter the debate about the merits of Hegel’s philoso-
phy, but clearly the views of one of the most respected Western philosophers of
the nineteenth century have had a great influence on the ideas and values of
Western civilisation. There is no doubt that his position was at the very least
Eurocentric and at worst highly racist, but the legacy of Hegel is one of negativity
regarding Western attitudes towards African culture and civilisation, which
clearly manifests itself in Sarkozy’s speech. It could be said that contemporary
views of Africa and African culture are still greatly influenced by Hegel’s racist
assumptions, which placed Black African people at the bottom of human devel-
opment and evolution. As a consequence, the achievements of African civilisation
are often ignored or even denied.
When the first major European investigation was carried out on the ruined
city of Great Zimbabwe by the German scientist Carl Mauch in 1871, he refused
to accept that it was the work of Africans, instead claiming it must have been the
product of the white settlers. We now know that it was part of the Bantu/Shona
civilisation of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. A similar view is evident
with regard to African philosophy. Upon examining Western academic tradition,
one would be hard pressed to find any reference to African philosophy unless it
involved a specialised course in African culture. A cursory examination of some
of the most popular education studies textbooks in the UK reveals little, if any,
coverage of non-Western or African philosophy (Bartlett and Burton, 2012; Blake
et al., 2008; Sharp et al., 2009; Walkup, 2011; Warren, 2009). This is a strange
anomaly given that the academy is supposed to be inclusive and open-minded.
In addition, given that we live in a multicultural society, the philosophical con-
tributions of non-Western philosophers are conspicuous by their absence in all
but the most specialist centres of learning.
Verharen (2002) takes issue with the general assumption that philosophy was
invented by the Ancient Greeks. He points out that all cultures have an intel-
lectual tradition that includes philosophy – the love of wisdom – even if they do
not use such explicit language. He goes on to argue that although he concurs
with the aims of the ancients in relation to the purpose of philosophy in provid-
ing foundational knowledge – that is, basic principles of truth that can be used
to make connections between things to create an understanding of the whole –
he does not agree with the approach of the ancients and modern educators to
limit the study of philosophy to certain groups.
A further claim that Verharen makes is that the ancient civilisations of
Egypt and Nubia may have had a significant influence on the Ancient Greeks.
If this is the case, there is all the more reason for Western philosophy to exam-
ine African philosophy and its influence on contemporary Western thought.
In addition, for Verharen, philosophy should be available to all, including
children, who should be able to learn how to think critically and philosophi-
cally as soon as possible. It is rare in the UK as well as the USA for children

below the age of 16 to be taught philosophy; it is not part of the National
Curriculum in England and Wales. There are many justifications for this,
including the claims by Plato and Aristotle that children lack the maturity to
deal with complex philosophical questions. To this we may add the belief that
teaching philosophy to children adds no clear benefit to the economy and is
therefore a waste of time. However, one of the most telling reasons for their
objection is that philosophy is potentially dangerous: knowledge is power. If
we arm young people with the skills of the philosopher, they may become too
challenging to those in authority. Verharen suggests that such an approach
has impoverished our education systems, claiming that ‘public schools rein-
force a slave mentality by refusing to include philosophy in their curricula’
(Verharen, 2002: 304). Although he was referring primarily to the teaching of
philosophy to Black school children in the USA, his ideas could just as well be
applied to all children.
Psychology
Once again, we need look no further than the ancients such as Plato and Aristotle
to find some of the first speculations about the workings of the mind – how we
think and how we learn. However, while Aristotle located thought and emotion
primarily in the heart, Plato identified the brain as the locus of such processes. He
was one of the first rationalists who suggested that although the brain is the centre
of thinking, reflection, understanding and knowledge, we cannot rely on our
senses alone for these processes. He stated that knowledge can only be acquired
through the intellect, as opposed to through the human senses. Aristotle, on the
other hand, was an early empiricist who put more emphasis on the role of the
senses, stating that knowledge of the world comes to us through our senses. These
debates on the nature of the human mind and learning have continued ever since,
and psychology emerged as a subdiscipline of philosophy, eventually becoming a
highly respected academic discipline as well as professional practice in its own
right, developing scientific theories of the mind and the brain based on experi-
mental and analytic methods.
A word of caution
It is important to provide a word of caution about disciplines such as psychol-
ogy, which potentially offer great practical and sometimes deceptively simple
solutions to complex human problems. It is easy to be seduced by an elegant
theory, often backed up by seemingly persuasive evidence, which purports to be

able to explain the functioning of the mind or the measurement of human abil-
ity, the nature of our personality or the source of human language development.
Students and even psychologists often take a theory that they have learnt or
developed and apply it uncritically to specific situations. Psychology is a specula-
tive discipline and it should be treated as such. Evidence needs to be examined
and treated critically, yet we often accept certain psychological ideas as given, or
accepted wisdom if not the truth.
Psychologists and geneticists have been involved in a variety of controver-
sial debates and policies that highlight this point. A good example is the role
of psychologists in the discredited theory of eugenics, which was a pseudo-
scientific discipline devoted to the ‘improvement’ of the human race through
the selective breeding of people with so-called desirable characteristics and of
the ‘control’ of those with ‘undesirable’ traits. We can see an example of these
ideas put into practice in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, but it was also
a popular discipline among policy makers in the USA and Britain for a time.
In the USA, two psychologists named Terman and Yerks were involved in
advising the American government in the early twentieth century on how to
control the number of individuals of ‘inferior races’ entering the USA. At the
time, there was a huge demand for labour in a burgeoning American economy,
and the fear was raised by some policy makers that uncontrolled immigration
to the USA from all parts of the globe would weaken the nation in the long
run due to the ‘measured’ inferior genetic quality of certain groups that
included Poles, Russians and southern Europeans (Kamin, 1977). Despite the
fact that eugenics has been discredited as a serious academic discipline, not
least because of its association with the atrocities of the Nazi era, there is still
a certain amount of academic activity that is sympathetic to the eugenics
cause (see Chapter 6). A substantial number of eminent scientists and writers
still subscribe to the view that we are not all the same – that some groups are
less intelligent than others. James Watson who, together with his colleague
Francis Crick, mapped the structure of DNA in the 1950s, is an advocate of
‘positive eugenics’, which involves, among other things, a policy of encourag-
ing ‘intelligent’ people to have more children. The intelligent people Watson
referred to did not include Black people about whom, it is alleged, Watson has
some particularly offensive views (see Dorling, 2011: 68).
In the USA, we also find support for such essentially racist attitudes. Herrnstein
and Murray (1994) spoke of the new cognitive classes who reach the top of soci-
ety due to their ability rather than because of any social advantage they may
have had. The authors of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and the Class Structure suggest
that a similar argument applies to the reasons why Black pupils in the USA per-
form less well in school and in social mobility generally. Psychologists, therefore,
have been closely associated with the measurement of ability and intelligence,

and in the sorting of individuals and groups into hierarchies. We can see within
these psychological theories the influence of elitist educational philosophers
such as Plato, where some groups are seen as superior to others and this is used
as the justification for the creation of a hierarchical educational system.
There are, however, other philosophical positions that inform psychological
theories and research on ability and intelligence, such as those that make the
assumption that there are, in principle, no limits to what children can achieve.
In practice, however, many children’s abilities and talents are not effectively
developed due to their social and physical environment (Dorling, 2011). Clearly,
we are not all the same, but many children are simply unable to develop to their
full potential because their basic needs are not being met. A child who con-
stantly goes to school hungry will not be able to develop or to study effectively
and make progress (Campbell and Butler, 2012). Such experiences can also have
long-term consequences for children’s life chances. Maslow (1970) identifies a
hierarchy of needs, arguing that deficiency needs, such as the need for food and
security, must be met before higher level needs such as intellectual achievement
and, ultimately, self-actualisation can be effectively pursued. As we can see, there
is much more to a child’s education and development than innate ability. We
will return to this issue later in Chapters 6 and 10.
The importance of the social

We need to bear in mind, moreover, the importance of the social environment
in which children are born, live and develop. No psychological theory or
research can be credible unless it includes these factors; children are social beings
and the evidence collected by psychologists such as Vygotsky demonstrates this
clearly. Vygotsky was one of the first psychologists to recognise the importance
of the way in which cognitive development in children takes place through the
medium of the child’s culture (Vygotsky, 1978). Indeed, cultural factors, includ-
ing the values and language of a particular culture, are believed to influence the
nature and pace of the cognitive development of children. If a society places
high priority on particular cognitive skills or abilities, then the children in that
society are likely to develop such skills sooner than they do in other societies
where there is less emphasis on them (Woolfolk, 2013).
Despite these debates in which the role of psychologists has often been
highly controversial, psychology has managed to establish its reputation in
the field of education and now plays a key role in explaining how children
learn and the cognitive processes involved in learning. Alexander (2009) in the
very comprehensive Cambridge Primary Review, which presents a review of
the main international and national research on the primary curriculum by

psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, historians and policy experts over
the past 50 years, identifies some of the key areas in which psychology has
made important contributions:
• The role of play in children’s development.
• The age at which children should start school.
• Effective teaching methods.
In addition, educational psychologists occupy an important professional role in

most education authorities advising and supporting head teachers, teachers and
educational support workers in their day-to-day activities in schools.
The emergence of sociology

As we can see from the previous sections, the early philosophers and psycholo-
gists wrote extensively on education, and the first sociologists similarly
appreciated the importance of education, in its broadest sense, to a ‘society’ and
its well-being. However, as with both of the other foundation disciplines of edu-
cation studies, we need to be aware of accusations of the narrow and Eurocentric
bias of the ‘classical’ sociological texts. Most of them limit their accounts of the
sociology of education to the ideas of European and American thinkers. Connell
(1997) describes this bias towards what she calls the ‘geographic North’ as a dis-
torted picture that has limited scope and diversity of approaches to sociology
generally and its different branches. In particular, she claims that the classical
sociological texts ignore the wealth of sociological thinking from the geograph-
ical South of Latin America, South Asia and Africa, as well as that of women and
other oppressed and minority groups. This issue will be dealt with in greater
depth in the next chapter that starts with the ideas of the Arab scholar Ibn
Khaldun (1332–1406 CE) who is thought to have developed the first sociology
of education in the fourteenth century CE, and whose ideas on the subject pre-
dated those of the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of sociology in the mid-nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.
Despite the progress sociology has made in helping us to understand issues of
gender, sexuality, race and disability, there is still a belief held by many students
and academics (Pett, 2015; Le Grange, 2016; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017) that sociol-
ogy is not inclusive enough and is still dominated by white, male, heterosexual,
Western/Northern perspectives. This has led to the growth of a number of aca-
demics and student groups asking questions such as ‘why is my curriculum
white?’ (Hussain, 2015; Pett, 2015) and calling for the ‘decolonisation of the
curriculum’. You can examine this claim in Case study 1.1.

Case study 1.1
Is the curriculum too white?
The university curriculum in Britain and globally is an area of continuing debate and
strongly divided opinions. Pett (2015) argues that there is a clear need to bring an end
to a system where ‘dead white men’ are able to ‘clog up reading lists and dominate the
syllabus’. She presents a number of interesting and constructive ways of doing this, one of
which is that ‘Teachers must be retaught’ to question existing practice and the accepted
canons of knowledge. Unfortunately, given the sensitivity of issues and the kinds of lan-
guage used in the debate, arguments have become distorted and exaggerated, and the
somewhat provocative language used by those on both sides of the debate does not
really help. In the case of the students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London, some reports claimed that they want the removal of white philosophers such
as Plato, Kant and Hegel from the curriculum (Petrie, 2017). However, what most seem
to be asking for is a more critical reading of these thinkers. This is clearly good academic
practice and essential if we are to avoid the kinds of thinking and comments made by
the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy quoted earlier. If our political leaders are
thinking in these terms, then there is a real need for such a critical and ‘decolonised’
curriculum. Moreover, it was claimed in the Mail on Sunday (Petrie, 2017) that School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) students in London want philosophers such as Kant
and Hegel to be ‘dropped’ from the SOAS curriculum. The debate about decolonisa-
tion of the curriculum is clearly a complex one. You might like to look at the following
sources to start you off – if, of course, you have not already done so:
• Pett, S. (2015) ‘It’s time to take the curriculum back from dead white men’, in
The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-take-the-curriculum-
back-from-dead-white-men-40268
• Have a look at Pett’s suggestions for decolonising the curriculum. What are your
views on this? Also, what do you think of her use of language in the article? You
may like to discuss this in your study group if you have formed one.
• The School of Oriental and African Studies: Educational Priorities 2017–18
includes a statement on Decolonising SOAS: Confronting the White Institution.
https://soasunion.org/pageassets/education/educationalpriorities/Educational-
priorities-2016-17(3).pdf
• It was claimed in the Mail on Sunday (Petrie, 2017) that SOAS students wanted
philosophers such as Kant, Hegel and Plato to be ‘dropped’ from their university
syllabus. Is this what the Education Priorities document states?
(Continued)

• Malik, K. (2017) ‘Are SOAS students right to “decolonise” their minds from
western philosophers?’ in The Guardian, 19 February: www.theguardian.com/
education/2017/feb/19/soas-philosopy-decolonise-our-minds-enlightenment-
white-european-kenan-malik
• Malik states that the debate about decolonising the curriculum is ‘not as straight-
forward as some might imagine’. Does he help to clarify the issues?
Lessons from history

It would be reasonable to assume that education policy makers and experts
have learnt a great deal from the mistakes of the past and from the accumu-
lated knowledge of decades of research but, as with most politically charged
issues, education is rarely left to the experts and some educationalists are quite
scathing of the way that governments have responded to the evidence gathered
over the years:
The lessons of past attempts at reform have not been learned. The lessons of past
research and development have been treated as irrelevant not because they are
genuinely inapplicable but merely because they are more than a few months old, or
maybe because they challenge the preferred political agenda. (Alexander, 2009: 38)
So, we already know a good deal about what works and what constitutes good
practice in education. However, politicians of whatever persuasion are usually
driven by their own political ideologies and the next new idea, as well as the
next election. What we actually get tends to be a compromise based on govern-
ment priorities and limited by budgetary targets rather than pedagogically sound
principles. In the following chapters these issues will be pursued in more detail.
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2
Early Sociology
of Education
Chapter aims
This chapter will examine sociology before it became recognised as a distinct
field of study. The work of the eminent fourteenth-century Muslim scholar
Ibn Khaldun will be discussed, as well as the claim that he was the found-
ing father of sociology before it was properly developed in Europe during the
nineteenth century. There will then be an examination of the emergence of
modern European sociology focusing mainly on the work of Emile Durkheim,
who is generally recognised as the first modern sociologist, and his sociology
of education.
Key words: society, industrial society, social change, evolutionary change, revo-
lutionary change, individualism, ideology, social solidarity, sociology, sociology
of education, moral education, southern theory.
Sociology before sociology

If, as we saw in Chapter 1, philosophy is the mother and father of all modern
disciplines, then sociology is one of its children. It was conceived in the
Enlightenment period of the eighteenth century, though some say this may
actually have occurred as early as the fourteenth century (Alatas, 2006), and it
was born in the nineteenth century. However, ‘society’ is something that phi-
losophers have been writing about ever since ancient times in Asia (K’ung Futzu
(Confucius) 551–497 BCE), in Ancient Greece (Plato and Aristotle) and in the
Middle East (Ibn Khaldun, fourteenth century CE). In his discussion of the ori-
gins of sociology, Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of modern Western
sociology, claims that none of them applied a sociological approach to the study
of society, being concerned mainly with the idea of the ‘perfect’ society
(Durkheim [1918] 1960: 4). In the Republic, for example, Plato laid out his notion
of the ideal city state in which social order and justice are the key themes. He
claims that a just society is one in which everyone knows and accepts their roles
in a strictly hierarchical system (Russell, 1945).
Plato had a very developed notion of such proto-sociological ideas as society,
which he saw as made up of a variety of parts all contributing to the unique
character of the whole. In addition, he developed a distinct theory of social dif-
ference and stratification, the division of labour and the role of education in the
socialisation and integration of society’s members. However, if we define sociol-
ogy as a discipline with its own specific area of study, a distinct body of
knowledge using its own conceptual tools and methodology without recourse to
non-social explanations such as divine mission or design, then, according to

Swingewood (1984), none of the earlier writers had applied a sociological
approach to the study of society. They tended to be political philosophers con-
cerned with defining or describing the ideal society rather than developing a
theory of the functioning of social forces and laws.
However, Ibn Khaldun, the eminent Muslim scholar writing in the four-
teenth century, produced a work that is believed by some scholars (Alatas, 2006;
Dhaoudi, 1990) to be the first sociological work ever written. It is not known
whether Durkheim or the other pioneers of modern sociology had come across
or read this work, but in the Muqaddimah [1958] (2005) Ibn Khaldun claims to
have developed a way of thinking (sociologically) that he had never come
across before. It is, he suggests, a rational and evidence-based analysis of history
in an attempt to develop a scientific understanding of how societies develop
and change. Though a Muslim scholar, for Khaldun (2005) his religion was not
an obstacle to this new science of society, for Islam, he claims, positively
encourages observation-based knowledge and rational thinking. In addition,
Ibn Khaldun (2005) emphasises the view that society is not governed by some
divine plan, nor was it the result of individual motives and actions, but instead
it is the result of social, cultural, environmental and political factors prevailing
at the time.
There is no hint of a divine purpose gradually unfolding in the course of history. The
facts are observed, correlated and explained without any effort to fit them into a
theistic interpretation to justify the way of God to man. (Schmidt, 1978: 24)
Such an approach to history and social change would not sound out of place
today, yet it was written in the fourteenth century. From the start of the
Maqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun proposes a rational, philosophically based study of
society. He identifies the ways in which the works of ‘outstanding Muslim his-
torians’ (Ibn Khaldun, 2005: 5) have been distorted and rendered useless by
their successors who, he claims, were merely interested in traditional and sen-
sational accounts of history with no attempt to challenge or check the
reliability of the evidence they reported. Ibn Khaldun’s (2005) discussion of
historical method reads like a modern manual for contemporary historians; he
asserts that writing history requires the use of a variety of sources rather than a
reliance on single traditional accounts and that there is a need to be guided by
rational principles regarding the sources and credibility of historical evidence.
In addition, he states that the historian needs to have a good knowledge and
understanding of the cultural, religious, social and political conditions of the
period under consideration.
Ibn Khaldun (2005) suggests that there are social laws that operate in socie-
ties, and societies with similar structures and modes of organisation tend to
demonstrate similar patterns of development. This does not mean that history
is predictable, as in the natural sciences, because he argues that environmental
Early sociology of education 27

factors and human agency – the actions of people – play an important part in
the historical process. Nevertheless, he claims that patterns are discernible that
enable us to learn from history.
The basis for a sociological understanding

of society
For Ibn Khaldun (2005), this is the key to his science of society: in order to
develop a sound understanding of the social processes at work in society, we
must have a reliable source of evidence for our theories. Building scientific theo-
ries on tradition, hearsay or some external unexplained force is not the way to
develop a scientific theory of social change. However, there is a clear tension in
Ibn Khaldun’s theory of history and social change, in that orthodox Islamic
theology identifies a world unfolding according to God’s plan. Ibn Khaldun
seems to be attempting to reconcile the principles of rational philosophy with
the teachings of the Quran by explaining how God has given humans the ability
to think rationally and, by using this gift of rationality, the social and physical
worlds can be revealed to humans and more fully understood. We therefore need
to place Ibn Khaldun’s ideas in the context of the intellectual climate of the
time; it was a period of a rapid growth of rational thought as well as one that
demanded Islamic orthodoxy. The Muqadimmah is full of highly advanced
philosophical insights that are regularly accompanied by affirmations of faith in
the Quran and in God’s wisdom.
Nevertheless, Ibn Khaldun (2005) presents a very modern approach to his-
tory and social change that effectively predates the work of more recognised
sociologists such as Marx, Durkheim and the nineteenth-century German
economist and sociologist Max Weber by several hundred years. The emer-
gence of sociology is generally assumed to be a response to the effects of social
change brought about by industrialisation. Ibn Khaldun (2005) was writing
about the changes in Islamic societies, but the changes were related to the
effects of the transition from simple nomadic Bedouin societies to more settled
urban/city societies which, at the time, had an impact that was almost as dra-
matic as that of the growth of industrialisation. In addition, Ibn Khaldun
(2005) identifies the need for some form of social bonding, which would ena-
ble societies to unite their members together in a moral and social community.
He calls this asabiyah, and it is a concept that anticipates the ideas relating to
social solidarity which concerned Durkheim, Marx and Weber. These were the
concerns of the earliest sociologist 400 years before the onset of industrialisa-
tion and the emergence of European sociology in the writings of the pioneers
of modern sociology.

Ibn Khaldun and education
Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah (2005) was written as a response to the changing
European and Arabic social, political and cultural conditions in the fourteenth
century. Arabic scholars were concerned about the rapidly growing strength and
intellectual flowering of European culture and the relative decline of Muslim
civilisations, particularly in the Maghreb, which is the western part of the Arab
world, including Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (Syed Agil, 2008). He attempts to
provide a sociological account for the growth and quality of education as well as
the reasons for its decline. Using his newly discovered historiography, Ibn
Khaldun (2005) examines the patterns and evidence available and claims that
the quality and nature of education in any society is closely related to economic
growth, which is itself dependent on the nature of the society. Ibn Khaldun
(2005) states that the level of intellectual and scientific progress has little to do
with the intellectual ability of particular groups, but is primarily related to the
length of time a civilisation has existed, the size of its population and the
amount of surplus labour. Where there is a large and growing surplus of labour,
the opportunity arises for greater numbers of individuals to engage in intellec-
tual and scientific activities. This was the case in the more settled parts of the
Arab world with large cities such as Baghdad and Cairo. However, in the nomadic
societies of the Bedouins, which are less rooted, such intellectual achievements
are much rarer due to their greater concern with meeting basic needs, thereby
providing less time and opportunity to develop the intellectual disciplines.
What we have in Ibn Khaldun’s sociology of education is a clear recognition of
the importance of social and economic growth in the development of education
and its relationship to the division of labour, which was a key concern of
Durkheim, as well as the amount of surplus labour, about which Marx wrote in
his political economy and his theory of class.
The birth of modern sociology

Sociology as a distinctly modern discipline was born in the nineteenth century, a
time of social, industrial and intellectual turmoil. Just as the first mass-produced
products were rolling off the furnaces and out of the factories of Europe, so too
was there a flow of ideas and ways of thinking about the new industrial age, as
well as the potential dangers and benefits it might bring in its wake. In this
strange, novel and, for many, confusing world, there was clearly the need for an
alternative vocabulary and language that would enable people to describe and to
understand the processes involved in these changes. In the field of political econ-
omy, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Karl Marx examined the sources of wealth

and profit in the new capitalist economy through concepts such as the labour
theory of value, surplus value and market competition. Politicians, political reformers,
trades unionists and political philosophers (such as Marx, again) debated the issue
of enfranchising a growing and increasingly powerful industrial workforce, as well
as of improving their employment rights and conditions of work. Natural phi-
losophers such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley proposed that humans had
not been created in God’s image, as most people believed at the time, but that they
had evolved from more primitive forms of life.
The suspicion and confusion caused by such ideas and social changes are
understandable, given the degree of comfort the traditional certainties provided
most of the population. However, Darwin’s theory became very influential, not
just in scientific circles, but also in the work of philosophers and the growing
number of sociologists who saw in society a system that was subject to the same
laws of evolution as any biological organism. In the words of Giddens (1971: 66):
‘It is difficult from the perspective of the modern age to recapture the extraordi-
nary impact which Darwin’s writings had upon social thought in the concluding
decades of the nineteenth century’.
Thinking point 2.1

Reflect on the first Thinking point you read in Chapter 1. Imagine how people
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries might have reacted to such ideas as
evolution or democratic rights for all, including women.
It is against this background that sociology was born. They were dramatic and
exciting times that included the effects of the French Revolution of 1789 and the
Industrial Revolution. The first person to coin the word ‘sociology’ was August
Comte (1798–1857) in 1838, but he was only one of a number of philosophers
who were concerned about the dramatic events taking place in Europe, such as the
rapid change from agricultural to industrial societies, the shift from rural to urban
living, and the changing ways of thinking, from traditional religious modes to
rationally based principles; a process named by Max Weber (1864–1920), (Weber
[1904–5] 1958; Weber [1921] 1968) as ‘rationalisation’. The response to these
developments by philosophers at the time varied from the optimistic to the gener-
ally pessimistic; some saw such changes as a threat to the natural or divinely
ordained social and hierarchical system and thereby to social stability.
Sociology emerged from this chaos as an attempt to understand such pro-
cesses and events, as well as predict what might happen. The immediate effects

of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation were clear for all to see in the forms
of poverty, disease, overcrowding, homelessness, crime and pollution. Such
externalities associated with a rapidly growing industrial economy such as in
Britain were already being documented by social reformers and philanthropists
including Charles Booth (1884–1903) and Seebohm Rowntree ([1901] 2000),
whose studies of poverty in London and York, respectively, were groundbreaking
not just in their methods of documenting poverty, but also because they found
evidence to suggest that much of the poverty resulted not from the inadequacies
of the poor, but from low wages. In other words, there were social forces beyond
the control of the poor that caused their suffering. This ran counter to the pre-
vailing view of the time and started a national debate about the need for a better
fed and educated workforce.
Philosophical debates about the effects of

industrialisation, the growth of democracy
and urbanisation
The philosophers writing about these momentous changes during the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries had to develop a new lexicon in order to be
able to describe and understand what they were witnessing. On a tour of the USA
in the mid-nineteenth century, the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville
([1853] 1969) believed that he had received a glimpse of the future of France and
indeed the rest of Europe, which was experiencing the overthrow of, or decline
in, the autocratic systems of government in which unelected aristocracies ruled.
Tocqueville was impressed with the development of this new nation in which
ordinary citizens – agricultural workers, tradesmen and the professional middle
classes – were playing a part in the political process. This was something that the
ruling elites of Europe generally looked upon with horror. However, Tocqueville,
although himself an aristocrat, was one of many thinkers who regarded this as
an inevitable development that had to be managed rather than halted, unlike
many of his French contemporaries, such as the conservative romantics Maistre
(1753–1821), Bonald (1754–1840) and Lamennaise (1782–1854), who were
committed to defending traditional rule by divinely appointed monarchs and
who harked back to a golden past when everyone knew their place in society.
In Democracy in America, however, Tocqueville ([1853] 1969: 12) acknowledges
that the movement towards greater equality and democracy was ‘too strong to
be halted’.
Despite Tocqueville’s acknowledgement of the inevitability of such develop-
ments, he was mindful of the potential problems that they posed, in particular
the threat of excessive individualism. Whereas American writers such as Ralph

Waldo Emerson (1803–82) saw the self-reliance and self-containment associated
with extreme individualism as virtues to be encouraged, Tocqueville viewed such
a trend as contrary to ‘individualism properly understood’, by which he means
one that promotes the common good and the welfare of society. In Emerson’s
individualism, Tocqueville sees the potential for individuals to lose their connec-
tions with others, leading to ‘egoism’, which he refers to as ‘exaggerated
self-love’ (Tocqueville [1853] 1969: 506). In such cases, self-love becomes a bar-
rier to citizenship and the fulfilment of one’s obligations to one’s neighbours
and nation.
However, Tocqueville saw in American society the signs of social mores and
behaviour which he believed helped to promote the common good. For exam-
ple, he saw the role that religion plays in the public and social life of Americans
as an important means of regulating behaviour in family and domestic affairs,
as well as being the basis of laws and of social behaviour generally. In addition,
Tocqueville identified the popularity of civic and political associations in
America as an important means of bringing individuals together and remind-
ing them of their membership of ‘society’. He uses the term ‘self-interest
rightly understood’ to describe the way in which citizens help one another in
such organisations, thereby combating the natural tendency to serve one’s
own self-interest.
As we can see, the importance of developing new types of social bonds to
replace the declining traditional ones was a focus of Tocqueville’s writing. In
looking to the future and new ways of dealing with these potential problems, he
can be described as a progressive when his opinions are compared to the reac-
tionary ideas of Bonald, Maistre and Lamennaise, who were advocating a return
to pre-revolutionary times of aristocratic and clerical rule, in which a rigid social
hierarchy was thought to be divinely ordained. Nevertheless, Tocqueville does
show a certain degree of concern at the prospect of mass democracy and the
need for those who govern to ‘educate democracy’ (Tocqueville [1853] 1969: 12).
Here we see the signs of a growing recognition of the key role that education
would play in these new and modern societies.
The ideas of Ferdinand Toennies:

Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
Clearly, there was a great deal of division about how to interpret the social
changes being experienced, as well as how to deal with them. Even progressive
thinkers such as Tocqueville showed a qualified approval for the growth of
democracy and the individualism associated with it. This ambivalence on the
part of many philosophers is understandable, given the fact that no society had

experienced such phenomena before and there was nothing to compare them
with. One device used by the early sociologists as a means of distinguishing
between traditional and modern societies was to devise typologies that would
identify the key characteristics of each and to highlight the main differences, as
well as the similarities between them. It should be added that no society will fit
the typologies exactly; they are ideal types and act primarily as heuristic devices
in academic analysis. A heuristic device is a commonly used way of helping to
identify the key aspects of a process or a phenomenon. It tends to distil an idea
to its simplest elements and acts as the basis for developing a deeper understand-
ing rather than providing an explanation. For example, in examining the
process of social change, it is possible to identify the key characteristics of a
society before the process of change has taken place and then compare them
after the change has occurred.
The German sociologist Ferdinand Toennies is noted for one of the more
memorable typologies of this kind. His work displays the kind of ambivalence to
the changes of the time mentioned earlier but, as with Tocqueville, Toennies
realised that there was no possibility of turning back the clock; the genie had
been released from the bottle and it could not be put back. The move towards
democracy, individualism and increasing rights was seen as too powerful to
restrain and, for Toennies ([1857] 1957) the question was not how to stop them,
but how to create a new type of society that contained the best aspects of com-
munity living of the past, which he called gemeinschaft, and minimised the
potential dangers associated with the more individualistic and impersonal type
of society that was emerging, which he called gesellschaft.
Toennies associates these two categories of motivation with the two types of
society, one of which is based primarily on wesenwille, where social bonds are
based on traditional family, religious and ancient customs (gemeinschaft), and the
other in which there is more emphasis on individual contractually based interac-
tions negotiated on merit and rational principles rather than on ritual or
tradition (gesellschaft). Although elements of both gemeinschaft and gesellschaft
may exist in any society to varying degrees, Toennies suggests that with the
growth of industrialisation, commerce and increasing social and political free-
dom, there is a move towards gesellschaft. In line with many theories of the time,
Toennies took an evolutionary approach to social change and employed biologi-
cal or organic analogies in order to develop his ideas. In distinguishing between
gemeinschaft and gesellschaft, for example, he suggests that the former has the
characteristics of a ‘living organism’ (Toennies [1857] 1957: 35), whereas gesells-
chaft displays the qualities of something manufactured or created. Moreover, he
suggests that there was a progression from community-based societies to ones
based more loosely on contract, business, rationality and self-interest.
There seems to be a tone in Toennies’s writing that displays a sense of despair
at the decline of what he believes are the more natural and spontaneous kinds

of social relationships in gemeinschaft and the growth of individualism, which
he believes results in the loss of community bonds and the emergence of atom-
ised individuals motivated only by self-interest. This is a view he shared with
the utilitarianism of Spencer (1820–1903), who claimed that there is a growth
of atomised individuals resulting from the spread of industry and the produc-
tion of goods and services. However, while the utilitarians argued that such
developments enabled these individuals to use their self-interest to maximise
their happiness through a greater ability to meet their individual needs, and
thereby their degree of social cohesion, for Toennies such spontaneous har-
mony was unlikely to occur. He believed that it was necessary for the state to
intervene in the form of institutions designed to achieve this (Swingewood,
1984). Toennies did not seem to think that modern societies could spontane-
ously develop their own new forms of social solidarity. He suggested that they
had to be imposed by the state. This is where Durkheim’s total sociological
approach differs from that of Toennies, for he believed that the basis for social
solidarity in industrial societies could be found within society itself rather than
having to be imposed from above.
Durkheim
It was in response to the writings of philosophers such as Tocqueville, Toennies
and Spencer, as well as more radical writers such as Marx, that Durkheim entered
the debate on the effects of industrialisation, urbanisation and the growth of
democracy. He was also much exercised about the consequent spread of indi-
vidualism and its impact on social solidarity. Durkheim was not only the first
‘proper’ sociologist – he was the first academic ever to become a professor of
sociology – but he was also the first to attempt to provide a fully sociological
account of how societies function and cohere. He sought the answers to these
questions within society, and asked how each society was able to create its own
moral order from within rather than externally through the political system. In
Paris where he taught, students and intellectuals discussed the ideas of Marx,
whose work was being translated into French. They pondered the possibilities of
socialism as a means of creating a society where extremes of poverty and inequal-
ity could be abolished. Paris in the late nineteenth century was the place to be for
philosophers, radicals and revolutionaries from all parts of Europe and beyond.
Durkheim, however, attempted to stand outside the political debates and events
of the time. He was more concerned with the effects of industrialisation per se
rather than the effects of a particular type of industrialisation known as capital-
ism. He therefore saw the main problems as arising from the processes involved
in industrialisation and not, as Marx suggested, in the class inequalities and the
conflict of economic interests. Moreover, whereas Marx saw such conflict as

inevitable in industrial capitalist society, Durkheim believed that the conflict
being experienced at the time was abnormal and could be ended through the
establishment of a new social and moral order in which excessive individualism
would be controlled by such things as occupational associations (Durkheim,
1947) and a system of education that instilled in young people a sense of com-
munity and belonging to the wider society (1961).
Consensus versus conflict

The debate at the time between Marxists and Durkheim had fundamental polit-
ical consequences as well as theoretical implications for sociology, for while
Marx (Marx and Engels [1846] 1964) saw conflict in capitalist societies as inevi-
table, Durkheim was much less pessimistic and believed in the possibility of
creating a new and harmonious social order, claiming that class conflict was not
unavoidable. Marx’s conflict theory was based on the assumption that all modes
of production that have existed are based on a conflict of interests between a
dominant class and a subordinate class. Marx defined a mode of production as a
historical epoch characterised by a specific set of productive relations, such as slave
labour or wage labour, and forces of production, comprising the materials, tools
and technological means of producing goods. This was part of Marx’s general
theory of historical development in which he saw the evolution of these modes
of production towards socialism, the only socioeconomic system he believed
capable of resolving these conflicts.
In the slave systems that existed in Ancient Greece and Rome, most of the
work (labour) was performed by slaves (the subordinate class). Citizens (the
dominant class) were able to own and use slaves as they wished and, without
such a mode of production, Ancient Athens and Rome could not have existed
and prospered. Indeed, it is arguable that Plato and Aristotle would not have
been able to spend so much time thinking and writing, or, in the case of
Socrates, ‘philosophising’, had they not lived and prospered in a slave society.
Similarly, in capitalist society Marx saw a conflict of interests between the work-
ers (the proletariat) and the dominant capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) in that the
latter, Marx claimed, wish to make as much profit as possible from the former
by making them work as hard as possible for the minimum pay possible.
The role of ideology

Marx suggested that any such systems of exploitation could not last for long
unless the dominant class has control over the way that people think. He
claimed that in all modes of production, those who control the means of

production – that is, the way the economy functions – impose their ‘ruling-
class ideology’ on the rest of society. In other words, they are able to convince
all other members of society that the way society is organised is fair and just.
Ideology is a very important concept in Marxist theory, as it helps to explain
how societies, no matter how unfair or unequal, are able to exist and cohere by
making the system appear normal or natural.
The search for a new moral order

Like Marx, as well as Ibn Khaldun and Tocqueville before him, Durkheim was
concerned with the effects of the transition from one type of socioeconomic
system to another, and in particular the effects of industrialisation on social
cohesion and solidarity. In his analysis of these issues, we can see clear signs of
Tocqueville’s influence. Durkheim saw in industrial society many benefits and
certainly did not suggest that there was a golden age that was being lost and
needed to be recaptured. However, he did believe that the transitional phase in
which he lived at the time was likely to experience conflict and upheaval as a
consequence of the problems caused by excessive individualism. Durkheim did
not see the growth of individualism as problematic per se, but distinguished
between moral individualism, which he claimed was the basis of a new form of
social solidarity that he called organic solidarity, and egoism, which he described
as self-love in which individuals place their biological desires and impulses
above those of others.
His examination of individualism led Durkheim in a direction that seems to
have run counter to his earlier work, which sought an essentially sociological
account of social change and social solidarity. Nevertheless, he seems to have felt
the need to develop a theory of human nature in order to explain the positive
aspects of individualism, which result in increased social solidarity, and the nega-
tive aspects of individualism, which result in egoism. Human nature is, according
to Durkheim, made up of two ‘states of consciousness’ (Durkheim, [1914] 1973),
one that originates from our biological being and satisfies our basic desires, and
the other that originates from and is instilled by society. Durkheim asserts that
these two states of human consciousness are constantly at odds with each other,
one striving to satisfy selfish needs and the other striving to meet social ends. He
suggests that these two parts of ourselves become more manifest with the grow-
ing division of labour in society (Durkheim, 1947). In modern societies, work
becomes more specialised and individuals come to see themselves as separate and
more important as others become more reliant on their skills or knowledge. As a
consequence, there is the need for a new type of solidarity to ensure that the
egoistical state of consciousness does not prevail. This is where Durkheim sees the
role of occupational groups and education as playing crucial roles. The former

would help to morally regulate individuals and ensure that members operated in
the collective interest, and the latter would help to inculcate a moral individual-
ism in the young.
The importance of education in Durkheim’s theory

Not only was Durkheim the first official sociologist, but he was also the first
sociologist to produce a sociology of education. The discipline of sociology was
seen by Durkheim as essentially a sociology of morals that would provide the
foundations for the new industrial society. He suggested that the transition crisis
was not one of a conflict of material and class interests, as Marx proposed, which
could only be resolved through a revolutionary change of society into a state-
imposed socialism. Nor did he agree with the views of the utilitarians such as
Spencer, who suggested that social cohesion would spontaneously arise out of
the economic contacts formed between individuals through the daily exchange
of goods and services. He believed that individual economic interests alone were
not sufficient to promote social solidarity. Toennies’s notion of state-imposed
institutions for the promotion of solidarity were likewise rejected by Durkheim,
as he believed that social solidarity in modern society should be established
through social institutions in which individuals submit voluntarily to some-
thing morally superior to themselves, rather than having it imposed by external
sources. He calls such notions or symbols of things standing above or superior
to the individual and which motivate human action ‘collective representations’
(Durkheim, [1897] 1951). It is the collective representation of society as being
exterior to as well as superior to the individual that Durkheim saw as the basis
of a moral education and the creation of a new moral order.
Sociology as a profession
Durkheim saw sociology as a profession that had a role in helping to bring about
social reform, setting it apart from any other academic discipline. For him, edu-
cation is the means by which we gain the physical, mental and, above all, the
moral ability to function effectively in society. Durkheim did not have a single
definition of what education is, but thought that it should serve the needs of
society. Each society is different, so the form it takes will differ from society to
society. He disagreed with the ideas of Kant who claimed that ‘the end of educa-
tion is to develop, in each individual, all the perfections of which he is capable’
(Kant, cited in Durkheim, 1956: 62). He saw such ideas as too vague and lacking
in social context. In modern industrial society, for example, he suggested that
there is a need for the division of labour and for individuals to develop the

potential they have in particular skills and abilities, which will equip them for
their role in society; we all have particular talents and it is these we should
develop rather than all possible skills, which he saw as an unrealistic ambition.
For Durkheim, though, the main task of education in modern societies is the
effective teaching of moral education. Because he believed that the sources of
morality and social cohesion lay within society and could not be imposed exter-
nally, Durkheim assumed that sociology is uniquely positioned to provide the
means of bringing about a new moral order with which to stimulate social soli-
darity. He did not assign the task of the moral education of children to the
family or to the Church, as he believed that in the modern age this should take
place within the context of the school, which would prepare young people for
the demands of society. In addition, he was quite clear that education should be
devoid of all religious content. It is here that we can see some of the principles
and ideals upon which the French education system rests: that of a secular
organisation devoted to promoting the ideal of loyalty to the French nation.
The family is the appropriate institution for developing within the child
‘homely sentiments basic to morality’ and indeed for guiding children in their
development of ‘the simplest personal relationships’ (Durkheim, 1961: 19), but,
in terms of preparing children for the demands of the wider society, Durkheim
saw the family as wholly unsuited and inappropriate due to its limited range of
social relations. Regarding religion, Durkheim was concerned that there was a
danger of religious organisations diverting or dividing the loyalty of individuals
who he believed should be devoted only to the nation. In addition, a moral
society as envisioned by Durkheim would be one based on rational scientific
principles whose ideals are supported by reason and not, as in the case of most
religions, based primarily on faith. As Durkheim (1961: 19) states: ‘a rational
morality cannot have the same content as one that depends upon some author-
ity other than reason’.
The dimensions of a moral education

Durkheim’s primary intention was to create a new secular curriculum that
focuses on the three dimensions of morality he thought essential for children to
learn and internalise. The first aspect of morality that Durkheim identifies is
discipline, or self-discipline, which he believes is necessary if children are to
learn to be able to control their egoistic states of consciousness. By accepting the
necessary limits to our desires, we acknowledge our obligations to society. In
addition, Durkheim suggests that limiting our desires is a means of achieving
individual happiness, for having unrealistic expectations can only lead to disap-
pointment. A further point that Durkheim makes is that discipline is essential
for the development of individuals, particularly if they are to be able to use their

will in reflective and responsible ways: by restricting our desires, we are able to
use our freedom more responsibly.
Enforcing discipline
In enforcing discipline, Durkheim does not advocate physical or corporal pun-
ishment. In fact, he believes that if moral education is to promote the idea of the
dignity of ‘man’, then corporal punishment can only be seen as an affront to
that principle:
In beating, in brutality of all kinds, there is something we find repugnant, some-

thing that revolts our conscience – in a word something immoral. Now, defending
morality through means repudiated by it, is a remarkable way of protecting
morality. It weakens on the one hand the sentiments one wishes to strengthen on
the other. One of the chief aims of moral education is to inspire in the child a
feeling for the dignity of man. Corporal punishment is a continual offence to this
sentiment. (Durkheim, 1961: 183)
Durkheim’s position on this matter can only be viewed as progressive at a time

when in countries such as Britain corporal punishment was widely justified and
practised at all levels and in all sectors of the education system from the public
schools to the elementary schools. However, although he did not approve of any
form of physical punishment in schools in enforcing discipline, Durkheim was
in favour of the judicious use of other forms of punishment. The purpose of
punishment for Durkheim is not to cause suffering to the child or exact retribu-
tion for an unacceptable act or behaviour, but instead to highlight the act and
its unacceptable nature, as well as to show how it offends against the commu-
nity of the school. Children are expected to develop a notion of the school as
something above them and as having a sacred quality that elicits respect and
submission to its authority. As a consequence, the offender is expected to
acknowledge the harm caused to the community. Ideally, any punishment
would entail some element of rehabilitation or compensation and should be
seen by the pupil as worthwhile rather than eliciting resentment: ‘Denying par-
ticipation in games, extra tasks, as well as reproaches and reprimands are the
chief elements of school punishment’. (Durkheim, 1961: 198)
The importance of attachment

Though Durkheim believed that discipline is an important element in ensur-
ing the acceptance by children of moral principles and values of the school,
he did not think that conformity brought about by a fear of punishment was

sufficient in itself to promote moral development in a child; there needs to
be a sense of attachment to the community. In this respect, the school acts
as a miniature society in which children can develop an understanding of the
wider society and its rules, as well as a love for their nation. Moral develop-
ment can only take place in the context of a wider loyalty and interest than
just to one’s self.
There are no genuinely moral ends except collective ones. There is no truly moral
force save that involved in attachment to the group. However, when one is com-
mitted to that society of which he is a member, it is psychologically impossible not
to be bound to the people who compose it and through whom it comes into being.
(Durkheim, 1961: 82)
Autonomy
Durkheim has often been criticised for presenting a picture of individuals as
essentially the products of society with little in the way of autonomy. Indeed,
in attempting to provide a totally sociological account of education, he ran the
risk of developing an ‘over-socialised conception of man’ (Wrong, 1961).
Morality clearly has personal and psychological dimensions and individuals are
not totally controlled by external social factors: they are thinking, meaning
makers who interpret the world around them and act accordingly. However,
Durkheim does not seem to take such an extreme position. As we have seen
already, he had a view of human nature that informed his ideas about the devel-
opment of individualism.
In addition, in his third dimension of teaching moral education, Durkheim
includes the importance of individual autonomy. He suggests that conform-
ity to morality can only be effective if it is performed freely and autonomously,
but this is dependent on a rational understanding of the rules and values
being taught. However, none of us is completely rational and sociology
does not have a completely rational explanation for all moral principles.
Nevertheless, Durkheim argues that it is not necessary for us to fully under-
stand what it is we are being asked to accept, or the reasons why we should
accept them; we merely have to understand that the basis for such rules is
rational. In the process, the more we learn and understand, the more auton-
omous we become.
In his theory of moral education, Durkheim is clearly attempting to create a
morally unifying education that would help to develop the necessary social
solidarity for a new age at the same time as promoting a moral individualism
guided by the ability to show self-discipline, a sense of attachment to the com-
munity and a rationally based acceptance of the need for conformity to a moral
system in the interest of society.

The view from the South
Despite the odd reference to non-Western thinkers, it would seem from most
of the literature that sociology is almost a uniquely Western invention that
began in mid-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe as a result of the
concerns of a few white middle-class male intellectuals over the issues of mod-
ernisation, industrialisation and the search for a new social and moral order in
Europe. This picture, however, is being increasingly challenged by sociologists
who claim that it is inaccurate and misleading. In her article entitled ‘Why is
classical theory classical?’, the Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell (1997)
challenges what she calls this ‘global Northern’ intellectual tradition, claiming
that sociology actually emerged from the encounters between European and
non-European cultures, as well as from the responses by colonised peoples to the
experiences of colonisation and imperialism. Connell states that there were also
Chinese and Islamic treatises on modernity. However, these and the accounts by
the people of the colonies, including those of women such as Harriett Martineau
(1802–1876), the Black feminist Anna Julia Hayward Cooper (1858–1964) and
Jane Addams (1860–1935), are missing from most accounts of the history of
sociology. Her claims, which are the result of fourteen years of research in
Europe, Africa, Australia and South America, also reveal a great deal of literature
on gender, race relations and sexuality that figured in the ethnographic studies
(small-scale studies of social groups) of the early sociologists. In such encounters,
the colonial ‘Other’ (the colonised) is subjected to the ‘imperial gaze’ (Kaplan,
1997). This is where the white, and usually male, Northern researcher/observer
identifies himself as superior and the one whose interpretation counts most.
There is often an evolutionist approach to such studies, in which the culture of
the colonial power is seen as more advanced than that of the colonised. Connell
cites a number of examples of these from the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries relating to sexuality, race and gender differences between these
so-called ‘primitive’ societies of the colonies and the metropole (the colonial
powers of France, Britain, Germany and the USA) (Connell, 1997: 1522). On the
part of the colonised peoples, Connell uncovered a wealth of ideas and material
from Latin America, Australia, Iran, Africa and India that people in the global
North tend to be unaware of.
There is also evidence of dialogue between the early French social philosophers
and Arab scholars on issues of colonialism and culture. So, for Connell the origins
of sociology are truly global and lie in the process of empire building and the
relationship between the metropole and their colonies. However, during the pro-
cess of creating an ‘official’ version of sociology and identifying its founding
‘fathers’, or ‘canon formation’ as Connell refers to it (Connell, 1997: 1545), such
literature and research were marginalised and even erased. Connell is, by her own
admission, a little unsure as to how exactly this occurred (Connell 1997: 1537).

However, she refers to the crisis of sociology during the 1930s when the pioneer-
ing ethnographic researchers of the Chicago School of Sociology became mired
in divisions over definitions and conceptions of what sociology is or should be.
She believes that this conceptual vacuum left by the Chicago School was filled by
an ambitious group of American and European sociologists such as Talcott
Parsons (1937), Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (1948), Robert Merton (1949)
and Robert Nisbet (1967), who established Durkheim and Weber, and eventually
Marx, as the founding fathers of sociology. These early European thinkers effec-
tively represented the academic interests and cultural biases of a group of mainly
white Western/American male intellectuals.
In order to support her claims, Connell consolidated her research in the form
of a book, Southern Theory (2007), that reveals a wealth of intellectual treasure
from the periphery of the dominant academic world on issues relating to the
problems of colonial and postcolonial societies, and which is almost unknown
to most sociologists from either the global South or the global North. Connell
(1997, 2007) reaches the conclusion that the notion of classical sociological
theory based on the ideas of the trinity of Weber, Marx and Durkheim is, in fact,
a myth. Moreover, she claims that there needs to be a ‘revolution’ in the socio-
logical division of labour (Connell, 2012) from one in which the socoiological
data is provided by the periphery in the form of studies of indigenous peoples of
the geographical South and theories that are created by the metropole, to one
where the ideas produced through the colonial encounter and its continued
effects on the post-colonial world need to be at the centre of this process of
theory construction. It would involve the inclusion of the full range of theories
of society from the past, including those created by colonised peoples, feminists,
revolutionaries and anarchists, and a move away from the global North’s control
over disciplinary orthodoxy. By doing this, Connell suggests that sociology can
develop an authentic understanding of itself and its origins, and thereby con-
tribute to the decolonisation of the sociology curriculum (Connell, 2018).
Case study 2.1

Raewyn Connell
Raewyn Connell is an Australian sociologist (born in Sydney in 1944) who has been
teaching sociology since the 1970s. Early in her career she became aware of the
strange situation at Australian universities where academics taught and wrote about
ideas from the other side of the world rather than those of the society and peo-
ple who originally occupied the land. These indigenous people were defined by
the pioneering sociologists and anthropologists as the ‘most primitive of all’ in the

colonised world, and served primarily as a ‘data mine’ for these Northern academ-
ics: to be studied but not to create knowledge (Connell, 2007: 77–8). They were
considered too ‘primitive’ to have anything of relevance to contribute to sociologi-
cal theory. In his ‘classic’ study The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, for example,
Durkheim [1912] (1976) described Aboriginal religion, which he called ‘totemism’,
as the most primitive in the world, which originated in the most basic society in the
world, from which it is possible to learn how all other religions evolved. Moreover,
Durkheim suggests that it is from such simple religions that ‘more advanced modes
of thinking such as philosophy and science spring’ (Boronski, 1987: 12). It was there-
fore believed by Durkheim and many other Northern academics that the Australian
Aboriginese were at a very ‘primitive’ stage of intellectual development and were
unable to think beyond such levels.
Connell decided to find out how this situation arose and ‘the significance of global
power for the social theory that was produced in the imperial centre, and exported
to the rest of the world’ (Connell, n.d.). Connell’s website is an excellent place to start
your research on Southern Theory; it contains useful links to resources and readings:
www.raewynconnell.net/p/theory.html
Connell’s ideas are very much aligned with the developing attitude among stu-
dents associated with the decolonisation of the university curriculum in South
Africa and other parts of the world that was reignited by the #RhodesMustFall
campaign at the University of Cape Town in 2015 (Heleta, 2016; Swain, 2019)
(see Chapter 12). This is just another episode in the continuing struggle in the
post-colonial countries of Africa and other parts of the global South for an intel-
lectual and cultural break with what the Iranian writer Jalal Al-e Ahmad ([1962]
1982) calls Gharbzadeghi, translated variously as ‘Westoxication’, ‘Plagued by the
West’ and ‘Occidation’ (Connell, 2007: 118). It is a description of how cultures
that have been colonised are dominated by views of themselves that have been
created by so-called Western ‘experts’ who come from the global North. In the
case of Iran, Al-e Ahmad is referring to the community of academics and indus-
trialists from the metropole who call themselves ‘Orientalists’ and whose views
‘override indigenous ones’ (Connell, 2007: 120). The Kenyan sociologist Tade
Akin Aina (2004) talks in similar terms of the wider tasks of developmental and
social transformation in Africa. He believes that this can only take place when
African intellectuals, including sociologists, can confront these issues on their
own terms to create their own knowledge and interpret African societies
‘through and with African lenses’ (Aina, 2004: 100).
When Connell wrote her article on the ‘myth’ of classical sociology in 1997, it
was greeted with hostility by some of her peers in the academy. Randall Collins,
an eminent Australian sociologist who wrote the epic The Sociology of Philosophies

(2000), an encyclopaedic account of the intellectual communities within which
philosophical ideas emerged around the world, was scathing of Connell’s thesis,
describing it as ‘A sociological guilt trip’ (Collins, 1997). Collins baulks at the idea
that a noble science such as sociology could have a concealed past tainted by
foundations linked to colonialism. Moreover, the tone of his response is a famil-
iar one, which is based on the belief that the past should not be judged by the
values of the present and that we should not harp on about the past, but instead
look at the progress that sociology has made since its inception. However, this
does not really address Connell’s point that there needs to be a reassessment of
the historical record of sociology’s global intellectual footprint in order to
develop a new and more globally inclusive discipline. Anyone who takes this
point seriously cannot fail to be influenced by it when taking a second look at
what has been handed down to us as ‘classical sociology’.
Collins’s response to Connell’s claims seems to reveal the difficulty many
sociologists have, as indeed do other academics, of taking a critical look at the
foundational principles of their disciplines. It would seem that this problem
still persists more than two decades on, as Heleta (2016) suggests in his article
on the issue.
Reading suggestion
In the following article, Heleta (2016) examines the responses of academics in
South Africa to the challenges of decolonisation.
Heleta, S. (2016) ‘Decolonisation: Academics must change what they teach, and
how’. Available online at: https://theconversation.com/decolonisation-academics-
must-change-what-they-teach-and-how-68080
Chapter summary
Most sociology textbooks suggest that the term ‘sociology’ was coined by August
Comte in 1839 and that Durkheim was the first to develop a new science of
society, which, as far as he was concerned, did not yet exist. He started to
develop a set of conceptual tools and methods of research that were distinct
from other disciplines such as psychology. His focus of study was ‘social facts’,
which he claimed had an influence on how individuals behave and which were
distinct from the internal psychological drives that influence human behaviour.
However, evidence suggests that sociology as a distinct discipline had already
been devised by the Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century in his

seminal work the Muqaddimah (1377) approximately 500 years before Durkheim.
Ibn Khaldun clearly identifies the focus of this new science and outlines the
method by which it should be studied. He claims to have discovered the laws
that govern society and the process of social change. While Ibn Khaldun studied
the social changes occurring in the Maghreb in the fourteenth century, such as
the decline of the powerful city states, Durkheim attempted to provide an under-
standing of the effects of industrialisation on societies such as France, and to
develop the means of ensuring a peaceful and non-revolutionary transition from
pre-industrial society based on mechanical solidarity, to a modern industrial
society based on organic solidarity. They were two pioneering sociologists writ-
ing about their own times but also attempting to provide practical advice to the
rulers of their day, and both identified the importance of education in the social
and economic development of society. Unfortunately, Ibn Khaldun’s work seems
to have been unknown or unacknowledged in the nineteenth century and, as a
consequence, Durkheim and other European sociologists such as Weber and
Marx take much of the credit for being the founding fathers of sociology. In
addition, there is a challenge to this conventional view of the origins of modern
sociology as the product of white European men. Southern Theory, for example,
suggests that it originated in the wider world as part of the process of colonial
expansion and that much of the knowledge and ideas produced during that
period has been erased from the sociological record.
Durkheim saw his ideas as forming a distinct alternative to the more radical
ideas of Marx whose works were being discussed in the cafés and streets of France
and Europe at the time. Durkheim did not see sociology’s role as a purely aca-
demic one, but envisioned a discipline that would have a role in policy making
as well as in education, where sociology would act as a moral science guiding the
nation’s children in the acquisition of a morality that would curb the effects of
excessive individualism resulting from the transition from pre-industrial to
industrial society.
In developing the new science of sociology, Durkheim was determined to base
his theories on purely social factors and explanations that are external to the
individual, as opposed to internal ones, such as human instinct or human
nature. However, despite this intention, Durkheim did resort to ideas of human
nature, which formed the basis of much of his sociology – particularly his sociol-
ogy of education. In The Dualism of Human Nature and its Social Condition,
Durkheim (1914) writes of the dual aspects of human beings, one in which we
are driven by our individual bodily needs and the other which represents our
social being. In addition, Durkheim claims that as individuals we have a limitless
desire for self-gratification. As a consequence, education and, more specifically,
moral education is seen as an essential means of limiting those desires and teach-
ing children the need for discipline and commitment to society. Nevertheless,
Durkheim denies that his sociology is based on theories of human nature,

instead claiming that it was sociology that provided such insights into the
human condition, a claim that does not seem entirely consistent with his writings
(Ritzer and Goodman, 2003).
Whatever is the case, it illustrates the difficulty in developing a totally
sociological understanding of society and the need for sociologists to use the
ideas of other disciplines such as psychology and philosophy. Indeed, this
applies to the other disciplines also; a psychology that ignores the sociological
dimensions of children’s learning and development will be of limited validity.
As education studies students, we should be mindful of this.
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3
Early Approaches
to Sociological
Research
Chapter aims
In this chapter we will be examining the work of the pioneers of sociological
research methods, in particular that of Marx, Weber and Durkheim. All three
conducted classic studies based on methods they developed and that are
still influential today. However, we will begin with the seminal ideas of Ibn
Khaldun, who was the first to propose a science of society and to identify
some of the basic principles for the conduct of effective and reliable sociologi-
cal and historical research, and then we will examine those of Comte who laid
the foundations for a positivist sociology.
Key words: research, positivism, historical materialism, social structure, social

action, ideal type, verstehen.
Introduction
The early sociologists were mindful of the need not only to develop a theory of
society, but also of the necessity to create a credible method of research to com-
plement the theory. This is indicated by the growing importance of knowledge
and data resulting from social research such as that by Booth (1884–1903) and
Rowntree ([1901] 2000) on poverty in England mentioned in Chapter 2.
Empiricism was becoming increasingly common as a means of understanding
not just the natural world, but also the social world. Such an approach had
already been identified in the fourteenth century CE by Ibn Khaldun, who
claimed to have discovered a new and ‘independent science, with its own pecu-
liar object – that is, human civilization and social organization’, which he called
ilm al-umran (Khaldun, 2005: 38–9). He advocated the use of observation and
experimentation, as well as checking the reliability of evidence against prevailing
social and cultural conditions, with the intention of discovering the laws of social
development and change. Many of Khaldun’s ideas are now considered to be part
of accepted practice in research. Khaldun was one of the first scholars to develop
a theory of the rise and fall of societies using his new science of society, a science
engaged in historical–empirical analysis of group behaviour and social structures
(Soyer and Gilbert, 2012). His evolutionary theory of the development of human
societies was based on the organic analogy of the human life-cycle. Each dynastic
period is characterised by birth, growth and maturity of civilisations in settled
urban communities with an inevitable ‘death’ through a self-destructive process
of corruption and injustice. This attempt to produce a theory of social change
and development preceded Comte’s positive sociology that identifies the stages

of human intellectual development. Moreover, Ibn Khaldun, just as Comte many
centuries later, was attempting to understand how to develop new forms of social
cohesion and control in the wake of the dissolution of old social orders.
As with the other fields of study emerging from the intellectual outpourings of
the Enlightenment such as chemistry, physics, biology, psychology and political
economy, the new discipline of sociology emerging in the nineteenth-century
sought to establish its intellectual credibility. This was done by convincing the
academic community of the uniqueness and significance of its subject matter –
industrial society and its effects on humanity, as well as the reliability and
validity of the methods adopted to study this phenomenon. However, in terms
of the nature of the subject matter, society and how to study it, there was no
agreement among the pioneering sociologists. This intellectual dispute can be
summed up by the German term Methodenstriet, which refers to the methodo-
logical and epistemological debates in Germany during the mid-nineteenth
century with regard to the natural and ‘human’ sciences.
French positivism
In the pioneering work of Durkheim (1895, 1897) and his predecessors such as
Comte (1896) and Saint-Simon (1760–1825), there was an attempt to provide a
distinctively sociological as opposed to a psychological explanation for collec-
tive human phenomena based on the observation of facts and the patterns that
relate to them. Comte was among the first to develop an identifiable discipline
known as sociology with a distinctive method and theoretical approach in the
form of his sociological positivism. For Comte, positivism relates to the idea of
sociology being a positive science devoted to the perceived need for social order
and consensus following the destructive events of the French Revolution of
1789, and also in terms of its progressive synthesis of the other sciences that
came before it. However, rather than being a science of isolated units such as
chemistry or physics, sociology, like biology, studies complex systems, and there-
fore Comte saw biology as the model for the analysis and understanding of the
laws governing social systems and their evolution. In this organic evolutionary
model, Comte saw society as evolving in ways analogous to nature. We can see
clearly here the influence of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution, with its
underlying idea of ‘progress’ (Giddens, 1970).
For Comte, therefore, societies should be studied in the same way as the natural
world using the methods of observation and experimentation. However, he
rejected empiricism in the form of the simple collection of facts. Instead, he
claimed that facts do not speak for themselves, but rather they need to be situated
within a theoretical framework, which in this case is one of social evolution. In
the human social world this is manifested in his law of three stages. Each stage
Early approaches to sociological research 51

represents a state of human thought that corresponds to the development of
human society, from one based on superstition and the power of supernatural
beings and forces (theological stage), to one based on a belief in intangible forces
operating beyond the realm of human physical experience, such as nature or
human essence, as a means of explaining the world and human existence (meta-
physical stage). The final positive stage is characterised by a search for observable
rather than speculative laws governing nature and humanity. It is through sociology
that the transition to this positive stage could be facilitated and thereby lead to a
new period of human development based on social reform rather than revolution.
Comte’s influence on scholars around Europe at the time, especially in
Britain, was considerable. Referring specifically to the ‘good Comte’ (Bourdeau,
2018) that is associated with his early work relating to positive sociology, John
Stuart Mill (1843) adopted Comte’s stages theory as well as his scientific
approach to the study of society. However, Mill was critical of Comte’s dismissal
of individual human subjects as the basic units of social science, claiming that
the laws governing human nature were the driving forces of social phenomena.
Marx and the science of capitalist development

In the mid-nineteenth century, while Comte was developing his positive science
of society based on an evolutionary and reformist approach to the effects of
industrialisation, Marx, with his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), was
advancing an alternative positive science of society that provided a critique of the
emerging capitalist system. For Marx, conflict and struggle between particular
social classes, and the socioeconomic relations in which they were engaged, was
seen as an integral part of social change. Any discussion of Marx’s ideas, however,
is fraught with problems relating to the ‘true’ reading of his work (MacRae, 1969).
There are many self-proclaimed guardians of Marx’s legacy, some of whom
emphasise Marx’s theory of human nature and his examination of history as the
progressive development of human self-realisation and class consciousness that
was a feature of his early work as contained in his Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts (1843–44) (Lukacs, 1968; Gramsci, 1971), and those who claim to
provide a ‘true’ reading of Marx (Althusser, 1969; Althusser and Balibar, 1970;
Godelier, 1972) by focusing on his later works such as Capital (1867, 1885, 1893),
that were much more of an analysis of economic structures, social formations
and the relations between their structures. Moreover, Marx’s work stands outside
the conventional system of academic debate due to its overtly polemical nature,
devoted as it is to radical and revolutionary change, when much of the socio-
logical output of the time was concerned more with social reform.
However, it can probably be asserted without contradiction that Marx was con-
cerned with the historical origins of inequality and the specific form it assumes

under capitalism (Ritzer and Goodman, 2003), and that Marxism became the first
scientific theory that identified itself with the interests of the industrial proletariat
(Swingewood, 1984), whose role as the source of the increasing wealth and pros-
perity of capitalism was seen as resulting in its own increasing impoverishment.
Marx’s theory of capitalism was, in fact, part of a wider and more comprehensive
theory of the historical development of humanity. He was attempting to create a
scientific method for the understanding of capitalism and its inherent conflicts
and contradictions that revealed the need for an alternative kind of society –
namely, socialism. There were other theories of socialism at the time, such as that
of Robert Owen (1771–1858) in Britain and Charles Fourier (1772–1837) in France.
However, these were dismissed by Engels as Utopian; moralistic critiques of capi-
talism rather than scientific theories providing an understanding of the laws
governing the historical development of capitalism and a firm basis upon which
to bring about socialism.
Marx’s method
Marx’s main aim was to identify the laws governing the origins, development,
decline and demise of capitalism. However, unlike the positivists such as Comte
who were writing at the time, Marx was not concerned with discovering universal
laws of social and economic development, believing that no such laws existed
(Mandel, in Marx, 1976). Each distinct economic mode of production, be it tribal,
ancient (slave) or feudal society, is governed by its own unique economic laws that
need to be studied in their own right. What Marx was proposing is a new method
for the ‘study of economic problems’ (Mandel, in Marx, 1976: 17). In doing this,
he employs the ideas of Hegel and his concept of the dialectic. In Hegel’s theory,
progress in human ideas occurs through stages of conflict in relation to a particu-
lar proposition, referred to as the thesis. This position is subject to criticism and its
weaknesses exposed. A counter position, or antithesis, is proposed, and the two are
incorporated into a new one – a synthesis. The process continues in the direction
of rational truth and the Absolute Idea: the unattainable condition of a total com-
prehension of nature, which makes up a totality.
Hegel’s dialectic is idealist because historical movement was only seen in
terms of ideas. Material reality is merely a reflection of these ideas (Mandel, in
Marx, 1976: 18). However, Marx was critical of the way that Hegel applied the
dialectic to ideas only. He began to see the true value of the dialectic in terms of
its application to material existence, and it is in The German Ideology (1845) that
Marx and Engels outlined their ‘Essence of the Materialist Conception of History’
(Marx and Engels, 1845: 6). In this critique of German idealism, Marx and Engels
suggest that all ideas originate from specific material conditions and not spon-
taneously or intuitively from the mind. They identify societies with particular

modes of production in which antagonistic social classes emerge based on the
particular forms of ownership of property and relations of production. The
German Ideology was a key point in the development of Marx’s and Engel’s
method of historical materialism, for although it was a brief and tentative out-
line of their position, it nonetheless formed the basis of Marx’s later work on the
theory of historical stages (Giddens, 1970).
In Marx’s and Engels’s application of the dialectic, then, the method is
retained but the idealism is dropped, with priority being given instead to social
and economic history rather than the history of ideas (Marshall, 1998). In this
transformation of the dialectic, Marx adopts the totality as part of his method-
ology of examining each society’s parts in relation to the whole. The parts
include social and economic relations and institutions, as well as ideas in the
form of science and ideology, with priority being given to material economic
factors in the shaping of the ideas of society and its structures. He moves from
an analysis of the simplest parts to the complex, examining their interconnect-
edness and revealing their contradictions and tensions.
It is in his later work that Marx applies this method most clearly. In Capital,
‘cited as a model application of this materialist dialectic’ (Mandel, in Marx, 1976),
Marx begins with an analysis of the commodity, which he describes as the most
basic unit of the capitalist mode of production. This is part of the process of build-
ing up a concrete mental category of capitalism as a totality by working from the
abstract parts to the whole. By leaving aside specific details relating to particular
examples of capitalist systems, Marx is able to provide an ‘ideal average’ (Capital,
Vol. 3, Part vi) against which to determine the features common to ‘capital in
general’ (Capital, Vol. 3, Part iv).
Marx was presenting a very complex system of ideas that proved, and still
prove, very challenging to those who read his work. This, combined with his
complex and often ambiguous use of language, add to the difficulty in accessing
the true meaning of these ideas, hence the variety of ways in which they have
been interpreted (Miller, 1991; Ollman, 1977). However, despite this, Marx pre-
sents a range of tools for an analysis of the contradictions arising within modes
of production, particularly capitalism, helping to expose the nature of inequality
that arises between social classes. Marx clearly wanted to provide a ‘scientific’,
and hence reliable and predictive, means of understanding capitalism and its
progress. It is debatable whether or not he has done this (see Popper, 1957).
Durkheim and positivism

Comte was one of the major intellectual forces of the nineteenth century who
laid the foundations for the new discipline of sociology that was based on the
methods of the natural sciences. Sociology was seen as another science devoted

to the study of the social organism and its laws of evolution that could be iden-
tified through comparison, experimentation, observation and the collection of
facts. Its focus of study was not the individual subject but the social system,
social institutions, social organisations and the process of social change.
However, it was Durkheim who was responsible for developing a full-blown
‘science of institutions, their genesis and functioning’ (Durkheim, 1982: 45). For
Durkheim, his predecessors had only hinted at the potential power that sociol-
ogy possessed in understanding the social forces at work in society. He made it
his life’s work to develop sociology as a respectable science that was clearly dif-
ferent from socialism and would contribute to the development of a new secular
French society. Much of Durkheim’s work (see Chapter 2) was a response to the
increasing popularity of Marxism among French students and the intelligentsia.
He suggested that most of the problems that Marx identified with capitalism
were inaccurate, claiming that the real issues were related more to the effects of
industrialisation rather than the conflict of interest between the emerging pro-
letariat and the capitalist class. This is the reason for his proposals for the
formation of occupational groups in a bid to bring these two classes together and
to revive ‘the moral constitution of society’ (Lukes, 1973: 323).
A key task Durkheim set himself was to develop a method of research that was
distinct from other sciences in terms of its approach. He followed Comte’s posi-
tivism and focused on social institutions, developing this further by claiming
that each society is the sum of its ‘social facts’ (Durkheim, 1982). Social facts are
defined by Durkheim as objective things that exist independently of individuals,
acting as regulating and constraining forces. As such, Durkheim’s methodology
deals with collective phenomena rather than individual psychological motives.
Social facts exist outside of the individual, possessing their own order and struc-
ture. They include information relating to the particular society, such as statistics
on religious practice and membership, levels of unemployment and suicide, and
they are also institutions unique to each society such as family organisation,
culture, language and occupational or professional groups, all of which regulate
or constrain the behaviour of their members. This may occur consciously or
unconsciously, such as in the spontaneous display of deference and respect for
religious symbols.
Suicide: A landmark in sociological research

Durkheim’s methodology involves examining these social facts in relation to
other social facts, rather than by reference to individual subjects and their
motives, identifying patterns and differences between societies and within soci-
eties over time. It is in his study Suicide that Durkheim’s method is arguably most
effectively demonstrated (Durkheim, 1897). The topic was chosen as an example

of a phenomenon that is generally perceived as the most personal of acts involv-
ing individual choices and intuitively seems to lend itself more to psychology
than to sociology. However, what Durkheim manages to do so brilliantly is to
distinguish between suicide as an individual act which, though significant at
both a psychological and a personal level, does not provide an insight into the
wider social dimensions of suicide, and suicide as a social fact as represented by
the suicide rate, that provides patterns and trends reflecting the general moral
condition of society as a whole (Aron, 1967).
Durkheim’s analysis is carried out on two levels, both in line with the positive
approach advocated by Comte. One involves the comparison of different socie-
ties or particular groups within those societies and the second is to examine
changes in the suicide rates of these societies or groups over time. For Durkheim,
comparison is an essential element of the sociological method, claiming that
‘comparative sociology is not a particular branch of sociology; it is sociology
itself in so far as it ceases to be purely descriptive and aspires to account for facts’
(Durkheim, 1982: 157). The data collected from a variety of European countries
reveal that suicide rates vary between societies and between groups, regions and
provinces within societies. Moreover, these suicide rates remain fairly constant
over time and any changes that do occur are not random or arbitrary but coin-
cide with changes in the social environment. Durkheim then sets out to explain
these differences in suicide rates between societies and groups, as well as the
changes that may occur over time. This starts with a consideration and a refuta-
tion of existing theories such as those associated with individual psychopathology,
alcoholism, heredity, climate, and, in particular, the theory of imitation pro-
posed by his great rival Gabriel Tarde (1843–1904) who suggested that suicide
levels were the result of a kind of contagion of imitation. After having dismissed
all these explanations, though not always convincingly (Ritzer and Goodman,
2003), using the available statistical data, he then went on to propose his socio-
logical theory that different suicide rates were the result of the influence of social
facts. Within each society or within populations or groups, there will be a system
of collective sentiments that lead to particular social currents that will affect the
propensity of individuals to commit suicide.
Thinking point 3.1

Durkheim dismissed Tarde’s theory of contagion and that imitation contributed
to the overall suicide rate of a society, providing statistical data to support his
claims. We now have much more reliable data on suicide based on more effec-
tive methods of data collection.

Read the article by Galoway and Mallon (2018) and find out if more recent
data support Durkheim’s position:
http://theconversation.com/lady-gagas-twitter-blunder-and-why-speculating-
about-suicide-after-a-celebrity-death-is-problematic-101165
It is at this point that Aron (1967) suggests that we reflect back on how Durkheim
reached this stage of his thesis. The refutations of other theories relating to the
interpretation of suicide are based on an uncritical use of and reliance on incom-
plete and partial statistics. Moreover, the numbers were so small as to render any
differences in the suicide rates inconsequential (Aron, 1967: 40). In fact,
Durkheim’s use of official statistics is a cause for concern throughout the study
(Aron, 1967; Douglas, 1967; Swingewood, 1984). In addition, Durkheim’s appli-
cation of the scientific method in terms of measuring the social facts he has
identified is problematic (Gibbs and Martin, 1964; Li, 1971). His concept of
‘integration’ is not sufficiently clearly defined to be operationalised – i.e. measured.
It is with these concerns in mind that we turn to Durkheim’s sociological explana-
tion of suicide in the emerging industrial societies.
Types of suicide
Durkheim’s categorisation of social suicide is based on an examination of the
variation in the levels of two social facts: integration and regulation. Integration
relates to the degree of attachment individuals have that links them to society,
such as the membership of organisations – religious, professional or political, or
to other individuals such as through marriage or parenthood, while regulation
relates to the ability of society to manage and control human desires, which are
by their nature infinite. For both regulation and integration to be effective, there
needs to be an equilibrium in that excessive or insufficient levels of each will
lead to a rise in suicide rates. If these human desires are unregulated or severely
disrupted, such as during times of economic crisis or rising divorce, the disori-
enting effects can lead to greater risk of suicide.
While accepting that suicide per se is not abnormal in any society, Durkheim
suggests that industrial societies encourage greater individualism due to the
increase in personal choice over such things as marriage, religion and morality, as
well as greater levels of education. Education in particular is identified by Durkheim
as having a strong relationship to suicide in that it encourages a spirit of enquiry
and a challenge to traditional ideas and practices. This can lead to a moral vacuum

in people’s lives resulting in feelings of purposelessness and a lack of belonging,
and an increase in what Durkheim calls egoistic suicide (1897). However, in situa-
tions where integration into a group or society is too high, individuals may feel
compelled to take their own lives for a greater cause. This pathological state leads
to an increase in altruistic suicide. We can see the significance of this type of over-
integration in the form of religious fundamentalism in more recent times.
With regard to the suicidogenic currents caused by pathological forms of
regulation, Durkheim pointed to the effects of regular social or economic
upheavals that are a feature of the business cycle of industrial societies, be it a
period of boom or bust. Either can create a current of disorientation that can
lead to insufficient regulation to guide human desires. This he refers to as anomic
suicide (Durkheim, 1897). Finally, there is fatalistic suicide, which refers to cur-
rents causing increases in suicide due to excessive regulation and relates to
individuals who find their lives so oppressive and inescapably controlled that
they resort to suicide as the only means of escape. Durkheim provides the exam-
ples of the childless woman and that of the young and unhappy husband.
From the data collected by Durkheim, a number of statistical links were made
between the levels of integration in a society and the suicide rate which produced
his basic law of suicide: ‘Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of
the social group of which the individual forms a part’ (Durkheim, 1970: 209). He
found that religion can act as an integrating institution protecting members from
the potential effects of social isolation and feelings of the meaninglessness in life.
However, although most religions condemn suicide, some are more protective
than others. Protestants have higher suicide rates than Catholics, and Jews have
lower suicide rates than the other two groups. Durkheim claims that this is
because Protestants are more likely to be vulnerable to individualism due to the
way their religion is organised. A Protestant’s relationship to God is a much
more personal and lonely one. For Martin Luther (1483–1546), Christians
should be free to create their own relationship with God independently of
intermediaries such as priests. Catholics and Jews, on the other hand, tend to
be much more integrated due to their strong community rituals and traditions.
So far, the argument is convincing and supported by the data. However, there
are points in the study where the data do not fit Durkheim’s thesis and the argu-
ment threatens to unravel. In particular, it has already been stated that Durkheim
claimed that there is a strong relationship between the level of education of a social
group and the suicide rate due to its individualising effects and suicidogenic con-
sequences. Although the data presented by Durkheim did confirm that the more
highly educated Protestants displayed higher suicide rates than the less educated
Catholics, Jews, on the other hand, have a significantly lower suicide rate despite
being more educated. Clearly, Durkheim was unable to explain the Jewish suicide
rate in terms of his theory of the effects of external facts – level of education – and
‘was forced to analyse these as an exception’ (Swingewood, 1984: 124). In fact,

Durkheim located the explanation in terms of the meanings that Jews attach to
their education that are different from those attached to it by Protestants. He sug-
gested that as a persecuted minority, Jews interpreted their education differently
from Protestants. Rather than using it in an individual and subversive manner, it is
employed more as a defensive force in the collective struggle against persecution
and prejudice. In effect, this demonstrates the difficulty of creating a theory of
suicide purely on the basis of external facts without including some element of
consciousness and meanings that are attached to such actions. Nevertheless, Suicide
is held up as a ground-breaking work that served a number of purposes. In particu-
lar, it enabled Durkheim to demonstrate the explanatory power of sociology using
positivism in the context of the social problems that he claimed were a feature of
the newly industrialising societies.
Weber
Although Weber and Durkheim were familiar with each other’s work, there was
little in the way of academic or intellectual interaction between them. The reason
for this is probably because they came from very different intellectual traditions
(Giddens, 1970). Weber’s early works were studies in history and he only came to
sociology as a means of providing the concepts that would enable him to develop
a theory of causal analysis in history. Nevertheless, he was particularly important
in developing a philosophical and methodological basis for sociology. In achiev-
ing this, he managed to steer a path between the sociological positivism of Comte
and Durkheim who saw sociology as a science of society that could reveal the
recurring laws of social and historical development, and the hermeneutics of
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) and Heinrich
Rickert (1863–1936). Hermeneutics arose in the nineteenth-century as a response
to the growing influence of positivism. Dilthey (1976) saw hermeneutics as the
science of social and cultural existence, which he believed to be distinct from
the natural sciences. He also believed that human consciousness is different from
human knowledge of the physical world. The new positivist science of society, he
claimed, threatened the study of conscious human action, thereby reducing it to
a by-product of social forces and laws: human autonomy and freedom were effec-
tively ignored. For Dilthey, the understanding of human action needs to be kept
at the centre of the method of the cultural sciences.
A further aspect of Weber’s work is the claim that he was engaged in an
‘intense debate with the Ghost of Marx’ (Salomon, 1945: 596). However, as
Giddens (1970) points out, Weber did not have access to much of Marx’s original
works, many of which were published after the former’s death in 1920. What can
be said is that Weber challenges the crude and dogmatic interpretations of
Marx’s work as presented by his followers in the German Social Democratic

Party that was gaining popularity among the German working class at the time.
Weber therefore sees Marx’s ideas mainly through the prism of his successors
rather than from his actual writings. We now know, however, that Marx’s actual
writings are ‘considerably more subtle and less dogmatic, than would appear’
from his many polemical statements (Giddens, 1970: 289).
Nevertheless, Weber was opposed to any approach to society based on a view
of recurring and invariable laws that effectively reduced the conscious subject
to a marginal or irrelevant figure. He was influenced in this by the ideas of
hermeneutic philosophers such as Dilthey (1976) who voiced a common con-
cern among German philosophers at the time that the human sciences were
losing their place in German universities to positivist approaches to history
that were beginning to dominate European thought. He viewed the cultural–
historical sciences as qualitatively different from the natural sciences in that in
each case the subject confronts different phenomena. In the case of the natural
world, the subject is faced with a (meaningless) phenomenon of nature that
has an independent existence and is subject to its own laws. In the human
world, the subject faces another (meaningful) subject that needs to be seen in
the context, not of invariable laws, but through an understanding of the mean-
ings attached to human action in the historical world of that subject.
This distinction between the cultural and natural sciences is further devel-
oped in Windelband’s and Rickert’s separation of the sciences into the nomothetic
and the idiographic. The former relates to the discovery of laws upon which to
base generalisations, while the latter relates to the examination and interpreta-
tion of unique and unrepeatable events. For Rickert, the cultural sciences are not
concerned with trying to establish general laws, but instead of selectively analys-
ing social reality in terms of values and to understand social action in the
context of those values. This does not mean that the researcher should make
value judgements about social actions, but that the actions should be examined
in terms of the values of the particular culture in which the actions take place.
However, given that social and historical reality is infinite in terms of actions
and thoughts, how are we to choose what to focus our analysis on in order to
understand particular historical events or social phenomena?
Thinking point 3.2

If a historian tried to recount in full detail, with all its qualifying characteristics,
every thought and act of a single person in a single day, he would not succeed.
A modern novelist has tried to record moment by moment all the thoughts that
can cross the mind in the course of a trip from Paris to Rome; just this recital
of the interior adventures of a single individual in the course of a single day

requires several hundred pages. One need only imagine a historian trying to
recount in the same way what took place in all the minds of all the soldiers who
fought in the battle of Austerlitz.
Obviously, then, every historical account is a selective reconstruction of what
took place in the past. But even when documents are plentiful, the historian
makes a selection as a result of what both Rickert and Weber call values.
(Aron, 1970: 195)
• You might like to think how easy or difficult it would be to produce an account
of all your own experiences and actions in a single day. Would it be possible?
• On what basis would you decide what were the most relevant thoughts
and actions?
This issue is a key problem for such a method. Rickert suggests that the process of
selection of actions or cultural phenomena in social research should be based on
their value-relevance to the particular society in which the researcher is located –
that is, on the basis of the contemporary value system. Each society will have
particular questions relating to issues of morality, truth, beauty and politics, and
the intellectual and cultural values of the time. It is these that will guide research-
ers in their choice. Weber was greatly influenced by Rickert’s concept of
value-relevance as well as the notion of value-neutrality in the execution of research,
using this as the basis for much of his own approach, stating that in his choice of
social and historical phenomena he was guided by what could be viewed as ‘the
interests of the modern European’ (Weber [1903–17] 1949: 30). A good example of
this is his study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, which was very much influ-
enced by a concern that Germany was being left behind by other European
nations, such as Britain and France, because of the outdated attitudes and practices
in parts of the German economy and society (Weber, 1994).
While accepting and adopting many of the philosophical and methodological
ideas of the hermeneutic approach, Weber does not unequivocally accept their
belief that generalisations cannot be made in the human sciences. He suggests
that it is possible to accept the uniqueness of social actions and historical events
at the same time as placing them within a framework of general categories or
types. This allows comparisons to be made between individual events and the
possible ‘causes which led to the differences’ (Weber [1896–1903] 1976: 385). For
Weber, then, the purpose of sociology is to develop concepts (concept formation)
with which to research the real world of events and actions, and thereby to iden-
tify causal factors of those historical phenomena.

Weber’s method
One of the key concepts devised by Weber is that of the ideal type, which acts as
a frame upon which to organise and classify human action as well as social for-
mations and historical phenomena. However, there is a problem of providing a
definitive list and single definition of ideal types, as some scholars, such as
Burger (1976), suggest that Weber uses them inconsistently and sometimes in
contradictory ways. Aron (1967) and Swingewood (1984), for instance, identify
three distinct forms of ideal type used by Weber, whereas Hekman (1983b: 120),
who argues that Weber’s ‘concept is methodologically sound and logically con-
sistent’ (1983a), suggests that there are four. First, Hekman identifies Weber’s
historical ideal types which are phenomena associated with specific historical
periods, an example being the ancient form of slavery. Second are the sociological
ideal types that relate to particular social forms of organisation that can be found
in a variety of societies over time. This would include the various forms of
bureaucracy. The third type highlights the different categories of action, such as
those based on traditional or rational criteria and, finally, Hekman claims that
Weber uses an ideal type of structure that results from particular types of social
action. So, traditional structures, such as certain religious organisations, might
be characterised by traditional forms of social action.
The ideal type is, therefore, a methodological tool devised by Weber to
enable the historian or sociologist to make sense of the unique and seemingly
random nature of social and historical reality. Ideal types are not universal or
unchanging, but are derived from the real world of the researcher and the
values of the time. These interests guide the construction of ideal types which
distil the essential characteristics of the phenomenon being examined. They
therefore do not reflect real life, but act as a gauge or benchmark against which
to examine real world examples. So, when the researcher comes across specific
phenomena such as bureaucratic systems located in different places at differ-
ent times, it is possible to compare each one against the sociological ideal type
that has been created. This can be used to search for the causes of such differ-
ences. By carrying out intensive research using evidence and historical data,
the researcher is able to construct the ideal type in an inductive manner (see
Chapter 1, p. 5), rather than on the basis of abstract ideas. In other words, the
ideal type emerges from empirical reality and on the basis of the patterns and
common characteristics of the phenomenon under investigation. From this, a
‘pure type’ is constructed against which all real examples are compared,
although in this mental form the ideal type ‘cannot be found empirically in
reality’ (Weber [1903–17] 1949: 90).
In relation to action, Weber ([1921] 1968) is much clearer and makes a dis-
tinction between human action that is meaningful and that which is merely
reactive. The latter is based on simple responses to external stimuli and is

impulsive, whereas the former is a consequence of thought and a degree of
intent (Weber, 1968). Although all human action is unique, it can be seen that
in particular contexts and structures, as well as at specific times, certain forms
of action can be viewed as probable. As a consequence, Weber identifies four
types of action in order to be able to understand their meaning within these
contexts. The first relates to traditional action that arises out of habit and the fact
that something has ‘always’ been done in a particular way. It usually requires
little thought, and to do otherwise might be considered odd or even deviant.
Actions that relate to traditional gender roles are clearly relevant here. The sec-
ond type that Weber refers to is affective action and is based on the emotional
state of the actor rather than on any clear motive or goal. An emotional out-
burst resulting from a tragic or joyous event would be an appropriate example
here. The third and fourth types of action relate to different forms of rationality
and are of most interest to Weber. Value rational action is guided by the belief in
a value for its own sake, rather than any expectations of success, relating to
ethical, religious, aesthetic or other ultimate principles. The artist who pursues
art for its own sake and not primarily for fame or other criteria of success is a
clear example of such value-based aesthetically driven action. Finally, means–
ends or goal-oriented action relates to the action of an individual who has a
clear goal to achieve and pursues it by rationally chosen means. The engineer
who plans and executes the building of a bridge based on the most rational
means provides an example of such goal-oriented action. It should be empha-
sised that these are ideal forms and that most action usually involves a
combination of more than one of these types.
An important point to make regarding Weber’s method is that he attempts
to create the epistemological basis for the synthesis of two categories of ideal
types: those related to social structures and organisations such as bureaucra-
cies, and those concerning the subjective meanings attached to human action
within those organisations and structures. The logic behind this is that struc-
tures exist, but actors need to carry out meaningful actions for them to
function. Weber’s methodological pronouncements, particularly in relation to
ideal types of action, advocate the use of a microsociological approach to the
study of individual action. This appears to have represented his position
regarding the most appropriate way to conduct sociological and historical
research. Indeed, his definition of sociology refers to it ‘as a science concern-
ing itself with the interpretive understanding of social action and thereby
with a causal explanation of its course and consequences’ (Weber, 1968: 4).
For Weber, the advantage that sociology has over the natural sciences is that
the sociologist is able to gain an understanding of the social phenomena
being observed. This is certainly a dimension of sociological investigation that
is absent from the approaches examined so far in the work of Comte,
Durkheim and Marx, and is known as the verstehen (understanding) approach.

Ideal types and rationalisation
Weber sets these ideal types of action within the context of his theory of ration-
alisation, a key theme running through most of his sociology in relation to
Western culture (Aron, 1967; Kalberg, 1994). We have seen that Weber suggests
that historians and sociologists should base their choice of research on the
value relevance of particular issues and patterns that arise in the society in
which they live, and that are therefore considered of contemporary signifi-
cance. Weber was particularly concerned by the increasing rationalisation of
Western societies. This is characterised by the emergence of certain forms of
rationality associated with types of action located within organisations and
particular social groups. As with the notion of ideal types, Weber does not pro-
vide a clear or single definition of rationalisation, but its main features include
a decline in the influence of mysticism, magic, tradition and emotion on peo-
ple’s lives and in organisations, and their replacement by rational principles
and criteria. This growing disenchantment of the world involves seeing it less in
terms of uncontrollable supernatural forces and more in terms of human com-
prehension, control and management. He suggests that this manifests itself
most clearly in the growth of capitalism in the West and the increasing role of
the state in managing society through bureaucratic structures. Weber relates
this to what he sees as a trend in Western cultures and their organisations in
becoming increasingly based on the application of rational means to achieve
particular ends, or what he refers to as formal rationality (Ritzer, 2000), which
links clearly to goal-oriented rational action of employees in such institutions.
In relation to the economy of Western industrial societies, Weber refers to the
spread of capitalist systems of organisation, competitive markets, accounting and
production based on the criteria of speed and efficiency, accompanied by rational
economic action that is a ‘conscious primary orientation to economic considera-
tions . . . for what matters is not the objective necessity of making economic
provision, but the belief that it is necessary’ (Weber, 1968: 64). With regard to
bureaucratisation, Weber develops an ideal-type of bureaucracy that is based on
formal rationality, in which the principles of efficiency, calculability and predict-
ability are underpinned by rules of procedure regarding individual roles
(bureaucrats), organised in a hierarchy related to function and qualifications.
While Weber sees bureaucracy as ‘completely indispensable’ (Weber, 1968: 223)
in modern societies, he was concerned by the increasing bureaucratisation of
societies such as Germany, which he feared were becoming so dominated by the
means of achieving bureaucratic goals that irrational consequences would arise.
This is summed up in Weber’s concept of the ‘iron cage’ or ‘steel-hard casing’
(Weber [1904–5] 2002: 123) as a metaphor for the logic of bureaucratic systems
into which we become locked and the priority they give to procedures (means)
over the actual goals they were set up to achieve. It is probably unnecessary to

provide examples of such bureaucratic ‘red tape’ and the way it can often seem
completely ‘irrational’. Weber clearly saw the benefits of bureaucracy, and indeed
their necessity. However, he feared the potential consequences of their develop-
ment and logic, be it in capitalist or socialist societies. He was also concerned
with why this process was more pronounced in Western societies than in other
parts of the world at the time, such as China and India. However, it should be
stressed that Weber did not say that these are the inevitable consequences of
rationalisation: the iron cage of bureaucracy is not an ‘iron law’.
Weber’s application of his method

Weber’s methodology is one that clearly identifies the importance of individual
actions and the subjective meanings attached to them in relation to the func-
tioning of institutions and the causal explanations for historical events or
phenomena. As a consequence, one might expect his sociological research to
focus on a microsociological account of individual actors in these contexts.
However, if we look at Weber’s major works such as Economy and Society (Weber,
1968), there is instead an analysis of structures and the way they determine the
actions of individuals. In his analysis of bureaucracy, for example, Weber offers
us a description of it as ‘the most rational known means of exercising authority
over human beings’ (Weber, 1968: 223) with little attempt to analyse the way in
which bureaucrats act in their roles and their motivations, instead reducing
them to mere positions within the hierarchy of the system. Ultimately, it could
be said that Weber’s methodological pronouncements exist separately from his
substantive sociology and this is an ‘enormous contradiction in his work’ (Ritzer
and Goodman, 2003: 122).
Thinking point 3.3

Weber’s ideas and views on bureaucracy and the bureaucratisation process are
highly prescient. In particular, he saw the signs of the increasing dominance of
bureaucracies in industrial societies and their potential for perverse logics lead-
ing to a possible threat to democracy:
For example, welfare bureaucracies measure their success by their ‘efficiency’

in dealing with clients, even their efficiency in getting them off welfare,
regardless of whether doing so actually serves the original goal of helping
the poor to better their situation. (Ritzer and Goodman, 2003: 151)
(Continued)

The multi-award winning film I, Daniel Blake (2016) directed by Ken Loach, is
a moving dramatisation of the experiences of a benefits claimant called Daniel
Blake that makes just such a case about how the welfare system works in Britain
and other parts of Europe. Loach states that the film is ‘about the cruelty of
bureaucracy’ (Wall Street Journal, 2016) and tells the story of those struggling
against this system. Moreover, it highlights how the welfare system can work in
ways that benefit neither society nor some of our most vulnerable citizens, and
yet follows its own sometimes perverse logic in pursuit of the goal of getting
people back into work.
The film’s critics describe it as ‘Left-wing propaganda’ (The Daily Telegraph,
2017). It was dismissed by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian
Green, as ‘a work of fiction’ that is ‘monstrously unfair to Job Centre staff’ and
‘bears no relation to the modern benefits system’ (Green, 2016). However, the
screenwriter of I, Daniel Blake, Paul Laverty, claims that the film was based on
research into thousands of benefits claimants and their experiences of the sys-
tem. Indeed, it provides an account of the actions of individual claimants and
the meanings behind them in response to their situation, as well as those of the
bureaucrats. This position is supported by research on the experiences of claim-
ants, particularly those with disabilities (Petrie, 2017).
• Watch the review of the film by the BBC’s film critic Mark Kermode (2016):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=offpkwG9zbA
How does he assess the film’s merits?
• Watch the film I, Daniel Blake and follow the main characters’ stories: www.
imdb.com/title/tt5168192/
What are your thoughts regarding the film’s merits?
• What do the personal thoughts and actions of these characters add to our
understanding of this particular example of bureaucracy?
Weber’s influence
Although Weber may not have developed his microsociological approach much
beyond the theoretical level, many of his ideas and concepts have inspired the
work of other sociologists such as Alfred Schutz (1967) whose phenomenology
is very clearly influenced by Weber’s ideas of human action based on the catego-
risation of particular motives. Schutz uses the ideas of Weber to develop a
sociology of our consciousness of the world and how we construct meaning out

of regularly occurring experiences (typifications) in the process of building a pic-
ture of the world around us. Such a categorisation of the world through
typifications is clearly based on Weber’s ideal types. However, whereas Weber
uses the concept of ideal types as a device used by a sociologist in the process of
research, Schutz suggests that typifications relate to the way in which we all
make sense of the world, albeit in a less formal or conscious way.
Weber’s influence on other sociologists is considerable. From the work of his
great interpreter, Talcott Parsons, who, in his epic theoretical work The Structure
of Social Action (1937), attempts a synthesis of the ideas of Weber, Durkheim and
the Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), to the qualitative approaches to
research by symbolic interactionists, Weber’s ideas have played a significant role
in the developments in sociology. Interpretive sociologists have been concerned
with the collection of qualitative data relating to the meanings that individuals
attach to their actions. As one advocate of qualitative methods states: ‘how can
one theorize or interpret coalmining or transsexualism if there is no familiarity
with what it all means to the participants themselves?’ (Plummer, 2001: 37).
Case study 3.1

The sound of street corner society: UK Grime music
as ethnography
Lee Barron
By mapping the development of Grime and identifying artist key exemplars, such as
Dizzee Rascal, The Streets, Wiley, Lethal Bizzle, Kano, Lady Sovereign and Professor
Green, I will argue that this style of music enables listeners to gain insights into mean-
ings of human existence from the standpoint of insiders and ‘to uncover the world of
everyday life’ (Jorgensen, 1989: 14–15). Therefore, Grime is effectively ethnographic
in nature – it is derived from ‘participant observation’ in the most immediate, ‘lived’
sense because its leitmotif is the ‘streets’ and the status of performers will be likened
to that of Gramsci’s idea of the ‘organic intellectual’. Consequently, when listening
to Grime, we can observe and experience unfamiliar social environments and social
conditions, as seen through the eyes of its ‘participant’ observers and communicated
in musical form.
Emerging from anthropology, ethnography would become a key component within
the methodological underpinning of sociology, particularly in the 1920s. Conventionally
positioned as the Manichean opposite of the quantitative methodological tradition, the
qualitative foundations of ethnography were based upon interpretivism, the seeking
(Continued)

of subjective meaning(s) in social action, and drawing upon Max Weber’s ‘verstehen’.
As Hammersley (1990) notes, ethnography is perhaps the loosest of all the social sci-
ences methodologies, as it is not so much a method as an ‘approach’ characterized
by diverseness. Hence, unstructured interviews, case studies, participant observation,
secondary documentary analysis and the life history all constitute ethnography. But,
underscoring such methodological variety is the ‘meta’ conception that a social actor’s
behaviour must be studied in everyday contexts, in an unstructured manner, and on a
relatively small scale. The motivating drive would be (and continues to be) the attempt
to gain naturalistic insight and understanding into ‘a social group’s observable pat-
terns of behaviour, customs and way of life,’ to achieve a compelling sense of the emic
perspective – the social actor’s/insider’s distinctive ‘perspective of reality’. (Fetterman,
1989: 27–30)
(Barron, 2013: 532–3)
Critical reflections on early sociology and

research methods
As we have seen from Chapter 2 and the above discussion, Marx, Durkheim and
Weber have been identified as the founding fathers of sociology. In the canon-
building process, their theories and methods were identified as providing the
intellectual and practical tools with which to study what were defined as the core
interests of sociology: modernisation and industrialisation. However, as Connell
(1997, 2007) points out, there is a need to understand the history of the develop-
ment of sociology in order to appreciate its wider global origins, as well as the
process by which earlier research and intellectual traditions, particularly those of
non-European or non-indigenous American origins, have either been erased or
excluded. Connell (1997) suggests that this has led to the foundation ‘myth’ of
sociology as a uniquely European and white American invention. What this does,
she claims, is provide a partial and limited picture of the wealth of sociological
theories and research that exist, or once existed, on a variety of themes relating to
gender, race, sexuality and colonialism, but are now forgotten and neglected.
In a survey of the sociological research and writing during the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, including general textbooks and the
comprehensive L’annee sociologique, which is a yearly record and review of
sociological and related research from around the world compiled by Emile
Durkheim and his colleagues between the years 1898 and 1913, Connell (2007)
found that only a minority of the studies covered issues relating to industriali-
sation and modernisation in Europe and America. Of the approximately 2,400
reviews in the L’annee sociologique during this period, twice as many of them

covered topics associated with the ancient and medieval world, the colonies
and remote tribal societies, magic and religion in the East and Far East, as stud-
ies relating to the industrial societies (Connell, 2007).
Early sociological studies during this period therefore were not only or even
mainly concerned with the impact of modernisation and industrialisation on
Europe and America, but with ‘global difference’ and, more specifically, com-
parison between societies of the metropolitan North with what were considered
the more ‘primitive’ societies and cultures of the global South. We have seen in
the work of Comte and his theory of the law of three stages a social evolutionary
approach to human social development, and this became the template against
which his followers such as Durkheim were to develop their grand theories. For
some, such as Ward (1897) and Sumner (1906), these differences were the result
of physical evolution, and their accounts took on highly racist tones presenting
the customs and appearances of the peoples of the colonies as evidence of their
‘primitiveness’ and of their existence at early stages of human development.
These ideas were familiar to the academic community of the metropole which
was beginning to find new ways of applying Darwin’s evolutionary theory.
European standards became the benchmark against which other cultures
were assessed, and this led to such studies as Material, Cultural and Social
Institutions of the Simpler Peoples by Hobhouse, Wheeler and Ginsberg (1915)
which analysed the data on over 500 cultures and classified them in terms of
their levels of economic development, political and legal systems, family struc-
ture and systems of social stratification. Such studies reveal how the concept of
human ‘progress’ (Connell, 2007: 10) had become an unquestioned assumption
of the early sociologists whose insights were not so much driven by an objective
analysis of the ethnographic data, as by their ideological assumptions relating
to the superiority of their own cultures. The methods used were therefore based
on a one-way flow of information in which the data was collected from a vari-
ety of sources and assessed by theorists, most of whom had never visited the
societies they were describing, nor carried out any ethnographic research.
Case study 3.2

Emile Durkheim (1912): The Elementary Forms
of Religious Life
This was certainly the case regarding Durkheim (1912), who purportedly wrote
with authority about the Arrernte people of the central desert region of Australia
as they existed in the 1890s and upon whom he based his theory of religion in his
(Continued)

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (TEFRL). Durkheim had never been to Australia
and had never spoken to an indigenous Australian, relying instead on sources col-
lected by ‘traders, police agents and priests’ (Thomassen, 2016: 180), as well as the
work by Spencer and Gillen (1899) called The Central Tribes of Australia, accepting
their accounts without question. Australia had been chosen by Durkheim because
it had been designated as the most ‘primitive’ of all known societies and, without
researching more thoroughly or conducting his own fieldwork, assumed that all
indigenous Australian communities were of a basic ‘type’, and therefore the Arrernte
were seen as the ideal place to discover the evolutionary prototype for all religions
without having to look at any other religions.
This crude and unsubstantiated evolutionism became the basis of Durkheim’s uni-
versalist theory of the origins of religion known as totemism. His theory became the
‘standard approach’ to the sociology of religion in most university courses and text-
books (Thomassen, 2016: 174) ‘and is still today considered the classic work in the
sociology of religion’ (Thomassen, 2016: 180). Moreover, Durkheim’s evolutionist
approach was adopted as a key aspect of mainstream structural functionalism (see
Chapter 4) that dominated the discipline through much of the twentieth century.
However, in an authoritative review of TEFRL by Arnold van Gennep (1913, cited
in Lukes, 1973; Connell, 2007; Thomassen, 2016), a long list of methodological and
theoretical problems with Durkheim’s seminal work is presented. In brief, van Gennep
suggests that Durkheim’s use of the ethnographic material was poor, his technical
knowledge and skills in the ethnographic method were deficient and there was a lack
of openness and transparency regarding the sources of much of his data (Thomassen,
2016). Furthermore, van Gennep claims that Durkheim completely underestimates
the complexity and sophistication of Australian indigenous societies, and suggests
that these societies were far from primitive and certainly not all of a type, as Durkheim
asserted, thus rendering his origins theory untenable. The underlying problem with
Durkheim’s thesis for van Gennep is that Durkheim broke his own rules of requir-
ing the researcher to use the facts and observable evidence to build a theory, by
instead trying to fit the ethnographic material to his theory. It is highly significant that
van Gennep’s work, despite its importance, is hardly known today and his career in
French academia pretty much ended there, possibly because he dared to challenge
Durkheim’s evolutionist theory and thereby Durkheim’s reputation as the foremost
sociologist in France at the time (Thomassen, 2016).
These early studies by sociologists represent what is often referred to as the

‘imperial gaze’ (Connell, 2007) and illustrate the link between the development
of sociology within the context of imperialism and its response to contact with
other cultures through colonialism. For Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2017) the develop-
ment of early research methods by Northern/Western ethnographers saw the

indigenous ‘other’ as not fully human. In these colonial encounters, the
Northern observers look on and study in a knowing manner with an inherent
belief in their own superiority and a desire to position the ‘native’ in a hierarchy
of human development. He claims that the methodology developed by the
European anthropologists and sociologists during colonial times has been
‘unmasked’. It represents the gaze of European ‘Man’ and his desire to under-
stand and control the ‘natives’. In this ‘ethnographic state’, ideologies, including
eugenics and racial difference, emerged justifying the oppression and surveil-
lance of indigenous people through systems such as apartheid. He claims that in
the postcolonial age, this ethnographic state has now been developed and
adapted by governments to create the ‘biometric state’ (Breckenridge, 2014),
which now uses technology to cast a surveillance gaze on us all, but especially
on ‘Muslims’ and ‘blacks’ whose ideas and practices do not fit the European ideal
and are therefore seen as requiring special monitoring (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2017).
Reading suggestion
You might like to investigate these ideas further by reading Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s arti-
cle on the need to unmask and decolonise Western-based research methodologies:
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2017) ‘Decolonising research methodology must include

undoing its dirty history’, in The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/
decolonising-research-methodology-must-include-undoing-its-dirty-history-
83912
Chapter summary
In this chapter, we have examined the ideas and theories of the early pioneers
of sociology, particularly in terms of their contribution to the development of
approaches to research. Their legacy still lives on in the various schools of
thought with their names attached to them, usually with the prefix ‘neo’, as in
‘neo-Weberian’, ‘neo-Marxist’ or ‘neo-Durkheimian’, approaches to sociologi-
cal research. We tend to associate positivist and quantitative research with the
methodological ideas of Durkheim (1895, 1897), and the more qualitative and
interpretive approaches with the methodological principles outlined by Weber
in The Methodology of the Social Sciences ([1903–17] 1949). However, it has
become increasingly common for sociologists to use the approaches of more
than one of these thinkers, such as in the work of Jurgen Habermas (1970)
whose critical theory combines the ideas of Marx and Weber to create what has
been called ‘Weberian Marxism’ (Dahms, 1997). Paul Willis (1977) produced a

classic ethnographic study of working-class boys (‘the lads’), using a Marxist
theoretical framework in an attempt to show how schools reproduce class
inequalities within the classroom. The boys were observed and interviewed in
order to understand the meanings and the motives behind their disruptive
behaviour, which had hitherto been seen as irrational and mindless.
Marxism, however, took a lot longer to enter the sociological mainstream,
stuck as it was in the straitjacket of Marx’s self-appointed heirs, first by the lead-
ing thinkers of the German Social Democratic Party during the late nineteenth
century who treated his theory as equivalent to a natural science with all the
predictive power of physics or chemistry, and then by the Orthodox Marxism of
Lenin and Stalin in the early and mid-twentieth century, during which time
Marxism became synonymous with dictatorship and despotism. Attempts were
made by Marxist intellectuals such as Georg Lukacs (1885–1971) and Antonio
Gramsci (1891–1937) to shift Marxism away from being a rigid mechanical
theory of inevitable social change to one that recognised the need to take
account of the changes within capitalism and its ability to control the conscious-
ness of the working class through its cultural hegemony (Gramsci, 1971). It was
with the help of the growth of radical politics and the civil rights movements of
the 1960s and 1970s that Marxism became more accepted as a serious academic
(though not necessarily respected) contributor to sociological theory and
research. Finally, it is important to reflect on the history of the development of
sociological methods against the background of the imperial expansion of the
West and its encounter with other cultures.
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4
Developments
in Sociology
of Education
Chapter aims
This chapter will cover the key developments in sociology of education since
the Second World War. It identifies the key political and intellectual influences
on the discipline.
Key words: functionalism, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, critical

pedagogy, grand theories, epistemology, teleology, relativism, empiricism,
rationalism, Fabianism, Sociology of Knowledge, universalist theories, indi-
genisation of sociology.
Introduction
As we saw in Chapter 2, sociology has a long heritage stretching back centuries and,
though it was not called sociology, philosophers such as Ibn Khaldun (2005) were
effectively writing sociology long before August Comte coined the term in 1839. In
the nineteenth century, however, European sociology experienced a rapid develop-
ment when philosophers such as Comte (1896), Toennies ([1857] 1957) and Spencer
(1896) found it necessary to explain and understand the effects of social change
resulting from industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation on something
they identified as ‘society’. Durkheim, however, took the credit for being the first
‘proper’ sociologist due to his aim to provide a totally sociological understanding of
human societies and for developing methods that sociologists might use in this new
discipline (Durkheim, [1897] 1951, 1938). As the first academic to be appointed
Professor of Sociology, he saw in sociology the potential means of creating a new
moral order in France, which was rapidly developing into a modern industrial soci-
ety, and sociology of education was seen as something to be taken seriously by both
academia and policy makers. Questions have been raised regarding the way that
Durkheim, Marx and Weber came to be ‘canonised’ as the founding ‘fathers’ of
sociology after their deaths, and how the problems of the industrialising North
came to be seen as the priority for sociology, with little regard for the impact of
colonialism on the people whose lands and labour were essential elements of the
industrialisation and modernisation process of the Northern hemisphere.
Sociology in Britain
Sociology in Britain was particularly slow to take off, which could be partly attrib-
utable to the British distrust of academic theorising and a preference for factual
and empirical research. This empiricism is a key feature of English and Scottish

academic culture originating in the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries through the work of philosophers such as John Locke and David
Hume, who promoted the idea that the world can only be understood by testing
our ideas through the collection of observable phenomena. As a result, continen-
tal styles of philosophical thinking have been seen more as forms of intellectual
posturing than as providing any relevant understanding or insights. This is aptly
illustrated by George Orwell’s reference to the French Marxist philosopher Jean-
Paul Sartre as a ‘bag of wind’ (Garton Ash, 2010: 354) on account of the latter’s
often impenetrable existentialist writings. While the French revere their intellec-
tuals, including their sociologists – radical or otherwise – in Britain, there is no
comparable degree of respect. Moreover, the further you look to the right of
the political spectrum, the greater the suspicion there is of philosophers and
intellectuals such as sociologists (Garton Ash, 2010). We can see examples in
Chapter 12 of this book with regard to the views of New Right thinkers and
politicians such as Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher.
British sociology of education

Early sociology of education in Britain during the mid-twentieth century was
associated with the Fabian Society (2014), a British social reform movement
founded in the late nineteenth century by, among others, the playwright George
Bernard Shaw and the social reformers Beatrice and Sidney Webb, dedicated to
the creation of a democratic socialist society through a welfare state based on the
collective ownership of key sectors of the economy, including energy, transport,
natural resources and communications. As you will see in Chapter 12, the elec-
tion of a Labour government in 1945 was seen as an opportunity to create a
democratic socialist society with the provision of a ‘cradle-to-grave’ system of
welfare into which everyone paid through general taxation and National
Insurance contributions. Free education for all was seen as a key policy in this
programme of promoting greater equality of opportunity and an increasingly
meritocratic society where roles would be allocated on the basis of achievement
rather than on privilege or tradition.
Reading suggestion
The Fabian Society derives its name from the Roman general Quintus Fabius,
known as Cuncator from his strategy of delaying his attacks on the invading
Carthaginians until the right moment.
(Continued)
Developments in sociology of education 79

Browse the Fabian Society website and identify some of the eminent sociolo-
gists and social reformers who were Fabians and were also associated with the
London School of Economics, which was founded by the Fabians in 1895. What
kinds of research did they do in relation to education? (https://fabians.org.uk/)
If British sociology of education can be said to have a political foundation,

then Fabian democratic socialism is that foundation. However, though under-
pinned by notions of equality, community and fairness, Fabian research was
associated less with developing a theoretical critique of British society, and
more with collecting empirical data relating to how fair Britain was becoming
under the new welfare state (Banks, 1955; Glass, 1954). In short, there was an
examination of the effectiveness of education in the creation of a more meri-
tocratic society. This approach to educational research has sometimes been
called ‘political arithmetic’ and has provided a great deal of empirical data on
the state of the nation.
In terms of its intellectual and sociological foundations, British sociology of
education at this time was influenced by what Bernstein (1974: 149) calls a ‘weak
structural functionalism’. Structural functionalism was the theoretical perspec-
tive underpinning most sociology in Britain and the United States during the
1950s, which focused on the role of education as part of a wider systems theory
that emphasised consensus and evolutionary, rather than revolutionary or rapid,
social change. This perspective had significant influence in America and Britain
at a time of Cold War politics and increasing tension between the Soviet Union
and the West, and when the Marxist prediction of the inevitability of class con-
flict was considered to be a genuine threat to Western democratic societies. By
the 1950s, American structural functionalism became the dominant sociological
perspective and Kingsley Davis (1959) goes so far as to suggest that all sociology
is functionalist in that the main concern of sociologists is to examine the way
that all parts of society are linked to each other.
The American connection

The work of American functionalists, such as Talcott Parsons, emphasises the
notion that the affluence of American democracy had created a system in which
social conflict had become obsolete and that violent social change is now abnor-
mal or deviant, in contrast with the way in which the Soviet Union had come
about as a social and political system. Sociological theory was, in effect, an aca-
demic weapon in the American arsenal against communism and much of
Parsons’s work alludes to white middle-class American society and institutions.

As we saw in Chapter 1, structural functionalism was also part of an intellectual
movement to create grand theories (Wright Mills, 1959) of society that attempt to
provide a comprehensive explanation of how societies cohere, function and
develop. For structural functionalism, each part of a society, such as the educa-
tion system and the family, can only be understood in terms of their relationship
with other institutions and the reciprocity of such relationships.
This systemic functionalism, which is associated with the work of Parsons
(1951) and Davis (1949), focuses on observable social phenomena rather than
unobservable and subjective motives of individuals in society. They adopted
Durkheim’s approach to sociology by seeing it as a positive science of society in
which social facts, such as statistical data about social trends and patterns, are
collected rather than examining individual and personal motives for action.
They believed that each society has its own levels of integration and patterns of
behaviour that exist sui generi, and are the result of the ways in which the key
institutions of society, such as family, moral and religious institutions, and the
education system, work together to bring about social cohesion.
Functional prerequisites
A further assumption is that all societies have functional needs or prerequisites
that relate to the general conditions needed to maintain and reproduce them-
selves. The role of education in systemic functionalism is clear in terms of its
integrative function, which relates to the socialisation of younger members of
society and preparation for their roles in society through appropriate training in
the skills required by the economic system. For functionalists such as Parsons
and Shils (1962), the tendency towards equilibrium is based on the assumption
that institutions such as schools effectively socialise pupils according to the
norms and values of society, and allocate them to the roles most suited to their
abilities. This again closely follows Durkheim’s view of education as a morally
unifying process that helps to develop the necessary social solidarity for a mod-
ern industrial age, and how, in such a modern rational society, education is seen
as a key mechanism for efficient role allocation.
Structural differentiation
In Parsons’s evolutionary theory, social institutions are subject to a process
known as structural differentiation, which means that their roles become less gen-
eralised and more focused on a limited range of specialised functions. For
example, Parsons (1959, 1965; Parsons and Bales, 1955) suggest that industriali-
sation has led to changes in the role of the family from a cumbersome extended

pre-industrial domestic unit of production, in which all family members are
engaged in the production of goods and services, and the socialisation and edu-
cation of children, to a geographically mobile and specialised nuclear family
ideally suited to the needs of modern society. With the growth of urbanisation
and factory production education, food production and welfare provision are
gradually taken over by specialist institutions, and the family focuses more on
the roles of reproduction, primary socialisation and the stabilisation of adult
personalities through the expressive mother or housewife.
In addition, role allocation, in terms of occupations and other status-related
positions, is expected to be increasingly determined by achievement and univer-
sal standards against which everyone is judged rather than on the basis of
custom or inheritance. While in traditional societies children were generally
destined to enter occupations similar to their parents, modern industrial society
requires roles to be allocated on merit, and on the basis of universally agreed and
understood criteria.
Education and stratification

We can see in early British sociology of education a general acceptance and
adoption of a functionalist approach, particularly the idea of evolutionary social
and political progress towards a more meritocratic society based on the rational
allocation of roles. There lies within the theory an inherently teleological assump-
tion about society which assumes that social systems have an in-built mechanism
guiding them in a particular direction or towards a particular end state. The most
comprehensive functionalist explanation of stratification in industrial societies
is provided by Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore (1969) in their paper ‘Some
Principles of Stratification’, which was first published in 1945. They suggest that
there are no societies in which complete equality exists without social classes or
stratification of any kind because, they claim, inequality is a normal, universal
social phenomenon.
Moreover, they argue that if a society is to thrive and progress, then it must
apply the most efficient means of allocating roles, otherwise the most important
positions in society may be occupied by those least suited to them. For them, the
education system is the most effective means of allocating roles due to its sup-
posed objective methods of assessing pupils’ talents and abilities, which enable
employers to take on the best candidates for occupations considered function-
ally most important and to reward them the most. The higher rewards
commanded by those individuals occupying the most important jobs incentivise
everyone to try their utmost to achieve their full potential. In terms of their
theory, stratification based on ability will inevitably mean inequality, but this is
justifiable on the grounds of efficiency and merit.

Critiquing structural functionalism
Davis does concede in a later paper (1949) that stratification by talent and edu-
cational achievement is not the only mechanism that seems to operate in the
allocation of roles in industrial societies – he also recognises that roles are often
acquired through privileged access as well as inherited wealth. Nevertheless, he
believes that ultimately, due to the development of industrial society and the
growing rationality of such a system, traditional methods of role allocation
become less common. This point is significant as it recognises the weakness of
the structural functionalist position on the role of the stratification systems in
industrial societies, such as the USA and Britain, in that it is often a theory of
what ought to be rather than what is (Sadovnik, 2007). Indeed, critics of structural
functionalism challenge the picture of society presented in American textbooks,
which were generally devoid of political and social context. They suggest that it
tends to be highly theoretical and makes claims that cannot be supported by the
evidence (Sadovnik, 2007). Moreover, functionalist theory of institutions such as
education and the family is so limited in its scope of analysis that there is little,
if any, recognition of race, ethnicity or class (Morgan, 1975).
American society in the mid-twentieth century

From the images of America presented by academics and popular culture, one
could be forgiven for believing that all American households were white, middle
class and made up of nuclear families, living in pleasant ranch-style houses in
the suburbs with facilities and appliances that most people in Europe and the
rest of the world could only dream of. It was an image promoted not just by
academics such as Parsons, but also by American popular culture such as film
and television (Coontz, 2001).
Coontz (2001), however, points out that reality in America was not quite so
white or comfortable for all. If, as she states, one-third of white families could not
survive on the income of the main breadwinner in the early 1960s, then the plight
of the minority ethnic groups was much worse. In the post-war period, the ethnic
composition of the USA was affected by large-scale migration to America from
Mexico and Puerto Rico. These groups, as well as the Indigenous and Black popu-
lations of America, were denied many of the rights enjoyed by white Americans.
Low wages, poor housing and a lack of basic civil rights created second-class citi-
zens of these groups. Coontz (2001) states that over 40 per cent of Black mothers
with small children did paid work, and a quarter of these were single mothers.
Three-quarters of Black Americans lived in the South where they were denied
the protection of the Constitution. Moreover, the practice of ‘redlining’ in the
fields of education, rented housing, mortgages, bank loans and employment had

a serious impact on Black households. Redlining involved local authorities,
insurance companies and banks drawing red lines on maps identifying commu-
nities, usually Black, which were seen as unfit to be provided with proper
financial and other services. Fifty per cent of Black families in the early 1960s
lived in poverty (Coontz, 2001). Clearly, for many, the American Dream would
remain just a dream in which the opportunity to obtain a decent education, a
well-paid job and a mortgage for a home was open mainly to white Americans.
Those who dared to speak out and point to the absence of so-called American
democracy, free speech and equal opportunities risked being branded unpatri-
otic or communists. This was merely one aspect of the Truman doctrine, which
involved creating fear and suspicion among the population as a means of com-
bating the spread of Soviet communism. One of the most sinister forms this took
was in the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings during the 1940s
and 1950s, in which prominent Americans, such as the playwright Arthur Miller
(1987), were invited to confess their communist allegiances, and to name other
communists, or face prison.
It is quite significant that although there has been a great deal of change in the
USA since that time, which has given minority groups more rights, this was the
result of considerable violence and loss of life by those involved in the civil rights
movement, rather than through consensual agreement. The civil rights move-
ment revealed that there was a distinct change of mood in popular and political
culture in some parts of America and Europe. This was symbolised by a growing
consciousness of injustice among the Black population and certain sections of
white educated youth, the emergence of the counter-culture and the growth of the
women’s movement, all of which included highly vocal groups that were chal-
lenging US domestic and foreign policy and pointing to the perceived hypocrisy
of their political leaders. This took the form of university occupations and the Free
Speech Movement (FSM), which started at Berkeley in 1964 in response to the
university administration’s ban on political activity on campus. Many students
had spent the summers of the 1960s marching with the civil rights movement and
on their return to campus demonstrated against their government’s involvement
in Vietnam. It was a time of growing interest in politics and challenge to conven-
tion. The counter-culture was experimenting with everything including drugs,
sexuality, economic and domestic relations, as well as education. Communes
sprang up along the west coast and the US government became very concerned
about the potential effect of these ‘radicals’ on the youth of America.
The shift to the left among youth, which also spread to Europe, was reflected
in the intellectual shift among writers and academics. Gouldner (1970: 404)
refers to this as a change in the ‘infrastructure’ of social theory, by which he
means a change in the general assumptions about what is considered to be real
and relevant in the existing social conditions. In response to his own question,
‘Whose side are we on?’, Howard Becker (1967) states that we should be on the

side of the ‘underdog’, those groups whose voices are rarely heard, such as the
poor, the deviant, the marginalised and other minorities. This was clearly a time
of growing scepticism among the new generation of students and academics
about the adequacy of existing theory to deal with a newly identified reality. The
‘New Left’ perceived the consensus theory of functionalism as incapable of iden-
tifying and explaining conflicts within Western society relating to race, gender,
class and power. C. Wright Mills, one of this new breed of New Left theorists,
carried out a highly effective critique of functionalist sociology, particularly its
abstract theorising, which he claimed limited rather than enhanced our under-
standing of everyday social life.
Political arithmetic
Sociologists and policy makers in Britain between the 1940s and the 1970s were
quite closely linked, and their relationship with their ‘clients’ was very ‘top down’
(Shain and Ozga, 2001). This involved sociologists identifying deficits, or prob-
lems, believed to be inherent in so-called ‘failing groups’, which were primarily
made up of the working class. Researchers such as Bernstein (1961) claimed to
have identified a deficiency in working-class speech codes that affected the ability
of these children to engage effectively with the curriculum. In terms of ‘family
climate’, sociologists were pointing to such things as the poorer levels of support
for children in working-class homes compared to those of the middle classes as the
reason for the gap in the levels of educational achievement between the two
groups (Douglas, 1964), or to the inappropriate values held by working-class
families (Sugarman, 1970). The problem, in effect, was seen to lie with those
groups that were unable to make best use of the opportunities available to them
in the new welfare system. There was still a great deal of optimism that the welfare
state could be used to help equalise society and that the education system, particu-
larly the new comprehensive system, was a key means of doing this.
A good example of the use of welfare mechanisms, which were a feature of
the consensus politics of the day in which both main parties tacitly agreed to use
the welfare state to improve the lot of all citizens and to help create a fairer soci-
ety, was the establishment of Educational Priority Areas (EPAs) by the Labour
government in the late 1960s in some of the most deprived areas of the country
(see Chapter 12 for further discussion of this scheme).
The shift to the left in British sociology

The failure of the scheme triggered a debate within academic sociology over the
continuing differences in educational attainment and social mobility between

the working class and the middle class. A new and more critical generation of
British sociologists was emerging who were focusing on the nature of the welfare
system and capitalist society in general as reasons for these class differences in
attainment. They focused on perceived low levels of social mobility, rather than
continuing to identify the problem as being located within the working class
itself (Boronski, 1987). The New Sociology of Education (NSOE) adopted an alto-
gether more radical approach compared to the ‘old sociology of education’,
which had essentially been part of the political establishment and had displayed
a degree of optimism about the potential for a modern welfare-based social
democratic system to create a more meritocratic and socially just society.
This is a significant point because, while British sociology of education was
moving to the left, the general direction of movement in party politics was to
the right. In the late 1970s, there was a breakdown in the political consensus in
which first the Conservatives and eventually Labour began to adopt neoliberal
ideas that were less concerned with inequality and social justice, and increas-
ingly focused on the need for a more competitive economy, and an education
system that would prepare young people for their role in the labour market.
Margaret Thatcher’s policy of promoting market principles as the basis for policy
making, for example, led to a move away from state welfare as a means of help-
ing those at the bottom of society, to the promotion of competition and self-help
as a means of bringing about social and economic progress (Tomlinson, 2005).
The fact that these two groups were heading in different directions was a fac-
tor that made conflict a distinct probability. Terms such as Marxism, class conflict,
class inequality and capitalist exploitation raised the concern and suspicion of
politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph who saw in them a clear
association with Soviet communism. This was a period of intense Cold War
politics in which the Soviet Union was described in 1983 by the then US
President, Ronald Reagan, as the ‘evil empire’. The radical tone of much sociol-
ogy of education raised questions regarding the patriotism and ‘academic
objectivity’ of such academics.
The New Sociology of Education

What we see emerging in Britain during the 1970s and 1980s was not a single
sociology of education, but several, which have been collectively referred to as
the New Sociology of Education (NSOE) (Young, 1971). Although NSOE encom-
passed a variety of approaches to education, it was united in the common
assumption that the education system worked to the disadvantage of working-
class pupils and, as it existed, was part of the problem rather than the solution
to what they described as the continuing class inequalities in Britain. This was a
period in which, according to Saunders (1996, 2010), British sociology became

dominated by left-wing sociologists who subscribed to what he calls the SAD
thesis. This theorised that people’s destinies are determined by the levels of
social advantage and disadvantage (SAD) that prevails in society, rather than by
such things as innate ability and effort.
Ball (2004) identifies three main strands of the NSOE, one of which focuses
on neo-Marxist theories of capitalist reproduction of labour and class relations
(Bowles and Gintis, 1976), a second strand that conducts a critique of the cur-
riculum and the form that classroom knowledge takes, as well as how this
disadvantages working-class pupils (Keddie, 1973; Vulliamy, 1972; Young,
1971), and a third, the use of ethnographic research to explore the processes at
work in the school that result in the educational ‘failure’ of working-class
pupils (Willis, 1977).
The key assumption behind the NSOE is that working-class pupils are likely
to end up with working-class jobs because there is a tendency for the education
system under capitalism to reproduce itself (Althusser, 1971; Bowles and Gintis,
1976). This does not necessarily occur in a simple and mechanical way, because
working-class pupils are often complicit in the process as they are able to par-
tially ‘penetrate’ the myth of meritocracy (Willis, 1977). They fully expect to end
up in factories like their fathers and therefore try to make the period of school-
ing as tolerable as they can by having as much fun as possible through acts of
defiance and disruption, often at the expense of girls and minority ethnic groups
(Willis, 1977). During their schooling, they experience a process of symbolic
violence (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) in which their own culture and language
are defined as inferior to that of the dominant class (Keddie, 1973; Young, 1971).
There is in NSOE a general position of pessimism about the prospects of bringing
about change and greater equality in society through education: working-class
children seem destined to remain at the bottom of the class system with little
prospect of improving themselves. This is particularly evident in the work of
structural Marxists such as Althusser (1971) and Bowles and Gintis (1976) who
see all institutions in capitalist society, including the education system, as
being determined in the last instance by the economy and ultimately serving
the interests of capitalism.
Whose knowledge?
In an attempt to challenge conventional deficit approaches to working-class
educational underachievement, Young (1971) presents an interpretivist analysis
of knowledge and the curriculum, which takes from Berger and Luckmann
(1966) the notion that all reality, including all knowledge, scientific and educa-
tional, is socially constructed. Young believes that some forms of knowledge
tend to be valued more than others, and the role of the sociology of education

is to establish how a hierarchy of such knowledge comes about with some ideas
and beliefs having the status of ‘official knowledge’. In Britain, for example, we
have a clear academic and vocational divide with traditional academic subjects
such as mathematics, history and English literature taking precedence over prac-
tical subjects such as woodwork and domestic science.
This hierarchy is relevant to the way in which teachers define and assess
pupils, such as through IQ tests and official exams. Young states that because an
academic grammar school curriculum is viewed as superior to other curricula, an
‘intelligent’ child is one who has passed the 11-plus and does well in their GCEs,
or GCSEs. As most of the pupils who attend grammar or selective schools tend
to be middle class, these pupils are more likely to be defined as intelligent rather
than working-class pupils who tend to follow a vocational curriculum. Bourdieu
and Passeron (1977) claim that in every society there is one group that is able to
impose its definition of reality on the rest, thereby committing acts of symbolic
violence against those whose culture does not fit the dominant form. They sug-
gest that this is how societies reproduce the patterns of inequality between social
classes. They further claim that the knowledge of the dominant class is not actu-
ally better or superior; it is just that it has become defined as such by those with
the power to do so.
The issue of relativism

In suggesting that all knowledge is of equal value, the NSOE takes what is called
a relativist position, which means that it lacks any means whereby we can judge
the merit of truth claims because it treats all knowledge as being of equal value.
The only difference, according to this position, is that some groups have the
power to define their knowledge as superior, more valid or truthful. Many phi-
losophers, however, point to the importance of an epistemological approach to
knowledge, which relates to specific criteria by which we can assess the validity
and merits of a truth claim (Gellner, 1992; Harre and Krousz, 1996; Moore and
Muller, 1999).
Thinking point 4.1

Since ancient times, philosophers have tried to develop ways of discover-
ing foundational knowledge that acts as the basis for discovering ‘truth’. In
ancient philosophy, rationalists such as Plato argued that certain types of pure
knowledge could be gained, but not through our senses. This foundational

knowledge, he claimed, could only be obtained through reasoning and rational
thought. The sophists, on the other hand, were sceptical about any attempts
to discover ‘truth’. All we can hope to do, they claimed, is be more convincing
in our argument than others. Pure knowledge is unattainable, so we should not
waste our time pursuing it. This approach did not satisfy many philosophers
who saw it as their duty to discover the truth. It is in this spirit of the search for
truth and certainty that the European Enlightenment arose in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. This involved a belief in the power of reason over
blind faith and superstition in an attempt to free the human mind, and to liber-
ate the individual and humanity from traditional authorities such as superstition
and religion. The pursuit of the truth by the rationalists was matched by the
growth of empiricism, which, like rationalism, was also concerned with dis-
covering strong foundations for knowledge, the key difference being that, for
empiricists, knowledge must be based on sensory experience, or what could be
called the doubting Thomas principle: the refusal to believe something is true
unless there is (sensory) evidence to support it.
The Enlightenment was, therefore, driven by both rationalist and empiri-
cist ideas. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the seeds sown in the
Enlightenment seemed to have come to fruition, with the emergence of theo-
ries that were believed to provide comprehensive accounts of the social, eco-
nomic, psychological and natural world. These grand theories, as Wright Mills
(1959) calls them, are part of an optimistic and progressive (teleological) vision
of history that was emerging about the modern world: with greater knowledge
and understanding, we can solve our human and material problems and create
a ‘better’ world.
• Do you think there is such a thing as truth? If so, what is the basis upon
which you would make such a claim?
• Do you think that with greater scientific knowledge and understanding, the
world is becoming a better place?
For writers such as Moore and Muller (1999), knowledge must have more secure
foundations than merely claiming that all knowledge is socially created and
therefore must be of equal value. To take such a position implies that not only
are the views of silent groups such as the poor, the disabled and minority ethnic
groups just as valid as those of the powerful and wealthy, but those of extremists
of any kind with offensive views, such as racists, are equally valid. In addition,
such relativism has little practical value to those with the task of deciding what

to include in the curriculum, as there is no standard by which to judge the worth
of knowledge that we might teach our children. This issue of relativism is also a
problem faced by postmodernist theory.
The growth of feminist classroom research

The interactionist approach of Willis (1977) inspired a new wave of feminist and
standpoint theorists to give voices to women and other marginalised groups
who had been virtually ignored in previous sociological research. Feminists were
already making an impact on family sociology (Oakley, 1974) and gender studies
(Sharpe, 1976) generally, developing both a theory of sexual oppression, as well
as challenging essentialist notions of gender differences. This means that they
were providing an alternative to the biological explanations for gender inequal-
ity and showing how gender differences are socially constructed through gender
role socialisation and patriarchal relations.
The classroom observations of Dale Spender (1983), for example, revealed the
disproportionate amount of attention given to boys in the classroom; the inter-
views carried out by Stanworth (1983) suggest that teachers and indeed girls
themselves hold stereotypical views about which occupations are suitable for
young women, which limits their ambitions; and Judy Samuel (1981) shows how
the language of science in textbooks reinforces the traditional view that science is
a boys’ subject. Much of this evidence might not have been revealed by using the
traditional methods of research adopted by the old sociology of education with its
focus on collecting large amounts of summative data relating to such things as the
outcomes of examinations, staying-on rates and social mobility. Arguably, the
work of feminist researchers has played an important part in providing vital evi-
dence for the women’s movement in its campaigns for greater gender equality in
education and employment in the form of anti-discriminatory and equal oppor-
tunities legislation that we now take for granted (Mitsos and Browne, 1998).
The postmodern turn

As we have seen, philosophers have for centuries been driven by a desire to discover
truth in the form of foundational knowledge upon which we can place absolute
trust and confidence in its reliability and dependability. The Enlightenment, in
particular, saw a move away from traditional and superstitious ways of thinking to
one in which rational and empirical or evidence-based knowledge became more
influential as the bases for understanding social and physical phenomena.
Philosophers and scientists of the Enlightenment developed grand theories
that provided comprehensive explanations of the world based on reason and

logical argument. There is an assumption that this form of knowledge brings
progress and liberation. Durkheim, for example (see Chapter 2), saw in sociology
the means of creating a positive science of society that would help governments
to make effective decisions, enabling the newly industrialising European socie-
ties to function more rationally and effectively, thereby eliminating the prospect
of social conflict. This is a moment of history and knowledge that postmodern-
ists define as modernity, and it is based on the idea of human betterment through
epistemological certainty.
Despite its theme of liberation and freedom, according to Adorno and
Horkheimer (1972) there lies within the Enlightenment the potential for domi-
nation and oppression. For example, a core theme was the control of nature for
the benefit of humanity. Scientific and instrumental rationality can also be seen
as leading to the domination of humanity through the development of bureau-
cratic state systems in which officials wield knowledge, power and surveillance
over their citizens. Indeed, this has been one of the key themes of the postmod-
ernist critiques of the Enlightenment.
However, a distinction needs to be made between the terms postmodern and
postmodernism. The former is a term coined by a group of philosophers who
refer to it as a moment or period in advanced capitalist societies which, accord-
ing to Lyotard ([1979] 1984), has existed at least since the early 1960s, and
which involves a change in cultural, social and economic relations and condi-
tions, and an end to modernist assumptions of certainty as well as the rejection
of a teleological belief in progress, as represented in the grand theories that
arose from the Enlightenment. Postmodernism is a theoretical critique of all
these alleged changes, and involves the analysis and description of the post-
modern condition. This includes a focus on the dissolution of conventional
relations of class and other forms of collective identity, to one in which there is
an emphasis on individual difference and consumption as a means of identity
creation (Pakulski and Waters, 1996), and an examination of the different forms
of knowledge and power used by modern states and their institutions to classify,
discipline and regulate populations as part of their attempt to order the world
(Foucault, 1967, 1973, 1981).
Postmodernism and education

In their seminal work entitled Postmodernism and Education, Usher and Edwards
(1994) state that there is no single postmodern position on education.
However, there is a common critique, running through postmodern discourse,
of Enlightenment notions of education as a means of creating a rational and
informed population that finds itself liberated and able to maximise each
individual’s potential.

They identify Foucault, who is generally associated with the poststructuralist
tradition that focuses on language structure and discourse analysis, as having
made a particularly significant contribution to a postmodern understanding of
education. Usher and Edwards (1994) suggest that because Foucault examines
the role of discourse in the use of power and knowledge, and because he presents
a challenge to modernist ideas about knowledge, progress and the alleged libera-
tory nature of education, he also falls within the postmodernist tradition. For
Usher and Edwards, this may explain Foucault’s approach to the difference
between the modern and postmodern. Whereas most postmodernists such as
Lyotard ([1979] 1984), Bauman (1992) or Baudrillard (1988) see a clear qualita-
tive difference between the modern and postmodern moments, Foucault (1986)
sees much continuity between them as well as many differences. However, it is
significant that some prominent interpreters of Foucault’s work such as Stephen
Ball (2013) make little reference to him as a postmodernist.
Foucault, truth and education

In common with most postmodernist approaches to knowledge, Foucault
(1970) does not employ epistemologies, or ways of finding truth; instead, he
uses the term episteme, which refers to any statement being ‘within the true’
rules of discourse regarding a particular problem and its possible solutions
(Foucault, 1970: 31). Epistemes are based on rules created by experts, or what
Foucault calls ‘discursive police’ (Foucault, 1970: 3), and the parameters relating
to the way we are able legitimately to think about and understand something.
Such forms of discourse create power relations that act as a means of controlling
groups defined by governments as ‘problems’.
For Foucault, state institutions such as asylums, prisons and indeed schools
have become places of control through the power that is validated and sup-
ported by systems of knowledge held by experts such as psychologists, teachers
and academics. The knowledge of these experts creates classes of people who are
compared to the notional ‘normal’ person. Foucault wrote a genealogy, or history,
of knowledge and practice that attempts to show why the behaviour of certain
groups has become ‘problematised’ and that of others has not (Foucault, 1983).
In the modern state, professionals are used as a means of creating knowledge
with which to identify and control such groups as well as to silence them. The
discourse of knowledge and power that results from this relationship ‘creates
truth’. Anyone who speaks outside this accepted framework of knowledge is
dismissed as lacking in credibility. Groups defined as dangerous, including
‘racial’ groups, those with impairments, those defined as mad, sexually deviant
or educationally subnormal, have all at one time or another been deemed to be
in need of control, segregation or worse. In the case of those with physical or

other impairments, we can see how they have been classified as both a burden
to society and as a threat to humanity due to their ‘undesirable’ characteristics,
which psychologists such as Cyril Burt feared would ‘contaminate’ the rest of the
‘normal’ population (see Chapter 10). For Foucault (1983: 75), ‘The problemati-
sation is an “answer” to a concrete situation which is real’.
The issue of relativism

The tone of Foucault’s work reflects a postmodernist scepticism about the role of
institutions such as education as a means of creating the conditions for enlight-
ened tolerance, individual autonomy and personal freedom. It is also clear that
Foucault is less interested in developing an epistemological understanding of
knowledge and more concerned with the way in which knowledge and power
combine to create truth and reality. In education, this takes the form of prob-
lematising issues relating to the management of populations through the
identification of certain groups and behaviour patterns and assessing their levels
of threat, ability, performance and usefulness.
This raises the nebulous issue of relativism, which Moore and Muller (1999)
are so critical of. However, Usher and Edwards (1994) suggest that while post-
modernists tend to adhere to the view that there is a multiplicity of truths that
are dependent on specific standpoints of particular groups, such epistemic relativ-
ity does not imply a position of moral relativism. This means that postmodernists
are not neutral on such issues, but are at the forefront of identifying and analys-
ing problems of injustice and oppression, as we can see in the work of Foucault.
They therefore reject accusations that for postmodernism ‘anything goes’ (Usher
and Edwards, 1994: 27).
Critical pedagogy
No survey of developments in sociology of education would be complete without
reference to critical pedagogy. As a theory of education, it combines Marxist the-
ory with interactionism, as well as a critical position on ‘official knowledge’ as
represented by the NSOE, to create both a critique of education in contemporary
capitalism and an alternative to the existing system of school knowledge and
classroom practice. Any analysis of critical pedagogy must start with Paulo Freire
(1996) who first came to prominence as a result of his work on adult literacy pro-
grammes in Brazil during the 1960s. His subsequent work focused on a wide range
of issues, and inspired a large number of writers working in the field of critical
theory (Darder et al., 2009). Freire’s work is suffused with humanist Marxist ideas
of overcoming oppressive class relations through growing self-realisation and

revolutionary transformation, existential philosophy, and Christian notions of
love and justice. There are three key aspects to Freire’s work:
1 Dialogue Freire claims there should be a dialogue between teacher and learner rather
than the teacher being the one who ‘deposits’ knowledge into the pupil.
2 Praxis This is action informed by reflection. Dialogue is not just about deeper under-
standing, but also about changing the world. Dialogue is a cooperative activity
involving respect. The process enhances community and helps to build social capital.
This will lead us to act in ways that lead to a more just and humanising society.
3 Conscientisation The idea of ‘a pedagogy of the oppressed’ is about developing
consciousness that will enable the poor and oppressed to transform the world.
Recent developments in critical pedagogy

Peter McLaren (Moraes, 2003) speaks very fervently in favour of a revolutionary
pedagogy. By ‘revolutionary’, McLaren means a humanist Marxist approach to
educational struggle, which includes an analysis of the class relations in a capi-
talist society that lead to the oppression of the working class. It is about the
means by which the working class can be liberated, creating a socialist alterna-
tive to capitalism. McLaren describes the influence of Marxism on his work, in
all its diverse forms, although he was initially attracted to postmodernism and
its critique of power relations in a global capitalist system. However, while
accepting that identity politics, as advocated through postmodernism, has
played a key role in promoting the dignity and respect for different sexual, racial
or religious groups, McLaren argues that class relations are the source of all ine-
qualities that exist in capitalist society, and postmodernists have reached a
political and intellectual dead end by denying the importance of class in
advanced capitalist societies (Moraes, 2003). As a consequence, he sees postmod-
ernism as lacking the intellectual means with which to expose global capitalism,
and the political and economic processes involved in exploiting the poor, as well
as lacking the methods needed to end such exploitation.
McLaren and critical pedagogy

For McLaren, radical educationalists must participate with the oppressed in the
process of discovering alternatives to the exploitative system of capitalism. He
believes that the education system plays a crucial part in this process, as it helps
to reproduce labour for the capitalist system. McLaren is highly influenced by the
Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1971), who locates the education system in
what he calls ‘civil society’ as opposed to the political or economic arena. As such,

it works through ideological control and by manipulation through hegemony.
Hegemony is a broad term that is used by Gramsci (1971) to denote domination
in its widest sense. It is based on the voluntary acceptance of the ideology of the
dominant class by the working class and becomes even more effective when
the dominant class is able to incorporate its ideas into the common-sense view
of the world possessed by the working class, such as through the education sys-
tem. This usually involves the notion that there is such a thing as a ‘natural order’
and that things can’t be changed. Gramsci (1971) does not see ideologies in terms
of their truth value, but according to their power to bind together the members of
social classes and to put into practice particular views of how society should be
organised. He also recognises the importance of an ideological apparatus that
helps to secure the consent of the oppressed. In capitalist societies, this involves
institutions such as the family and the education system, which help to spread
and maintain the dominance of ruling-class ideology.
Obstacles
McLaren identifies what he sees as the main obstacles to the class struggle. In
particular, he is concerned about the liberal left, which he accuses of uttering
many of the concepts of liberation politics, but being more concerned with mak-
ing capitalism more ‘compassionate’ by arguing for more welfare rather than
promoting the idea of transforming society. He points to the capitalist class as
being very adept at dividing the working class in terms of promoting racism,
homophobia, xenophobia and sexism. Freire was also very mindful of such tac-
tics. The key to dealing with this for McLaren is for the militant intellectuals to
show, through critical pedagogy, that exploitative class relations are the source of
all these divisions. In his most recent writings (McLaren, 2015), he revives the
original inspiration he gained from Paul Freire by combining the radical philoso-
phy of Marx with the spiritual teachings of Jesus Christ as a means of challenging
what he sees as the dehumanising and oppressive forces of neoliberalism.
The continuing challenge to hegemonic

Northern sociology
The critical pedagogies of Freire and McLaren offer very radical approaches to
education and clearly shift the focus of attention from the metropolitan North
to the lives of people in the post-colonial societies of the Southern hemi-
sphere. Moreover, particularly in the case of Freire (1996), there is an emphasis
on the need for the oppressed peoples to create their own understanding of

their situation through acts of naming the world, thereby creating the condi-
tions for a praxis of liberation. This desire to produce a ‘view-from-below’ in
an unequal world (Connell, 2007: 224) is an important part of a process of
challenging hegemonic social science and is essential in enabling us to under-
stand the experiences of communities of the South. However, although
Connell (2007) agrees that there has been a good deal of progress in main-
stream sociology beyond the ethnocentric notions of the ‘primitive’ South,
there is still a lack of recognition of the validity and credibility of knowledge
produced outside the metropolitan centres.
In Southern Theory (2007), Connell carries out what might be called a ‘sociol-
ogy of sociology’, by engaging in an exploration of the ‘impact of social and
cultural factors upon the works of intellectuals’ (Curtis and Petras, 1972: 197).
In particular, she examines the knowledge bases, or epistemologies, underpin-
ning the key works of James Coleman (1990), Anthony Giddens (1984) and
Pierre Bourdieu (1990), three prominent sociologists who represent the pinnacle
of Northern sociology and whose works have exerted a great deal of influence
on current sociological thinking. To illustrate, in a survey carried out in 1997 by
the International Sociological Association (2018), Bourdieu’s (1984) Distinction:
A Critique of the Judgement of Taste was declared the sixth most influential work
of the twentieth century by its members. It is also worth pointing out that all
the top ten authors identified in the survey were white male Americans or
Europeans. Connell suggests that the works of her three chosen authors are
typical of the genre. There is an assumption of universal applicability and rele-
vance in presenting a world and its problems as conceived by the ‘centre’
represented by the theories of European and American sociologists. Ideas by
intellectuals from the South who write from a ‘local’ or non-Western perspective
are often ignored and located in the less prestigious subdisciplines relating to
regional sociologies such as African Studies or Latin American Studies. This mar-
ginalisation of Southern sociology, which is usually associated with the
‘pre-modern’ (and therefore less credible), results in the ‘exclusion’ of Southern
intellectuals from key debates and high-profile journals in the discipline
(Connell, 2007; Keim, 2011). Moreover, Connell’s research shows that the post-
colonial world has continued to be the source of material for the development
of theories in the metropole, and the ideas of Southern intellectuals rarely
inform the universalist theories developed in the North.
Developing a more inclusive sociology

The call for a more inclusive sociology that provides a way of understanding, as
well as researching, local and indigenous social processes and relations, has been
gathering pace in recent years (Omobowale and Akanle, 2017), though this

desire to ‘indigenise’ sociology is not a new phenomenon. According to
Omobowale and Akanle (2017), there has been a growing effort by sociologists
in the South to bring their insights and research to a wider international audi-
ence over a long period of time (Akiwowo, 1974, 1986; Alatas, 2006; Makinde,
1988; Sanda, 1988). Akiwowo (1983) sees the potential for the application of
indigenous ideas to the understanding and development of the discipline in a
variety of areas such as medical sociology, political sociology, mass communica-
tions, industrial sociology, as well as education. This call is therefore not merely
in the interest of equity or fairness in relation to the need for a diversity of voices
in the sociological community, but also because it is felt by an increasing num-
ber of sociologists in the global South that the theoretical and methodological
tools, including theories, concepts and approaches to the research process of the
North, are not always appropriate for the study of local or indigenous issues such
as dealing with the legacy of colonialism in postcolonial societies. Keim (2011)
agrees with this view stating that there is a need for credible and relevant alter-
natives to hegemonic globalising sociology. In particular, she suggests that the
ideas and research by scholarly communities in the South need to be identified
and given more international attention and exposure. However, this is hindered
by a number of significant factors, most notably what Keim (2011) describes as
the ‘structural inequalities and distorted communication mechanisms at an
international level’ (Keim 2011: 124), which refers to the fact that the power,
control and dissemination of sociological academic output remain in the hands
of Northern academic institutions and scholars.
Case study 4.1

Local sociological problems using indigenous concepts
and theories: the Asuwada Theory of Sociation
For Omobowale and Akanle (2017), the struggle to develop an indigenous sociol-
ogy is as much local and domestic as it is international. This is illustrated by the
national response to the ideas of Akinsola Akiwowo, the Nigerian sociologist who
has long been advocating the cause of indigenous sociology. Akiwowo’s Asuwada
Theory of Sociation (1974, 1986) is an attempt to develop both a local Yoruba and
a wider African theory of social interaction and community integration. This is an
aspect of Nigerian life that he believes has been greatly affected by contact with
Europeans during the eighteenth century and the rivalries that arose between kin
and within communities by the growing individual wealth accumulated in these
(Continued)

new markets (Akiwowo, 1983). Sociation relates to the way that individuals inter-
act and how this affects the quality of community life. He develops a sociological
interpretation using ritual poetry called Ayajo that is recited at the inauguration of
any new community in Oyu state in Nigeria. For Akiwowo, conventional Northern
sociological tools and concepts were deemed inappropriate for his Theory of
Sociation. He was inspired instead by more local indigenous ideas contained in tra-
ditional poetry relating to a ‘good person’ and a ‘bad person’, and how these help
to understand factors relating to community survival and prosperity (Omobowale
and Akanle, 2017). In particular, Akiwowo finds the conventional Northern con-
cept of the rational individual negotiating rules and manoeuvring for advantage
over others unhelpful. Local Asuwada custom announces the integrity of each indi-
vidual in the community, but it also points to their social identity and obligations
to the common good. For the individual and the community to be complete, each
needs to recognise and act on their obligations to the other. The supernatural
origin of the individual from a divine being named Olodumare (Akiwowo, 1986;
Omobowale and Akanle, 2017) is an integral part of Yoruba local belief, and is
based on the principle that humans are essentially good and the purpose of indi-
viduals living together in a community is for a ‘common good’ (Makinde, 1988:
64). Akiwowo proposes that if any Nigerian sociologist wishes to study and under-
stand African community life and, furthermore, to develop plans to improve the
quality of community life generally, then they would be well advised to consider
the ideas of Asuwada (Akiwowo, 1986: 354).
Although Akiwowo’s theory received a good deal of international attention after
it was published in the journal International Sociology, Omobowale and Akanle
(2017) state that domestically there was a somewhat muted response. The reasons
Omobowale and Akanle give for this are varied and complex, relating to local aca-
demic and ethnic rivalries, as well as the continuing problem of the dominance of
Northern sociological epistemologies within the Nigerian academy. Akiwowo’s notion
of divine or supernatural origins of individuals in Olodumare is a position that many
Nigerian sociologists socialised in the Northern empiricist tradition find it hard to
accept and consider such ideas as ‘primitive, crude and backward’ (Omobowale and
Akanle, 2017: 44).
The obstacles to developing indigenous and local sociology, according to
Omobowale and Akanle (2017), relate to both international factors of hegemonic
domination by the global North, as well as domestic and local factors relating to a
‘resistance to local initiative (even by local scholars)’ (Omobowale and Akanle, 2017:
50) to see within their own societies’ alternative and original ways of understanding
their own cultures outside the universalising epistemologies they were socialised to
accept. Omobowale and Akanle (2017: 55) do not, however, advocate the separa-
tion, or what they call ‘territorialisation’, of African sociology, but instead propose a

‘scholarly dialogue’ in order to create a new ‘research agenda’ that moves away from
the conventional North/South hierarchy of perspectives.
• Should we apply the dominant sociological epistemologies to all places and

contexts?
• Is there a place for local sociologies where an understanding of indigenous val-

ues, customs, norms, beliefs and practices are better suited to understanding
local issues than mainstream hegemonic sociology?
Keim (2011) believes that it is essential for Southern sociology to be given

increasing amounts of international exposure, as this is a key method by which
non-Northern sociology can develop what Alatas calls ‘autonomous traditions’
(Alatas, 2006). However, she points out that this process is likely to be hindered
by national and international assessment processes, such as the Research
Excellence Framework (REF, 2019) in the UK, whereby academics and their insti-
tutions are judged and rated by the amount and quality of internationally
relevant research and publications they produce. This is likely to contribute to
maintaining indigenous sociology at the margins of the discipline unless the
system is reformed.
Chapter summary
This chapter has made a broad sweep of developments in sociology of educa-
tion since the Second World War. It has shown how sociology in general, and
sociology of education in particular, were slow to take off in Britain, and how
there was an emphasis on political arithmetic as a means of describing and
measuring the degree to which Britain was becoming a more meritocratic soci-
ety as a result of the introduction of the welfare state in 1945. The prevailing
sociological perspective was based on American structural functionalism,
which tended to present an idealised picture rather than what was actually
happening in the education system. The disillusionment of many sociologists
with the perceived inability of the welfare state to reduce class inequalities in
Britain led to a new and more radical sociology of education that was at odds
with the move to the right in British politics. The result was an end to the close
links that sociologists had with British governments in the immediate post-war
period. Sociology has continued in a more critical and radical direction ever
since, although it could be said that there are many sociologies of education
rather than just one, some of which challenge traditional sociological claims to

provide a valid and truthful picture of society. In addition, there is increasing
pressure to make sociology more inclusive by enabling the voices of the global
South to be heard more effectively.
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5
Critical and
Radical Pedagogies
Chapter aims
This chapter will address the work of key theorists in critical and radical peda-
gogies in response to twenty-first century challenges in education, including
social justice, inequality and schools as transformational spaces of possibility. In
addition, the notion of teachers as transformative intellectuals is considered as a
potential catalyst for the revolutionary change that critical and radical pedago-
gies demand. This chapter will consider the work of global theorists, including
Paulo Freire (Método Paulo Freire), Henry Giroux (transformative pedagogy) and
Peter McLaren (the three Rs: Reflection, Resistance and Revolution on teacher
education reform). Additionally, reflecting on extremism as a political ideology
will inform the debate. Finally, a consideration of hip hop as a community-based
alternative radical pedagogy, as implemented in America and Brazil but gaining
global momentum, will conclude this chapter.
Key words: social justice, transformation, critical consciousness, social exclusion,

banking concept.
Introduction
Critical and radical pedagogies are embedded in a creative range of academic
disciplines, including politics, history and philosophy of education, and com-
prise social movements that combine education with critical theory. The basic
tenet of critical pedagogy is that there is an unequal social stratification in
society based on class, race and gender; in response, critical and radical pedago-
gies provide cultural, political and ethical guidance for those in education who
are open to change and seek liberation as an authentic goal in a radically differ-
ent world based on equality. Key principles such as democracy and freedom
from oppression are recognised as the cornerstones of critical and radical peda-
gogy, as illustrated in the American context in the work of Apple (1995) and
Giroux (1983), who have applied the works of Marcuse ([1937] 1968) and Freire
(1970b), arguing that a movement of raising consciousness in society is the first
step for attaining the necessary change and subsequent freedom. Critical peda-
gogy is therefore preoccupied with challenging social injustice via revolutionary
transformation within society. Critical and radical pedagogies aim to create new
forms of knowledge by challenging the relationships between who occupies the
centre and who occupies the margins of power in schools; this new knowledge
is concerned with providing a way of reading history as part of a larger project
of reclaiming power and identity, particularly as these are shaped around the

categories of race, gender, class and ethnicity. The function of critical and radi-
cal pedagogy is to raise consciousness in society and to motivate the critical
person to seek social justice, to seek emancipation. Therefore, critical and radi-
cal pedagogies are engaged with bringing about change, and it is here that
Marx’s Thesis XI on Feuerbach comes to life: ‘The philosophers have only inter-
preted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ (Marx
[1845] 1977: 158).
Twenty-first century challenges in education

A postmodern example of a radical pedagogy demanding transformative
change in schools is the work of Tait Coles, a former science teacher and author
of Never Mind the Inspectors: Here’s Punk Learning. Coles applies the revolution-
ary passion of the punk movement as a catalyst to change classroom pedagogy
via creativity, independent learning and student ownership. Punk learning
(Coles, 2014a) positions students at the centre of their learning, championing
ownership as opposed to imposed curriculum, and allows them to take control
of how and what they are learning. For Coles, punk learning is about reclaim-
ing teaching as a profession from the control of central government and the
destruction of the inspectorate process while at the same time engaging stu-
dents in ways that he feels currently they are disengaged. Rooted in the
anarchy of the punk movement and classical sociology, Coles presents a
manifesto, almost a call to arms; he demands that teachers should challenge
the control of school structures and draw pupils in from the margins to the
centre of curriculum design and delivery and, as such, he claims transforma-
tion of schooling in the UK will take place. An example of how this vision
might appear on a practical level is evident in the BAFTA award-winning
Channel 4 series Educating Yorkshire, which is based on the pupils and teachers
of Thornhill Community Academy. Set in a socially and economically deprived
setting, the school is notable for its acute focus on nurturing leadership skills,
social justice and moral citizenship alongside the all-important academic
attainment. The transformation of ‘Musharaf’, a shy young man with a stam-
mer, into a formidable role model was the highlight of the series. However, the
real story is the transformation of a schooling culture where pupils are active
in their own transformation; how the entire school is invested in this process;
how an alternative curriculum can champion change, and finally how the
commitment and care of teaching staff can act as a catalyst towards such a
transformation – as it was in the case of ‘Musharaf’.
Critical and radical pedagogies are embedded in the notion that education
has the power to bring about change. In other words, a vision of education is
one that locates the moral purpose of education. As a result, critical and radical
Critical and radical pedagogies 107

pedagogies are not centred on a prescriptive set of practices, but on a continuous
moral project that enables students to develop a social awareness and their role
as active citizens in a society based on equality.
Paulo Freire
Freire’s critical pedagogy has two central themes: critical consciousness and lit-
eracy, both of which are deeply rooted in the critical concept of power, making
his ideology relevant beyond the historical period and geographical setting of
the original application in late twentieth-century Brazil. Freire’s work is con-
cerned with the development of conscienticizao, which is translated as ‘critical
consciousness’ (Freire, 1970a, 1970b), a process by which the student is made
aware of their ability to participate in their own learning and in the transforma-
tion of society. For Freire, freedom begins with a consciousness-raising movement
(McLaren and Leonard, 1993), which is noted as a beginning point of the libera-
tory praxis; this means the bringing about of social change through reflection
and action. Change, in consciousness and concrete action, are linked for Freire
(Freire, 1985; McLaren and Lankshear, 1993), therefore a momentum- and goal-
orientated focus is noted in Freirian thought and change is the outcome. Freire
draws attention to and challenges what he calls ‘the banking concept of educa-
tion’ (Friere, 1970a), which regards students as empty bank accounts waiting to
be filled by the school teacher or the imposed curriculum. Freire argues that the
student must not be perceived as a tabula rasa (a Latin term meaning ‘blank
slate’), but must be included as an active participant in their own transforma-
tion, arguing that ‘The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for
their redemption’ (Freire, 1970b: 54).
In a later publication and linked to adult literacy, Freire reinforces this point,
which is the keystone to the radical postmodern pedagogy ‘punk learning’.
‘Education makes sense because women and men learn that through learning
they can make and remake themselves; because women and men are able to
take responsibility for themselves as beings capable of knowing’ (Freire, 2004:
15). Freire’s critical pedagogy demonstrates change via literacy and the poten-
tial to escape the prison-like state of being trapped and dependent on others,
and the sense of powerlessness (Freire, 1973) caused by the lack of ability in
reading and writing. For Freire, the development of a sense of self-esteem and
collective self-confidence, coupled with the desire to change, not only one’s
self, but the circumstances of one’s social group, bring together the overarching
principles of freedom, democracy and equality in a critical pedagogy that
acknowledges that a literate population is a stepping stone to active participa-
tion in democratic society.

Thinking point 5.1
In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire shares his philosophy for a student-centred,
liberating model of teaching. He also reaches out to teachers, urging them to
‘fight alongside the people for the recovery of peoples’ stolen humanity’ (Freire,
1970b: 76). He shares his belief in adult literacy and the importance of cultivating
respect for one’s own language as a vehicle for transformation. He championed
the ‘culture circle’ of learning via collaboration and dialogue where all voices car-
ried equal weight. He speaks of a ‘culture of silence’ both in education and wider
society where the voices of marginalised groups are not heard, and encourages
teachers to find ways of breaking that silence.
Review the Teacher’ Standards (www.gov.uk) that were introduced on 1
September 2012 and set a clear baseline of expectations for the professional
practice and conduct of teachers.
• Can you see any congruence between a Freirean vision and a government
directive?
• Reflect on your own school experiences. Consider if any of Freire’s ideas

about teaching might have been utilised and why.
Peter McLaren
McLaren is a teacher, a poet and a researcher whose work has been influenced
by key figures in classical sociology and philosophy, including Marx, Guevara,
Althusser, Bourdieu, Fromm, Hegel, Dewey and Gramsci. He was also a close
friend and associate of the late Paulo Freire who inspired his commitment to
social justice. This has infused his writing on critical pedagogy, which is referred
to as Marxist humanism. Like Freire, McLaren’s body of work details how
Western educational systems work in tandem with an ‘imperial ideology’
(Eryaman, 2009: 188) to maintain inequities, thus making the space for a radical
pedagogy all the more imperative. To clarify, for McLaren the aim of critical and
radical pedagogy depends not on the abolition of private property, which is the
classical Marxist position, but on the enlightenment, or raised consciousness, of
the alienated and oppressed labour force; for critical pedagogy to be realised, it
must help those engaged in the pedagogical encounter to transcend their own
exclusion. This aspect illustrates the centrality of resistance in McLaren’s vision.
McLaren writes from the American perspective and defends the position that
public schools (the equivalent of state schools in the UK) are legitimate sites for

democratic advancement concentrating predominantly on the reform of teacher
education in his Reflection, Resistance, Revolution pedagogy. Building on the
revelations in Jonathan Kozol’s (1991) classic book Savage Inequalities, which
expose the unequal conditions in American public schools based on his personal
reflections of racial segregation using terms such as ‘educational apartheid’
(Scherer, 1993) and ‘ghetto education’ (Rojas and Liou, 2017), McLaren confi-
dently calls for revolutionary change in teacher education in order to challenge
the status quo.
McLaren’s radical pedagogy is shared by his contemporaries, including Ira
Shor and Henry Giroux, and is referred to as social reconstructionism, a peda-
gogy where teachers are active in the process of bringing about social change via
a range of strategies, including cross-cultural communication and cultural liter-
acy. In this way, a regeneration of teachers takes place, moving away from the
traditional authoritarian transmission of a dominant culture to ‘transformative
intellectuals’ who embody a commitment to social justice and equality. It is
important to articulate that McLaren’s rally call is not a new pedagogy, but based
on a number of very influential publications and theorists. First, he is influenced
by the reconstructionist position set out by Counts (1932) in Dare the Schools
Build a New Social Order?, which included a manifesto for socialist reform and
collectivism. Second, he captures the spirit of Dewey, who criticised traditional
forms of teacher education and called for a new social and educational philoso-
phy which motivated ‘a zeal for the betterment of our common civilization’
(Dewey, 1933: 270). Third, he was influenced by a historic movement of ‘frontier
educators’ (Grant and Secada, 1990) who emphasised a focus on an understand-
ing of the conditions under which learners live in order to offer intellectual and
practical guidance for progression. Finally, McLaren takes note of the work of
Kilpatrick (1933), writing at a time of immense social unrest and change:
The socially unenlightened teaching too often found in the ordinary college or
normal school can hardly have any other result than turning out teachers ignorant
of our social situation and with no intelligent concern about it. Each staff member
should be encouraged to know first-hand how the less favoured among us live and
feel. First-hand contacts carry greater potency. We can easily disregard the needs of
those we do not know. Without this, we can hardly hope for socially prepared
teachers. (Kilpatrick, 1933: 266)
So, what are the characteristics of the teacher who reflects McLaren’s radical
pedagogy? A comprehensive list is offered, including a demonstrated commit-
ment to developing an ethical dimension of critical reflection; application of
data on racism, sexism and social class inequality linked to special educational
needs; an understanding of global educational practices beyond white, middle-
class and heterosexual educational norms that perpetuate fixed ideas about
minority groups and indigenous groups; and enabling student teachers to

develop the skills to critically examine the ideological nature of teachers’ work,
including the concept of the negotiated curriculum as opposed to the predeter-
mined, imposed curriculum. Fundamentally, McLaren, who makes thoughtful
reference to the work of Hill (2017, 2018) and the British context, purports ‘a
model of a teacher as a transformative intellectual who does not instruct stu-
dents what to think but who learns to think dialectically and who develops a
critical consciousness aimed at social transformation’ (McLaren, 2017: 16). In
conclusion, the radical nature of McLaren’s pedagogy is that the elements dis-
cussed above are simply the tip of the iceberg; in reality, the reform of teacher
education is more about the bigger societal injustices (Cole, 2017, 2018) that
exist and, in order to dismantle the structures that maintain such injustices, an
intellectually transformative teaching profession can facilitate social reform on
a wider scale.
Henry Giroux
A close friend of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux is one of the founding theorists of
critical pedagogy in the USA and is currently captivating new audiences on
Facebook and social media in order to secure his goal of a more socially and
economically just society that not only eliminates oppressive inequalities of
wealth, power and privilege, but does so with the creation of an ‘open, self-
critical community of inquiring citizens’ (Giroux, 1983: 190). Giroux has been
influenced by the Frankfurt School, Bourdieu, Willis, Gramsci, Apple and
Marcuse, who argued that the structures of schooling are a barrier for students
to developing their own goals, and essentially serve to deskill students (Giroux,
1992); as a result, he has made consequential contributions to many disciplines,
including critical theory, youth studies, cultural studies, higher education and
public pedagogy. Giroux is a formidable postmodern theorist whose work is
based on his honest and transparent insights into his own lower working-class
upbringing, including experiences of food shortages, exclusion in school and
feeling an outsider at college, all of which led to the formulation of his own
critical consciousness. His personal story of transformation is an important facet
of his writing as he is able to capture the acute injustice of invisibility (Burrell
and Flood, 2019; Hassan, 2014), as well as the stigma, social markings and struc-
tural inequalities (Heller, 2011) of the white academic, as captured in the extract
below taken from an interview:
When I first started teaching at Boston University I did not have the knowledge,
theoretical tools or the experience to move into a world largely dominated by
middle- and ruling-class cultural capital. I was constantly confronted with faculty
and students who assumed a god-given right of privilege and power, especially

with regards to their academic credentials, middle-class language skills and lifelong
experience in which people like myself were defined through our deficits, and
largely as outsiders. All of these requisite changes were brought home to me during
my second semester. My father had just died of a heart attack, and I had returned
to the campus after attending his funeral. My Dean at the time was a guy named
Bob Dentler, an Ivy-League educated scholar. I ran into him on the street shortly
after my father’s death and he said to me, ‘I am sorry to hear about your father. It
must have been difficult settling his estate?’ Estate? My father left a hundred dollars
in an envelope taped behind a mirror. That was his estate. I was immediately struck
by how out of touch so many academics are with respect to those others who are
not replicas of themselves. (Peters, 2011)
It is important to reflect momentarily on the power of a personal story of trans-

formation as a catalyst for a radical pedagogy – the impact of oppressive
structures on an individual and the criticality of resistance (Kincheloe, 2004)
cannot be underestimated, and it is based on this rationale that it is important
to reflect on Giroux’s lived experiences in his own words in order to fully appreci-
ate and understand his pedagogical standpoint.
Giroux’s vast canon of academic literature has an overwhelming radical edge
and explores the notion of schools as sites of struggle; institutional sites and
cultural sites of contestation where the oppressed and economically marginal-
ised are further disempowered, hence the call for a radical pedagogy of reform.
For Giroux, pedagogy is defined as follows:
Pedagogy is not simply about the social construction of knowledge, values, and
experiences; it is also a performative practice embodied in the lived interactions
among educators, audiences, texts, and institutional formations. Pedagogy, at its
best, implies that learning takes place across a spectrum of social practices and
settings. (Giroux, 2004: 61)
The focus on ‘sites of learning’ (these can be multiple, shifting and overlapping)
is significant, as this draws on the notion of the production and distribution of
power, which has political, economic and educational impacts. Schools are clearly
key sites of radical pedagogy; however, the concept of ‘permanent education’
(Lima, 2018) extends the focus to lifelong education and a holistic environmental
conceptualisation of education, which Giroux links to cultural reproduction – the
idea that knowledge is produced under certain conditions. To summarise, Giroux’s
radical pedagogy is rooted in democratic values and practices that build on the
histories and struggles of excluded and marginalised groups based on class, race,
gender, age or disability. It is not a road map to overcoming these societal chal-
lenges, but a powerful lens that focuses on the unequal distribution of power, and
calls for teachers to consider this alternative lens in order to better understand the
world and to transform it when necessary. In common with Thornhill Community
Academy, Giroux argues that schools should explore the creative curriculum
(Harris and De Bruin, 2018), which involves building a curriculum around the

varied histories, experiences, literacies and values of the diverse school commu-
nity in order to consolidate their identity and encourage their participation in not
only their own transformation, but also in becoming engaged global citizens who
have the capacity to bring about social change.
Extremism as political ideology

Understanding extremism as a political ideology has to begin with defining
extremism first and foremost, beyond advocacy of extremism views. Extremism
can be defined in the contexts of criminology, psychology, history, literature,
fashion, politics and sociology, therefore it is only to be expected that a wide
range of definitions may be applicable. Extremism as an ideology can be in
response to exploitation or alienation based on political and social conditions as
an act of fanaticism (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2010) which draws common threads
among the academic disciplines listed previously. The word ‘ideology’, coined by
the French enlightenment philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracey (1754–1836;
1801) as the science of ideas, predates Marx and Engels and can also be defined
as a way of looking at things comprehensively or a world view.
In this discussion, further reflection on the definition of political ideology is
useful in a consideration of extremism. Political ideologies can relate to a vast
range of subject matter, including the environment, criminal welfare, national-
ism, education, the economy, and debates on disability or gender. As Fleming
(2014) suggests, the study of extremist politics includes an analysis of behaviour,
strategy, supporters and potential influence of the groups as a collective of indi-
viduals who campaign on behalf of that particular group. Fleming goes on to
speak of the enduring public fascination with political extremism, even when it
poses only a marginal threat to civic institutions and society (2014: 395).
Accordingly, it could be argued that extremism as an ideology makes consider-
able assumptions about what is acceptable in the realms of thought and action.
To identify a political extremist, therefore, would be to condemn their actions,
manifesto, or indirectly attempt to censor. When extremist groups receive sup-
port from sources of wider societal/global influence, this adds a subjective
dimension. To illustrate, Newton Gingrich and his support of the Tea Party
Movement, Russell Brand and his support of the E15 single mum’s campaign for
better housing, and Stella McCartney and her support for Greenpeace.
At GCSE level, the subject of the government and politics includes a study of
conservative, liberal, socialist and Marxist political ideologies, and continues to
focus on feminism, postmodernism, environmentalism, ecologism and religious
fundamentalism as exemplars of extreme political ideologies (www.ocr.org.uk).
To illustrate with an exemplar, Annie Kenney, a leading figure in the Women’s
Social and Political Union (WSPU) and a suffragette, PETA (People for the Ethical
Treatment of Animals), Greenpeace and Andrea Dworkin, the American radical

feminist renowned for her criticism of pornography and its associations with
violence against women, all demonstrate the breadth of political activism associ-
ated with extremism. The dominance of social media has enabled the emergence
of a plethora of new exemplars of political extremism, which have made an
impact in the mainstream political spectrum, popular culture and indeed in the
everyday lives of citizens. Some compelling exemplars include #SayHerName, a
movement in response to police violence against Black women in America, and
Momentum, a grassroots movement that aims to action social and political
change in Britain through its support of Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour
Party. Reflecting on extremism as a political ideology in this chapter aims to
reframe mainstream media use of the term ‘extremism’ and apply a wider lens
that considers a range of academic disciplines.
Case study 5.1

#SayHerName
In his groundbreaking text, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois (1903) asserts that
“the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line”.
From a disproportionate number of Black people being killed by police to racial
disparities in school discipline practices, anti-Blackness manifests in nearly all are-
nas of society. In each era of anti-Blackness, however, Black freedom movements
have emerged to combat contemporaneous forms of racial injustice. We have
entered a new chapter in Black freedom struggles. The Movement for Black Lives
(M4BL), though still in relative infancy, has called upon the nation to confront
its investment in anti-Blackness and to divest from it. M4BL demands that we
understand the conditions under which a Black person could be killed by police
or vigilantes every 28 hours (Costs Vargas, 2018).
The connective thread between movement goals is dismantling White supremacy.
#SayHerName, which commenced as a movement to combat the invisibility in main-

stream media of the violent victimisation of Black women/femmes, insisted that we
take an intersectional approach to comprehending this recent era of racial and gender
terror. To uncover the unique ways in which Black women and girls experience violent
victimisation requires unpacking both the gendered dynamics of racial injustice and the
racial dynamics of gender injustice.
In October 2015, the video footage of a 15-year-old Black girl being assaulted by
a school resource officer went viral. Her body was flung across the room as another
Black girl pleaded for the officer to stop. Through social media platforms such as
Twitter, the incident became widely known as #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh.

After the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh and the verbal outcry of Niya Kenny, the stu-
dent who pleaded for the officer to stop harming the victim, both girls were detained
for their respective ‘unruly’ behaviour. The victim’s stillness and silence throughout the
violent encounter was painful to witness. Niya’s voice was the only audible sound on
the tape besides the noises the victim’s body and chair made as the officer assaulted
her. Much of this new work recognises schools as one of many “sites of racialized and
gendered terror for Black girls” (Annamma et al., 2016, p. 33).
It would be nearly impossible to discuss the emergence of the M4BL without center-
ing the killing of Michael Brown by ex-officer Darren Wilson and the Ferguson Uprising.
Benjamin (2018) reflects that “forty years from now, we will still be talking about what
happened in Ferguson” (p. 1). Although the killing of Trayvon Martin by perpetually
violent vigilante George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, in 2012 and Zimmerman’s
acquittal generated national outrage and significant organising and mobilising efforts,
Ferguson ensured that this moment of examining how Black bodies are surveilled and
policed became a nascent national and, arguably, global movement for racial injustice.
By the end of 2014, we knew some of the names of Black people killed by police.
Alongside Martin and Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Tamir Rice exempli-
fied the harsh reality of a Black person being killed by police or vigilantes every
28 hours. The #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh video became a distinct entry point for
new discussions on the experiences of Black girls in classrooms (Annamma et al.,
2016; Lindsay, 2016). The presence of video footage of the brutal assault allowed
millions to bear witness to how the state can and does interact with Black girls
labelled defiant or unruly.
Forty percent of Black girls have experienced some form of sexual abuse before
they turn 18 (Women of Color Network, 2006). A more recent study conducted
by DuMonthier, Childers and Milli in 2017 reports 60% of Black girls under 18
experience sexual violence. Black children account for 37% of missing minors in
the United States, many of them Black women. Being poor, Black, and a girl too
often means negligible media coverage and less attention from law enforcement.
The video of the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh is part of a growing audio-visual
archive of police violence against Black girls. Understanding the broader con-
text of how Black girls encounter police and other forms of state authority could
assist those working in urban schools with how they work with Black girls. Those
teaching, counselling, and otherwise working with Black girls in classrooms should
watch the June 2015 video of 14 year old Dejerria Benton being thrown on the
ground in McKinney, Texas, by Corporal Eric Casebolt (Labouvier, 2015). The
physical and verbal attack she endured at the hands of an officer while unarmed
and in a swimsuit showed the carelessness and brutishness many Black girls fear
they may encounter when dealing with law enforcement and state authorities.
(Continued)

In September 2016, another video surfaced of officers violently handling a Black girl
in Hagerstown, Maryland.
The site of a young Black girl’s body being assaulted by an officer did something that
data and a handful of committed scholars had yet been able to accomplish – it moved
the needle slightly on how we talk about Black girls and state violence. Believing Black
girls’ stories of state violence in the absence of video or non-Black girl witness corrobo-
ration means we not only have to #SayHerName but we have to #HearHerScreams –
silent or raging. Black girls occupy the margins of the margins. To hear them and their
stories requires new listening practices and radical approaches to thinking about what
it means to demand racial and gender justice in our institutions.
(Lindsay, 2018: 5)
Keepin’ it real: hip hop pedagogy

I may not change the world but I guarantee that I will spark the mind that will.
(Tupac Shakur, rapper, activist, 1971–96)
Since its birth on the streets of New York in the 1970s, hip hop has been trans-
formed from a youth movement to an international phenomenon (Kwamogi
Okello and Quaye, 2018; Kruse, 2018) translating globally into education peda-
gogy (Shelby-Caffey et al., 2018; Dando, 2017). Hip hop pedagogy is presented
as a holistic community-based educational approach that aims to meet the needs
of minority students by providing them with space for an emancipatory learning
experience and celebrates sociology in the form of Giroux, who calls for us to
‘reconsider education, to engage in understanding it as a way of life in which
learning is a collective activity’ (Giroux, 1992: 203).
In acknowledging the intersections of race, power, identity, history and
politics in hip hop music as a reflection of the exclusion, economic disadvan-
tage and inferiority experienced by Afro-American, Latin and Caribbean young
people in America and Brazil (Marcyliena and Bennett, 2011), it is clear to see
how a movement entrenched in a collective consciousness and a powerful
urban culture that nurtures young people can translate into a restructuring of
the classroom. The Brazilian context differs slightly in that hip hop is rooted
in street dance and reflects a striking similarity to Brazil’s traditional martial
art, capoeira (Jordan and Manning 2018). Both forms of cultural expression
emerged from African diasporic roots and are associated with disaffected young
people (the majority of whom are male), often unemployed and with limited
education who began to occupy public spaces and form a strong sense of group
organisation, cohesion and consciousness. Academics have noted that it is the

potential for channelling this consciousness that transports hip hop from a
culture into an educational pedagogy: ‘the term hip-hop culture; it’s the culture
that gets us in touch with each other. We create community and we discover
ourselves in the process. This reality is our consciousness’ (Pardue, 2008: 29).
Similarly, politicians who advocate hip hop pedagogy in both America and
Brazil focus on the capacity for inclusion, self-esteem and collective support as
elements that can enhance the educational life chances of young people, offer-
ing a positive counter-narrative to social exclusion and educational failure
(Love, 2016; Kim and Pulido, 2015).
To illustrate the pragmatic implications of hip hop pedagogy in the class-
room, the work of an urban school teacher, Sam Seidel (www.hiphopgenius.org),
is captured in his book (2011) Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education,
providing an innovative insight into how a school curriculum can be devised
with the students at the centre and with liberatory outcomes. The school, High
School for Recording Arts (HSRA) in St Paul, Minnesota, provides a space for
young people to explore their artistic skills while learning about computing,
digital media and business. Working mainly with high school ‘dropouts’ and
incorporating hip hop culture as a tool to include, motivate, inspire and main-
tain retention, the school emphasises ‘respect for the brilliance and resilience of
young people’ (Seidel, 2011: 54) at the heart of its delivery. Hip hop pedagogy is
championed as an educational strategy through the Hip-Hop Education Centre
in New York, a joint project with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture and New York University, which proudly boast that President Obama
talks of listening to Jay-Z on his iPod.
In an educational system preoccupied with transferrable employability skills,
scholars of all kinds, but especially those who use hip hop culture as their lens of
critical enquiry, must guide students to think about society beyond employability
targets. Kruse (2018) argues that hip hop scholarship has much to offer wider
society, beyond the social issues that contributed to hip hop’s origins and its
continuing relevance as a cultural force, as a culturally relevant pedagogy. Hip
hop, like all popular culture, has to wrestle with many challenges. First, the close
associations with celebrity, explosive record sales, a burgeoning economy and the
acute contradictions of role models such as Carlos Coy, a.k.a. South Park Mexican
(sexual assault of a child), Tab Virgil Jr, a.k.a. Turk (attempted murder) and
Reminisce Smith, a.k.a. Remy Ma (illegal weapon possession and attempted coer-
cion), to name just three. Second, from within the academy questions remain
unanswered such as are professional hip hop practitioners the best equipped to
teach hip hop studies? Can hip hop be adapted in a multidisciplinary manner or
must it exist as a discrete subject? Third, as the second generation of hip hop
adherents enter higher education, has its identity evolved and how true to its
origins can it remain? Finally, beyond building academic resilience and literacy,
can hip hop be taken seriously in higher education (Khan, 2019; Emdin, 2015).

Reading suggestion
Founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim and now owned by
Google, YouTube is a powerful exemplar of critical pedagogy via the interplay of
participatory culture (Ito, 2005) which is understood as its core business. With
a dizzying global reach which is consistently on the rise and redefining what
is understood by popular culture (vlogging, unboxing and gaming), YouTube
is now perceived as the dominant multimedia platform (Burgess and Green,
2018) evidenced by the open, community-driven and authentic culture it has
perpetuated since its origins in June 2005. Henry Jenkins defines participatory
culture as one
• with relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement;

• with strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others;
• with some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the
most experienced is passed along to novices;
• where members believe that their contributions matter;
• where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at
the least they care what other people think about what they have created).
(2009: 56)
Read the following:
1 Garcia, A. (2013) ‘Beautiful dark twisted pedagogy: Kanye West and the
lessons of participatory culture’. Radical Teacher, 97 (Fall), which explores
how Kanye West reimagined music distribution using participatory culture
on a range of social media platforms. Available online at: http://radical
teacher.library.pitt.edu/ojs/public/journals/1/RT97.pdf
2 Keskin, B. (2018) ‘What do YouTube videos say about public education?’ SAGE
Open, March, pp. 1–5, which considers the power dynamic of this bottom-up
educational philosophy.
Chapter summary
This chapter considered the work of key theorists in critical and radical peda-
gogies in response to twenty-first century challenges in education, including
the work of global theorists Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux and Peter McLaren.
In addition, the discussion captured extremism, a political ideology and a
postmodern radical pedagogy in the form of hip hop, a cultural identity

incorporating DJing, breakdancing, graffiti and knowledge with a mass global
following, burgeoning economy and cult celebrity endorsement, which has
been subject to critical enquiry in order to effect the transfer into pedagogy
for educational advancement.
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6
Differential
Educational Attainment
and the Debate
about Intelligence
Chapter aims
The aim of this chapter is to examine the key areas of debate relating to inequali-
ties in educational attainment, including theories of intelligence, social and
cultural explanations, as well as the role of schools. Government policies and
attempts to address these inequalities will be assessed.
Key words: meritocracy, social mobility, equality of opportunity, intelligence,

IQ, eugenics, genetic determinism, social capital, cultural capital.
Introduction
One of the longest running and most controversial debates in sociology of edu-
cation relates to the issue of differential educational attainment – that is, the
debate about why some groups in society perform better than others, usually in
relation to social class, gender or ethnicity, but here we will focus primarily on
social class differences. These differences in attainment affect the degree of social
mobility and relate to how open our society is. In Britain, this debate takes place
against a background of post-war welfare reforms and education policy in which
there was to be a new era of equality of opportunity and meritocracy. This is a
term that we now take for granted, but it was coined by Michael Young in his
1958 book, The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870–2033, and refers to a society in which
all roles and positions are allocated on the basis of effort and merit as opposed
to tradition or inheritance. In such a society, those who govern are alleged to be
the most able and have gained their positions through the greatest effort and the
highest ability as measured by such supposedly objective criteria as intelligence
and educational achievement.
From negative to positive

Although the idea of meritocracy tends to be seen in positive terms nowadays,
Young wrote this work as a dystopian vision of Britain in which inequality based
on merit gradually replaces a society based on social class inequalities. He suggests
that this brings with it its own problems in that, while there was once educational
injustice due to class inequality and class privilege during which those at the bot-
tom of society could explain their lack of upward social mobility and educational
success as something beyond their control and in need of change, in a merito-
cratic society the unfairness is justified as being based on a fair system. This leaves

little opportunity for those at the bottom to progress further in life, regardless of
effort, once they have been designated as having limited ability.
Young was writing at a time of great optimism in the prospect for social
democracy and the desire to create a new and fairer society based on rational and
efficient systems of role allocation that would replace unfair and inefficient tra-
ditional ones. However, he was pointing out the potential problems that he
envisaged arose from the tripartite system of education in which ability is
believed to be measurable by means of intelligence tests that can predict the
performance potential of all children. Meritocracy is inherently bound up with
the principle of selection and that is why the Norwood Committee of 1943 rec-
ommended a system of secondary education that involved the separation of
children at age 11 on the basis of the ‘11-plus’. This age was chosen on the
grounds that, according to government psychologists such as Cyril Burt (see
Chapters 10 and 12), intelligence in children is essentially inherited at birth and
fixed by that age. Such testing was seen as the best means of allocating them to
the type of education most suited to their talents: a grammar school for the aca-
demically gifted, a secondary modern school for the non-academic child and a
technical high school for those with practical talents. Those parents with inde-
pendent means were still able to send their children to private schools, which
remained relatively untouched during the post-war reforms.
The increasing amount of evidence (Ministry of Education, 1954; Ministry of
Education, 1959) which showed that the tripartite system was not benefiting
working-class pupils and was leading to ‘a wastage of ability’ led some politicians
in the 1960s to propose a comprehensive system of education in which all chil-
dren should be educated together in order to achieve more equality of
opportunity. Comprehensivisation had been Labour Party policy since 1952, but
the Labour government’s half-hearted approach meant that it was only in 1965
that Local Education Authorities (LEAs) were ‘requested’ to start planning for the
introduction of a comprehensive system (Green, 1991). However, no sooner had
a comprehensive system been introduced, than it became branded as the cause
of all the alleged problems within the education system, including falling stand-
ards and deteriorating discipline in schools (Tomlinson, 2005). The Black Papers
(Cox and Dyson, 1969) suggested that selection was essential because it was the
only way to ensure that pupils received the education most suited to their talents.
The evidence produced during the 1950s and 1960s revealing that working-
class children were not performing as well as middle-class children in terms of
gaining access to grammar schools and thereby university (Banks, 1955; Floud
et al., 1956) confirmed the views of many at the time that ability and intelli-
gence are inherited and that, on average, middle-class parents are more
intelligent than working-class parents (Saunders, 1996, 2010). There are still
sociologists, psychologists and educationalists who argue that levels of educa-
tional attainment and patterns of social mobility are the result primarily of
Differential educational attainment and intelligence 125

inherited intelligence in the population (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Jensen,
1969; Saunders, 1996, 2010, 2012; Shakeshaft et al., 2013).
The rise of a meritocracy?

According to Peter Saunders (1996, 2010), we live in an age of meritocracy almost
as envisaged by Young. The problem, Saunders suggests, is that British sociology
is, and has long been, a profession dominated by left-wing academics who are
obsessed with class divisions and are driven by what he calls the ‘SAD thesis’
(Saunders, 2010) – that is, the belief that people’s destinies are determined by the
levels of social advantage and disadvantage (SAD) that prevail in society rather
than by such things as innate ability or intelligence. In effect, he states that soci-
ologists tend to focus on social causes for differences in educational attainment
and levels of social mobility, and find it difficult to accept that natural phenomena
such as genes might play a part. Due to a reluctance to consider non-sociological
explanations, Saunders claims that most sociologists automatically leap to the
conclusion that it is the system that is to blame for the poorer educational
achievements and lower levels of occupational mobility of the working class.
Clearly, there is some validity in Saunders’s claim that sociology experienced a
shift to the left in thinking and writing during the 1960s and 1970s in response
to the perceived failure of the welfare state to make an impact on class inequalities
and the continuing class segregation of the education system (see Chapter 12).
However, his arguments relating to intelligence are highly contentious and con-
troversial. In his examination of a wide range of British evidence on educational
attainment and social mobility, Saunders (2010, 2012) claims confidently that it
is a myth to describe Britain as a closed society as is suggested by politicians such
as Nick Clegg (Her Majesty’s Government, 2011) and Alan Milburn (Her Majesty’s
Government, 2009), asserting that the evidence confirms what he had suspected:
the key elements influencing a person’s class position are intelligence and effort.
Yet most of Saunders’s assumptions are based on a somewhat partial analysis of
the data, often pointing to statistical anomalies if the evidence challenges his
beliefs, or taking a very uncritical approach to the reliability of theories of intelli-
gence and the evidence that supports it. In fact, despite the general lack of
consensus among psychologists and geneticists (Sternberg, 1977; Gardner, 1983;
Hart and Drummond, 2014; Rose et al., 1984) about what intelligence is and
whether it can be rendered in the form of a single and fixed aggregate, Saunders
feels confident enough to proclaim that ‘the logic is compelling’ (Saunders, 2010:
60), which, for anyone doing social scientific research, is about as certain as it is
possible to be. The key point to remember for any student of education is that
most social sciences, and that includes psychology, are speculative disciplines and
they should be treated as such. Hence the caution exercised by most sociologists

when dealing with issues of intelligence. For example, how reasonable is it to base
a theory of social mobility on the outcome of a few cognitive tests and thereby
downplay the influence of other factors, including socialisation, family context,
environmental influences, uncontrolled occurrences and countless numbers of
possible variables that have an impact on an individual’s life course? Most soci-
ologists are not prepared to commit themselves to such a position, especially as
much of the evidence upon which the heritability of intelligence is based is either
highly contested or flawed (Gould, 1981; Kamin, 1977; Rose et al., 1984).
Thinking point 6.1

James Fallon (2014) is an American neurophysiologist who specialises in the
genetics of mass murderers. He claims to be able to identify such individuals
from their brain scans. Moreover, these patterns, he claims, can be identified
from childhood using some simple tests because he believes that pathological
killers are born, not bred. The possible application for such a predictive tool is
not lost on Fallon who sees in it a means of identifying potential killers at an
early age and of preventing them from entering society and becoming a danger
to the rest of us – a simple and elegant solution to a potentially serious threat.
And yet, it transpires that by some strange coincidence, Fallon himself has
the brain patterns and presumably the genes of a ‘psychopath’. However, he
is clearly not a mass murderer; he is a highly respected neuroscientist with a
great deal of talent in his field of research, as well as being a loving husband
and father. If genes are so predictive, why is it that Fallon has not even got a
criminal record? Indeed, Fallon concedes that there are many with such genes
who never get into trouble and who live useful and crime-free lives. In effect,
individuals are not prisoners of their genes. This comes as an epiphany to Fallon
who realises the folly of basing his theory of psychopathy on genetic testing
alone. You might like to have a look at Fallon’s (2014) book The Psychopath
Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey Into the Dark Side of the Brain, in which
he discusses his findings and conclusions (see References).
1 How important do you think it is for us to know information about the

‘pathological’ characteristics of children as identified by Fallon?
2 How fair would it be to ‘label’ someone from the age of 5 as having

‘psychopathic traits’?
3 What might be the implications of Fallon’s findings for theories of intelligence?

Is inequality inevitable?
In his Margaret Thatcher Lecture in 2013, Boris Johnson (2013) suggests that
Britain needs to nurture all of its talent in order to succeed in an increasingly
‘impatient’ and competitive global economy. He warns against a politics of
envy in which the wealthy are targeted by those who resent their good for-
tune, pointing out that as a small minority blessed with God-given talents,
the wealthy should be hailed as heroes not only for the wealth they create,
but also for the fact that they pay a disproportionate amount of tax on which
we rely to keep our public services functioning. In his speech, Johnson con-
flates the wealthy with the highly intelligent; they are, in his mind, one and
the same thing, ignoring such factors as inherited wealth (Piketty, 2014) or,
indeed, wealth illegally or unfairly acquired. He suggests that economic
equality is undesirable because it discourages competition and because we are
born with unequal and fixed amounts of intelligence. He goes on to state that
only about 2 per cent of the population are born with an above-average
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) of over 130 and that about 16 per cent of the
population are unfortunate enough to be endowed with an IQ of only 85 or
below. The key message that Johnson conveys in his lecture is similar to that
propounded by Saunders: the wealthy are wealthy because they are more able
and intelligent than the rest of us, and that this ability is there at birth and
remains fixed throughout our lives. Just as Young hypothesised in 1958, in a
meritocracy we are able to separate children at an ever earlier age and allocate
them to forms of education most suited to their ability levels, thus making
for a more efficient society, and one that is led by those believed to be the
most able.
What is intelligence?
How have we reached a point of such certainty about the heritability of intel-
ligence on the part of some biologists, psychologists, politicians and sociologists
on one hand, and one of clear scepticism on the part of others? In 1904, the
French psychologist Alfred Binet developed the first intelligence test to identify
pupils who were struggling in their studies and in need of extra support. The
tests involved the use of a number of cognitive questions that a child might be
expected to understand by a certain age. The results enabled Binet to calculate
the difference between the child’s mental age and physical age, and this would
be used to identify any extra support the child might need. Binet had no inten-
tion of using his intelligence tests as anything other than as a diagnostic tool,

but he was concerned they might be used as a means of labelling some children
as congenitally – that is innately – ‘feeble-minded’, thereby ignoring their
potential to learn and to improve their intelligence (Kamin, 1977). In 1912,
Wilhelm Stern devised the IQ, which he defined as the ratio of a child’s mental
age, as measured by the intelligence test, and their chronological (actual) age.
So, if their mental age is 10 but their chronological age is 8, then the ratio of
this is 10/8 = 1.25 × 100 = an IQ of 125. With adults, the issue becomes more
complicated because after a certain chronological age, mental age becomes
meaningless when comparing adults of vastly differing ages. As a result, a devi-
ance IQ is used by comparing a person’s mental age with the mean level of
intelligence in the population.
IQ, eugenics and immigration

Had IQ testing been limited to diagnostic assessment and a means of devising
ways of helping children to improve their ‘intelligence’, then it might not have
been such a controversial issue. However, Binet’s worst fears were realised when
psychologists in the USA began to employ it as a tool of the eugenics movement.
In 1916, the American psychologist and eugenicist Lewis Terman created the
Stanford–Binet Test, which he hoped could be used to identify the ‘feeble-
minded’ with the aim of controlling their reproduction. This had the purpose of
helping to eliminate what was thought to be the source of the criminal classes
and thereby helping to preserve the genetic integrity of the American popula-
tion. The work of the American Eugenics Research Association had already
played a prominent role in the enactment of sterilisation laws in a number of
states from 1907 onwards.
The USA at the turn of the twentieth century was a young nation that was
growing rapidly as a result of its dynamic economy and the consequent
demand for labour. However, there was a growing fear among the dominant
white establishment that the influx of ‘inferior races’ threatened their pre-
eminent position. In 1916, Madison Grant wrote a survey of the ‘great races’,
which was written as a warning to America of the ‘melting-pot’ approach to
immigration (Grant, 1916). Placing the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic groups at the
top of the racial hierarchy, Grant claimed that unrestricted immigration to
the USA would bring an end to these superior races and result in the dying
out of the qualities and characteristics that once made Europe great, and
which could also make America great. For Grant, these characteristics are
genetically transmitted and therefore are seen to be in need of management
through eugenic policies.

Thinking point 6.2
Read this short extract from Madison Grant’s (1916: 48) The Passing of the Great
Race, or the Racial Basis of European History and discuss the points that are raised
at the end.
The ideal in eugenics toward which statesmanship should be directed is,
of course, improvement in quality rather than quantity . . . Where altruism,
philanthropy or sentimentalism intervene with the noblest purpose and forbid
nature to penalize the unfortunate victims of reckless breeding, the multiplica-
tion of inferior types is encouraged and fostered. Indiscriminate efforts to pre-
serve babies among the lower classes often result in serious injury to the race. At
the existing stage of civilization, the legalizing of birth control would probably
be of benefit by reducing the number of offspring in the undesirable classes.
1 What are the main assumptions behind eugenics?
2 Why do those who propose eugenic theories urge governments to carry

out eugenic policies?
3 Why does Grant criticise philanthropy?
Terman saw this as a clarion call to engage in the testing and control of immigra-
tion to America with the intention of restricting the entry of races that he
believed to have lower intelligence, especially those from south-eastern and
eastern Europe. In fact, it was partly a result of the activities of the American
Eugenics Research Association that the Johnson–Lodge Immigration Act of 1924
was passed, which imposed quotas on those ‘races’ designated as biologically
inferior. This was a time of great turmoil in Europe, during which Nazi persecu-
tion of Jews and other ‘undesirable’ groups led to huge numbers of refugees
seeking entry to the USA. The quotas imposed on southern and eastern Europeans
by the 1924 Act had clear consequences and, according to Kamin (1977), prob-
ably led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of European refugees directly or
indirectly at the hands of the Nazis.
IQ tests
Intelligence as a concept has become so much a part of our discourse in educa-
tion that we tend to accept it as an innate quality that can be measured

accurately through intelligence tests. Those with IQs of 150 are deemed to be of
exceptional mental ability and, according to Mensa, make up only 2 per cent of
the population (Mensa, 2014). Those with IQs of less than 100 are deemed to be
of below-average intelligence. In effect, IQ is usually viewed as synonymous with
intelligence, often referred to as g, which is the symbol for general intelligence,
with the former providing a quantitative measure of g. The question is: what
precisely is g? This is a real problem because it is believed by hereditarians such
as Jensen (1969), Herrnstein and Murray (1994) and Saunders (2010, 2012) that
g refers to the strength or power of an individual’s linguistic, mathematical and
spatial skills uncontaminated by any cultural or social factors. Moreover, they
suggest that such individual differences are overwhelmingly inherited, with the
environment playing only a very small role. Furthermore, and in a clear rejec-
tion of Binet’s claim that it is possible to improve one’s intelligence, hereditarians
emphasise the fixed nature of an individual’s abilities.
These individual differences are said to be reflected in group characteristics
because, according to Saunders (2010), those with similar levels of intelligence
tend to seek each other out and, because they tend to have jobs of similar sta-
tus, are more likely to meet and have children together. This, for Saunders,
explains the reason why children of middle-class professional parents have a
relatively better chance than children from working-class backgrounds of
becoming middle-class professionals themselves.
Do IQ tests measure pure ability?

Despite the seemingly objective and value-free nature of intelligence, it is a con-
cept that for some is socially constructed and is seen to measure qualities and
skills identified and valued by particular groups at a particular time (Dorling,
2011). Furthermore, IQ tests are criticised by psychologists such as Otto Klineberg
(1935b) for not being culture-free, but instead of being biased towards white
middle-class children to the disadvantage of working-class, Black and other eth-
nic children. This is clearly demonstrated by Klineberg in a study carried out in
1928 (Klineberg, 1928). The experiment involved administering intelligence tests
to a sample of white American children, Black American children and Indigenous
American children from the Yakima tribe of Washington State. The results
showed that under timed conditions the Black and Yakima children did less well
on average than the white children. However, when the time element was
removed and the children could do the tests at their own pace, the differences in
the scores were no longer evident. Klineberg concludes that intelligence tests are
more about measuring cultural differences between groups rather than pure abil-
ity. In his book Race Differences (1935b), Klineberg asserts that in every society
those with power tend to provide ways of justifying their superiority, and of the

intellectual and cultural inferiority of those at the bottom of the hierarchy. These
ideas, he suggests, are based on stereotypes rather than on any scientific explana-
tion. Klineberg’s evidence and his views at the time, however, were not very
popular with policy makers, who were more likely to be influenced by the ideas
of eugenicists such as Nathaniel Hirsch (1930) and Madison Grant (1916).
A further point to make is that the genetic trait of intelligence is not fixed and
unchanging within groups. Klineberg (1935a) produced evidence of an improve-
ment in the IQ scores of Black pupils who moved from the southern states, such
as Alabama and Mississippi, to the better resourced schools in the north of the
USA such as Delaware. His conclusion was that the differences in intelligence
were the result of social and economic differences, not fixed racial and genetic
ones (Klineberg, 1935a). More recently, the Flynn effect (Flynn, 1998) shows that
intelligence scores for populations all around the world are increasing, and this
has resulted in the regular revision of the standard deviation by 15 percentage
points. This means that intelligence tests need to be recalibrated to ensure that
the standard or average score remains at 100.
It is significant that as early as 1923, the American psychologist and pioneer
of IQ testing, Carl Brigham, found evidence that there was a relationship
between the measured intelligence of immigrants entering and the number of
years they had been resident in America. However, he chose to ignore these data
to pursue a line of argument, using statistical analysis, which satisfied his beliefs
that increased immigration to the country of non-Nordic or non-Anglo-Saxon
‘races’ had actually led to an overall deterioration of intelligence of those enter-
ing the country (Kamin, 1977). This is a clear example of the way in which
statistical manipulation can be used to make one’s case, which in this instance
was that of the innateness and fixed nature of intelligence. It is an approach
used to alarming levels by Cyril Burt, the psychologist who probably had the
most influence on twentieth-century English education policy.
How do we know that intelligence is

mainly hereditary?
It would be unreasonable to claim that we are all born with the same cognitive,
creative or analytic potential, but we do not know whether or not intelligence is
mainly inherited, nor do we know how individual ability and environment
interact to enable individuals to demonstrate their potential – cognitive, creative
or otherwise. Despite Saunders’s (2010: 57) claim that the evidence is ‘compel-
ling and incontrovertible’, the original research upon which it is based is highly
tainted and based on prejudice, and more recent research is not as conclusive as
he claims (Rose et al., 1984).

Many of our beliefs about the heritability of intelligence come from the
assumptions made by the American psychologist and eugenicist Nathaniel Hirsch
(1930). In his study, Twins, Hirsch sets out to quantify the precise contribution of
genes and environmental factors to an individual’s ‘intelligence’ and comes up
with the ratio of 80:20, the higher figure being attributed to innate biological
factors. In the same book Hirsch echoes the views of other eugenicists such as
Madison Grant and Lewis Terman by lamenting the decline of Western civilisa-
tion, and he suggests how the study of twins can provide the scientific knowledge
with which politicians can halt this decline. Hirsch’s claim triggered a number of
studies of twins in order to test his hypothesis. The principle behind such studies
is very simple and focuses on the degree to which monozygotic twins (MZ) – that
is, twins from the same egg and fertilised by the same sperm, and therefore shar-
ing identical genes, demonstrate the same levels of intelligence even when reared
apart. Should they demonstrate very similar or exactly the same measurable intel-
ligence after such separation, ideally from birth, then it can be taken as strong
evidence to support the hereditarian hypothesis of intelligence. If, on the other
hand, such separated twins do not show a high degree of similarity in terms of
intelligence, then it can be assumed that environment plays a strong part in intel-
ligence. In practice, however, it is much more difficult to test such a hypothesis
given the lack of proper control over environmental factors (James, 2016) and the
problems of obtaining samples of such twins.
How reliable and valid is the evidence?

We know from a review of the evidence (Gillie, 1976; Kamin, 1977; Rose et al.,
1984) that much of the early work on intelligence and IQ was flawed as a result
of the preconceptions held by many of the researchers. The work of Cyril Burt is
so flawed that it is difficult to understand why he was not challenged more
effectively at the time by other experts. Instead, the ideas of Burt were so
accepted as representing the truth that they constituted an ideology that per-
vaded all levels of society, creating the rules and the parameters by which the
issue of intelligence could be discussed and understood, and anyone attempting
to speak outside this accepted framework was dismissed as having no credibility.
The reputation of Burt during much of the early to mid-twentieth century was
so great and his ideas so influential that few psychologists or other experts dared
to challenge his evidence, such as it was, or his methods of measuring the intel-
ligence of MZ and dizygotic twins (twins born from separate eggs) reared both
together and apart, as well as his measurement of the heritability of intelligence
within populations. We now have a pretty good idea that Burt probably made up
much of the evidence to support his theory of the heritability of intelligence
(Kamin, 1977; Rose et al., 1984). This makes his alleged correlations in intelligence

test scores for MZ twins reared together (0.944) and for MZ twins reared apart
(0.771) highly suspicious, particularly as he claimed to have repeated these cor-
relations to three decimal points even when the sample size increased. This is a
result that is statistically highly unlikely to occur (Kamin, 1977).
Although Saunders (2010) accepts that Burt’s evidence is unreliable and rec-
ognises the problems associated with the creation of valid experimental
conditions that adequately test the heritability thesis, he suggests that subse-
quent twin studies are generally reliable. He believes that this evidence confirms
that we are all born with fixed levels of intelligence which we inherit from our
parents and that this intelligence remains stable over our lifetimes. However, the
evidence is not quite so clear-cut and is difficult to compare, as studies tend to
use different measures of intelligence, sampling methods and methodologies.
Thinking point 6.3

• What do you think intelligence is?
• From what you have read, do you think it is something that is fixed at birth?
• What might be the implications of discovering an ‘intelligence gene’?
You might like to examine some of the alternative views of intelligence, such as
Howard Gardner’s (1983) theory of multiple intelligences or Sternberg’s (1977;
Sternberg and Grigorenko, 2001) theory of cognitive styles, as well as those of
Hart and Drummond (2014) (see References).
Schools don’t matter

Robert Plomin (Shakeshaft et al., 2013) is an American neuroscientist working in
Britain who has been involved in one of the most recent controversies about
intelligence and genetics. Plomin professes surprise and frustration at the
response of the media, and indeed other academics such as Leon Kamin who
refuse to accept the evidence supporting the genetic basis of intelligence
(Wakefield, 2013), and believes that it is only a matter of time before we isolate
the set of genes responsible for g, that single and elusive piece of genetic material
which is believed by some to determine each individual’s future academic per-
formance. However, as we have witnessed from the work of James Fallon, it is
highly inadvisable to base a theory of human traits and future performance on
a single factor. In a review of the evidence produced by the Human Genome

Project (HGP), an international project launched in 1990 which has been
involved in mapping all human genes, analysing different DNA (genetic mate-
rial) sequences and looking for associations between them and the heritability
of human traits, Oliver James (2016) states that although some genes have been
identified as being associated with physical characteristics such as height or eye
colour, no DNA sequences have so far been associated with psychological traits
such as intelligence, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or schizophrenia.
James further points out that, despite the lack of evidence supporting such
claims, many scientific articles still tend to start with an assumption that there
is. He concludes by suggesting that this practice should end (James, 2016).
Nevertheless, Plomin has absolute faith that in the future genetic research will
provide the means to create a genetic profile, or what he calls a ‘learning chip’,
for every child, and thereby enable us to create the appropriate educational
environment to suit their talents (Wilby, 2014).
Equality of opportunity
Saunders (2010, 2012) rejects the claims that Britain lacks equality of opportu-
nity. Moreover, he rejects the assumption that g is spread evenly throughout the
population. Instead, he claims that children from more affluent backgrounds
have inherited their intelligence from their parents and are therefore likely to be
of above-average intelligence themselves. This, for Saunders, is the main reason
for the different levels of relative mobility upwards between middle-class and
working-class children. However, there is convincing longitudinal evidence to
show that children from more affluent backgrounds do better because of their
advantaged backgrounds. The work of Jefferis et al. (2002) shows how children
born in 1958, who experienced poverty in childhood, fell behind children from
more affluent backgrounds in school tests at age 7 and that the gap widens with
age. In a more recent study that compared the cognitive development of a sam-
ple of children from low socioeconomic backgrounds with children from high
socioeconomic backgrounds born in 1970, Feinstein (2003) administered a vari-
ety of age-appropriate tests to monitor and compare their progress at 22, 40, 60
and 120 months. He identified what can be described as a crossover in intelli-
gence scores between initially low-scoring middle-class children and high-scoring
working-class children. The latter group of children who had started with high
scores in their cognitive tests at 22 months were passed on their way down by
the initially lower-scoring, middle-class children on their way up. Feinstein sug-
gests that the family climate and early educational experiences of the middle-class
children have a positive effect on the more ‘average’ middle-class children,
whereas what is likely to be a poorer and less stimulating early childhood expe-
rience of the working-class children tends to hold them back (see Chapter 7).

A statistical artefact?
Saunders (2012) admits that the evidence produced by Feinstein appears at first
sight to be quite compelling, but then rejects the results as merely a statistical arte-
fact rather than the real effects of social and environmental differences. He claims
that cognitive tests of young children are notoriously unreliable, revealing extreme
results in which some children score much higher or much lower than they
‘should’ (Saunders, 2012: 21), which in later tests are evened out when genetic fac-
tors become more pronounced. The apparent crossover of bright working-class
children and ‘dull’ middle-class children is put down to a regression to the mean.
In other words, they are not accurate measures of their ability later on in life
because the effects of genes increase gradually and strengthen as the child gets
older. This he believes is a statistical artefact, which he claims is common in such
tests. Saunders’s use of the word ‘should’ is significant in that he seems to have
already decided what the children from the different socioeconomic backgrounds
should be achieving and his approach to the evidence suggests this.
Individual problem or public issue?

For the former Education Secretary Michael Gove, though, this is evidence of less
able rich children overtaking able poor children due to their socioeconomic
advantages (Paton, 2010); however, the solution, he believes, lies not in the
reduction of this gap between the rich and the poor, but in increasing the effec-
tiveness of schools through curriculum reform, increasing school discipline, the
imposition of ‘higher standards’ and the removal of schools from local authority
control through the free schools programme (Gove, 2010, 2012). Gove refuses to
accept that poverty and disadvantage should be used as reasons why poorer chil-
dren don’t do as well as children from more affluent backgrounds, although
much of the evidence shows that structural factors and growing inequalities play
a significant role in this process (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009, 2018).
There is an assumption by Gove and other politicians that parents and chil-
dren from poor backgrounds are fatalistic in their attitudes and display poverty
of aspiration (Gove, 2012), a view that has been perpetuated by sociologists
(Sugarman, 1970) and anthropologists (Lewis, 1961), who describe a world of
the poor characterised by fatalistic attitudes and an obsession with immediate
gratification. More recently, the work of Charles Murray (1996) has conjured up
images of a dissolute ‘underclass’, which has become so dependent on benefits
that there is no incentive for them to gain qualifications for a job.
What we have, then, is a continuation of the use of deficit models by politi-
cians who are determined to reject the evidence which shows that wider structural

and social factors affect educational achievement. It is a common strategy for
politicians to blame their predecessors, local authorities, a lack of discipline, fail-
ing schools, poor teaching and irresponsible parents for the failings of the system
(Smyth and Wrigley, 2013). Summing up the work of three studies by the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation, Carter-Wall and Whitfield (2012) claim they reveal no
shortage of aspiration among young people living in deprived areas. They suggest
that what at first sight might appear to be a sense of fatalism and a negative atti-
tude to education and school by parents and children, may actually be the
consequences of negative experiences, poor parent and school relations, as well
as limited knowledge of how to access systems of support.
Schools matter most

At the forefront of the debate about inequalities in educational attainment and
the assertion that social mobility has stagnated is the issue of school effective-
ness. In any common-sense approach, it seems logical to see schools as part of
‘the problem’ and to suggest that many of them are not teaching effectively, are
poorly led, that they lack discipline and do not push their children sufficiently.
They are, in the words of Nick Gibb, the former Schools Minister, ‘letting chil-
dren down’ (Department for Education, 2012). He points to the fact that only
33.9 per cent of pupils from deprived backgrounds achieve five A*–C grade
GCSEs, including English language and maths, compared to the national average
of 58.2 per cent in state-maintained schools. Gibb asks that if 21 state schools
with more than 10 pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds can ensure that 80
per cent of these pupils achieve five A*–C grades, including English language and
maths, then why can’t the 329 schools with 10 or more deprived children where
only 20 per cent achieve five A*–C grades at GCSE do the same?
You do not have to be a statistician to be aware of the problem with Gibb’s
question. The 21 schools, which make up only 0.6 per cent of a total of 3,268
state-funded mainstream secondary schools (January 2012) in England
(Department for Education, 2014), are clearly outliers which are likely to occur.
Moreover, what Gibb does not reveal is the location of these outliers, their size
or what proportions of these schools are made up of deprived pupils. Stating that
they had 10 or more tells us very little. According to Smyth and Wrigley (2013),
it transpires that half of these 21 schools are grammar schools that select the
brightest pupils in the area and a quarter of them are high-achieving compre-
hensive schools in affluent areas with very small numbers of deprived pupils.
In making such accusations on the basis of such weak data, the government
is placing high expectations on schools in terms of reducing levels of inequal-
ity in society, of increasing social mobility and of providing a highly skilled

workforce able to compete with the best in the world. The question is how
realistic is it to expect schools to compensate for the current effects of inequal-
ities in England (Mortimore and Whitty, 1997; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009,
2018)? In a summary of the hundreds of studies on school effectiveness, Bangs
et al. (2010) claim that the school effect, in terms of educational achievement,
accounts for only between 8 and 15 per cent of the total. Other factors, such
as family, income levels, social class, peer influences and neighbourhood,
together play a much bigger role.
In general, politicians do not want to hear about problems and obstacles to
their policies; they want solutions to problems they have identified and expect
quick solutions. This is possibly one reason why they do not have much time for
the views of sociologists who suggest that there are wider social and structural
barriers to children from less advantaged backgrounds. For politicians such as
Gove and Cameron, poverty is not something that has cumulative effects which,
when deeply embedded in communities, cause wider social problems in terms of
community breakdown. Poverty is instead treated as a state of mind rather than
something that affects people’s lives, and the actions and behaviour of the poor
are seen as ‘lifestyle choices’ (Jones, 2011). This is clearly evident in school
improvement policies, which are usually devoid of the social context of those on
the receiving end (Smyth and Wrigley, 2013). In some places, there are clearly
exceptional groups of individuals working together – headteachers, teachers,
pupils and parents – who sometimes succeed despite all the odds. The question
is whether it is reasonable or realistic for the government to expect all schools
in poorer areas to do so.
Going private
A further dimension to the debate about equality of opportunity is the advan-
tage conferred upon those who receive a private education. Even Gove comments
with astonishment that so ‘many of the positions of wealth, influence, celebrity
and power in our society are held by individuals who were privately educated’
(Gove, 2012). However, rather than accepting that the privilege of such pupils
will inevitably confer upon them an unfair advantage over the rest of the school
population, Gove instead berates state schools for not being more like private
schools, insisting ‘that a difficult start in life can be overcome, with hard work
and good teaching’ (Gove, 2012).
In his interviews with young people attending private and state schools,
Riddell (2010) examines their aspirations and ambitions. He suggests that these
are influenced by their social circumstances and the culture of school and family.
Interviews with pupils from less privileged backgrounds revealed a general lack
of support in their schools and the need to make great sacrifices by effectively

reinventing themselves in order to achieve their aspirations. Interviews with
pupils attending private schools reveal school and family working seamlessly
together to create a climate of expectation, if not entitlement, to a place at a
prestigious university and ultimately to a top profession. This is also evident in
Stephen Ball’s (2003) ethnographic study of pupils from a variety of state and
private school backgrounds. The research focuses on the ‘privilege’ of the middle
class and how this enables it to mobilise different kinds of capital to maintain
and improve its social position in relation to the working class. He carried out
interviews with 120 students and 35 families from both the state and the private
school sectors and uses Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986) notions of social capital and
cultural capital to illustrate how the middle class is able to access the sources of
influence and power in the education system. This provides them with greater
choice in terms of schools and higher education institutions.
Social capital relates to social (class) groups and their networks in the form of
exchange, social obligations and other connections that create a sense of belong-
ing to a class or a class fraction (section). It helps to act as a barrier excluding those,
such as the working class, who do not fit in, and as a means of creating class soli-
darity and cohesion. Cultural capital consists of the cultural values and objects of
the dominant class that are recognisable through language, interests and style,
and which indicate status. Such cultural capital is usually recognised as superior
or official in its status in comparison to popular culture in its various forms. This
is seen by Bourdieu (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977) as part of the symbolic violence
committed by the middle class against the working class (see Chapter 4).
Middle-class parents who buy into the private sector are able to develop net-
works and relationships beyond their relatives, friends and acquaintances,
thereby maximising their options in the education system. This process of bridg-
ing (Putnam, 2000) is essential for ‘getting ahead’. Private schools provide access
to such bridging opportunities through the links they have with the elite univer-
sities. Ball’s (2003) interviews with middle-class pupils, particularly those who
went to private schools, are replete with references to social networks and sup-
port systems beyond their immediate families, whereas those with working-class
pupils rarely include references to adults beyond their family. In terms of the
development of these networks, elite private schools enable their pupils to invest
in and develop their cultural capital, which is displayed at relevant points such
as at interviews and in accessing support.
Independent schools and grammar schools:

saviours of our education system?
In April 2017, Theresa May presented her vision for the future of English educa-
tion. This would involve measures to engage the services of the independent

school sector as well as grammar schools to address the issue of the ‘underper-
formance’ of English state schools (May, 2016). The ban on the setting up of new
grammar schools imposed by New Labour would be lifted, and selective schools
would be allowed to grow and encouraged to take more children from poorer
backgrounds. In effect, grammar schools and independent schools were pre-
sented by Theresa May as the potential saviours of the English education system.
In Wales and Scotland, where education is the responsibility of their respective
governments, the approach is different. In Scotland, for example, there has been
a clear attempt by the government in Edinburgh to distance itself from primarily
school-based policies to raise standards and improve social mobility. The govern-
ment there has instead adopted a ‘holistic’ approach to such issues by tackling
poverty and attempting to reduce levels of inequality through welfare and
employment policies. The Scottish Government (2018) states that this ‘will also
require the government to work collaboratively with employers, councils,
schools and universities. They all have a key role to play.’ This is more in line
with the overwhelming evidence nationally and globally supporting the claims
that to improve educational achievement for poorer children as well as nation-
ally, and to promote greater social mobility, it is first necessary to address the
structural inequalities that affect poorer children from birth (Wilkinson and
Pickett, 2009, 2018; Jerrim and Macmillan, 2015).
Mrs May was evidently unmoved by this, as well as the mounting evidence that
grammar schools in particular don’t contribute to social mobility (Pickett, 2016;
Taylor, 2016), that they tend to benefit the very affluent most (Burgess et al.,
2017), that they tend to damage social cohesion (Gorard, 2016; Gorard and
Siddiqui, 2018) and that selective schools such as grammar schools make no
appreciable difference to overall examination performance compared to non-
selective schools (Gorard and Siddiqui, 2018). In a study of over half a million
English pupils between 2014 and 2016, Gorard and Siddiqui (2018) found that,
after taking all relevant data into account, including prior attainment, socioeco-
nomic factors such as the occupation of parents, how long a child had been
eligible for free school meals, area of residence and school catchment area, gram-
mar schools are no better at improving their pupils’ grades than non-selective
comprehensives and academies. On this basis alone, Gorard and Siddiqui (2018)
suggest that there is no good reason to change the law and to expand the number
of grammar schools. What their findings do is confirm what is already known,
which is that the apparent success of grammar schools is due to the fact that their
pupils already have higher prior attainment at age 11 and come from predomi-
nantly advantaged backrounds (Smyth and Wrigley, 2013; Burgess et al., 2017),
rather than as the result of some special approach to teaching that non-selective
schools have somehow failed to use with their pupils. The international evidence
generally supports the findings in the UK. Gorard (2016) states that from his
analysis of a variety of education systems in advanced industrial societies using

PISA data, there would appear to be no evidence to show that selective systems are
linked to better overall educational performance. However, grammar schools are
very popular. A YouGov poll in 2016 revealed that: ‘Misgivings about social mobil-
ity clearly pale in comparison to the perception that grammar schools provide a
better education, as nearly two thirds of people (67%) would send their child to a
grammar school should they have passed an entrance exam, whilst just 10%
would not’ (Smith, 2016). Perceptions seem to trump the evidence, no matter how
strong the evidence. As Boronski (2016) points out, grammar schools can be seen
as a ‘very English solution to a very English problem’. They represent to such par-
ents ‘respect for tradition, academic rigour, discipline and access through merit’
(Boronski, 2016).
Regarding independent schools, the labour economist Francis Green asks, ‘Why
Britain’s private schools are such a social problem’? (Green, 2019a). The alleged
concern by politicians that there should be equality of educational opportunity
and a level playing field does not sit well in an education system that allows a
wealthy elite to pay for an exclusive education that leads to better life chances for
their children than those in state schools. The impact of the public school effect
could not be revealed more starkly than in a recent report for the Sutton Trust by
Rebecca Montacute (Montacute, 2018), which found that between 2015 and 2017
as few as eight schools in England, mostly private, had as many offers of places
(1,310) to Oxford and Cambridge Universities as 2,894 other schools and colleges
in England put together. Overall, applicants from independent schools are seven
times more likely to be offered a place at Oxford or Cambridge universities than
those from non-selective state schools. Such evidence and the potential conse-
quences for the rest of the population is enough to warrant what Green (2019b)
calls a ‘fully inclusive national conversation about the subject’. Green and Kynaston
(2019) contribute to this conversation by identifying two possible approaches that
would result in some radical solutions. One would involve imposing ‘handicaps’
on independent schools, and the other, which they call ‘crossing tracks’, would
involve the partial integration of private schools into the state sector.
Case study 6.1

Private schools in Britain
Independent or private schools are identified by Green (2019b) as a problem in
Britain that needs to be part of an inclusive conversation. That means that both
users and non-users of private education need to take part. This might be very
(Continued)

difficult for a variety of reasons. First, most of us have very little idea about how
the private education system works; it is an exclusive world that involves only
6 per cent of the school population and their parents, and very few of us are likely
to mix with such people. As a consequence, most of us do not appreciate the
benefits of a private education, especially to those who have attended schools
that are members of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC),
the organisation that represents the most prestigious independent schools in the
country, known as ‘public’ schools, and includes well-known names such as Eton,
Uppingham and Harrow School. Many people may think that spending anything
from £18,000 a year as a day pupil to £40,000 a year as a boarder (UK Boarding
Schools, 2018) is a waste of money (Green, 2014). However, in such a conversa-
tion it is necessary to look at the evidence, and this suggests that the educational
performance of independent schools, particularly the elite public schools, is gener-
ally high and the children who attend them have better-than-average life chances
in terms of employment prospects, earnings and social capital (social networks)
(Green, 2014; Savage, 2015; Parsons et al., 2017; Green and Kynaston, 2019).
From the perspective of the independent school user, there would be a lot to lose
from any radical reform of the system.
You might like to do some of your own research on the issue (see References below).
The articles by Francis Green (2014, 2019a) are a good starting point for a view that
recommends radical reform rather than the abolition of independent schools.
The article by Christopher Ray (2013) is scathing of what he calls the ‘dogmatic
left’s’ determination to destroy the independent school sector.
The question is, therefore, whether independent schools are part of ‘the problem’
and the privilege they continue to confer on the wealthy and powerful needs to
be greatly curtailed if not ended, or whether, as Theresa May believes, they should
be seen as part of the solution.
Chapter summary
This chapter has covered the wide-ranging debate relating to inequalities in edu-
cational attainment between children from affluent backgrounds compared to
those from less affluent backgrounds, as well as the related issues of meritocracy
and social mobility in Britain. It is a debate that encompasses theories of intel-
ligence, cultural differences and the effects of wider social and economic
inequalities. From the theories and the evidence presented, it could be suggested
that no single approach or explanation can on its own explain these inequalities
in educational attainment.

Sociologists are likely to be cautious about genetic and biological theories of
difference and their contribution to educational differences. They are particu-
larly mindful of hereditarian theories and their origins in eugenics, which has
been the intellectual and ideological basis of so many oppressive regimes such
as Nazi Germany, the Apartheid system in South Africa, and even the racial seg-
regation in the South of the United States until the late twentieth century. In
addition, the evidence upon which hereditarian theories are based is highly
contentious. In general, sociologists focus on socioeconomic and cultural factors
in attempting to explain inequalities in educational attainment. Politicians, on
the other hand, are more likely to point to the inadequacies and deficits of the
poor and the state school system rather than the advantages experienced by
privileged groups in society and the wider socioeconomic divisions in British
society. They prefer to focus on the personal troubles of the poor rather than
wider public issues as the causes of educational underachievement.
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7
Social Class
and Social Mobility
Chapter aims
In this chapter there will be an examination of the current debate about class
and social mobility in the UK. In particular, it will assess the claim by some poli-
ticians, academics and policy makers that social mobility in the UK has ground
to a halt. Reference will be made to a variety of literature and data, both
national and international, in order to gain an up-to-date and wide-ranging
understanding of the issues.
Key words: meritocracy, social class, social mobility, poverty propaganda.
The enduring relevance of class

When Theresa May became British Prime Minister in 2016, one of her first public
statements was to describe her vision of Britain as ‘the great meritocracy’ (May,
2016). This vision, contained in a speech to an audience at the British Academy,
was a stirring account of how she wanted to make Britain a fair and socially
mobile society where everyone, no matter what their class or origin, would be
able to reach their full potential in terms of educational attainment and, ulti-
mately, occupation on the basis of effort and merit alone. Although there is some
debate about the implications of a truly meritocratic society (Young, 1958; Savage
et al., 2015), the principle of meritocracy is one that few would gainsay, be they
from the right or the left of the political spectrum (Son Hing et al., 2011; Duru-
Bellat and Tenret, 2012). However, May’s rhetoric could almost have come from
the mouth of a Labour leader when she refers in her speech to a desire to create
a society where ‘working class people have more control over their lives and
the chance to share fairly in the prosperity of the nation’ (May, 2016: 2), and
of the need ‘to give ordinary, working class people the better deal they deserve’
(May, 2016: 3). Two further significant points May makes are the assertion that
she is in complete agreement with the working class desire ‘that everyone plays
by the same rules and things are fair.’ This is clearly essential if all those who
have ability are able to realise their full potential. However, she does concede
that this would involve ‘tackling some vested interests’ (May, 2016: 3).
These comments and policy commitments will be examined against the back-
ground of a British society that continues to be characterised by the high levels
of privilege conferred on an elite through growing levels of wealth (Piketty,
2014; Savage et al., 2015), continued access to exclusive institutions of private
education as well as disproportionate access to the most prestigious institutions
of higher education (Social Mobility Commission, 2016b; Montacute, 2018a).

This certainly poses the problem of reconciling the seemingly incompatible
beliefs in equality of educational opportunity with a commitment to the main-
tenance of an exclusive private education system to which only the privileged
few have access (Kynaston and Kynaston, 2015).
Theresa May’s speech appears to be a response to a growing clamour in the
media and among politicians brought about by a number of government reports
suggesting a lack of progress in terms of social mobility in Britain – i.e. in Wales,
Scotland and England (Cabinet Office, 2012; Social Mobility Commission,
2016a, 2016b, 2017). The government’s own independent advisory body on
social mobility, the Social Mobility Commission, has consistently shown that
even though its stated aim and duty since 2010 has been to ‘to assess progress
towards improving social mobility in the UK and to promote social mobility in
England’ (House of Commons, 2018: 4), Britain remains ‘a deeply divided
nation’ (Social Mobility Commission, 2017: iii). There is even the suggestion
that social mobility in Britain has declined (Social Mobility Commission, 2017),
and, despite its stated duty, ‘it did not seem that the Government had either the
ability or the willingness to put their collective shoulders to the wheel when it
came to delivering social mobility’ (House of Commons, 2018: 7). Nevertheless,
Theresa May claims that the government is committed to such a policy. She
believes that by ensuring that everyone ‘plays by the same rules’ and by engag-
ing with the independent education sector as part of the solution rather than
seeing it as part of the problem, standards can be raised for every pupil. This, she
seems to assert, is the only route to Britain becoming ‘the great meritocracy’.
Despite making some references to the problems and challenges of eco-
nomic disadvantage and the need to put the ‘government firmly on the side of
the poorest in our society’ (May, 2016: 4), the main emphasis of the Prime
Minister’s speech is devoted to identifying the shortcomings of English schools
and their underperformance (May, 2016: 5). Mrs May states that she is deter-
mined to tackle the problem of underperformance by raising school standards
through diversity of provision and increasing every school’s ability to meet the
needs of each pupil. This would be achieved by enlisting the support of centres
of excellence – top universities, businesses, the most successful independent
schools, faith schools and academies – to sponsor and collaborate with ‘poor
performing’ state schools and, in addition, to expand the selective education
sector – i.e. grammar schools. Herein lies Theresa May’s route to achieving the
great meritocracy in which the privileged few share their pedagogical and
organisational expertise, their facilities and leadership in raising the standards
of state schools. In doing so, the independent school sector would be able to
justify its existence and the generous tax position it holds. There would also be
increased selection at 11, 14 and 16 through the expansion of the grammar
school sector. However, very little, if anything, was said by the Prime Minister
regarding ‘playing by the rules’ or, indeed, by whose rules we would be playing.
Social class and social mobility 151

Wales and Scotland
The Social Mobility Commission, though responsible for assessing the progress
of social mobility in the UK, it is only responsible for promoting it in England.
Wales and Scotland have their own devolved powers and, until recently, the
Scottish government has focused mainly on poverty and deprivation. As a result,
there is a lack of reliable data relating to social mobility in Scotland. What the
Social Mobility Commission (2017) found, however, is that employment and
education outcomes vary geographically in Scotland, with more affluent areas
tending to do better than the poorer post-industrial areas. A recent study by Eiser
(2018) suggests that in Scotland there is less social mobility than in the UK as a
whole, but the difference is very small.
In Wales, once again, the lack of data affects the attempt at a comparison with
the rest of the UK. However, the Social Mobility Commission (2017) reports that,
at 23 per cent, Wales has a higher level of poverty than most of the rest of the
UK, apart from London and the West Midlands. This has a significant impact on
poorer children and young people in Wales. Of those children in Wales on free
school meals, there is a 30 per cent difference in terms of achievement at Key
Stage 4 compared to other pupils. Such differences in attainment are also evident
for disadvantaged children living in more affluent areas of Wales. This seriously
affects their opportunities later in terms of post-16 training and gaining qualifi-
cations for well-paid jobs.
Is it just about education?

So, although Theresa May’s speech refers to Britain, her approach to improving
social mobility relates primarily to England. It rests almost entirely on the
English education system and its ability to raise school standards for all.
However, it could be argued this falls short of a comprehensive approach when
we consider the wider context of any education system and the type of society
in which it is located (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009, 2018). In an analysis of the
relationship between social mobility and education, Volante and Jerrim (2018)
raise the justified scepticism about the potential of education alone to bring
about merit-based intergenerational social mobility, upwards or downwards. In
other words, the children of the middle class and elites move down the class
ladder due to their relatively lower levels of ability and achievement compared
to their parents (downward intergenerational social mobility), and working-class
children move up the class ladder due to their relatively higher levels of ability
and achievement compared to their parents (upward intergenerational social
mobility). Clearly, education does play an important role in this process and

this was indeed the finding of the major studies of social mobility in the mid-
twentieth century based on a comparison of sons with their fathers’ occupations
(Glass, 1954; Goldthorpe et al., 1987). Goldthorpe’s study of sons born during
the mid-twentieth century compared with Glass’s study of men born during the
early part of the twentieth century revealed that there was a good deal of inter-
generational social mobility upwards from the working class to the intermediate
and the service classes due partly to the introduction of free secondary and
higher education after the Second World War, but also as a result of the changes
in Britain’s occupational structure that saw a growth in welfare and service-
oriented sectors. There was essentially more room at the top of Britain’s newly
created welfare state that could not be filled by the existing middle class alone
(Goldthorpe et al., 1987). (For the system of occupational class classification
used by Goldthorpe et al., see Table 7.1 below.)
Table 7.1 The Goldthorpe Occupational Classification: Oxford Mobility Study
Class Occupations Class group
I Higher professional and administrative, large managers and proprietors Service class
II Lower professional and administrative, small managers and proprietors –
III Routine non-manual Intermediate class
IV Small employers, proprietors and self-employed –
V Lower technical and manual supervisory workers Working class
VI Skilled manual workers –
VII Semi and unskilled manual workers –
Source: Adapted from Goldthorpe (1980)
The Oxford Mobility Study, as it is sometimes referred to, also revealed that there
had been a higher rate of absolute mobility (mainly upward), compared to Glass’s
data of men born earlier in the century. Men born into working-class families in
the mid-twentieth century had an improved chance of moving up the class lad-
der. This seemed to support the claim that Britain was becoming a more open
society. However, although there was evidence of this greater fluidity in the
British occupational system, there was little change in the relative chance of a
working-class boy moving up the class ladder to the service class compared to
that of a boy of intermediate class origins moving up to the service class, or that
of a boy from the service class remaining there when he grew up. For every
working-class boy who made it to the service class, there were two from the
intermediate class and four from the service class (Kellner and Wilby, 1980). So,
despite the major changes and expansion of the education system after the
Second World War, the chance of a working-class boy rising to a professional or
managerial occupation compared to a boy from a more privileged background

had barely changed at all. This in itself is an indication of the inability of educa-
tion on its own to bring about ability- and merit-based social mobility during
the second half of the twentieth century.
Subsequent evidence produced by Goldthorpe and colleagues (Goldthorpe
et al., 1987; Bukodi et al., 2015), this time including women, suggests that this
pattern of social mobility revealed in the original study had continued through
the late twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, though for women
there appeared to be a steady rise, albeit from a lower level initially found among
men. What we have witnessed over the past seventy years, then, is social mobil-
ity certainly and, predominantly, absolute upward social mobility that seems to
have benefited all occupational social classes. However, not all have benefited
equally. In many respects, the increased level of opportunities available to the
working class were a consequence of necessity rather than design and not neces-
sarily because the system was becoming ‘fair’ or that everyone was beginning to
‘play by the rules’: there were just not enough children from more privileged
backgrounds to take up the huge growth in professional and other service occu-
pations in the newly created National Health Service established in 1948, the
expansion in the education system under the 1944 Education Act, as well as the
emergence of new professional groups of welfare and social workers. Moreover,
all of these services were supported by a growing class of administrators and
bureaucrats. It is hardly surprising that during this period, social mobility was
predominantly upward. What we do not have, however, is a meritocratic system
in which individuals from each social group have an equal chance of upward or
downward social mobility based on their ability and merit. It could be argued
that there does not seem to have been the level of upward social mobility from
the working class one might have expected given the expansion and growth in
access to education since 1945.
Has social mobility stalled?

There does seem to be a good deal of disagreement regarding the trends in social
mobility in Britain in recent years. Much of the disagreement rests with the sys-
tems of classification used. Some – mainly sociologists – use occupational groups
as the basis for classifying and measuring changes in the origins and destinations
of members of different groups. This is essentially a Weberian (1947) approach
based on the relative status of each occupational group that reflects their particu-
lar market position as measured by conditions of employment and employment
relations. It has been used by Goldthorpe and his team over the past few decades
who suggest that social mobility in Britain has remained constant and that
‘there has been no decline in mobility, whether considered in absolute or rela-
tive terms’ (Bukodi et al., 2015: 93). This seems to run contrary to the findings

of the government’s own independent Social Mobility Commission. So, despite
claims that social mobility in Britain has ground to a halt or even declined,
Goldthorpe (Bukodi et al., 2015: 94) and his colleagues argue that, using a socio-
logical approach, evidence that social mobility has declined is ‘slight and the
evidence going contrary to it far more substantial’.
If, however, we use different criteria for measuring social mobility, such as
income groups, a different picture is revealed. Indeed, Goldthorpe and his
team (Bukodi et al., 2015: 95) concede that it ‘is of course possible for intergen-
erational income mobility and intergenerational class mobility to show
different patterns and trends’. The main evidence cited is that by Blanden
et al. (2004), which is based on a comparison of cohorts (groups) born at dif-
ferent times. In this case, Blanden and her colleagues used the National Child
Development Study (NCDS) which follows all individuals born in one week in
1958 and the British Cohort Study (BCS) that follows all individuals born in
one week in 1970. In a comparison of these two groups when in their early
thirties, Blanden et al. (2004) found that there was an increased correlation
(relationship) between the self-reported earnings of the adults born in 1970
and their parents, compared with the self-reported earnings of the adults born
in 1958 compared to their parents. This suggests a decline in social mobility
between these two cohort periods. Nevertheless, a number of sociologists
(Gorard, 2008; Bukodi et al., 2015; Bukodi and Goldthorpe, 2018) claim that
this evidence is weak and its influence on politicians and policy makers has
been out of all proportion to its ‘scale and rigour’ (Gorard, 2008: 317). Indeed,
Gorard provides a very convincing critique of the methodology and data used
by Blanden et al. (2004) to the extent of showing that quite the reverse of their
conclusion could be reached, and that instead ‘Britain has a quite staggering
level of social mobility’ (Gorard, 2008: 323). In a summary of the evidence
Bukodi (2019) suggests that:
• Claims by the Social Mobility Commission that social mobility in Britain has declined
is unfounded, and that the evidence produced by economists using income data
suggesting that social mobility has declined is weak and unreliable.
• Rates of absolute social mobility, as measured by occupation, for both men and
women between generations have not changed significantly since 1945 in terms of
the percentage of individuals in different occupational classes compared to their par-
ents. However, what has changed is the fall in upward mobility and an increase in
downward mobility that is a result of a decline in the growth of managerial and pro-
fessional occupations compared to the immediate post-war period up to the 1980s,
known as the ‘golden age’.
• The rates of relative social mobility have also changed little during the same period
with children born into the managerial and professional classes having twenty times
greater chance of achieving the same position compared to that of children born into
the working class.

It seems that the data relating to social mobility in Britain is far from con-
clusive and is the subject of intense disagreement. This is hardly surprising
given the fact that different ways of measuring class and social mobility are
being used. Moreover, as conceded by many of these researchers themselves,
the reliability and validity of the available data has declined over recent
decades (Gorard, 2008; Bukodi et al., 2015). Savage et al. (2015) lament the
fact that the differences in approach to class and social mobility, in which
economists focus on income criteria and sociologists use occupation, is
unfortunate as these two approaches need not be seen as incompatible, sug-
gesting that a combination of income, occupational and other forms of
capital could be used to provide a multidimensional approach to class and
social mobility.
A multidimensional approach to class and

social mobility
The findings of sociologists such as Goldthorpe and his colleagues provide
important insights into the general patterns of occupational social mobility in
Britain since the Second World War, although we need to take into account
their own warnings regarding the soundness of their samples and data sources.
However, what they do not provide is a more detailed and fine-grained analy-
sis of social class mobility relating to the differences within occupational
categories, particularly those at the very top as well as those at the bottom of
the occupational class system (Savage et al., 2015). By aggregating data into
broad occupational groups, a great deal of important detail is hidden. This is
particularly evident if we look at the evidence relating to the very highest and
lowest levels of the occupational system in terms of a variety of criteria such
as pay, capital assets and other forms of capital such as social connections and
cultural assets, known respectively as social capital and cultural capital
(Bourdieu, 1986). Based on their evidence from the Great British Class Survey,
for instance, Savage et al. (2015) identify a relatively small elite, estimated to
make up approximately 6 per cent of the population, which is separated from
the other occupational groups by the huge advantages they have in terms of
their conditions of work, pay and bonuses, and other benefits. These have
been growing over the past few decades to the point where, according to a
2014 Labour Force Survey (cited in Savage et al., 2015), the top 10 per cent
earn almost 17 times more than the lowest 10 per cent. At the very extreme
end, at current levels (2018), top earners will have earned more within the first
week of the year than the average earner will have earned in the whole year
(Neate, 2018).

Thinking point 7.1
‘Fat Cat Thursday’: Independent study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel
and Development (CIPD) reveals top FTSE bosses earn average workers’ annual
salary within a week of the start of the year.
This article by Neate in The Guardian from January 2018 illustrates the kinds
of pay and conditions enjoyed by those at the very top of the earnings league
that tend to be concealed by studies based on large scale occupation measures
of class:
www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/04/fat-cat-thursday-top-bosses-
earn-workers-annual-salary-by-lunchtime.
• How does the mean average pay of the FTSE top 100 bosses compare with
that of the average worker in the UK?
• How much more per hour on average does a chief executive in the FTSE
100 earn than an apprentice on the minimum wage?
• How might these differentials be justified?
• Is it relevant or appropriate to focus on these extremes?
This ordinary elite, as Savage et al. (2015) refer to it, made up primarily of top
professionals including lawyers, city financiers and chief executive officers
(CEOs) is, from the evidence, pulling away not just from the lowest paid occupa-
tional groups, but also from those of notionally equivalent professions such as IT
professionals, engineers and scientists. What Savage et al. (2015) show is not only
the high levels of pay among the top professions, but also their high levels of
self-recruitment. These traditional ‘gentlemanly’ professions remain highly
exclusive and mainly attract those from the most privileged backgrounds – in
particular, those who have attended exclusive private schools. Savage et al. (2015)
show that although there is a good deal of movement into the middle sections of
the occupational structure, access to the elite is much more difficult for those
entering from the outside, and those that do manage to gain access tend to be
paid less, are less well-connected and are less involved in high-status cultural
activities. Savage et al. (2015) found that 51 per cent of those in the elite class had
parents who were from senior management or higher professional backgrounds.
At the bottom end of the class system Savage et al. (2015) identify a precariat,
so-called because of the precarious and insecure nature of their lives. Making up
approximately 15 per cent of the population, they tend to be low paid with

insecure jobs and are reliant on rented accommodation; they have few impor-
tant connections and low levels of engagement with high-status culture. In line
with research by other sociologists such as Bukodi et al. (2015; Bukodi, 2019),
Savage et al. (2015) find high levels of self-recruitment not only at the top but
also at the bottom. Among the precariat, 65 per cent remain where they were
born, and only 11 per cent of the elite is made up of those who have managed
to make it from the bottom to the top.
The use of the term ‘precariat’ to refer to those at the bottom of the social
class ladder is significant in that much of the debate about class and welfare is
often couched in moralistic and judgemental terms. Whereas the rich and high
earners tend to be perceived as virtuous, productive and hard-working (Bamfield
and Horton, 2009), those at ‘the bottom’, often referred to as the ‘underclass’,
tend to be stigmatised as less deserving and as welfare-dependent ‘scroungers’
(Jones, 2011; McKenzie, 2015). Savage et al. (2015) therefore, with good reason,
adopts Guy Standing’s (2011) term ‘precariat’ to avoid such derogatory names
that tend to reduce the credibility of the poorer members of society in any
debate about class, social mobility and welfare policy. There is a tendency to
moralise about the culture and lifestyles of the poor in ways that the very
wealthy and highly paid are less likely to be subjected to. Indeed, Standing’s
term is an apt portmanteau which identifies a new kind of proletariat, ‘a class-
in-the-making’ (Standing, 2011: Preface), coming to terms with an increasingly
global economy, and which shares similar low levels of pay, housing security and
poor employment rights with other workers around the world.
Wealth
If we bring wealth into the discussion, which includes inherited wealth, pen-
sions, property and other savings and assets, the growing divisions in Britain and
other similar societies is even more revealing, and the limitations of occupation-
based studies of social mobility become more evident. What the research of
Thomas Piketty (2014) suggests is the emergence over the past few decades of a
new super wealthy elite.
Savage et al. (2015), however, suggest that similar trends can be identified in
the emergence of the ordinary elite – those just below the super-rich. We saw
in the previous section on income evidence of the huge growth in earnings
among the top 6 per cent of the population, made up mainly of higher profes-
sionals, CEOs and top managers who, due to their relatively closed and
self-recruiting nature, have been able to accumulate considerable assets by
investing their income in property and housing for rent, as well as other low-
risk ventures that, according to Piketty (2014), have generally yielded returns
exceeding those of the rate of economic growth. This has ultimately led to a

growing gap between the rich and those with less or little economic capital.
Indeed, the tendency has been for the gap to become ever wider because the
more you have, the more you tend to acquire (Piketty, 2014). The question is,
does this matter? Certainly, Theresa May in her 2016 speech refers to the need
for the working class to have the ‘chance to share fairly in the prosperity of the
nation’ (May 2016: 2). However, as Saunders (1996, 2010, 2012) claims (see
Chapter 6), this situation merely suggests that we have achieved a state of
meritocracy where the most able tend to reach the top in a highly competitive
market economy and, because they are the most able, their children are also
likely to have inherited their parents’ abilities as well as their wealth, hence the
high levels of self-recruitment. From this perspective, therefore, Saunders
argues that it would be wrong to blame those who are successful for the poorer
educational achievement and lower levels of upward social mobility of the
working class. Moreover, followers of libertarian economists and philosophers
such as Hayek (1944), Friedman and Friedman (1980) and Nozik (1974) suggest
that it would be inappropriate for governments to interfere with the market
and restrict the fundamental right of individuals to keep all earnings lawfully
acquired and, moreover, it would be equally inappropriate to attempt to equal-
ise society through higher taxation of the rich (Taxpayers’ Alliance, 2010;
Butler, 2012). In their view, such policies would not only distort the market,
but also act as a disincentive to innovation and enterprise.
We have already examined the problems with Saunders’s arguments regarding
the heritability of talent and ability as the main explanation for the current levels
and patterns of social mobility in Britain in Chapter 6, particularly in terms of the
science of intelligence and ability. Instead, it could be argued that the current situ-
ation which is leading to growing concentrations of wealth within the elite and the
higher reaches of the class system, as well as the high levels of elite self-recruitment,
artificially skews social mobility in favour of those already at the top (Savage et
al., 2015). The long-term accumulation of wealth by this relatively closed elite
confers great advantage to them in terms of their ability to transfer this wealth to
their children (Hills et al., 2013). However, this is only part of the story because
long-term accumulation of economic capital over time also tends to lead to high
levels of other forms of capital – social and cultural – which, when combined, pro-
vide a significant advantage in terms of education, occupational mobility and the
continued accumulation of wealth.
Consequences of growing inequality

The scale of inequality and its consequences as experienced by people in Britain
dominates political agendas, and a significant body of literature (Dorling, 2017;
Cooper and Whyte, 2017; Hood and Waters, 2017; Hecht, 2017) explores the

relationship between poverty and stigma. From a political perspective, the
inequality agenda has been so relentlessly implemented that Britain is now
among the most unequal countries in the Western world. Furthermore, the
widening of the gap between the top 1 per cent income group and the bottom
50 per cent (Smith, 2018) across Europe, the Middle East, America and the
United Kingdom suggests that income inequality is a global social concern.
Additional evidence to support this alarming position is noted in Carter’s
(2018) enquiry into the impact of global trends on children. He suggests that
investment in early years education is a critical strategy in combatting child-
hood poverty and makes reference to The World Inequality Report (2018)
which indicates that tax progressivity and more equal access to education are
also key. Thus, a distressing picture of global inequality sets the backdrop to
the discussion on poverty propaganda, which is a growing phenomenon in the
Western world.
Poverty propaganda
The term ‘poverty propaganda’ (Shildrick, 2018) draws attention to the acutely
judgemental (mis)interpretation of those people who are economically disad-
vantaged and examines the demonisation and labelling of the poor by popular
culture and social media. It is located beyond stereotypical characterisation of
the poor as work-shy, lazy, unreliable, unemployable and unable to take personal
responsibility to a powerful and damaging ideology that fuels societal unrest and
contempt. Poverty in Britain is widespread, as indeed are its causes, ranging from
insecure employment, inadequate access to financial support for the most vul-
nerable at work, such as the disabled, and physical and mental ill-health. To
illustrate, since 2010 the Conservative-led policy of austerity has deepened
extremes of economic inequality, deprivation and exclusion suffered by people
who already experience limited life chances (O’Hara, 2017). A report in 2018 by
the Professor Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and
Human Rights, pointing to Britain’s great wealth as a global economic power
and once admired welfare state, goes so far as to describe the consequences of
the policy of austerity as ‘not just a disgrace, but a calamity and an economic
disaster all rolled into one’ (Alston, 2018: 1). Poverty propaganda is an ideologi-
cal position fuelled by political rhetoric, which in turn is strengthened by social
media, mainstream media and popular culture. Sometimes referred to as ‘poverty
porn’ (Patrick, 2017), which takes the experiences of the poor into the realm of
entertainment, it has evolved as a subgenre of reality television which places an
intense spotlight on the lives of people living in poverty, while at the same time
failing to acknowledge or address the structural social injustice that has contrib-
uted to their condition (Sage, 2018). This particular genre ‘others’ the participants

and drives home the perception that claimants are undeserving, and reinforces
notions of personal and social stigma associated with claiming benefits.
The prominence of Factual Welfare Television (FWT) (Dovey, 2000; Corner,
2002; Kilburn, 2003; Murray, 2009; Grindstaff, 2009) and its intersection with
political discourses on poverty that are explored in this chapter have further
fuelled poverty porn. Intentionally provocative, sensational and unethical, the
poverty propaganda genre has an unsure footing as the educational public service
mandate that FWT aims to deliver. A plethora of television programmes, includ-
ing Benefits Street (Channel 4, 2014–15), On Benefits and Proud (Channel 4, 2013),
Britain’s Benefit Tenants (Channel 4, 2015), Celebs on Benefits: Claim to Fame
(Channel 5, 2015) and The Great British Benefit Handout (Channel 5, 2016, 2017)
demonstrate the heightened focus on welfare ‘dependency’. The reality television
genre is of critical importance to a wider consideration of social class as it
becomes a vehicle for (re)production of social class stratification; representation
(Allen et al., 2014) and consumption (Oakley and O’Brian, 2016).
Case study 7.1

Grenfell Tower
Grenfell Tower has become violently embedded into contemporary British social
history as a tragic narrative of profit over the lives of vulnerable and marginalised
communities, extreme wealth living next door to poverty, and compelling stories
of hope, aspiration, creativity and social mobility (Rawlingson, 2017). The story of
Grenfell Tower is securely located in poverty propaganda by its association with other
council-owned high-rise tower blocks (McKenzie, 2015), referred to as ‘sink estates’
(Cameron, 2016), or potentially as the space where three generations of a family
have been out of work (Duncan Smith, 2007). Hanley’s (2012: 97) compelling his-
torical analysis of such spaces concludes, ‘there is one phrase in the English language
that has come to be larded with more negative meaning than “council estate” and
that is “tower block”’.
Starting in the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire that had been contained to
one flat quickly engulfed the entire tower, spreading rapidly. Following initial advice
from the fire service, residents housed above the fire remained in their homes. Many
residents made attempts to evacuate the building despite the obvious dangers; the
Metropolitan Police reported a death toll of 79 (confirmed, including an unborn
baby) and 70 injured. The trauma of the fire at Grenfell Tower is deeply rooted in the
collective consciousness following live images of an out-of-control inferno played out
(Continued)

alongside family, friends and community members receiving distressing phone calls
from residents who were only too aware of their tragic predicament (Di Donato and
Narayan, 2017). The catastrophic human tragedy of Grenfell Tower exposed many
multiple and complex issues that impact on a wider discussion on social class, and are
captured in the classic work of Frederick Engels based on his eyewitness accounts of
poverty in England in 1844:
What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all

great towns. Everywhere barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand,
and nameless misery on the other, everywhere social warfare, every man’s
house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protec-
tion of the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before
the consequences of our social state as they manifest themselves here undis-
guised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still hangs together.
(Engels, 1845: 88)
Investigations after the fire revealed that Grenfell Tower was indeed a death trap,
having failed at least two fire safety inspections in 2016/17, which resulted in a ‘fire
deficiency notice’ from the then London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority
(LFEPA), delivered eight months before the fire, and a separate independent Fire Risk
Assessment, dated June 2016, both identifying multiple failures. The notice from the
LFEPA found problems with fire doors: they did not fit correctly and they did not
close, and that in the case of fire, inadequate precautions were identified to stop
fire and smoke from spreading. Each warning called on the Kensington and Chelsea
Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO, now disbanded) to act immediately,
with a clear stipulation that action must be taken by May 2017, one month before
the fire. Furthermore, during refurbishments in 2016, Grenfell Tower was covered in
aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding and no sprinklers were fitted. More
thorough investigations uncovered that the ACM cladding was subject to insuffi-
ciently rigorous fire-testing and was, in fact, highly flammable; however, it was the
preferred option as it was cheaper. Tragically, Engels’s ‘plundering under the protec-
tion of the law’ chimes true, as it is the very lack of regulatory practices and policies
that allowed construction companies to operate in ways that offset the safety of life
against profit. In the wake of the fire, an enquiry into the construction and housing
industry calls for a culture change, and Theresa May has pledged £400 million to strip
similar cladding from other high-rise buildings.
The fire at Grenfell Tower played out as if it was a live drama, with an audience of
millions, mourning alongside the communities affected. Despite the tragedy of inno-
cent lives lost to corporate mismanagement and gross housing inequality, the most
powerful narrative is the one that rewrites the narrative of poverty propaganda and is

owned by the very residents who made Grenfell Tower their home. To illustrate with
one invaluable example among many is the story of Khadija Saye. Born in London,
Khadija Saye, also known as Ya-Haddy Sisi Saye, lived and worked on the twentieth
floor in Grenfell Tower with her Gambian mother, Mary Meidy. Khadija was educated
locally until the age of 16 when she won a full scholarship to the prestigious Rugby
School; she went on to take a BA in Photography at UCA Farnham, where she started
to make work on identity and her Gambian heritage. She began documenting Grenfell
Tower while still a student. Her final series, for her graduation in 2013, was entitled
‘Crowned’ and looked at Afro-Caribbean hairstyles. Her work attracted critical atten-
tion, in particular a piece entitled ‘Sothiou’ from a group of works by Khadija under the
title ‘Dwelling: In This Space We Breathe’, which was included in the Diaspora Pavilion
at the Venice Biennale and is currently on display at the Tate Britain.
It is important to acknowledge the numerous stories of multicultural, multi-ethnic,
vibrant and hard-working residents remembered for their everyday exchanges in the
complex pace of London life. It is equally important to reflect upon the fact that their
homes were overcrowded, unsuitable for their needs, regenerated at huge costs for
aesthetics and yet, despite this, remained in disrepair (Springfield, 2017; Ryan, 2017).
As Watt (2017) concludes, ‘they watched their neighbourhood crumble around them,
they were ignored and patronised by political elites, invisible and not counting, and not
even counted properly . . . disposable homes, disposable lives’.
Case study 7.2

The Romanians Are Coming
As an example of the global reach of poverty propaganda, this case study reflects on
research conducted by Andreescu (2018) in her critique of The Romanians Are Coming
(Bluemel, 2015), a Channel 4 documentary series which is charged with perpetuating
a negative image of Romanians in the British media. The programme is memorable,
she argues, due to the disproportionate time given to images of extreme poverty such
as piles of rubbish, close-ups of aged and vulnerable faces in isolated rural locations,
and a distorted interpretation of cultural practices (e.g. festivals and riding horses), all
of which combine to present a picture of exploitation in the guise of entertainment
(Butu, 2015; Haliliuc, 2015; Margaritescu, 2015; Pusca, 2015).
The series launches with the image of a man riding a horse on a wide-stretching
field of waste and rubbish. As a contrasting technique, the viewer is immediately taken
(Continued)

to the streets of London, where immigrants identified as Romanians are gathered in
packs, surrounded by large plastic bags. They are lying on the grass with apparently
nowhere else to go. A local British man who is interviewed remarks with disgust in
both his expression and tone that the immigrants ‘stink this place’. Another one
argues that they should be sent back, while a third, holding a sign that reads ‘Jesus’
reminds the immigrants that ‘thou shalt not steal’, and ‘surely you have jobs in your
land’ (Andreescu, 2018: 5). This exemplar demonstrates that poverty propaganda not
only has a global context, but incorporates overlapping discourses such as ‘race’ and
nationalism as shown in the reinforcement of stereotypical associations of Romanians
with gypsy culture, nothing to do (O’Neill, 2017) and filth. Critics have argued that
the programme is guilty of depicting not only destitute spaces, but destitute lives,
as illustrated by Zygmunt Bauman’s compelling analysis of the human consequence
of globalisation (2000: 58): ‘Indeed, these refugees, asylum seekers, migrants [ . . . ]
they are the waste of globalisation’, with reference to images of children playing next
to a dead dog and empty buildings, as depicted in this programme.
Capitals and social class

Social class and patterns of mobility are intimately bound up with economic,
cultural and social factors. As a consequence, the analysis of social mobility needs
to progress from a simple statistical analysis of occupational mobility patterns to
one that involves an examination of the distribution of the different forms of
capital, together with the effects of their uneven distribution on class formations
and the development of class interests. Savage (2005) refer to this as the capitals,
assets and resources (CARs) approach to the study of class, relating it to the ideas
of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu (1984, 1986) saw class differences as based on
degrees of privilege bound up in the combined levels of different types of capital
assets – economic, cultural and social – each class possesses. This approach to
class examines how such assets are used in strategic ways by a class to secure its
interests against those who lack them. It is distinct from traditional Marxist
approaches that are based on a division between manual and non-manual work-
ers, and the exploitative relations believed to exist between the owners and
non-owners of economic capital. It also differs from approaches that focus on the
status differences between occupations that lead to particular market situations
relating to pay and conditions of employment.
A key advantage of a cultural class analysis is that it enables us to see class,
educational attainment and social mobility in terms of the mechanisms and pro-
cesses employed by those able to successfully negotiate the complexities of a
highly competitive market capitalist system through the use of accumulated cul-
tural assets and practices (cultural capital) that act as symbolic markers separating

them from those who have lower amounts of such assets. The medium linking
such groups is a network of social connections (social capital) that bring members
together physically, virtually or otherwise, enabling them to assert, reinforce and
protect their collective interests. Such connections and the reciprocal obligations
that develop over time lead to the formation of classes with specific identities and
levels of capital. In the Great British Class Survey, Savage et al. (2015) conducted
research, in conjunction with the BBC, on over 160,000 respondents. The ques-
tions they were asked related, among other things, to leisure and cultural pursuits,
social networks and economic situation, including income, house values and sav-
ings. Using a method they call ‘latent class analysis’, whereby groups are identified
in terms of the three types of capital they hold in common, Savage et al. (2015)
developed a new classification system in which seven classes are ranked broadly
in terms of economic capital and how they are rated in terms of the other two
types of capital. (For the seven class classification system used by Savage et al. with
levels of income, house values as well as estimates for each class as a percentage of
population, see Table 7.2 below.)
Table 7.2 The seven social classes as grouped by latent class analysis (adapted from
Savage et al. (2015)
Name of class Household income/house value Percentage of population
Elite £89,000/£325,000 6 per cent

Established middle class £47,000/£176,000 25 per cent
Technical middle class £37,000/£163,000 6 per cent
New affluent workers £29,000/£129,000 15 per cent
Traditional working class £13,000/£127,000 14 per cent
Emerging service workers £21,000/£18,000 19 per cent
Precariat £8,000/£27,000 15 per cent
What Savage et al. (2015) discovered is a complex mix of capitals in the middle
of this class hierarchy, making it difficult to classify them effectively. However,
they found two clearly identifiable classes that stand out from the other five in
terms of their capitals, assets and resources. As a result, Savage and his team dis-
tinguished three main class groupings. First, as we have already seen, they refer
to a small elite making up 6 per cent of the total population that is much better
off than any other group, characterised by its high levels of economic capital,
with incomes double that of the next placed group, their high scores in relation
to ‘high-brow’ cultural capital as measured by cultural activities, such as going to
museums and classical concerts, and widespread social networks that incorporate
high-status people. Secondly, the five classes in the middle: the established mid-
dle class, the technical middle class, the new affluent workers, the traditional
working class and the emerging service class. This middle group is much more

nebulous in terms of a clear classification of working class and middle class, and
the types of capital they possess. Finally, there is a clearly identifiable group at the
bottom, the precariat, which, as we have already seen, makes up 15 per cent of
the population and scores very poorly in all three kinds of capital assets.
In terms of ethnic representation, Savage et al. (2015) found that minority
ethnic groups are relatively well represented in the emerging service class (21 per
cent) as well as the established middle class (13 per cent), indicating high levels
of participation in education and training after the age of 16 among ethnic
minorities (Bhattachariyya et al., 2003; Connor et al., 2004). However, at 4 per
cent, ‘ethnic minorities are relatively under-represented among the elite’ (Savage
et al., 2015: 173). This also seems to be reflected in elite university attendance,
particularly for Black students who make up 8 per cent of the UK student popu-
lation. In 2016, only 1.2 per cent of Oxford undergraduates were Black, and for
Cambridge the figure for the same year was 1.5 per cent (The Guardian, 2018).
The 24 universities that make up the prestigious Russell Group do better, with
an average of 4 per cent Black student population, but this is still less than the
percentage of Black students for all UK universities. As the Great British Class
Survey did not focus on ethnicity, Savage et al. (2015) have little to say regarding
this situation other than that, in terms of latent class analysis, minority ethnic
groups seem to have a good deal of cultural capital, but they do not seem to be
able to convert this into the levels of economic capital that white Britons have
achieved. A good deal of further research is necessary here.
‘Accessing advantage’
Among those at the very highest levels of the class system, codes of conduct and
behaviour are employed to access and confidently negotiate the rules and regula-
tions of the variety of educational, cultural and professional institutions they
encounter. Crucially, just as economic capital is passed from one generation to
the next, so too is cultural capital, whereby highly educated parents are able to
prepare their children for the demands of a higher education and a high-status
occupation. Attendance at an exclusive independent school is commonplace,
followed by university, which is usually viewed as an entitlement (Reay et al.,
2005). However, the expectation is not just that the children of the elite will go
to university – they will be expected to attend an elite university. Clearly, this is
not a certainty, but rather a probability that exceeds those from other social
classes. A recent report by the Sutton Trust (Montacute, 2018a) found that inde-
pendent school pupils are seven times more likely to go to Oxford University or
Cambridge University than those from non-selective state schools.
It is in these sorts of processes and interactions that the so-called ‘rules of the
game’, referred to by Theresa May in her speech in 2016, are played out, where those

who feel most confident and entitled tend to prevail. Significantly, the Sutton Trust
recognises this gap in the knowledge of these rules, not just among the pupils who
attend state schools but also their teachers, when it suggests ‘Many young people
are not getting the right advice’ (Montacute, 2018a: 4) when considering applying
to a top university. A further revealing point made in the report is the level of appli-
cations to Oxford University by pupils with very high grades (A*A*A) from state
schools, and particularly those from deprived backgrounds (those eligible for pupil
premium), compared to those from private school pupils. The figures are 25 per
cent, 14 per cent and 37 per cent respectively (Montacute, 2018a: 12). While the
Sutton Trust makes recommendations and suggestions that Oxford and other top
universities need to make more of an effort to encourage poorer students to apply,
it is not entirely surprising that this situation persists when we consider the poten-
tial shame and stigma that may be experienced by students from poorer backgrounds
who either don’t know ‘the rules’ or may feel that they do not ‘belong’ (Reay et al.,
2005). In many respects, it could be said that ‘elitism’ itself is a problem.
It seems that it is not just ability that counts; there is a necessity to convert
that ability into its optimal manifestations at every stage of the journey from
birth, through the education system and into the highest reaches of the occupa-
tional system. This is alluded to in the Sutton Trust report when it suggests that
the reasons for these disparities in access to the top universities ‘are complex,
and will in some cases begin even before a child starts at school. To close these
gaps, it’s important that in every part of education, from the early years, through
to primary and secondary school, all children are given the help and support
that they need to fulfil their potential’ (Montacute, 2018a: 40). However, the
report does not develop this further, focusing instead on what the universities
could do to ‘reach out’ to students from all backgrounds. A very effective and
detailed examination of the effects of deprivation on children’s cognitive and
developmental processes is provided by Wilkinson and Pickett (2018).
For any young person to achieve A*A*A is exceptional, but for a child from a
deprived background to do so is remarkable, especially when there is evidence
to suggest that bright children from poorer families are less likely than other
children to achieve the top grades at GCSE which would be essential to give
them the kinds of choices that would enable them to even consider applying to
a top university (Johnes, 2018). If we take a step further back to the performance
of able children from poorer backgrounds at primary school, there is a similar
story of such children not performing as well as able children from better-off
families by the end of their primary education. Montacute (2018b) found that
only 4 per cent of disadvantaged pupils achieved high Key Stage 2 scores (top
10 per cent) compared to 13 per cent of pupils from non-disadvantaged back-
grounds. The cumulative effect of such under-achievement by children from
poorer backgrounds at the various stages of their education is likely to be sig-
nificant and may help to account for their relatively low levels of social mobility.

Much of the recent evidence on educational attainment in Britain seems to
challenge the claim that it is primarily ability combined with effort in school
that determine children’s educational performance. The notion that schools
alone are able to bring out the full potential of poorer children and thereby pro-
mote social mobility is clearly inadequate. Indeed, in their recent research
comparing the performance of children in nine comparably affluent countries,
Johnes and his colleagues (Masci et al., 2018) used a statistical approach called
machine learning methods to assess the relative importance of a variety of factors
that affected the performance of the children from these countries in their
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests for 2015.
Case study 7.3

What is the Programme for International Student
Assessment?
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a triennial international
survey that aims to evaluate education systems worldwide by testing the skills and
knowledge of 15-year-old students. In 2015, over half a million students, representing
28 million 15-year-olds in 72 countries and economies, took the internationally agreed
two-hour test. Students were assessed in science, mathematics, reading, collaborative
problem-solving and financial literacy.
The OECD PISA global competence framework

Learning to participate in interconnected, complex and diverse societies is no longer
a luxury but a pressing necessity. Recognising the unique roles that schools play in
preparing our youth to participate in our world, PISA has developed a framework to
explain, foster and assess adolescents’ global competence. The framework is designed
as a tool for policy makers, leaders, and teachers interested in nurturing global com-
petence among young people worldwide (PISA, 2018a).
Test questions from the PISA 2018 Field Trial

These are examples of the test that the 15-year-olds took in the PISA 2018 Field Trial:
(PISA, 2018b; www.oecd.org/pisa/test/PISA-2018-Released-New-REA-Items.pdf).
• Access the OECD/PISA website and browse the different sections relating to the
purpose for such tests and the uses to which they are put. You can find examples
of the various surveys online at: www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2015database/

• Have a look at the test questions. Do you think they provide a fair and valid test
that can be used to compare 15-year-old pupils from around the world?
OECD/PISA system of social classification:
Socio-economic status in PISA is measured through the PISA index of economic,

social and cultural status (ESCS). This index combines students’ responses on
their parents’ occupations and educational attainment, and their reports on the
cultural possessions and educational resources available in the students’ home.
Advantaged students are those in the top quarter of the ESCS distribution within
their country; disadvantaged students are those in the bottom quarter. Poor-
performing students are those in the bottom quarter of a country’s performance
distribution. (PISA: In Focus 25, 2013: 4)
Machine learning uses computational models to convert large amounts of empir-

ical data into identifiable patterns and hierarchies of significance and acts as a
predictive model (Wittek, 2014; Tan, 2015). In this case, data from the OECD/PISA
database was analysed by Johnes and his team (Masci et al., 2018). The OECD has
a huge amount of data collected from different countries through surveys of
schools, teachers, parents and students that provide an economic and social pro-
file of each country (see Case study 7.3 for how to find examples of such surveys).
What Johnes and his fellow researchers (Masci et al., 2018) found is that, com-
pared to the other eight affluent countries (Australia, Canada, USA, Japan, France,
Spain, Italy and Germany), the performance of pupils in the UK was considerably
influenced by social factors. In terms of the variation between UK schools’ perfor-
mance in the tests, about 50 per cent of the variation could be attributed to the
levels of students’ disadvantage. This is a very significant point because when the
PISA performance data for the UK is analysed, Johnes and his team (Masci et al.,
2018) claim that what we are looking at is not primarily school-related factors
such as the staff student ratio, the size of the school and the number of computers
it has, nor the levels of school funding. These, it seems from the evidence, play a
very small part. What is more important is the level of pupil deprivation. In a
summary of their findings, Johnes (2018) states that in the UK, where almost half
of all schools have more than 20 per cent of their pupils from disadvantaged back-
grounds (for OECD definition of disadvantage see Case study 7.3 above), this can
be the deciding factor in how well a school performs: once it reaches that 20 per
cent level, its performance drops very sharply (Johnes, 2018). Johnes concludes
that whereas the effect of education policies relating to improving the perfor-
mance of poorer pupils tend to be, at best, minimal, policies designed to address
social and economic disadvantage have a far bigger effect.

The wider picture
From the preceding discussion, it seems that we need to be cautious in claiming
that social mobility in the UK has stalled, or is declining, as has been claimed by
some policy makers, politicians and academics. Indeed, a range of evidence
using a variety of measures of class (Gorard, 2008; Bukodi et al., 2015; Savage
et al., 2015) suggests that there is a good deal of social mobility, particularly in
the middle sections of the class structure. However, it appears to be generally
agreed that movement to the top professions and into the elite is low, particu-
larly by those from the lowest parts of the class structure. Those at the bottom
are much less able to realise their potential and those at the top are highly self-
recruiting due to their significant and increasing levels of economic, cultural and
social capital (Hills et al., 2013; Savage et al., 2015), the combined effects of
which provide them with greater opportunities in accessing advantage in the
fields of education and the occupational system. Furthermore, there is evidence
to suggest that it is not schools that are failing poorer pupils, but instead it is
children’s social and economic circumstances that play a significant role in
influencing educational outcomes (Masci et al., 2018).
This seems to be in line with the patterns of educational attainment and
social mobility experienced by other countries with comparable social and
economic profiles to the UK, such as the USA, in terms of wealth and income
inequalities (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009, 2018; Jerrim and Macmillan, 2015;
Volante and Jerrim, 2018). Evidence collected by Wilkinson and Pickett (2009,
2018) from the World Bank, the World Health Organization (WHO) and data
from the OECD on the 23 wealthiest countries in the world reveal that the
more unequal the society, the less likely are poorer children to achieve their
full potential. Developing the theme of their original study (Wilkinson and
Pickett, 2009) on the detrimental effects of high levels of inequality, Wilkinson
and Pickett (2018) present further evidence of how extremes of inequality in
affluent societies drag down whole societies, not just the poor. Once again,
using standards and data from internationally recognised organisations such as
the WHO, the OECD, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency
Fund (UNICEF), as well as official data from these affluent countries, they dem-
onstrate how the bigger the income differences, the more are educational
standards depressed at each level of the social hierarchy. So, although it is the
poorest that are most adversely affected, the wider effect is to diminish overall
national educational performance. Such unequal societies are the least socially
mobile, and sons’ eventual income (at age 30) tends to be linked more with
their fathers’ income than in other less unequal societies (Jerrim and
Macmillan, 2015; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2018). In other words, more unequal
societies tend to have lower levels of intergenerational income mobility than
less unequal societies.

The ‘American dream’
It seems somewhat ironic that, in the words of Richard Wilkinson (TED-Ed, 2013),
‘if Americans want to live the American dream, they should go to Denmark.’ This
is because in Denmark, one of the least unequal of the wealthy developed socie-
ties, there is a much lower association between fathers’ and sons’ incomes. This
phenomenon, in which those countries with higher levels of income inequality
tend also to have lower levels of intergenerational income mobility than less
unequal societies, can be represented in what has come to be known as The Great
Gatsby Curve (GGC) after the classic American novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald in which
the wealthy eponymous hero, or anti-hero, of the novel is revealed to be from very
humble origins. The GGC is therefore an indicator of the levels of opportunity to
be socially mobile in different societies.
Reading suggestion
You can find an explanation of The Great Gatsby Curve by Alan B. Krueger
(2012) with examples at the following source: https://pages.wustl.edu/files/
pages/imce/fazz/ad_10_1_krueger.pdf
In an attempt to develop the GGC further, Jerrim and Macmillan (2015) exam-
ined the influence of education in the process of intergenerational mobility.
They did this by using internationally comparable data from the Programme for
International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC) to see if there was a
relationship between children’s education, their parents’ education and the chil-
dren’s eventual income. Twenty-four of the countries that participated in PIAAC
were selected, for which data on educational attainment and earnings were col-
lected and analysed. What the researchers found is that in the more equal
societies such as Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Belgium, the link between the
education attainment of parents’ and children’s earnings appeared to be insig-
nificant when compared to the income of children in less equal societies. It was
the children’s own educational attainment that seemed to matter most.
However, in more unequal countries such as France, South Korea and the UK,
there appeared to be a much stronger link between parents’ education and their
children’s income. Even though the children had the same levels of educational
achievement, those with lower educated parents earned approximately 20 per
cent less than children with more highly educated parents.
What Jerrim and Macmillan (2015) found, therefore, is that there is a link
between parental education, children’s education and children’s income, and that
this varies internationally in terms of levels of inequality within these countries.

In general, children in more equal societies are able to rely on their own levels of
educational achievement when it comes to their levels of income. In less equal
societies, children’s income when they become adults seems to be more linked to
their parents’ income and level of education. Jerrim and Macmillan (2015) empha-
sise that the data they present show associations; they do not claim to show a
causal relationship. Clearly, further research is needed to show whether there is,
indeed, such a link.
Pupil resilience
A further indicator that demonstrates how highly unequal societies perform
worse than more equal societies in relation to the education of children from
poorer backgrounds can be seen from the level of academic resilience they dis-
play. This refers to the ability of children from poorer backgrounds (those
within the bottom 25 per cent of the socioeconomic classification system) to
achieve better educational performance than would be expected in terms of
the socioeconomic status of their parents. OECD (2012, 2015) data shows that
some countries do better than others at helping poorer children succeed at
school. The UK performs below the OECD average in terms of the resilience of
poorer children to their socioeconomic position. Only about a quarter of these
children manage to perform better than expected. The 2015 PISA results show
a continuation of this trend, with many wealthy but very unequal countries
such as the USA, Switzerland, France and the UK scoring below average. In
these countries, there were fewer than 30 per cent of pupils who could be
classed as academically resilient, while in less unequal wealthy societies such
as Finland, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, there were
30 per cent or more.
However, caution is recommended in relation to the use of the PISA data, as
we cannot always rely on the accurate reporting of national performance data to
PISA. A report by the Brookings Institute (Loveless, 2014) suggests that there is
evidence to show that the administration of PISA in Shanghai, China, which
came top on the PISA rankings in 2009 and 2012, was severely affected by the
hukou system which places restrictions on the rights of rural migrants and their
children to access Shanghai’s high schools and are therefore not able to take the
PISA tests. In the same report, it is pointed out that the USA does not include
Puerto Rico, one of its poorest territories, in its national sample (Loveless, 2014).
This is part of a wider problem related to the PISA system, which allows some
countries to choose where to conduct the tests (Sands, 2017). It has enabled
them to select samples from their most high-performing education authorities,
so when assessing such data we must be wary of accepting them at face value,

thus adding to the problem of gaining an accurate picture of what is happening
and making it more difficult to address the issue of educational inequality.
Chapter summary
We started the chapter with a discussion of Theresa May’s speech in 2016, in
which she makes an impassioned plea for all sectors of the English education
system to work together and play by the same rules in order to raise educational
standards so that all children, particularly those from the working class, can
achieve their full potential. However, much of the evidence seems to suggest
that placing all our hopes on teachers and schools to solve the problem of the
underachievement of working-class children and thereby improving social
mobility in the UK is not only unrealistic, but unfair on teachers and schools.
There is increasing evidence from the UK, as well as internationally, to show that
‘education is important but not enough to change inequities around the world’
(Volante and Jerrim, 2018). This is because education in any society does not
operate in an economic, political and social vacuum; it reflects the wider ine-
qualities of that society and therefore requires policies that are ‘focused on the
redistribution of financial resources, and on minimizing educational disparities
between rich and poor’ (Jerrim and Macmillan, 2015: Conclusion).
In the study Social Class in the 21st Century, Savage et al. (2015) reminds us of
the saying ‘that equality of opportunity can only be made real when it is associ-
ated with equality in general. The less equal societies are, the less easy it is for
there to be social mobility between its extremes’ (Savage et al., 2015: 215). As
Jerrim and Volante (2018) point out, many governments around the world are
concerned about levels of social mobility in their societies and this is not just for
social justice reasons, but also because they are becoming increasingly mindful
of the potential wastage of talent caused by a low levels of intergenerational
mobility. In countries such as Britain, high levels of social closure, especially at
the top, based on the ever-growing capital assets of an elite, not only make it
harder for able but poorer children to reach the top, but also depress the aspira-
tions of able young people who are made to feel that they ‘don’t belong’.
Moreover, it tends to reinforce in the elite a sense of entitlement and enables
them to invest their capital assets in their own children in ways that those who
are less connected and culturally advantaged are unable to do. Just as important,
however, is the evidence that shows how extremes of inequality do not only
adversely affect the poor, but they also drag down whole societies by depressing
overall educational attainment. It is not just the able poor who suffer, but so also
do children of all levels of ability and talent, which is something that any fair
or, indeed, rational society can ill-afford to ignore.

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8
Multiculturalism,
‘race’ and power
Chapter aims
This chapter will explore the historical development of multiculturalism in
education and will reflect on the contested notion of Britishness as a politi-
cal dimension of multiculturalism. In addition, this chapter will introduce an
international perspective in the exploration of multiculturalism in America and
biculturalism in Australia as contrasting examples. To conclude, this chapter will
consider Critical Race Theory (CRT) and will unpack discourses around white-
ness and white privilege that will draw on ideas of ‘race’, education and power.
You will notice that we have chosen to capitalise the term ‘Black’; we have done
so in order to acknowledge the powerful political dimensions of this term, in
particular in relation to CRT.
Key words: Britishness, segregation, Islamophobia, acculturation, domina-

tion, identity, hybridity, white privilege, power structures, intersectionality,
convergence.
Multiculturalism in Britain
In order to consider the impact of multiculturalism on education, it is impor-
tant to briefly consider the historical and political context of this discussion.
The transformation of Britain into the current multicultural society it is and the
associated challenges of racism and discrimination that this transformation has
encountered have taken place over many centuries; however, from a political
perspective, a focus on mass migration of Asian and Black people in the latter
part of the twentieth century paints a different picture. This period of modern
history is often referred to as the era of immigration, suggesting a heightened
peak of activity; however, migration and the pathologising of external groups is
by no means a new phenomenon to this island. Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes
and Normans have established roots in historic Britain, with Jews and
Huguenots arriving later, and a new wave of Celts in the Irish. Modern history
includes migrants from the British Empire and Commonwealth, including
whites from Australia, Canada and South Africa, and Blacks and Asians from
Africa, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong. Historically,
discrimination against the perceived or created ‘other’ has a troubled history in
the British Isles, as illustrated by the ongoing tensions between England and
Ireland embedded in a long-standing tradition of colonialism that presented
the Irish as a primitive, uneducated, unclean nationality, originating from the
observations of medieval commentators in the twelfth century and stretching

through the massacre of the Irish in Ulster in the sixteenth century. Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland also share a contested relationship with
immigrants in the course of the nineteenth century, including Litvak Jews in
Dublin and later Chinese Commonwealth citizens able to travel without the
need for a work permit, and more recently Roma and Polish communities
(Fanning and Michael, 2018).
A turning point towards a framework of ‘Blackness’ in relation to ‘others’ in
Britain was the 1948 Empire Windrush era, the start of the Black immigration in
the 1950s and 1960s, and the consequent race riots of 1958. A powerful irony is
noted by academics and commentators reflecting on this period in that the
immigrants travelling to the UK were invited Commonwealth citizens who
arrived to help the ‘mother country’ after the end of the Second World War
(Arens, 2018). Instead, they were met with acute experiences of racism and dis-
crimination, prompting the government to respond with so-called equalities
legislation such as the first Race Relations Act (1965, under Labour), which out-
lawed racism in public places, and made it unlawful to refuse access to anyone
on racial grounds to public places such as accommodation and social spaces. The
subsequent impact of mass Black and Asian immigration on housing, education,
the health service and how British society is perceived is the context within
which this discussion of multiculturalism in education is framed.
Contested notion of Britishness

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks addressed the question of what it takes to make a society
a ‘home we build together’ rather than a ‘hotel’, in his consideration of the
contested notion of Britishness and in particular the idea of shared values
(Sacks, 2007). He argues that neither individualist liberalism (with its focus on
rights), nor multiculturalism (with its focus on identity) can offer anything
beyond a ‘hotel’. Both lead to a position that rests on an agreement only on
minimal and fragile rules of co-existence and excludes any substantive notion
of shared human values. In capturing a sense of shared values, as a multicultural
nation, we are able to celebrate our Britishness as supported by politician and
community leaders such as Munira Mirza, cultural adviser to Boris Johnson and
advocate of tolerance as a core British value. Sacks’s proposal is a revival of the
idea of a social covenant in which the hyperdiverse citizens of multicultural
Britain are able to retain their particular identities, but yet commit themselves
wholeheartedly to the common project of society-building founded on shared
(British) values.
Academics such as Tariq Ramadan also support this emerging grand narra-
tive illustrating that faith communities are tasked with being proactive in
finding the common ground that unites us. Ramadan (2015) is now taking up
Multiculturalism, ‘race’ and power 181

the challenge of delving deeply into his own tradition to ask himself what
Islam has to contribute to the moral sustenance of a Western democracy like
the UK, and coming up with hopeful answers to contribute to a cohesive and
unified sense of Britishness. These are bold and proactive, positive steps
dependent on wider ideological support and ultimately need to be translated
into pragmatic notions that can shape a postmodern conceptualisation of what
it is to be British today.
This chapter started by framing the discussion in a historical context in order
to clarify and demonstrate how we have arrived at the current state of play. This
historical perspective and its impact are acutely relevant to an exploration of
Britishness. This is a contested idea perhaps because traditional and historically
framed notions of what constitutes Britishness are both exclusive and outdated,
though still highly influential. This is typified by the word picture painted in
1993 in a speech by Conservative Prime Minister John Major who stated that
‘fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county
grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and –
as George Orwell said – “old maids cycling to holy communion through the
morning mist”’ (Kumar, 2003). Further evidence of the enduring nature of his-
torical views of what it means to be British is captured in Norman Tebbit’s
infamous ‘cricket test’, and convincingly in a series of lectures given to Cambridge
undergraduates in 1882 by Sir John Seeley at the height of his enthusiasm for
empire and in a carefully manipulated strategy to shape Victorian values: ‘We
seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence
of mind. While we were doing it . . . we did not allow it to affect our imagination
or in any degree to change our ways of thinking’ (Seeley, [1883] 1971: 15). Finally,
there is the undeniable influence of Enoch Powell on the contemporary UK inde-
pendence Party (UKIP) policy as illustrated in the classic notion that ‘the West
Indian or Indian does not, by being born in England, become [ever?] an
Englishman’ (Paul, 1997: 178).
A more current reflection of how blurred the lines are in defining Britishness
would be to take account of the impact of glocal (local and global) factors such
as the impact of globalisation on how we live, work and enjoy leisure time.
Britain’s entry into the European Union, an impetus for more rigid definitions
for what it means to be Scottish (illustrated by the Commonwealth Games,
2012, and the ‘yes’ campaign for the Referendum, 2014) or Welsh. As Parekh
reports, we cannot unpack Britishness without encountering ‘race’:
Britishness, as much as Englishness, has systematic, largely unspoken, racial con-

notations. Whiteness nowhere features as an explicit condition of being British, but
it is widely understood that Englishness, and therefore by extension Britishness, is
racially coded. ‘There ain’t no black in the Union Jack’, it has been said. Race is
deeply entwined with political culture and with the idea of nation. (The Runnymede
Trust, 2000: 38)

Perhaps it is a movement of popular consciousness; this nation is made up of
hybrid identities and founded on intellectual and political discourses that
should now reinvent our national identity, reflecting who we are now and what
we share as unifying values.
Multiculturalism in America
Multiculturalism has had a complex and complicated past in American history,
the legacy of which, some would argue, continues into the present and the
future. Wilbur Zelinsky the American cultural geographer defended the position
that America had always been ‘a stratified caste-ridden society, practicing a
rather primitive form of multiculturalism . . . now due to quantitative growth,
increasing complexities, the activism of minority populations and the globalisa-
tion of cultural and social processes, multiculturalism has come out of the closet,
so to speak’ (Zelinsky, 2001: 192). Cultural theorists have presented the argu-
ment that as a philosophical ideal, multiculturalism began as part of the
pragmatism movement at the end of the nineteenth century in the USA, then as
political and cultural pluralism at the turn of the twentieth. This timeline is
reflected in postmodern manifestations of multiculturalism in the USA, where
dissatisfaction with the traditional ideology of the ‘melting pot’ (diverse cultures
assimilating into a single cultural identity) placed a spotlight on the acute and
jarring inequalities embedded constitutionally. In order to contextualise the cur-
rent political position, it is important to reflect on this ‘complex’ history of
multiculturalism in the USA, as, it can be argued, the past is increasingly relevant
to the present and the future.
America’s role in the transatlantic slave trade during the Colonial era in the
late seventeenth century secured national prosperity; however, it is also the bed-
rock of African-American discontent. This dehumanisation of Black people for
economic gain has left a lasting legacy on the American psyche, a history that is
revisited with frequency, as illustrated in the Hollywood box office hit Twelve
Years a Slave (2013), the film adaptation of Solomon Northup’s book, one of the
longest and most detailed slave narratives. The enslavement of Black people
throughout American history is a common thread, as noted in the American
Revolutionary War (1775–83), where Americans won their freedom from British
rule and the new nation of the United States of America was created. However,
this much sought-after freedom was not extended to the Black slaves, as the
notion of white supremacy and Black inferiority reinforced by popular culture
and religious rhetoric demonstrate.
During the American Civil War (1861–65) Black slaves occupied the lowest of
Zelinsky’s (2001) caste group. Though slavery was outlawed in 1865, new forms
of racial discrimination and injustice were constituted by the ‘Black Codes’ and

later ‘Reconstruction’ as laws restricting the rights of Blacks, which denied freed
slaves the right to vote, and to leave a job and move elsewhere.
The perpetuation of racial segregation was the preoccupation of Southern
states, which passed laws on racial segregation (separation of Black people from
whites) known as Jim Crow laws in 1877. The term ‘Jim Crow’ was noted in 1828
as a song performed by an actor with a ‘blackened’ face and characterised as
poor, infirm and uneducated. This potent racial stereotype later became associ-
ated with laws on segregation and then later still as a slur directed at Black
people, alongside the infamous caricature ‘mammy’ of the rotund African
American woman content in her state of slavery (Reyes, 2018). By 1915, all
Southern states had implemented some form of Jim Crow laws, effectively sow-
ing the seeds for the white supremacist group, the Ku Klux Klan. In 1919, the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) pub-
lished a record of this period in American history entitled Thirty Years of Lynching
in the United States: 1889–1918, documenting sexual abuse, hanging, lynching
and incidents of Black people being burned alive as examples of the extremes of
hostility and violence directed towards Black people in the USA (NAACP, 1969).
Protests against Jim Crow laws gathered momentum, leading to the Civil Rights
Movement led by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, a Montgomery Baptist minister.
The 1950s and 1960s were a period of acute and sustained unrest in American
social and political history with widespread state-sponsored violence and escala-
tion of hostilities, leading to the emergence of Black Power groups, such as the
Black Panthers, and finally culminating in the passage of the landmark Civil Rights
Act in July 1964. The enduring legacy of Jim Crow laws ensures that Black people
are over-represented in the penal system and in inner city ghettos, and many fail
to reach the lowest rung of the social mobility ladder, a result of poor educational
and life chances (Epperly et al., 2019). Landmark cases such as the video recording
of the assault on Rodney King in 1991 by four law enforcement officers (Stacey
Koon, Laurence Powell, Timothy Wind and Theodore Briseno), leading to the 1992
Los Angeles riots, illustrate the fact that racial fault-lines are both fragile and trig-
gered intermittently with terrifying consequences in modern-day America.
Multiculturalism in America maintains the dominance of an ‘American
Culture’ (white, Anglo, Christian), which embodies the motto of acculturation
e pluribus anum (one out of many). Captured within this ideology is the inferior-
ity of subcultures that may offer a counter-narrative, based on globalisation, as
exemplified by President Barack Obama, who spoke of his new conceptualisa-
tion of multiculturalism as a national strength (Obama, 2009). In this new era,
multiculturalism and biculturalism extend beyond an individual’s sense of self-
identity and also refer to nationhood (Nguyen and Benet-Martínez, 2010),
valuing diversity and acknowledging the distinct contribution immigrant cul-
tures make, thereby facilitating psychological well-being and self-worth among
America’s diverse citizens.

Thinking point 8.1
Chuka Umunna, the former Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Social
Integration, prior to his resignation as a Labour MP in February 2019, wrote in
his foreward to the final inquiry into the integration of immigrants (2017: 4):
Too often the integration of immigrants is depicted as a means of shutting

down multiculturalism and replacing it with the politics of assimilation or,
worse still, pandering to the politics of hate. This is a fundamental misun-
derstanding. A strategic and proactive integration agenda is the best way
of protecting our diverse, multicultural communities from the peddlers
of hatred and division. Our report argues that the government should
develop a comprehensive approach to promoting the greater economic,
civic, and cultural integration of immigrants; as well as finding ways to
cultivate meaningful social contact between communities.
The report consists of a series of recommendations that aim to deliver on social

integration in post-Brexit Britain, including the directives that ‘Ministers should
develop a new strategy for the promotion of English language learning reflecting
the guiding principle that no one should be able to live in our country for a con-
siderable length of time without speaking English and rather than being seen as
security risks or “the other”, immigrants should be viewed as Britons-in-waiting’.
Reflect on the directives noted above. What are the advantages and chal-
lenges of implementing the first directive links to speaking English? In practical
terms, how can ‘Britons-in-waiting’ be integrated into British society?
Biculturalism in Australia
An exploration of biculturalism from the Australian context offers an opportunity
to introduce an international perspective in the process of developing the discourse
on multiculturalism as a global phenomenon. A bicultural identity, as opposed to
a monocultural identity (Lawrence et al., 2012) is a person’s sense of self in relation
to more than one culture, in an environment where multiple cultures co-exist.
Australia is an interesting case study to explore, as the increase in population
mobilisation has made a significant impact on mainstream and adult educational
provision predominantly caused by the rising numbers of immigrant and refugee
communities. Researchers have noted the dual educational and cultural chal-
lenges these communities face incorporating educational challenges when
entering a system that operates on a sound understanding of the English language

and Western learning styles, and that focuses on the sense of self, personal iden-
tity and maintaining a heritage culture. The process of negotiating a place within
both cultures allows newcomers to adapt to their new surroundings, while main-
taining their previous cultural values and resources as part of their acculturation
process (Schwartz et al., 2010).
Studies with learners in adult education settings have concluded that students
who were more biculturally committed appeared to experience some advantages
in tackling specific challenges. These studies argue that the ways in which newly
arrived immigrants develop their bicultural identities can have implications for
how they address educational challenges, and the subtle negotiations of how
they find a place for themselves within the new culture and their heritage cul-
ture. A strong bicultural identity is therefore understood as the means by which
an individual can achieve a strong identity in their heritage culture, which in
turn can help to develop greater intercultural awareness.
This latter aspect of biculturalism is particularly proactive in managing discrim-
ination, and contributes to a heightened psychological sense of well-being (Syed,
2010). Psychologists have applied Erikson’s (1968) concept of ego-identity to assess
how cultural identities are sustained, concluding that biculturalism is a complex
process and cannot be simplified to excluding one or other cultural identity from
one’s consciousness. This discussion focuses on the experiences of young adults;
however, an interesting dimension of biculturalism is the process of identity con-
struction in schools, an area of increasing research (Hird, 1996) with bicultural
communities and, in particular, with bicultural boys in the school setting.
A creative example is noted in the work of Anita Jetnikoff and her research
conducted with bicultural boys in a mainstream setting with a specific focus on
literacy. In her application of personal narratives as a research tool, Jetnikoff
(1997) allows the bicultural male pupils to disclose how their experiences of
biculturalism are played out in the classroom. This method captures the aim of
making space for marginalised voices that may otherwise remain unreported
(Singh, 1995). In other words, the bicultural boys and their lived experiences are
made visible, present and relevant in the research project in the sharing of their
personal narratives, in contrast to the mainstream classroom structures that
render them silent. Jetnikoff draws attention to dominant discourses on anti-
intellectualism, masculinity and exclusion as key themes in the narratives
shared in her research, concluding that:
At school, bicultural boys have to constantly construct and reconstruct themselves

in order to fit in. They must be ‘one of the boys’ on the football field, and sociable
and ‘not too smart’ in class. Some bicultural boys, therefore, have to become trick-
sters, slaving at home to make up for what they pretend not to do at school. Even
though they work hard at school, they do not do so loudly. They try to keep their
intelligence inconspicuous, so that peers do not construct them as ‘skids’, and to
maintain a sense of fitting into school life. (Jetnikoff, 1997: 36)

Navin, a 14-year-old Pakistani participant, explained that in order to fit in at
school it was important that he did not appear engaged in his studies, despite
the hours of supervised homework that took place privately under the watchful
gaze of both parents and older siblings, illustrating how the entire family
invested in Navin’s education. Navin also allowed academic competitors, in the
form of fellow classmates, to beat him in tests, in order to facilitate this all-
important process of belonging. What seemed a priority to Navin in the school
setting appeared at odds with his home life, resulting in a binary existence. At
school, the priority was to ‘joke around’, ‘fit in’ and ‘be Australian’. At home, a
strong faith (Muslim), cultural (Pakistani) identity and close-knit family dynamic
influenced Navin to ‘be himself’. This distinction between school and home had
to be carefully managed, and is the process of construction and reconstruction
Jetnikoff speaks of in the extract above. It was important that Navin did not feel
different at school, or was not exposed to scenarios that shone a spotlight on his
differences, as he explains:
Like, sometimes in history or something the teacher might ask me to get up and
talk about Islam, and that makes you feel really different. Then of course you feel
different, but when you’re doing maths, or playing football, you’re just one of the
crowd I suppose. When you’re openly telling everyone else that you’re different, of
course you feel different.
To conclude this discussion on biculturalism, Navin demonstrates how the

notion of an inclusive curriculum (while addressing the range of religious herit-
ages in the school community) also serves to define Navin as ‘other’, thereby
heightening his experience of exclusion at that moment. His careful negotia-
tions of a strong bicultural heritage must be managed within the context of
school structures and may perhaps be impeded by the best intentions of the
teachers delivering an inclusive curriculum.
Critical Race Theory (CRT)

CRT finds its origins in an American intellectual movement in the late 1970s and
early 1980s and is born out of legal theory. It was formulated in an era during
which some academics and political thinkers, worried by what they perceived as
a loss of momentum in the sustained campaign for racial equality, began to
question whether the constitutional and legal system itself had the capacity for
change. They felt that the Civil Rights movement, which had set out to achieve
so much, had in effect been halted in its tracks. This awareness was made acute
when, as legal professionals, they were confronted by what the Constitution and
other policy statements promised and what they actually delivered: the perpetu-
ation of an acutely unequal society (Bell, 1992). This movement was embedded

in a Marxist conceptualisation where the ordinary (Black) citizen suffered multi-
ple layers of exclusion caused by a Constitution that was incapable of allowing
for the redistributionist change necessary to create a more equal world. In other
words, it existed to sustain an inequality. To create a more equal world, the
Constitution and the legal system would have to be challenged and dismantled
from within. The Marxist criticism of the system was called critical theory; the
legal criticism of the system was known as Critical Legal Studies (CLS) and the
most radical aspect was the racial criticism of the system, which is known as
Critical Race Theory (CRT) and is the focus of this discussion. CRT is therefore a
radical intellectual movement committed to challenging power structures and
racial inequality in society (Ladson-Billings, 1998).
Despite the original foundation in legal scholarship where it provides a critical
analysis of race and racism from a legal standpoint, CRT has evolved into a flex-
ible, interdisciplinary framework that can be applied to a myriad of disciplines,
including sociology, history, literature, culture and science (Bell, 2009). In addi-
tion, spin-off minority groups have formulated their own principles to champion
their own change-making movements, including Latino-critical (LatCrit), which
addresses issues of immigration and integration, and Asian American (made of
Indian scholarship) who focus on indigenous people’s rights. Both these splinter
groups illustrate the diversity of potential under the CRT banner.
Reading suggestion
The forefathers of CRT are Derrick Bell and Alan Freeman, who are credited with
starting the movement. Key scholars of influence within the movement include
Richard Delgado, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Cheryl Harris, Gloria Ladson-Billings,
Patricia Williams, Tara Yosso and William Tate. CRT is also of significance in
British academia and includes the work of John Preston, Nicola Rollock, David
Gillborn, Mike Cole and Ann Phoenix. The following references support wider
reading on CRT:
Cole, M. (2017) New Developments in Critical Race Theory and Education: Revisiting
Racialized Capitalism and Socialism in Austerity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
In his book, Cole explores the impact of ‘BritCrit’, the British version of CRT
in the context of austerity and through the lens of Marxism, and argues for a
revised understanding of socialism for the twenty-first century. Cole considers
the notion of counter-story, which resonates with the voices of Black thinkers
that have been silenced. Additionally, the book unpacks the prevailing rise and
impact of the ‘race traitor’ assigned identity.

Warmington, P. (2014) Black British Intellectuals: Multiculturalism’s Hidden
History. London: Routledge.
This book presents the counter-narrative that Delgado speaks of in this chapter
by exploring histories of race, education and social justice through the work of
Black British public intellectuals: academics and campaigners. The book pro-
vides a critical history of diverse currents in Black British intellectual produc-
tion, from the eighteenth century, through post-war migration and into the
‘post-multicultural’ present, focusing on the sometimes hidden impacts of Black
thinkers on education and social justice. The book defends the position that
Black British thinkers have helped fundamentally to shape educational policy,
practice and philosophy, particularly in the post-war period. Additionally, it
argues that education has been one of the key spaces in which the mass con-
sciousness of being Black and British has emerged, and a key site in which Black
British intellectual positions have been defined and differentiated.
Due to its origins in a legal movement, the ways in which CRT is applied as a
theoretical framework in understanding ‘race’ and racism is complex and orien-
tated towards policy reconstruction. However, at the heart of the movement are
some very basic principles: first, CRT explains that racism is endemic in the
fabric and system of American society. Second, CRT recognises that power struc-
tures in society are based on white privilege and white supremacy. Third, CRT
defends the position of convergence, where white elites will support the
advancement of Blacks only if this also supports white self-interest. Fourth, CRT
challenges legal ‘truths’ of a colour-blind, liberal and meritocratic system of gov-
ernance in America replacing it with rule by a white minority of extreme wealth
and power. Finally, CRT recognises the role of intersectionality, the complex
ways in which inequality and subordination can combine to exclude minority
groups in a sociocultural, economic and political context.
The forefathers of CRT, Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman and Richard Delgado, posi-
tioned these principles at the heart of their initial campaigns to motivate
support for CRT, often using personal narratives, the foundational experience of
slavery and the enduring impact on the African American as a starting point. As
Simmons (2012) clarified, ‘Derrick Bell and other CRT scholars have challenged
us to do more than talk about it – but be about it’ (2012: 3). This rallying call is
epitomised in Simmons’s own account of how encountering CRT guided his
work as a doctoral candidate in education, powerfully recounting how the reali-
sation of his Blackness during the era of the ‘Obama effect’ (Emdin and Lee,
2012) was reminiscent of the rise in consciousness as expressed through Negro
spirituals such as ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ when African slaves passed on

words of hope, faith and resistance from plantation to plantation via musical
narrative. Simmons shares his frustration and anxiety as an African-American
teacher in an urban setting, as a role model and an activist undermined by a
dominant narrative sold by Hollywood in films such as Dangerous Minds, Half
Nelson, Freedom Writers and The Ron Clark Story, which projected a notion that
privileged the stories of white teachers who appeared to be over-represented in
urban schools, rescuing the receptive and grateful African-American and Latino
students who (inevitably) were involved in life stories of extreme dysfunction,
abuse, crime and neglect. This is an example of convergence (Taylor et al., 2016)
and also intersectionality (Crenshaw, 2019) and illustrates the many layers of
complexity associated with CRT. None the less, the challenge presented by CRT
is to give voice to the marginalised (Simmons accomplishes this as a researcher)
and to be active at grassroots level, which Simmons achieves by dismantling the
dominant narratives of convergence and re-presenting the critical significance of
the Black male teacher in urban settings as a catalyst for self-recognition and as
a change maker. As Richard Delgado clarifies:
Critical Race Theory’s challenge to racial oppression and the status quo sometimes
takes the form of storytelling in which writers analyse the myths, presuppositions
and received wisdoms that make up the common culture about race and that
invariably renders Black and other minorities one-down. Starting from the premise
that a culture constructs its own social reality in ways that promote its own self
interest, these scholars set out to construct a different reality. Our social world with
its rules, practices, and assignments of prestige and power, is not fixed, rather we
construct it with words, stories and silence. But we need not acquiesce in arrange-
ments that are unfair and one sided. By writing and speaking against them, we may
contribute to a better, fairer world. (Delgado, 2000: xvii)
In a British context, David Gillborn has applied CRT to the education system in
the course of his research over many years. He argues that a traditional concep-
tualisation of racism in education would suggest that it is, in fact, an exceptional
occurrence, notable due to high-profile media cases such as the 1986 murder of
Ahmed Ullah (Macdonald et al., 1989) in the playground of Burnage School or
the 1993 murder of Stephen Lawrence driven by race hatred. It is important to
momentarily reflect on the timeline of Stephen’s murder, not only as a water-
shed exemplar of institutional racism, but also as an indicator of how CRT
emerges in the course of this particular case study.
The murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 by a group of
white youths as he waited for a bus in Eltham, south-east London, has domi-
nated the political and social psyche for decades for many differing reasons. The
original police inquiry generated no arrests and instead Stephen’s parents,
Doreen and Neville, and his brother Stuart were viewed as troublemakers rather
than grieving parents and family members. Their first-hand experience of the
Metropolitan Police and media hype in the aftermath of the murder led to the

conclusion that Stephen’s death was not a pressing matter because of his colour.
After years of campaigning, the Lawrences’ demands for a public inquiry were
finally met by Home Secretary Jack Straw as part of the New Labour administra-
tion in 1997.
Gillborn likens the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and the reporting of subsequent
campaigns regarding private legal action by the Lawrence family as the closest
British parallel yet to the kinds of national furore over high-profile cases of insti-
tutional racism in America, such as the beating of Rodney King in 1992 and the
shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, thus making the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
a watershed moment in British cultural and political history. The Inquiry Report
concluded that institutional racism was confirmed as a factor in the key agencies
of society, including the police, education and the health service, leading to a
position where the New Labour government, the Conservative opposition and,
in particular, the Metropolitan Police were forced to accept the inquiry’s findings
of institutional racism. As Ambalavaner Sivanandan, Director of the Institute for
Race Relations observed, ‘the unrelenting struggle of the Lawrences has put insti-
tutional racism back on the agenda . . . they changed the whole discourse on race
relations and made the government and the media and the people of this country
acknowledge that there is a deep, ingrained, systematic racism in the institutions
and structures of this society’ (Sivanandan, 2000: 7).
It was not until 2012, some 20 years after Stephen’s murder, that Gary Dobson
and David Norris were found guilty of his murder and sentenced to minimum
terms of 15 years and 2 months, and 14 years and 3 months, respectively. To
bring this timeline up to date, in May 2014, an independent inquiry (Ellison
Report) into corruption and the role of undercover policing revealed that the
Metropolitan Police tried to smear the Lawrence family in the aftermath of
Stephen’s murder. In response to this confirmation, Doreen Lawrence, now
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, stated, ‘I’m not shocked. It’s something I sus-
pected all along’ (BBC News, 2014).
A more critical conceptualisation of racism in education would support the
position that racism is endemic throughout the education system (Cole, 2017)
and enacted through ‘colour-blind’ policy and rhetoric, and sustained by actions
that are assumed to apply fairly to all. To illustrate: the discourses on the under-
achievement of Black students that pathologise young Black students (in
particular, male students), view the Black family structure as disrupted and there-
fore unsupportive of both the learner and the education system. This draws
attention to the heightened need to discipline Black students more severely and
disproportionately, placing them in lower ranked teaching groups, often as a
response to issues of disaffection and behaviour rather than academic ability
(Taylor et al., 2016).
Research conducted by Chadderton (2013) applying CRT in the British edu-
cational context gives weight and authority to the work of Leonardo (2009) and

Lynn and Parker (2006) from the American context, and identifies many paral-
lels, including the prevalence of institutional racism and evidence of
intersectionality. Therefore, research suggests that the basic principles of CRT,
as explained earlier in this chapter, are also applicable in the British educational
context. This evidence is presented in a discussion on ‘masculinities’ in Chapter 9,
where recommendations for teacher education are considered in the light of
evidence on the educational experiences of African-Caribbean boys. Finally,
Chadderton argues that there is no new critique of schools as spaces reproducing
wider social inequalities, and she draws attention to the increasingly consumer-
orientated language of the marketplace linked to schools in Britain, the increase
in competition-orientated measures of school success and the impact of intersec-
tionality on pupil attainment overall.
To further develop the focus on intersectionality, this chapter will now move
on to a consideration of whiteness and white privilege as an increasingly pressing
sociological aspect of identity construction.
Whiteness and white privilege

As this chapter explores the importance of ‘race’ in the context of identity and
the impact on multiculturalism, it is important also to reflect on the develop-
ment of whiteness as deconstruction of ‘race’ and white privilege. Bhopal (2018)
suggests that in discussions about issues of race, be they in the law, literature,
sport, music, fashion or religion – in fact, in all aspects of society – it is evident
that whiteness is privileged, raceless and normalised, and therefore cannot be
understood in the same way as Blackness.
To expand on this point applying Edward Said’s orientalist position, the Black
is the ‘other’ that will always occupy the peripheral, while the white is the
dominant, the majority, the powerhouse and, as a consequence, commands the
centre. The concept of normalisation is derived from the notion that white peo-
ple are not subject to racialization; they are neither perceived nor do they
self-identify in the context of their ‘race’. In comparison, it is very common and
indeed a feature of institutional racism to refer to ‘black crime’. Similarly, in
professional football one would not hear about ‘the white footballer Steven
Gerrard’; however, it is an integral part of the commentary and possibly football-
ing culture that one would be made aware of the Ivorian (or African) Yaya Toure.
This simple everyday example is ‘the fact of Blackness’ of which Fanon (1992)
writes – an ideological position that is rooted securely in CRT; from a historical
sociological position, whiteness has been taken to signify a ‘raceless’, normalised
identity belonging to the majority. Consequently, whiteness as a means of
understanding how society functions signals the production and reproduction
of dominance rather than subordination and the presence of privilege.

Whiteness theory treats whiteness not as a biological category, but as a social
construction. CRT theorists would argue that whiteness is best thought of as a
form of property, both legal and cultural, and symbolic, and can therefore be
defined as an ideology that provides material and symbolic privilege to whites.
This material privilege can take the form of access to better schools and estab-
lished institutions, such as the Inner Temple where a student may qualify as a
barrister, or to an elitist, Oxbridge or ‘red brick’ university and senior positions
in key institutions, such as top-ranking positions in the army and navy. From
the examples cited here, it is clear to see that whiteness engages in power struc-
tures that are both discrete and hidden, a form of embedded dominance that
allows people to use their white status, which is allegedly normative, to exploit
other non-whites.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s work on class inequalities and cul-
tural capital is of relevance in understanding how whiteness operates; however,
it is his influential work on ‘habitus’ that can be applied directly to this discus-
sion. The concept of ‘habitus’ is at the heart of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework,
and reflects many shades in terms of application and complexity. It has been
effectively applied in the British educational context by academics such as
Strand (2014a, b) and is important in establishing links between ‘race’, class and
educational attainment. The word ‘habitus’ is commonplace in the classical
Greek reflections of Aristotle, who applied it to mean those acquired virtues that
were the prerequisites for a virtuous life.
In contemporary American psychology, habitus is taken to mean being con-
scious of one’s upbringing, which shapes the person one becomes; it also
combines primary and secondary socialisation with situations and events that
are of notable influence while growing up. Despite his focus on Algerian and
French society, Bourdieu’s approach is insightful in analysing power in terms of
social change, and his work is considered in the context both of the debate on
class inequalities and educational attainment in advanced capitalist societies.
Bourdieu defends the position that the theory of cultural reproduction is con-
cerned with the link between original class membership and ultimate class
membership, and explains how this link is mediated by the education system.
Accordingly, the education systems of advanced and industrialised societies
operate in such a way as to reinforce class inequalities so that achievement in
the education system is facilitated by the possession of cultural capital and of
higher class habitus. Pupils occupying a different original class position – by this,
Bourdieu means a lower class – do not possess these traits, so the failure of the
majority of these pupils is an inevitable consequence that explains class inequal-
ities in educational attainment. Providing this background context is of
relevance in understanding ‘white habitus’ as it facilitates the conceptualisation
of theory in the bigger picture – that ability to stand back and see how theory
can become apparent in practical contexts.

To demonstrate how ‘white habitus’ operates in an everyday context, the
social segregation of housing often results in white people living in areas with a
white majority. As a consequence, if whites mainly interact with only each
other, then this can result in the sharing of similar cultural and racial experi-
ences. This can influence the formulation of shared attitudes, thereby reinforcing
their habitus and developing ‘white habitus’. For the CRT advocate, this allows
for further white supremacy ideologies to prevail because in a setting where
shared values and attitudes about non-whites dominate, white privilege becomes
invisible (Snellings, 2015). In other words, whiteness becomes transparent, neu-
tral, the norm, while other non-white races or ethnic groups are ‘othered’,
thereby subjecting them to prejudice and potent negative assumptions.
Atkinson (2010) offers a powerful self-reflection on her personal narrative of
encountering and understanding white habitus and white privilege in her
encounters during her college years. In the extract captured below, she recounts
experiences of travelling with the basketball team and how this provided con-
crete evidence of both ‘white habitus’ and white privilege:
I remember visiting different schools in our district. The schools east and south of
mine were predominantly black or Hispanic and the schools north and west were
mainly white. More memorable were the trips into inner-city Austin, where our coach
would tell us to keep all of our valuables with us and to take a buddy when going to
the restroom. These statements were only made when we travelled in certain areas.
They were obviously based on assumptions about the people at certain schools
because of the location and type of school it was. At the time, I do not recall thinking
it was out of the ordinary that we would need to be careful in these ‘types’ of areas.
I did not see these reactions as having anything to do with race because race was not
discussed; the idea was just there, and it just made sense. (Atkinson, 2010: 5)
White privilege is the historical, conscious and unconscious privileging of white

people over Black people and can be understood in a comparison to Eurocentrism,
which is a more commonly placed ideology in relation to ‘race’ and multicultur-
alism. Eurocentrism refers to standards and values that are embedded in the
notion that European-based culture and experience are superior to other (non-
European) cultural values and experience. The Eurocentric standpoint is a
historical legacy of colonialism and imperialism, and the version of history that
places Western discovery and achievements at the centre of the grand narrative.
To illustrate, in the history of mathematics, as taught in the West, there is a
notable failure to formally include and celebrate the discoveries of ancient civi-
lisations such as those of Indian (theory of trigonometry), Chinese (development
of negative numbers) and Islamic (algebra) mathematicians, opting instead for a
world view that suggests that the great mathematical discoveries are European
(Said, 1994). Similarly, in sociology, Ibn Khaldun is neither a familiar name
linked to the academic development of sociological ideas, nor is his culture a
celebrated tradition of academic endeavour and excellence.

To conclude this discussion, a further exemplar from the world of sport is noted
by McIntosh (1997), who identified 46 outcomes of privilege associated with her
whiteness, which her Black fellow sportsmen and women were unable to experi-
ence. Her research is interesting as it marries the binary challenges of ‘race’ and
gender in the sporting context; however, based on her personal experiences, she
is able to locate and describe her white privilege as an ‘invisible package of
unearned assets that indicate a subtle but ultimately destructive process of power
relations’ (Long and Hylton, 2002: 97). The assets to which she refers are captured
in an extensive list, thereby demonstrating the all-encompassing nature of white
privilege, and include the fact that she is not represented as a role model for her
‘race’; that she is never placed in a position where she is expected to know about
other sportsmen and women of her ‘race’; that she is not aware of or concerned
by racist chanting; and, finally, that her sporting ability is not attributed to her
‘race’. This snapshot into the ‘assets’ McIntosh speaks of incorporates the role of
the media, spectators and also governing bodies in sport, further demonstrating
the endemic nature of white privilege.
Case study 8.1

Whiteness and higher education in Britain
University College London (UCL) hosted a BME Attainment Conference (2018) during
which Dr Jason Arday (University of Roehampton) and Ayo Olatunji (BME Sabbatical
Officer, UCL Student Union) delivered a presentation entitled ‘Understanding White
Privilege in Higher Education’. The presentation set out to expose the elephant in the
room by first acknowledging a sense of discomfort when investigating the lack of
diversity in higher education and indeed the problematic nature of addressing ‘race’
in the Academy. This discomfort has many sources: it is structural, meaning that each
institute of higher education autonomously decides how or if it will address inequality;
it is organisational, meaning that ‘ownership’ of BME attainment is linked to specific
roles as opposed to the institution as a whole; and finally it is cultural, meaning that
there is resistance in acknowledging that problems even exist when it comes to BME
attainment. Perhaps this final category is the biggest hurdle of all?
Evidence cited that Black staff are paid 12.6 per cent less than their white col-
leagues, while for academics of Asian ethnicity the gap was 10.4 per cent, and that
at professorial level there are just 96 BME staff (Alexander and Arday, 2015). The pre-
senters argued that the concept of whiteness is a useful vehicle in understanding the
nuances of institutionalised racism in higher education, as illustrated by the pay gaps,
(Continued)

and that challenging of normative whiteness is paramount in dismantling the cycle
of inequality. Under-representation of BME academic staff alongside the notion that
‘race’ remains a problematic issue for some white academics to confront (Gillborn,
2014) are the dual challenges that higher education must address. Further layers of
complexity are noted when white academic staff, Arday reminds us, are tasked with
acknowledging that their privilege can sometimes contribute towards maintaining
cycles of inequality.
Chapter summary
This chapter has explored the historical development of multiculturalism in
education and reflected on the contested notion of Britishness as a political
dimension of multiculturalism. From an international perspective, multicultural-
ism in America and biculturalism in Australia are noted as exemplars of contrast
in the debate on how diverse peoples are viewed. By way of conclusion, this
chapter has explored Critical Race Theory (CRT) and discourses around whiteness
and white privilege that have drawn on the ideas of ‘race’, education and power.
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9
Reimagining
gender roles
Chapter aims
This chapter will examine the sociology of gender roles by reflecting on key
theoretical perspectives, including feminist sociological theory, and feminist
peace and conflict theory, as an alternative lens through which to reimagine
gender. This examination will also explore the radical feminist standpoint on
historic educational developments in the UK, focusing in particular on how girls
and young women have experienced the education system. In addition, this
chapter will consider the feminist perspective on research as an emancipatory
process for both the researcher and the researched. The chapter also aims to
reimagine gender by exploring masculinity as a sociocultural phenomenon,
and finally by considering the role that women played in the Arab Spring as an
example of radical transformation.
Key words: masculinity, education feminism, genderquake, empowerment,

transformative change.
Sociological theories of gender

Feminist sociological theory is a political as well as an academic approach to the
study of how society operates in terms of gender. Embedded within a global
tradition of change making, this approach is both challenging and critical, and
aims to ensure a secure place for gender in classical sociology. This theoretical
position argues that classical sociology (from within a European context) has
failed to explore a gendered basis of how social institutions function, opting
instead to represent women’s roles and identities in relation to men, and paint-
ing a picture of oppression, domination and inferiority. Working closely with
other academic disciplines such as political theory, literature, history, geogra-
phy and philosophy, feminist sociological theory sets out to destabilise this
narrow vision by shifting the focus from the margins to the centre of the dis-
course, and applying the knowledge and understanding of the experiences and
insights of women into a sociological imagination with a focus on gender and
education in particular.
Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Weber are generally regarded as being the
‘fathers’ of classical sociology in the Western conceptualisation, thereby reveal-
ing a clear gender imbalance in sociological knowledge production. Furthermore,
the interpretation of women’s roles captured in the work of the ‘fathers’ rein-
forces the marginalisation of women, including ideas of (male) intellectual
superiority and of women being powerless as a consequence of patriarchy.

The balance is somewhat redressed in the latter part of the nineteenth cen-
tury and the early twentieth century in the work of key theorists such as
Beatrice Potter Webb, who wrote about the basis of a welfare state following the
First World War; Marianne Weber, who addressed the influence of modernity on
the legal position of women; and Ida B. Wells-Barnett from the African-
American perspective, who documented evidence of events such as lynching
and applied a sociological lens to societal conflict and the treatment of Black
people in America.
The origin of the term ‘feminism’ is a disputed historical story that provides
a fitting backdrop for the many varied and complex definitions of the terms.
This process of definition is compounded by the variety of types of feminism
such as familial feminism, Christian radical feminism, socialist feminism, queer
feminism and male feminism, to name just a few subcategories. A traditionalist
focus on feminism would acknowledge the strand of feminism that sought to
champion women’s economic independence alongside campaigns that addressed
issues such as birth control, the role and status of women in marriage, and equal-
ity in the workplace. Historical global periods, including the First World War, the
Great Depression, the baby boom years (1940s and 1950s) and the three waves
of feminism, from the early part of the twentieth century to the present day, are
notable for their impact in reducing the progression of the feminist march.
However, in the aftermath of the Second World War, an ideological shift towards
feminist matters is identifiable in relation to women’s potential in building a
productive economy, in higher education and as equal to men in society. A key
influential text reflecting themes of this era is Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second
Sex (1952), which identified two clear goals for women in the post-war era: first
women should shape and embrace their own history as authentic subjects; and
second, it was incumbent upon society to change in order for women to achieve
the first goal.
An alternative historically rooted yet postmodern lens through which to
re-examine gender is feminist peace and conflict theory (FPCT), which focuses
on the visibility of women in conflicts and in relation to violence, both domes-
tic and state-based. FPCT is a transformative movement grounded in a historical
context highlighting women’s reality during war and conflict, thus presenting
‘her-story’ as opposed to ‘his-tory’, which is the traditional historiography
(Reardon, 1985). The participation of women in warfare globally (Bennett et al.,
1995) and the depiction of the iconic warrior queen (Mernissi, 1993) contribute
to a representation of women as powerful; however, this is in the wider context
of war in which the public domination of women is linked to the domination
of women in the private sphere.
As Benhabib (1992) reflects from a philosophical perspective, women are situ-
ated in a ‘timeless universe’, thus rendering them as disempowered and
ultimately invisible. This aspect is evident in the classical work of Virginia Woolf
Reimagining gender roles 201

in her 1938 essay ‘Three Guineas’, which explores the enforced invisibility of
women (Woolf, 1938). Woolf’s work is similar to that of Mary Wollstonecraft
(1975), who wrote about the French Revolution and the notion that private and
public violence is interrelated, and that the domination of men over women is
legitimised from domestic relations to warfare. This ideological standpoint, the
motivation behind FPCT, aims to destabilise women’s lack of political power and
how this has silenced women’s experiences of violence in the home. In FPCT, a
role for women is carved out to challenge how society perceives women as equal
citizens and agents of political change. To summarise, feminist sociological
theory and feminist peace and conflict theory are therefore best understood as
parts of an intellectual movement with a vast array of subcategories representing
feminist thought.
Education through the lens of radical feminism

In this section, education policy and practice is explored through the lens of
radical feminism, a movement of transformative change by women, for women,
that rose during the ‘second wave’ of feminism c.1960 (in the UK, USA and
Australia) and was heavily influenced by the civil rights movement in America,
which was itself a catalyst for a global women’s liberation movement. The main
concern of the radical feminist is to campaign for and establish equality for
women and thereby bring about transformation in society, an aim that has
drawn parallels with Marxism and its ideological battle with patriarchy and class
analysis. A radical feminist would argue that women’s oppression is the result of
patriarchy, a system of domination through which men as a group have power
over women as a group – as a consequence of this manifesto, they would seek
freedom from being placed under the power of men and would celebrate systems
of self-empowerment.
To illustrate, the radical feminist would campaign for a woman’s right to be
in control of her own body, particularly in relation to reproductive capabili-
ties, but also including freedom from the oppressive control of men, medical
professionals and religious authorities, and would also uphold the right to
state support for childcare so that women could play an active role in society.
As the name suggests, radical feminists espouse a more extreme set of solutions
to the problems faced by women in society in comparison to liberal feminists.
In relation to education, the radical feminist would argue that from a histori-
cal perspective, economic and political structures embedded in patriarchy and
implemented by male-dominated institutions (the government, funding
authorities, local authorities) have compounded gender inequalities, resulting
in a movement within education to close the ‘gender gap’ (Cruddas and
Haddock, 2003). Historically, the education of girls has been at the margins of

policy and curriculum design as evident in the focus in the 1960s on providing
a range of vocational options for boys in the tripartite system and higher edu-
cation for an elite minority of young men.
In the 1970s through to the 1980s, the demand for women’s equality on
social policy – see, for example, the Equal Pay Act in 1970 and the Sex
Discrimination Act in l975 – gave rise to ‘education feminism’ (Forbes, 2002)
advocated by female teachers and academics who championed a radical move-
ment that challenged systems of oppression, including patriarchy, social class
and ‘race’-based discrimination. It was in this period that female underachieve-
ment both in school and higher education was attributed to the socialisation
processes to which girls were subjected, including gender blindness and gender
stereotyping in curriculum subjects (e.g. girls being guided to the arts and away
from maths and science), as well as low teacher expectations (Arnot and Mac an
Ghaill, 2006). Radical feminists sought alternatives to male-centric schooling,
such as single-sex schools that supported the creation of a gendered identity
based on an autonomous female-learning – a safe space where girls were included
in the curriculum and challenged academically. In this period, a heightened
focus by academics on the triple exclusion of Black girls in the education system
at this time (Mirza, 2009) noted the construction of the marginalised ‘other’ as
a result of institutional racism and sexism. Further research by Dillabough et al.
(2009) explores the notion of multiple femininities, a fluid social construction
that supported the radical feminist position that the education system both pro-
duced and reproduced identities, and therefore by altering the structures of the
system (such as how schools are managed, ethos, feminine culture of teaching
and learning) strong radical feminist identities could be nurtured, in effect creat-
ing a ‘genderquake’ (Wilkinson, 1997).
This period reflects a time of adjustment in terms of gender reforms based
on inequalities in the education system; however, a girl-friendly ideology was
never established to any real degree, and the ensuing period, from 1980 to the
era of New Labour in 1997, noted rapid and significant developments that
demanded a prompt response from radical feminists (Osler and Vincent, 2004).
The review of the national curriculum (Education Reform Act, 1988) under
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher marked an era of assumed equality of oppor-
tunity both in education and in work. This new politically motivated era in
education embraced a highly technology-centred, global and competitive
vision in which girls could and would achieve alongside boys in order to build
a flexible and highly educated workforce. Interestingly, Thatcher’s administra-
tion also supported traditional family values, and the roles and identities
captured therein, leading the radical feminist to question and challenge educa-
tion policy such as the Education Reform Act and the establishment of
regulatory organisations such as Ofsted and the Qualification and Curriculum
Authority (QCA) in the late 1980s.

A significant shift from ‘education feminism’ to ‘managerialism’ occurred,
which is reflected in the consolidation of a male-orientated performance culture
of testing and competition, with a marked change in language around gender
matters from social justice to performance. To some extent, the notion that not
only can women compete on an equal basis with men but outperform them
appealed to a sector of the radical feminist ideology. This was reflected in media
scrutiny of Black male underachievement (Sewell, 1998) linked to ideas about a
crisis in masculinity and a ‘lost’ generation of young men alongside growing
academic interest in the performance levels of girls and young women in higher
education.
It can be argued that in the previous period of education, feminism provided a
solid foundation for such successes to become a reality; however, the cost of such
successes was apparent to radical feminists and others in the persistence of the
‘glass ceiling’ in senior management positions across most sectors, resulting in
high-achieving women, like Margaret Thatcher, representing an acute minority
unable to destabilise the status quo.
Under New Labour, a refocusing on the performative culture of schools
projected an inclusive, neoliberal agenda that focused on addressing the
underachievement of different ethnic groups (Gillborn and Mirza, 2000) and
closing the gender gap by careful monitoring of girls and boys in school in
comparison to high-performing education systems around the world. The
preoccupation with data-driven policy change meant that children’s perfor-
mance was measured from age 7 and this emerging picture (embedded in data
generated through a culture of testing) of the continued underachievement of
boys led to the conclusion that the previous era of reform has produced (not
reproduced) this culture of disaffection and failure. The post-1997 New Labour
era is notable for placing the educational needs of boys at the centre of
reform, including challenging controlling teacher pedagogies that perpetu-
ated disaffected masculinities (Arnot, 2006), setting out to recruit male
primary teachers in order to provide much-needed positive role models and
developing ‘boy-friendly’ schooling practices such as using more information
technology and physical activities in teaching all curriculum subjects, but
especially English and maths.
Despite the momentum of change, radical feminists continued to question
entrenched notions of gender stereotyping that remained constant in the educa-
tion system, such as fewer women recruited in science, engineering and
technology in higher education and the fact that on vocational courses women
were in the overwhelming majority in childcare, hairdressing and beauty
courses, while men dominated courses linked to the motor industry, construc-
tion and information technology. This new era set out to address the gender gap
and in doing so cement gender equality. However, the social, cultural and eco-
nomic divisions women were subject to, compounding their social exclusion,

were also apparent, as reflected in the following commentary on New Labour’s
economic policy at the time:
In the repositioning of family and state responsibilities what is of real significance is

the placing of gender at the heart of state actions: the ‘out of control’ and unedu-
cable boy is in need of reigning in; the parent at home, oftentimes the single parent/
mother, is made responsible for and penalised for his actions; at the same time, she
is culpable in the production and sustenance of family poverty by not having a real
job, and will be further penalised by changes to tax and benefit support. (Raphael
Reed, 1998: 64–5).
To conclude, the radical feminist perspective on education in the UK acknowl-

edges that significant economic restructuring, the dismantling of traditional
male preserves (in terms of curriculum areas and employment options) alongside
the closing of the gender gap, the transformation of family life and the changing
role and status of women in society have all contributed to a genderquake effect.
Genderquake as a sociological concept celebrates positive generational change
for women, and refers to the radical change in perceptions and attitudes (in
education, society and work) as experienced by younger women compared with
women of previous generations.
It can be argued that the reverberations from the genderquake effect are ongo-
ing, as illustrated by the appointment of Nicky Morgan, who was appointed
Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities on 15 July 2014,
with a vast remit, including early years, adoption and child protection, teachers’
pay, the school curriculum, school improvement and the establishment of acad-
emies and free schools. Educated at the University of Oxford and formerly a
solicitor specialising in corporate law, Nicky Morgan’s new dual responsibility
has been challenged by radical feminists (and other branches of feminism) as an
act of reducing women’s issues into a ‘non-role’, as it can be accomplished along-
side major global and national educational developments.
It is important to credit the role of the radical feminist movement as a catalyst
for change, despite the initial reservations and concerns expressed by more lib-
eral or conservative feminists. Academics such as Germaine Greer and Ann
Oakley (often referred to as ‘feminist foremothers’) argue that it was this version
of feminism that has helped to bring about radical changes in the ways girls
perceived themselves; consequently, they no longer constructed their identity in
relation to the domestic domain. Instead, women’s identities embraced the
notion of intersectionality with dominant intersections of ‘race’, class, ethnicity
and even religions, resulting in an ideological shift whereby women saw them-
selves as career professionals first and as homemakers at a later stage. This range
of progressive developments has established and maintained a sense of owner-
ship and self-realisation that achieves the ultimate aim of radical feminism – to
escape patriarchy. As such, the tireless campaign of the radical feminist claims

that the postmodern era is the best time to be a woman. This is because a critical
foundation to knowledge production has been established, facilitating the pro-
cess by which we come to learn about women’s lives through their experiences.
Case study 9.1

Gendered discourses on activism
Gendered discourses of activism encompass ideas around visibility, representation
and performance. In the context of this case study, gender provides symbolic mean-
ing in the way that it is performed in the everyday interactions and politicised choices
of the exemplars cited in this case study who offer a counter narrative to Cooke’s
(1997) concept of ‘war story’. Central to ‘war story’ is rhetoric about Muslim wom-
en’s identities, specifically how complex and traditional tropes of masculinity and
femininity can be applied to justify powerful stereotypes – namely, Muslim women
are oppressed so men must fight. ‘The war on terror’ similarly constructed Muslim
women as victimised women who needed to be rescued. Whether veiled or unveiled,
an acute imbalance in gendered discourses meant that this stereotype has become
cemented in the Western psyche. Research on Muslim women activists (Massoumi,
2015) argues that this enduring stereotype continues because first Muslim women
in leadership or the activist role are invisible, second narratives of the transformative
potential of Muslim women are not reflected in the mainstream, and third Muslim
women are subject to cultural imperialism and Islamophobia. This case study includes
a pen portrait of three prominent Muslim women activists and their achievements
in an attempt to reflect the changing landscape of gendered discourses on activism.
Alaa Salah – Sudanese political activist

In April 2019, Salah was captured by a local photographer Lana Haroun (@lana_
hago) in a crowd of thousands in Khartoum, standing on the roof of a car and sing-
ing songs of resistance. The now iconic image, which was immediately compared
to the statue of liberty on social media, launched Salah’s political activist career on
a global level. This 22-year-old student of Architecture was leading one of many
nationwide anti-government rallies demanding that President Omar al-Bashir step
down. The image went viral instantly and became a social media meme to represent
Sudanese women and their leading role in social activism. Salah’s actions in rallying
protesters in song, wearing the ‘toub’, an outfit evoking the garments worn by previ-
ous generations of Sudanese women fighting military dictatorship in the 1960s, has
reframed narratives about Muslim women in the middle era. Salah has been referred
to as ‘kandaka’, which is the title given to Nubian queens in ancient Sudan who left

a legacy of female empowerment and deep loyalty to their nationality and identity.
Prior to this image going viral, Salah has been a vocal critic of an oppressive regime
played out by the government of Sudan, responding to death threats by saying ‘The
bullet doesn’t kill. What kills is the silence of the people.’ (Source: https://twitter.com/
oalaa_salah?lang=en-gb )
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan – Cambridge graduate

and spoken-word poet
Blogging under the pseudonym ‘The Brown Hijabi’, Manzoor-Khan studied History
at Cambridge and Post-Colonial Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS). A writer, spoken-word poet and speaker, Manzoor-Khan hails from Bradford and
is motivated by her own life experiences, as captured in her blog (https://thebrownhi
jabi.com/) and poetry. Her career was launched in 2017 when she was second-place
runner-up at the ‘Last Word Festival Poetry Slam’ final in London with her entry entitled
‘This is Not a Humanising Poem’, an extract of which is captured below:
So this will not be a ‘Muslims are like us’ poem
I refuse to be respectable
Instead
Love us when we we’re lazy
Love us when we’re poor
Love us in our back to back, council estates, depressed, unwashed and weeping
Love us high as kites, unemployed, joy-riding, time-wasting, failing at school
Love us filthy, without the right colour passports, without the right sounding
English
Love us silent, apologising, shopping in Poundland, skiving off school, homeless,

unsure, sometimes violent
Love us when we aren’t athletes, when we don’t bake cakes

When we don’t offer our homes, or free taxi rides after the event
When we’re wretched, suicidal, naked and contributing nothing
Love us then.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESdDPcKH_KA)
(Continued)

Manzoor-Khan writes that she is motivated to interrogate narratives around ‘race’
and disrupt power relations specifically in relation to Islamophobia, racism and
(de)coloniality.
Deeyah Khan
Khan is an award-winning documentary maker and founder of @sister_hood_mag,
a digital magazine that showcases the work and voices of women of Muslim heri-
tage globally. Khan’s Norwegian/British/Afghani/Pakistani heritage have shaped her
identity construction, reflected in her childhood career as a singer and performer of
classical south Asian folk music. Her career was launched at the 2012 Raindance Film
Festival where her documentary, Banaz: A Love Story, was premiered. The film was
later used to train British police about honour killings. Khan is an activist against anti-
immigration laws, racism and far-right politics. In 2015, her second documentary,
Jihad: A Story of the Others, recounted a two-year investigation into the experiences
of young men and women drawn into radicalisation. Dominant themes include alien-
ation, identity crisis, rejection by their own community and mainstream society, and
government foreign policy. In 2017, Khan produced White Right: Meeting the Enemy,
which captures the narrative of home-grown neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The
documentary attempts to use soft skills to understand what motivates race hate and
violent ideology.
Masculinity
In exploring the sociocultural phenomenon of masculinity, it is important first
and foremost to secure a definition of masculinity; however, this is challenging.
Academics in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, cultural the-
ory, psychology and politics, would argue that ‘masculinity’ is composed of
many masculinities (Kilmartin, 2010). In other words, there are many creative
forms and expressions of this gender identity, including ‘being masculine’,
which refers to the process of adopting a gender identity that is securely manly
or masculine in orientation. To illustrate, Black masculinity and gay masculinity
are two contemporary exemplars of the diverse forms of masculinity that exist
in society. It is important to mark, at the outset of this discussion, the distinction
between masculinity and gender, in that masculinity is the degree or extent of
being masculine or man-like, while (as a verb) gender is preoccupied in being
assigned, meaning to assign a gender, or to engender.
The term ‘masculinity’ is embedded in social, political, cultural, historical and
geographical locations and time periods, adding further complexity to the pro-
cess of finding a definition. Masculinities are also plural and dynamic in that

they are shaped by structural factors and the individual. From a psychological
perspective, researchers have argued that boys are socialised in a variety of cul-
tural ideals of masculinity from the world of sport, media, popular culture and
schooling. As a consequence, this complex range of influences can have a limit-
ing impact on their emotional expression and capacity to respond to, or
acknowledge, feelings. From the sociological perspective, masculinities can be
understood in terms of qualities or attributes ascribed to men – for example, a
muscular physique (Grogan and Richards, 2002).
Research suggests that even from as young as 4 years, boys are aware of and
interested in their muscles. By the age of 8, this awareness has intensified and is
evident in discussion about muscle-gaining behaviours such as diet, interest in
icons in popular culture who are very muscular (Superman, Wolverine) and role-
playing in sport or play that requires physical strength (McCabe and Ricciardelli,
2003). This research suggests that socialisation, gender cultures and social inter-
action are all key factors in the construction of masculinities. The powerful role
of the media cannot be underestimated in terms of projecting and maintaining
ideas of masculinity that are internalised and become the norm overnight.
An exemplar of the sociologically driven characterisation of what it means to
be masculine can be found in the cult American series Breaking Bad and Sons of
Anarchy. Breaking Bad tells the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry
teacher with a PhD, played by Bryan Cranston, who ‘breaks bad’, deciding to
make a dramatic U-turn in his life by leaving his profession to produce and
eventually traffic crystal methamphetamine across New Mexico. A key facet in
the storyline is that Walt is a loyal family man, devoted to his pregnant wife,
Skyler, and teenage son, Walt Jr, who suffers from cerebral palsy. This cult series
has won critical acclaim as demonstrated by its global popularity and the way
that archive episodes are tagged in online sociology discussion forums in an
exploration of masculinity, deviance, crime, family and class.
Sons of Anarchy is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet and tells the story of
a motorcycle gang called ‘Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original’
or SAMCRO, referred to as Sam Crow. The gang operates as a vigilante organisa-
tion, trafficking powerful weapons and engaging in violent gang culture. The
series finale in 2013 was described as a bloodbath where the main characters die
a violent death because of the poor choices they make. The main character is Jax
Teller (played by Charlie Hunnam) who is divorced from his drug-addict partner
and has a young son who was born with premature cardiac problems.
There are many overlapping themes in both examples of media-manipulated
notions of masculinity, which also dominate academic discourses, including
crime, violence, disrupted family life (Williams, 2009) and contested ideas about
fatherhood (Lamb, 2004). Research commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation on masculinity and associated themes based in the UK (Hauari and
Hollingworth, 2009; Lewis, 2000; Lewis and Lamb, 2007) also expands on themes

of disruption, isolation, being an outsider, striving to be a role model and anger.
Moreover, this research emphasises the impact of economic social exclusion and
‘race’, arguing that attitudes to fathering are influenced by a complex web of fac-
tors, including the fathers’ personal experiences of being parented, culture, faith,
housing, (un)employment and mental health, concluding that the fathering role
in modern Britain is a fragile balancing act of many competing elements set
within a framework of social and economic challenges.
In terms of a global perspective, a further illustration of reimaging gender is
captured from American research and the empowering conceptualisation of
masculinity, which is aligned with ‘race’, and how Black masculinity draws on
psychological attributes and life chances as opposed to physicality. hooks (2004),
who writes about ‘plantation patriarchy’, offers a sobering insight into the
enduring notion of Black masculinity:
Negative stereotypes about the nature of black masculinity continue to over deter-
mine the identities black males are allowed to fashion for themselves. The radical
subculture of black maleness that begins to emerge as a natural outcome of militant
anti-racist activism terrified racist white America. As long as black males were
deemed savages unable to rise above their animal nature, they could be seen as a
threat easily contained. It was the black male seeking liberation from the chains of
imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy that had to be wiped out. This
black man potential rebel, revolutionary, leader of the people could not be allowed
to thrive. (hooks, 2004: xi)
In a highly emotive and compelling account, hooks argues that the male African-
American experience is framed within a myriad of entrenched stereotypes, but
starting within the context of slavery, which denied men their manhood, and
moving through associations with violence (towards other men as well as
women), disaffection in schooling, absent father syndrome and a preoccupation
with being ‘cool’. Academic literature on Black masculinity addresses the recur-
ring notion of ‘cool’ in relation to rap music (Baker-Kimmons and McFarland,
2011), sport (Abdel-Shehid, 2005) and violence (Collins, 2004), concentrating in
particular on hip hop as a movement where Black masculinity can exist in its
own world as demonstrated by the motto FUBU: ‘for us, by us’ (Alim, 2006: 39).
While historical Black masculinity may have attempted to seek acceptance in
the mainstream, hip hop (which is rooted in the civil rights movement)
embraced ‘gangsta’ culture, having a good time and existing within a separate
world unconcerned with integration into the mainstream and founded in the
rhetoric of the dominator. Boyd (2003), a leading voice in the reign of hip hop
as a radical pedagogy, suggested that this popular subculture offered a radical
alternative, explaining ‘Hip hop is concerned with being “real,” honouring the
truth of one’s own convictions, while refusing to bend over to accommodate the
dictates of the masses. Unlike the previous generation of people who often com-
promised or made do, in search of something bigger, hip-hop sees compromise

as false, fake, and bogus.’ It is important to emphasise that Boyd’s insight is just
one of many voices about hip hop as a way for Black masculinity to be reformu-
lated and refashioned for the postmodern world.
hooks (2004) is a vehement critic of Boyd’s vision, arguing that a lack of
spiritual fulfilment and the denial of a true self was more fake and bogus than
any allegiance to this particular ideology. For hooks, the dominator mindset
was not a rearticulation of Black masculinity, but a denial of true potential and
an indication of wounded souls. To conclude this discussion on Black masculin-
ity hooks therefore advocates the need for Black men to embrace their unique
masculinity by seeking wholeness through first and foremost resilience as
exemplified by an alternative hip hop pedagogy by music icons such as Kanye
West, Jay-Z and 50 Cent (Young, 2007), who embody and celebrate the socio-
cultural attributes of Black masculinity as life-enhancing, rooted in positive
self-esteem, liberatory and self-healing.
Moreover, economic well-being and a grounded sense of self-worth complete
the rearticulation of Black masculinity as captured in the work of the acclaimed
poet of the Black male revolution, Haki R. Madhubuti: ‘Gender equality, like
human rights, is not modern paper talk, is not a reward given to smart women
or good “girls”, but enlightened men. Gender quality is a hard fought right,
earned by women and men who are not afraid of their own shadows, mistakes
and histories’ (Madhubuti, 1990: 18).
Reading suggestion
Bakki, Y. (2019) ‘Dying to live: Youth violence and the munpain’. The Sociological
Review, 1: 1–19.
This journal article draws on interview data from two young men who are both
involved in gangs and have been victims of knife crime. The article shares their
experiences of ‘road life’, which is understood as a street cultural formation
that captures speech, fashion and music all within the context of socially mar-
ginalised spaces such as the council estate, as in this example. Additionally,
the journal article explores the notion of ‘munpain’, which is a portmanteau
of pain and mundane, essentially a descriptor of everyday suffering which
extends to including knife crime.
Everybody’s broke, struggling, the pain. It’s just pain. Everything’s pain.
You wake up one day and you find got a congestions fine for £65, then
on top of that you are on bail and on top of that there’s no toothpaste, its
(Continued)

more pain. You gotta break into a tenner, everything in London is a pain,
you got no money, there’s lots of things to go to, but there’s no money to
go, no clothes to go, that’s pain. (Bakki, 2019: 18)
The article explores gender construction in the context of the label ‘road man’
(Ilhan, 2015), as a stupid or violent young man perpetuated via social media
memes and reflecting the mainstream media representation of young men.
The location is very specific – inner city council estates and powerful tropes
about dress, disaffection and gang activity using knives are used to explain how
young men are propelled to project and perform a version of masculinity. The
potent conclusion argues that structural inequalities have devalued the lives of
the young men in the study who are ‘dying to live’ as they find ways to cope
with their pain.
Thinking point 9.1

Bowe et al. (2019) conducted research which examined the visual framing and
stereotyping of the burkini debate. The burkini is the creation of Australian
designer Aheda Zanetti who invented the first version of the garment in
response to a request from a family member for modest sportswear in 2004
‘to give women freedom, not to take it away . . . It was about integration and
acceptance and being equal and not being judged’ (Zanetti, 2016). The label
‘burkini’ is associated with the full-length covering referred to as the burqa
which, alongside the hijab, has been subject to intense sociopolitical scru-
tiny. Dominant themes include Muslim identity construction, freedom versus
oppression, Muslim women’s choice to cover (or not), representation, religious
liberty versus secularism, citizenship and state control. Consider how the regu-
lation of Muslim women’s clothing links to the discussion of women’s voice(s)
in this chapter.
Women’s voices: a feminist perspective

on research
In this discussion, a consideration of the many complex and varied interpreta-
tions of the feminist perspective on research is framed within a context of how
knowledge about women’s lives and experiences is shaped. We start with a quote

from Maeve Landman articulating what sets feminist research apart from other
types of research:
It is argued that feminist research is exclusively feminist because it is the feminist

beliefs, motives, concerns and knowledge that act as the guiding framework to the
whole research process. The methodology of feminist research differs from that of
traditional social science researches on the basis of three reasons. First, feminist
research explores and challenges the power imbalance between the researcher and
the researched. Second, the feminist research is politically driven and has a sense of
purpose and has an important role in removing the social inequalities. And finally,
it asks for the experiences of women to guide the whole research process.
(Landman, 2006: 431)
Feminist scholars such as Sandra Harding, Kathryn Norberg, Elizabeth Potter,

Linda Alcoff, Margaret Fonow and Judith Cook all promote the idea that tradi-
tional approaches to research are undesirable as they do not reflect the diverse
nature of the feminist perspective. They argue that a feminist perspective (cap-
tured in research approach, design and methodology) is significant, as it creates
a framework that is more receptive and sensitive to gender issues, whereas tradi-
tional approaches to research adopt an unbiased male-centred focus (Ramazanoglu
with Holland, 2006). This feminist perspective suggests, first and foremost, that
the researcher must be personally involved with the subject and that they must
experience the subject of research for it to be a meaningful research exercise. In
addition, it is argued that the research must be emancipatory in nature and must
take the individual’s perspective, making it both an empowering and a unique
approach to research. To illustrate, Sarah Harding, Professor of Education at the
University of California – Los Angeles (UCLA) and feminist philosopher of sci-
ence, makes reference to this position as a standpoint, suggesting that any
emancipatory social movement will include a group of people who argue ‘from
my standpoint, this is how I see things’.
It is critical to engage with the various feminist perspectives on research as
this field of enquiry is fluid, ever-changing and representative of a multiplicity
of voices. There are many dimensions to the feminist perspective on research,
including liberal feminist theory, Marxist–socialist feminist theory, radical femi-
nist, psychoanalytical feminist, African feminist, ecofeminist and global feminist
theory. The many shades of feminist theory suggest a powerful political influ-
ence in formulating ideas about how we can learn about women’s lives and their
experiences; it is integral to speak of and to the experiences of women as the
means of knowledge production. Therefore, the feminist perspective on research
is a movement that aims to place women at the centre of the discourse and
establish knowledge production from this point.
To expand further, there are many integral aspects of feminist research, as
clarified by Reinharz (1992), including the notion that a multiplicity of research
methods can be creatively applied, it is multidisciplinary and it aims to create

social change. Moreover, feminist research strives to represent and celebrate
human diversity, to include the researcher as a research subject, and also to nur-
ture strong relations with the people studied (Reinharz, 1992: 240).
Women and the Arab Spring

In this chapter, the notion of reimagining gender and gender roles aims to cap-
ture the progressive nature of how women have delivered a counter-narrative to
more traditional ways of being presented and represented. With this in mind, it
is timely to focus on the Arab Spring as a groundbreaking period of gender-
reshaping potential with its capacity to transform sociopolitical notions of
gender. The Arab Spring was a grassroots movement of social, cultural and
political reform engineered via social media and through people power where
women were catalysts in bringing about revolutionary change. As such, it is a
time of immense significance, with a domino effect still being felt to this day.
Additionally, the Arab Spring can be regarded as a geopolitical space where ide-
ologies are made and remade, and, with this potential in mind, we will now
consider the role that women played in its overall impact.
The Arab Spring began in 2011. Global media reported that it was triggered
by the actions of 26-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi in the rural town of Sidi Bouzid,
Tunisia, who was allegedly slapped by Fedia Hamdi (a policewoman) when he
refused to hand over his wooden cart of fruit and vegetables. It is reported that
Bouazizi did not have a permit to sell the goods and that this action of the
policewoman, the violence of the act, the public humiliation and the despera-
tion in his attempt to work to feed his family, led Bouazizi to set himself on fire
in front of a government building as an extreme act of protest.
News reports of the incident portrayed a scenario where an ordinary man,
struggling to make a living, was met by an unjust and authoritarian symbol of a
corrupt regime, which had widespread impact throughout Tunisia. Local resi-
dents identified with Mohamed Bouazizi’s suicide, sharing his frustration and
despair, and took to the streets gathering outside the governor’s offices. Social
media was instrumental in making wider local and global communities aware of
the protests gathering momentum, and it was immediately clear that the target
of their rage was the dictatorial state rule, led by President Ben Ali, which had
remained unchallenged for too long.
At the same time, in Cairo, Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26-year-old blogger, posted a
video on Facebook calling for a demonstration in Tahrir Square to protest against
the Mubarak regime, marking the start of the Egyptian Arab Spring. In Tunisia,
videos were uploaded onto Facebook depicting the graffiti sprayed onto the
white walls of government buildings and the students gathering in nearby towns
and in Kasbah Square, the political centre of Tunis. The protesters attracted even

more media attention in their chants against a lack of freedom of speech, pov-
erty and unemployment and corruption. The speed at which events took place
and the interest generated triggered mass gatherings across the country in a mat-
ter of hours. President Ben Ali was likened to a mafia don with stories of greed,
abuse and violence now widespread. Within a matter of days, the world was
watching live footage as the people of Tunisia made a stand to reclaim their
country. On 14 January, four weeks after Bouazizi’s self-immolation, the
President fled to Saudi Arabia. Tunisia was free and the Arab Spring was born.
As the Arab Spring spread across North Africa and the Arabian Gulf, the role of
women as campaigners for change, alongside men, was a notable phenomenon,
challenging orientalist (Said, 1978) notions of how women are perceived in Arab
states. As protest organisers, bloggers, hunger strikers and medics on the ground,
women in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain were visible as leading the
march to change. Mona Eltahawey, an Egyptian-American activist, presented a
two-part documentary for the BBC World Service entitled The Women of the Arab
Spring exploring the notion of a gendered Arab Spring. A paradigm shift was evi-
dent from national issues of unemployment, exclusion and corruption as
experienced by all citizens to issues of women’s rights, sexual violence and exploi-
tation, unequal representation of women and women’s security, which dominated
women’s lived experiences. Iranian-American scholar Farzaneh Milani captured
the dynamic shift in focus, engineered by women, for women.
The year 2011 will probably be remembered for its perennial spring: the Arab
Spring, a time of transformative change and rejuvenation. A non-violent, desegre-
gated, transgressive, youth-generated, and technologically savvy movement has
swept across many countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The massive
participation of throngs of women, walking shoulder to shoulder and side by side
with men, is a turning point in the contemporary history of the region. It is indeed
a revolution within revolutions. Although there will be many challenges ahead,
particularly for those women who have transgressed all conventional boundaries
and traditional spaces, the genie is out of the bottle. (Youssef and Heideman, 2012)
Reading suggestion
Cherif, K., Bernard, A. and Bessis, S. (2012) Women of the Arab Spring: Taking their
Place? Paris: FIDH – Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme.
This publication was produced and distributed with support from the Democratic
Governance Mission of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs,
the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Norwegian Ministry of
(Continued)

Foreign Affairs, the Takreem Foundation and the Mairie de Paris. The publica-
tion addresses women’s engagement in revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
In addition, a consideration of the differing demands of women in Yemen,
Bahrain, Algeria and Morocco culminates in recommendations entitled ‘20
measures for equality’.
Chapter summary
In this chapter, an examination of the sociology of gender roles reflected on key
theoretical perspectives, including feminist sociological theory and feminist
peace and conflict theory as an alternative lens through which to reimagine
gender. Additionally, a consideration of the radical feminist standpoint on his-
toric educational developments in the UK focused on how girls and young
women have experienced the education system. A feminist perspective on
research as an emancipatory process for both the researcher and the researched
offered an alternative lens on how research is viewed. Finally, the chapter reim-
agined gender by exploring masculinity as a sociocultural phenomenon and by
exploring the role that women played in the Arab Spring as an example of
radical transformation.
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10
Inclusion:
Disability and Special
Educational Needs
Chapter aims
This chapter will examine the issues of disability and special educational needs
(SEN), and the policy of inclusion against a background of increasing political
activism by disability rights groups and new ways of thinking about disability in
the context of an increasingly performance-driven education system.
Key words: special needs, social model, medical model, affirmative and
rights-based models of disability, social construction of disability, impairment,
disability, deficit approaches, labelling, integration, inclusion.
Introduction
In 1982, Sally Tomlinson wrote a seminal work on special needs education from
a sociological perspective (Tomlinson, 1982). It was written at a time when, as
Tomlinson admits, there was a distinct ‘hostility to sociology as an academic
activity’ (Tomlinson, 1982: 1). In addition, sociology’s contribution to the aca-
demic debate, policy making and practice in the field of special education had
been negligible up to that point. For example, there were no sociologists on the
groundbreaking Warnock Committee, which was set up in 1974 to examine
existing special education provision at the time in order to recommend changes
based on the findings and opinions of experts in the field. These experts came
primarily from the disciplines of psychology and medicine, which dominated
thinking on special education and who had for decades set the agenda on policy
and practice relating to special education. What Tomlinson did was to apply the
sociological imagination to the issue of special education, which adds another
dimension to the area of special needs, and challenges the individualised
approach to disability dominant at the time. Special education now draws on a
wide variety of academic fields and sociology is recognised as one of its many
foundational disciplines (Farrell, 2010).
The emergence of disability studies

What may be seen as the diverse and often limiting experiences of children and
adults with specific impairments that represent many seemingly unconnected
personal problems can in fact be connected to the wider social and cultural con-
text. Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing number of sociologically
inspired works relating to disability and special needs that have identified the

structural and social origins of the disabilities experienced by those with impair-
ments. Crucially, many of the most influential of these have been written by
academics and activists within the disabled people’s movement (Finkelstein,
1980; Oliver, 1990; Shakespeare et al., 1996). These writers were attempting to
establish a new discipline, disability studies, as distinct from psychology, medi-
cine or sociology, which would be multidisciplinary and have a focus on
‘disabled people’s lifestyles and aspirations’ (Finkelstein, 1998: 33). So it was, in
fact, academics and activists in the disability rights movement who started to
claim that individuals with impairments are unable to make progress in educa-
tion and society generally, not primarily because of their impairments, but
because society disables them through the way it is organised, the way it defines
them, as well as what it defines as educational success and failure. Writers in the
disabilities studies field wish to create a new way of thinking about impairment
that is not dominated by other professionals and experts who claim to know
what is best for those with disabilities.
Using C. Wright Mills’s (1959) notion of private troubles and public issues,
Oliver (1990) suggests that professionals and those in power such as politicians
and policy makers play a key role in this process, as they have the power to
define the problem and tend to locate it within the individuals concerned rather
than in society and how it functions. By focusing on the so-called pathological
traits and deficits of those who underachieve in the education system, profes-
sionals and policy makers are able to deflect blame away from such things as
how education is funded, the way that schooling is organised to fit the so-called
‘normal’ pupil and the existing curriculum.
A further dimension of this approach relates to the interests of those involved
in defining and treating people with impairments. As Tomlinson (1982) points
out, social life is based on struggles for influence and power between status
groups, each trying to assert their rights to control relationships. If there is any-
thing that sociologists have shown us in the study of the professions, it is that
professionals do not always function in the interest of their patients or clients
(Illich, 1976; Turner, 1995). This is as much the case in special education as in
any other field of social life. In this struggle, the primary definers tend to be those
higher up the hierarchy of credibility – in particular, doctors and psychologists
(Becker, 1967).
The individual problem of disability

Disability has historically been viewed as a personal and individual problem.
Tomlinson’s (1982) account of the social origins of special education examines the
emergence of special needs education during the nineteenth century in England
ostensibly as a humanitarian mission to help those seen as unfortunate enough to
Inclusion: Disability and SEN 221

have acquired or to have been born with impairments become useful and produc-
tive members of society. The impairment, physical or mental, was seen as a
personal tragedy, which was defined as the problem. With the increasing role of
the state in the education and welfare of children generally, and of children with
impairments in particular, the role of professionals such as doctors and psycholo-
gists became more prominent in entrenching this view. Indeed, the discourse of
disability has been dominated by notions of deficit relating to children with spe-
cial needs. Negative labels and pathological terms still tend to dominate academic
and professional practice, and this has a strong influence on common-sense
assumptions held by policy makers and the public.
The role of the professions

With the growing involvement of the state in mass public education in England
through the introduction of the 1870 Elementary Education Act, there was a
clear growth in the role of experts and professionals, including teachers,
employed by the state to administer and run the education system. There was a
perceived need to classify and sort people with impairments into groups relating
to their degree of educability (Finkelstein, 1980; Tomlinson, 1982). Finkelstein
argues that in the preceding feudal period there had been no segregation of peo-
ple with impairments, who tended to form part of the poor and marginalised
labouring peasantry who made a living selling their labour or begging. However,
with the growth of factory-based production, those with impairments were
deemed to be incapable of operating machinery designed for the ‘average’
worker. The disciplines of medicine and psychology were enlisted in the process
of identifying, classifying and allocating those with impairments to appropriate
roles and institutions. Segregation of those with impairments from the rest of
the community became the norm. Those who were deemed educable and capa-
ble of being productive were provided with training and offered work. Henry
Dannett, for example, set up the first school for the blind in 1791 that was pri-
marily commercial in nature. Those pupils who were incapable of working
productively were expelled (Tomlinson, 1982). Doctors were enlisted to identify
and categorise those with impairments as it was believed that they possessed
new knowledge of the human mind and body based on rational science and they
were thought to be able to create order out of the diverse characteristics and
seemingly confusing behaviour of those with impairments.
It was from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century that,
according to Foucault (1973), this new approach to sickness emerged, based on
the rational principles of observation and classification. This clinical gaze, as
Foucault called it, created a new language, or discourse, which has come to define
and dominate thinking about the human mind and body. The medical knowledge

created through this clinical gaze has gained the status of ‘truth’ that acts as a
form of power over us all. In any discussion of special educational needs (SEN),
there is a focus on the individual and their particular deficits. As such, the disa-
bled came to be seen not only as a burden, but also as a threat to the well-being
of society. Segregation from the community in large Victorian asylums became
the norm and this continued well into the twentieth century. The fear stemmed
from the belief that the mental or physical defects of the disabled could be passed
on from one generation to the next, and this brought about the establishment of
the eugenics movement. Eugenics is the philosophy concerned with promoting
the improvement of the human race through the encouragement of individuals
with socially desirable physical and intellectual traits to reproduce, and the dis-
couragement of those considered by society to have socially undesirable physical
and intellectual traits from reproducing.
The science of segregation: the role of psychology

Along with the growing role of medicine in the control of people with impair-
ments there was the rise of the psychologist who used the new method of
mental testing to identify those requiring separation from the rest of the
‘normal’ population. Foremost among psychologists at the time was Cyril
Burt, who made it his duty to assess children using the new intelligence test
that had become the preferred way of identifying the ‘innately dull’ and
‘backward child’ (Burt, 1937). Burt was the first official psychologist to be
appointed by the London County Council in 1913 and, by all accounts, his
ideas and methods were generally accepted without question (Tomlinson,
1982). As we saw in Chapter 6, psychologists were at the forefront of the
eugenics movement and Burt’s ideas were based on somewhat dubious scien-
tific assumptions, as well as rather sinister political intentions.
The scientific bases of Burt’s theories are highly contested: he claimed to
have developed a way of measuring a child’s potential using a standardised test
that could be administered to any child from any background. He assumed that
a child’s ability is fixed by the age of 11 and that this was the best way of allo-
cating children to different types of school. Burt’s ideas were so highly respected
that they formed the basis for the 11-plus exam and grammar school entrance,
which still exists in some local authorities, as well as the legislation that led to
the official categorisation and segregation of children with special needs in
special schools.
It is easy in hindsight to accept that some ideas developed by scientists in the
past were simply mistaken or not well developed. Burt was certainly a man of his
time in which eugenics had a popular following. However, Burt was not the aver-
age misinformed or mistaken scientist. He was a highly skilled researcher and

statistician, and there is strong evidence (Gillie, 1976; Kamin, 1977) to suggest
that Burt forged much of his data on the heritability of intelligence in order to
artificially promote his idea that those at the bottom of the social ladder were
there because they had inherited their low intelligence from their parents, and
those at the top of society were there also because they had inherited their
abilities from their parents. The corollary of this was a belief that it was a waste
of time providing an expensive extended education for the masses, as they
would not benefit from it and nor would society.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Burt was an influential member of the Eugenics
Society, which advocated the segregation and even the forced sterilisation of
those with low intelligence. It is not too strong to suggest that Burt was com-
mitted to the social control of the ‘problem classes’ (Burt, 1937), of which those
with impairments were considered to be a part. For pupils deemed to be subnor-
mal, Burt recommended that they should be educated in special schools with a
much less demanding curriculum to accommodate their impaired cognitive
abilities. This is pretty much what happened: by 1913, the Mental Deficiency
Act was passed, ensuring the removal of so-called defective children from local
elementary schools and their placement in special schools. By the end of the
Second World War, the Education Act (1944) required local education authori-
ties to test children with a view to identifying whether they were in need of
special education in a separate educational institution. The stigma of segrega-
tion and negative labelling of children with impairments now had official state
sanction, and the medical model of disability became the official discourse of
educationalists.
Special education and identity formation

As Tomlinson (1982) points out, there has been, until relatively recently, a lack of
interest by sociologists in the field of SEN. However, there is no shortage of poten-
tial insights that can be provided by sociological theories and perspectives. As we
saw in Chapter 1, sociology is a discipline that challenges many of our taken-for-
granted assumptions and subjects them to a sociological imagination through the
application of sociological analysis, research and perspectives. Such analyses do
not provide the whole picture or, indeed, the truth, which would be too much to
expect, but they provide insights that may enable us to better understand many
aspects of social life. If we take the notions of special needs and the idea of disabil-
ity, we can immediately see the association of such terms with ideas of deviance,
sickness and deficit. Indeed, the work of labelling theorists such as Becker (1963)
and Goffman (1964, 1968) provide an excellent starting point in an attempt to
understand the effects of the segregation of children with special needs from the
rest of society.

In Stigma, Goffman (1964) draws on a variety of sources of data, including his
own experiences, to explain the effects of stigmatising labels on those who come
to be seen as somehow different. The discourse surrounding special needs is
located within the fields of medicine and deviance, as well as education, and it
is generally the first two that attract the negative labels, which eventually affect
the third field, education, and ultimately such things as job prospects and other
social and personal relationships. What Goffman suggests is that the stigmatis-
ing labels spoil the relationships that individuals seek to create with others,
because such labels tend to dominate and override others’ perceptions of them.
In effect, the stigma of deviance such as ex-con, epileptic, ex-mental patient or
disabled becomes the master status of the person concerned: it becomes the indi-
vidual’s prime source of identity.
Thinking point 10.1

Identify some labels that can be seen as master statuses. The labels could
be positive ones, as well as negative ones. How might these labels affect
social interaction – for example, in applying for a job or forming personal
relationships?
As with other forms of deviance, those with impairments may present discredit-
ing stigmas – that is, those that are immediately evident when there is a social
encounter such as where someone has missing limbs. This disrupts ‘normal’
interaction in that the so-called normal person often does not know how to
react and the person with the impairment does not know how the other will
respond. However, it may be the case that a person has a discreditable stigma that
is not immediately evident but, should it be revealed, it could potentially dis-
rupt social interactions. For example, a person with epilepsy will generally
appear ‘normal’, but they will usually try to manage such information about
themselves in an attempt to continue to appear normal. However, should such
information become manifest, it could seriously affect such things as personal
relationships and job prospects. Research on epileptics by Scambler and
Hopkins (1986) (cited in Marsh and Keating, 2006) reveals that only 1 in 20
revealed their epilepsy to their employers and 1 in 2 of those studied had not
informed their spouse of their condition before they got married. Those with
such stigmata clearly fear the effect a general disclosure of this information may
have on those with whom they interact, particularly those who may have a
significant influence on their lives.

Labels of handicap
As we have seen, the treatment of children diagnosed as having special needs in
the immediate post-war period involved incarceration in some form or other.
Under the 1944 Education Act, those children diagnosed as having one or more
of the ten official designations were defined as ‘handicapped’.
Table 10.1 Categories of handicap

under the 1944 Education Act
Severely subnormal (SSN)

Blind/partially sighted
Deaf/partially deaf
Epileptic
Educationally subnormal
Maladjusted
Physically handicapped
Speech defect
Delicate
Diabetic
Under the 1944 Act, it was only medical officers who had the statutory right to
certify a child as having a handicap relating to the mind or body. A positive
diagnosis was then followed up by a series of tests by an educational psycholo-
gist, who determined what kind of educational support was needed. This usually
involved the child being allocated to an appropriate special school. Often it was
a special day school if it was located near the child’s home, or a special residen-
tial school if there was no suitable institution nearby. In some circumstances, a
child diagnosed with special needs was sent to a special class, perhaps at their
local school. In cases involving severe chronic handicap, there was the prospect
of long-term confinement in a hospital.
Very little sociological research or evidence exists relating to the experiences
of children attending special schools. Indeed, there is very little information
generally, which is in part due to the fact that pupils in such institutions had
little or no voice, and access to them by outsiders such as researchers and even
parents was highly restricted (Brignell, 2010). Brignell describes how children’s
letters to their parents were usually censored and staff tended to accompany the
child when parents visited. As a result, what testimonies we do have do not pro-
vide a representative picture of life in special schools at the time. However, what
evidence there is seems to confirm much of what Goffman (1968) found in his
examination of the supposedly therapeutic and caring role of such institutions.

In a review of the literature on the experiences of the disabled in special institu-
tions, Brignell (2010) reveals the many humiliating experiences, degrading
rituals and mortifications experienced by disabled children in the immediate
post-Second World War period. Goffman’s own ethnographic evidence and
experience reveal a similar picture, leading him to conclude that such ‘total
institutions’ tend to serve the interests and routines of the staff rather than the
inmates. In addition, he found that rather than providing places of asylum, they
were in reality environments where the self-concept of the inmate was con-
stantly undermined and any sense of individuality they might display was
removed, destroyed or ignored.
Such treatment also seems to be confirmed by Jenny Morris (1991) from her
interviews with individuals such as Ruth Moore, who is more aptly described as
a victim rather than a patient, and who spent time in a variety of institutions
for the handicapped as a child in England during the 1940s and 1950s. It makes
very disturbing reading. One of Moore’s friends from those times managed
eventually to get a job in the county council where an institution they had
attended as children was located. Having gained access to the hospital records
relating to the children who had been inmates there, Moore’s friend established
that two-thirds of those children had died. More recently, allegations about the
celebrity Jimmy Savile, who had been an active worker for disability charities,
suggest that he had abused as many as 500 children, many of them handi-
capped, over a 40-year period (Laville and Halliday, 2013). Such revelations
reveal not only the hidden levels of abuse that are only now coming to light,
but also the inability of the victims to be heard and protected due to the alleged
complicity of many of those in authority.
A lack of prospects
Furthermore, if special schools were supposed to be places of education and
training in order to enable young people with disabilities to live independent
lives, then the prospects for those with severe chronic handicap were limited.
However, those with mild handicaps such as the mildly educationally subnor-
mal (ESN-M) were provided with training designed to prepare them for routine
manual work. The development of ‘good’ work habits such as conformity and
obedience to authority were all part of a regime of creating compliant but self-
sufficient workers (Tomlinson, 1982). In general, those with some training in
basic skills did find work after leaving their special schools in the early post-war
period; however, with the downturn in the national and global economy during
the mid-1970s, this group was particularly ‘affected by the recession and those
requiring routine or semi-skilled work found the most difficulty’ (City of
Birmingham, 1977, cited in Tomlinson, 1982: 143). For most pupils with special

needs, then, the lack of an autonomy and choice in their education, and the
inability to progress any further than the kinds of basic training recommended
by experts such as Burt and general prejudice against the disabled, meant that
the life chances of those who were defined as handicapped meant a future of
poor job prospects and higher than average levels of poverty. This has been con-
firmed in studies of poverty at the time. In his highly regarded and
comprehensive research on poverty in the UK during the late 1960s, for exam-
ple, Peter Townsend (1979) found that ‘More than half of those with appreciable
or severe incapacity were in households in or on the margins of poverty, com-
pared with only a fifth of those with no incapacity’ (Townsend, 1979: 711). A
similar picture seems to emerge from evidence collected in the USA during this
period (Osgood, 2007).
A self-fulfilling prophecy?
As we have seen, labelling theory can help us to understand the way that the
medical model creates negative labels that affect the way those with impairments
are seen and treated by professionals, as well as by other ‘normal’ people. It also
provides an insight into the way that labels can affect those who are labelled.
Labels relating to special needs are rarely positive and, as a consequence, those
labelled as slow learners may come to see themselves as such and conform to
people’s expectations of them. This is sometimes called a self-fulfilling prophecy,
and it has been claimed by writers such as Coard (1971) that African-Caribbean
children in the UK are more likely to be labelled as disruptive and also as hav-
ing special needs. He suggests that this results in their lower-than-average
levels of academic achievement and higher-than-average levels of exclusion.
He sees this as being due to prejudice and a self-fulfilling prophecy. Coard pro-
vides no hard evidence of such a phenomenon, but a study by Rosenthal and
Jacobson (1968) seems to suggest there is some evidence for a self-fulfilling
prophecy. As with most research in the social sciences, however, the findings
are rarely conclusive because no single study will tend to settle a debate.
Subsequent studies have shown both supporting and opposing results, which
seem to depend on such variables as the age, ethnicity and socioeconomic class
of the children, and the quality and nature of the data a teacher has on pupils,
as well as on how teachers respond to such data in relation to the pupils’
performance (Woolfolk, 2013).
As we have seen, labelling theory can help us to understand the way the
medical model creates negative labels that affect the way individuals with
impairments are seen and treated by those in authority, as well as by other
‘normal’ people. Such labelling can also be exacerbated by racism and sexism
(Morris, 1991). However, labelling theory has been accused of being too

deterministic – that those who have been labelled as deviants are portrayed as
passive victims. It is clear that not everyone who is labelled as deviant accepts
the limitations imposed on them by the label; the label may be rejected, how-
ever, given that challenging professionals such as doctors or psychologists
would be difficult for most patients, what match is a child against the weight
of such institutional authority? As the disability rights activist Simon Brisenden
(1998: 23) writes of the label ‘disabled’:
It teaches us a conditioned uselessness, which is not based upon our actual physical
or intellectual capacities, but upon the desire to make us believe that we are a drain
upon society’s resources. It teaches us to be passive, to live up to the image of our-
selves as objects of charity that we should be grateful to receive, and to ignore the
possibility that we may be active people who have something to contribute to society.
Tomlinson (1982) suggests that there is little sociology can offer special education
in terms of tools and procedures; however, if we take into account the potentially
negative self-concepts that might result from the frequent labelling of children
with special needs, then a policy of more positive labelling in terms of the classi-
fication of children with disabilities might be a starting point. This is indeed
happening, and what we have been witnessing over the past 30 years is a series of
reports, policy developments and a growth in the activities and successes of civil
rights movements both in the UK and worldwide that have had a significant influ-
ence on how disability is defined and treated. Perhaps one of the most significant
events of the past decade, which has challenged many people’s assumptions about
those with impairments, was the London Paralympics of 2012. Research sug-
gests that the impact of the games has generally been positive in terms of
public attitudes towards those with disabilities (EFDS, 2012; Ferrara, 2012).
Challenging essentialist views of disability

Oliver (1993) suggests that the focus of attention should be on society and not
on the disabled person, as we already have a wealth of information about the
experiences of the disabled. Moreover, Finkelstein (1980) argues that disability is
the result of a process in which those with impairments have become defined by
their biological or physical condition rather than in terms of their other qualities
as human beings. This is known as an essentialist view of disability and implies
that because those with impairments are different biologically, they are some-
how deficient. Essentialist assumptions justify and provide a so-called rational
basis for exclusionary practices. If it is assumed that those with impairments are
fundamentally different from ‘normal’ people and are unable to live normal
lives, then there is the clear implication that those with impairments cannot
function within the world of the non-disabled.

An excellent example of such essentialist ideas and their consequences with
regard to a particular disabled group such as the blind is the claim by some
psychologists that the condition of blindness causes a ‘blind personality’, which
is characterised by displays of helplessness, docility and depression. For these
psychologists, the blindness is responsible for creating such a personality and
the inability of the blind person to come to terms with the condition. However,
in a pioneering sociological study in the USA in the 1960s that focuses on the
adventitiously blinded – that is, those who are not born blind but become
blind – Scott (1969) argues that the blind learn such helplessness and therefore
become disabled in the course of their (re)socialisation; that is, in their interac-
tions with family members, agencies for the blind, medical and welfare
professionals and peers. Scott suggests that what is needed is a fundamental
change in attitudes and treatment of the blind in order to challenge the gener-
ally negative discourse surrounding the condition of blindness. In countries
where blindness is treated primarily as a technical problem, rather than one of
loss, blind personalities are much less in evidence (Taylor, 1994).
Divisions within the movement

The work of the pioneers of disability studies theory such as Oliver and
Finkelstein has been highly influential in challenging the personal tragedy
approach of the medical model and in showing how disability is a socially
created problem rather than one that stems primarily from an impairment. As
such, it has encouraged us to rethink and challenge conventional ideas of dis
ability, which have tended to dominate our understanding of the issue and
which locate the problem of disability squarely on the shoulders of individuals
with impairments. However, Light (2003) refers to the ‘unsocial muddle’ that
has erupted among those involved in disability studies and the disability rights
movement. What writers such as Morris (1991) argue is that by focusing on the
ideology of ‘disabilism’ and the common experiences of disability, the social
model effectively excludes the diverse experiences of disabled people. As a
result, issues such as gender, race and sexuality are ignored. In addition, for
disabled feminists such as Morris, to ignore the differences of impairment is to
fall victim to the normalising pressure of society. Morris suggests that by deny-
ing or downplaying their impairments, disabled people are rejecting who they
are: a politics of disability is about celebrating this difference and affirming it in
order to develop a pride in one’s identity. Moreover, she points to the myth of
the personal tragedy approach to disability, which assumes that all people with
impairments want to be ‘cured’ or to be ‘normal’. It is this myth that Morris
believes prevents the non-disabled from thinking of the disabled as anything
other than deviants or tragic victims incapable of living valued and fulfilling lives.

Celebrating difference
Swain and French (2000) develop what they describe as an ‘affirmative model of
disability’ that challenges disabilist ideology, while at the same time creating a
positive image of impairment through a disability culture and also by rejecting the
normalising pressure on those with disabilities. The affirmative model, however,
though celebrating these differences, does not imply that those with disabilities
do not have the same ambitions and aspirations as non-disabled people. Like any-
one else, disabled people seek independence through gainful employment, which
can only be achieved through education. For disabled activists, current policy and
legislation still operate in terms of a medical and exclusionary model despite the
rhetoric of inclusion used by politicians. This has a clear effect on the life chances
of the disabled and their quality of life. Just as in the immediate post-war period
the handicapped were reported to have higher-than-average levels of poverty,
there seems to have been little change in recent years.
Disability and life chances today

The consequences of exclusion are evident in terms of the life chances of disa-
bled people today. Evidence from the Office for Disability Issues (ODI, 2013)
reveals the continuing gap between the disabled and non-disabled in terms of
educational attainment, levels of employment and living standards. Although
there was an increase in the proportion of children with SEN statements achiev-
ing five or more GCSEs at grades A*–C from 8.7 per cent to 24.9 per cent
between 2005/6 and 2010/11, there was an even more impressive increase dur-
ing the same period for children without special needs from 66.3 per cent to 88.9
per cent, revealing an increasing gap between the two groups (ODI, 2013).
Although there has been a reduction in the gap between the two groups in terms
of the percentage in work there was still a 30 per cent gap in 2012, with 76.4 per
cent of non-disabled people of working age in employment compared to 46.3
per cent of disabled people. This clearly has an effect on the proportion of disa-
bled people living in poverty. In 2012, 21 per cent of children in families with
at least one disabled member were living in poverty compared to 16 per cent of
children in families without any disabled members (ODI, 2013).
The right to be included

Summing up a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called
Education: A Different Vision: An Alternative White Paper published in 1993,

Thomas and Vaughan (2004) state that employers are generally not well dis-
posed to children who have had a ‘special education’: the label ‘special’ itself
creates disadvantage for the disabled with regard to employment so, for the
IPPR, schools and colleges should become inclusive of all children regardless of
their disabilities or differences, and the education they provide should cater for
their individual needs. As such, for the IPPR, the onus is on schools to change
and not their pupils.
There has, however, been a slow but clearly discernible change in attitudes
to, as well as among, those with disabilities since the 1960s, which ultimately
has had a clear influence on policy regarding special education. The Warnock
Report (Department for Education and Science, 1978) was a landmark in spe-
cial education as it recommended the integration of disabled children into
mainstream schools and, furthermore, shifted the focus on disabled children
away from their impairments and towards their educational needs. By using
the term ‘special educational needs’ (SEN) and proposing the abolition of the
term ‘handicapped’, there was a clear shift in thinking away from the medical
model of disability to a more social one. In the 1990s and early 2000s in
England and Wales, New Labour, as well as the coalition government in
Scotland, introduced a number of policies and legislation promoting the inclu-
sion of disabled children in mainstream education. Much of this change can
be attributed to the politicisation of disability issues and the demands for civil
rights by disabled people who had started to organise themselves, just as those
campaigning for sexual equality and racial equality were beginning to organise
in the 1960s.
In addition, experts and professionals were starting to reassess their proce-
dures and the evidence relating to the effectiveness of the segregation of
those with impairments generally, as well as that of special education in spe-
cial schools in particular (Christopolos and Renz, 1969; Dunn, 1968; Leyden,
1978). A further factor was the international impetus for the furthering of the
rights of oppressed and minority groups by organisations such as the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNESCO, 1989) and the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
in the form of such pronouncements as the Salamanca Statement of 1994 and
Inclusive Education on the Agenda (1998), which stated that it was the right
of all children, regardless of their disability or learning difficulties, to be edu-
cated together.
Integration and inclusion

The debate about the education of children with special needs has, over the past
four decades, revolved around the concepts of integration and inclusion. As we

have seen above, the Warnock Report (Department for Education and Science,
1978), and the subsequent legislation that enacted much of its recommenda-
tions in the 1981 Education Act, focus on a policy of integration. This refers to
the requirement, under Section 2 of the Act, that Local Education Authorities
(LEAs) are required to educate children with SEN alongside other children in
mainstream schools. Considering the attitude to and treatment of children with
disabilities up to the 1970s, the recommendations of the Warnock Report and
the legislation that followed seemed quite radical. However, if we examine the
ideas of the Warnock Report and the legislative guidelines regarding integration
in more detail, we can see a lack of real commitment to integration. For a start,
integration, as envisioned by Warnock and the 1981 Act took three forms. The
first, locational integration refers to the placement of children with SEN in the
same schools as other children, but in special units rather than in the same
classes. Social integration is where children with SEN mix with other children in
the school generally such as during break times, social events and meal times,
but are still educated in separate classes, and functional integration relates to the
inclusion of children with SEN in all aspects of school life with other children,
including being taught in the same classes.
Warnock did not make a strong commitment to any particular form of inte-
gration and this equivocal position was reflected in the 1981 Act, in that the
duty placed on LEAs to integrate was seriously undermined by the conditions set
on the level and nature of integration that children with SEN and their parents
could expect from their local school. Although integration was a duty of LEAs,
and parents’ views had to be taken into account, this could be overridden if
three requirements could not be met: first, that the education of the other chil-
dren would not be adversely affected by such placements; second, the
requirement to use resources efficiently; and third, if the children would not be
able to receive the special educational support deemed necessary for them. This
effectively gave LEAs a get-out clause if they did not agree with their duty to
integrate. Indeed, they were under no legal obligation to make any changes as
part of a general policy of increasing integration.
In a national survey of LEAs by the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education
(CSIE, 1985, cited in Thomas and Vaughan, 2004), ‘Caught in the Act’, conducted
soon after the introduction of the 1981 Education Act, it was revealed that only a
small minority (11 per cent) provided information in their literature for parents
about their duty to integrate children with SEN into mainstream schools. This lack
of communication and openness about their obligations, together with the ease
with which LEAs and their professional staff were able to avoid their responsibili-
ties, made the 1981 Education Act largely ineffectual as a means of promoting
integration. As Evans (1995, cited in Hodkinson and Vickerman, 2009) states,
between 1985 and 1991, there was only a 12.5 per cent drop in the proportion of
children in special schools and in some LEAs there was actually a rise.

From integration to inclusion
The key weakness of the legislation was the concept of integration, which puts the
onus on parents of children with SEN to fight for a place in a mainstream school,
and imposes no obligation on LEAs to make any changes to facilitate greater inte-
gration. This highlights a key difference between inclusion and integration: while
the latter is permissive in terms of allowing LEAs to integrate if they so wished and
could satisfy the provisos contained in Section 2, inclusion is based on an assump-
tion of the right of all children to be educated with their peers. Once this right is
established, the obligation is reversed: the education providers are required to
make the changes necessary to enable all children to be educated together.
Inclusion relates more closely to the views of disability rights groups such as CSIE,
which were reflecting the changes in attitude towards SEN during the 1990s.
Taking their lead from such documents as UNESCO’s Salamanca Statement, as well
as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Britain rati-
fied in 1991 and which states that all children including those with disabilities
have the right to ‘the fullest possible social integration and individual develop-
ment’ (UNESCO, 1989: 3), CSIE produced an Inclusion Charter (see Table 10.2) in
2002 containing six statements relating to the ending of segregation in education.
In its campaign to promote inclusive education in Britain, CSIE has sought
support for the charter from organisations representing the disabled. However,
despite sending the Charter out for endorsement to potentially interested parties
Table 10.2 CSIE Inclusion Charter (2002)
CSIE Inclusion Charter
1 We fully support an end to all segregated education on the grounds of disability or learning
difficulty, as a policy commitment and goal for this country.
2 We see the ending of segregation in education as a human rights issue which belongs within
equal opportunities policies.
3 We believe that all students share equal value and status. We therefore believe that the exclusion
of students from the mainstream because of disability or learning difficulty is devaluation and is
discriminating.
4 We envisage the gradual transfer of resources, expertise, staff and students from segregated
special schools to an appropriately supported, diverse and inclusive mainstream.
5 We believe that segregated education is a major cause of society’s widespread prejudice against
adults with disabilities or difficulties and that efforts to increase their participation in community
life will be seriously jeopardised unless segregated education is reduced and ultimately ended.
De-segregating special education is therefore a crucial first step in helping to change
discriminatory attitudes, in creating greater understanding and in developing a fairer society.
6 For these reasons we call on Central and Local Governments to do all in their power to work as
quickly as possible towards the goal of a de-segregated education system.
(CSIE, 2002: 1)

on several occasions over the past decade, CSIE has not met with universal sup-
port from all the relevant groups. The list is notable for the absence of such
names as Scope, which represents disabled people and their families, the Royal
National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), the Royal National Institute for the Deaf
(RNID), as well as the Royal Society for Mentally Handicapped Children and
Adults (MENCAP), all of which are arguably some of the most high-profile and
respected organisations in their respective fields (CSIE, 2018).
A lack of consensus
The arguments in support of full inclusion can be summed up under the categories
of the ethical and philosophical, the social and the educational. In terms of the
ethical and philosophical justifications, there is a straightforward assertion that all
children have the right to be educated together and not segregated on the grounds
of difference (CSIE, 2002; IPPR, 1993; UNESCO, 1989, 1994). Socially, the policy
of integration is seen as an essential part of the process of challenging discrimina-
tory attitudes and practices (CSIE, 2002; Wertheimer, 1997). For groups such as
CSIE, bringing children up and educating them separately sends all the wrong
messages to young people who, it claims, need to be part of a fairer and more just
society. Inclusion is justified on educational grounds on the basis that there is no
convincing evidence supporting the claim that segregation benefits students
(CSIE, 2003). In a clear reversal of traditional psychological approaches to the
education of those with disabilities, the British Psychological Society published a
position paper in 2002 that presented a very strong case for inclusion by endorsing
the CSIE Charter and also suggests how psychologists might contribute to this
policy (BPS, 2002).
In addition to these arguments, it is claimed that inclusion is more cost-
effective than segregated provision. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD, 1999, cited in Thomas and Vaughan, 2004), suggests
that it is more expensive to run a twin system of special schools and mainstream
schools than a single inclusive one. However, these points are not sufficient to
convince those who do not support the closure of special schools and wholesale
inclusion. The debate was particularly polarised in the 1990s and early 2000s,
during which time those who did not support wholesale inclusion were labelled
as somehow morally suspect by those who did (Garner, 2009). The debate was
presented very much in black-and-white terms.
New Labour
In 1997, when New Labour came to power on a programme of social justice and
inclusion, it seemed that real change was afoot in England and Wales in favour

of inclusive education. It published a Green (discussion) Paper ‘Excellence for all
children: Meeting special educational needs’ (DfEE, 1997), which started with
what seemed like a manifesto for full inclusion. Quoting the Salamanca
Statement’s proposal for progressive steps towards greater inclusion, there
seemed to be a clear commitment to increasing inclusion. Indeed, subsequent
policy documents and legislation, such as ‘Meeting special educational needs: A
programme of action’ (1998) and the Special Educational Needs and Disability
Act (SENDA) 2001, went a long way towards promoting inclusion as a right
rather than just a desirable thing. The former set out five aims that identified a
strategy involving parents, local authorities, schools, teachers and other relevant
agencies in working together to bring about greater inclusion. The latter made it
illegal for local authorities and schools to discriminate against those with disa-
bilities in their admissions policies and the provision of services. Moreover, the
get-out clause relating to the efficient use of resources, which was such a blatant
feature of the 1981 Education Act and which allowed LEAs to escape their duty
to integrate, was rescinded.
In Scotland, too, at that time there was a move towards a rights-based
approach to special educational needs and inclusion with the introduction of
the policy known as ‘presumption of mainstreaming’. Under the 2000 Standards
in Scotland’s Schools Act, every child should, as far as possible, be educated
with other children in a mainstream classroom unless it can be shown that any
of the following circumstances apply: that the mainstream school would not be
suitable for a particular child’s ability or aptitude, that the inclusion of such a
child might affect the learning of other children in the school, or that it would
cost an ‘unreasonable’ amount to educate such a child in a mainstream school
(Enquire, 2017). This legisation came into force in 2003 despite the misgivings
voiced about these three criteria that were seen as giving Scottish local authori-
ties too much freedom to avoid their responsibilities to mainstreaming (Florian,
2017). They are, indeed, very similar to the get-out clauses that were a feature
of the much criticised 1981 Education Act in England and Wales that had just
been repealed.
Despite these developments in England and Wales, those who support full and
unconditional inclusion such as CSIE were critical of what they describe as New
Labour’s contradictory position (Thomas and Vaughan, 2004), for while endors-
ing and promoting the idea of greater integration, New Labour also stated its
belief in the continuing need for special schools and the rights of parents to have
their child educated in a special school. Indeed, the Green Paper (1997) went on
to suggest that such separate institutions would still have a place in the education
system for the foreseeable future. For those who propose a rights-based case for
inclusion, this is a real cause for concern (Thomas and Vaughan, 2004).
However, this rights-based position has been subject to a greater challenge in
recent years. For Garner (2009), there is now a growing acceptance that inclusion

is much more complex than merely winning the right for children with SEN to
be educated in mainstream schools alongside their peers. As Armstrong et al.
(2010) point out, there is very little clarity or agreement not only about what
inclusion is, but also about how it can be implemented, as well as what the
desired outcomes of inclusion might be. In addition, there is some scepticism
about what inclusion might involve for some disabled groups. The Royal
National Institute for the Deaf (RNID), for example, represents a community
with its own language and culture (Deaf culture), as well as identity. Deaf people
generally have a strong allegiance to their community, which would be at odds
with a mainstream education dominated by hearing pupils and teachers.
Thinking point 10.2

What would constitute an inclusive education?
As Armstrong et al. (2010) point out, there is little agreement as to what inclu-
sive education is or should be. This creates a good deal of confusion in academic
debate, as well as policy development. You might like to read Ainscow et al.
(2006), which examines this issue in some depth.
The purpose of education

The current priorities of the education system are based on a neoliberal approach.
This refers to the notion that market principles should dictate the way that edu-
cation is delivered and assessed. Schools are required to compete with each other
for pupils through funding systems based on performance criteria. In addition,
the education system is now expected to be much more focused on providing
for the needs of the economy through the creation of human capital in the form
of skilled workers. It could be argued that this is incompatible with the right to
inclusion of children with SEN into mainstream schools in that the main prior-
ity of the education system is to create employable citizens at the lowest possible
cost to the state. Children with SEN are generally more expensive to educate and
this has meant that schools have engaged in processes of excluding ‘problem’
pupils (Tomlinson, 2005) or have been reluctant to spend the extra resources
needed for pupils with special needs (Ball et al., 1994). The government’s own
figures show that ‘Pupils with SEN with statements are around eight times more
likely to be permanently excluded than those pupils with no SEN’ (Department
for Education, 2011). With the expansion of the academies and free schools
programme under the coalition, it is feared by some that such practices will

increase, particularly in the light of the fact that free schools have much more
autonomy as to how they spend their budgets and admissions policies. Recent
evidence suggests that this has, indeed, been the case (Rogers, 2019). This clearly
raises questions regarding the education system in England and Wales, such as
what is education for, as well as who is it for? In a policy climate that places
ever-increasing emphasis on the extrinsic purposes of education, such as the
need to increase the level of human capital, those who represent a financial
burden on the system and have little power to assert their rights are more likely
to be vulnerable to the changing priorities of those with the power to make deci-
sions regarding the curriculum, testing and resource allocation (Roffey, 2017).
This, indeed, seems to be one of the issues affecting the implementation in
England and Wales of a new Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND)
Code of Practice in September 2014.
Including families, teachers and children

The new SEND Code of Practice 2014 changes and updates the 2001 SEN Code of
Practice, and places children and young people with special educational needs and
their parents or carers at the centre of a system working in partnership with local
authorities, schools, social and health services. This new code of practice is
designed to help the relevant interested parties to make decisions about the sup-
port needed to help these children and young people achieve their aspirations
(DfE, 2015). It is a response to the findings of the Lamb Inquiry (2009), which
reported that the long-standing complaint by parents and carers of children with
special educational needs is that they are not being sufficiently included in the
decision-making process regarding the education and welfare of their children,
despite the fact in ‘the most successful schools the effective engagement of parents
has had a profound impact on children’s progress and the confidence between the
school and parent’ (Lamb, 2009: 3). Lamb (2009) recommends, therefore, that
parents need to be listened to more and brought into a partnership with statutory
bodies in a meaningful way in order for their children’s needs to be met. A survey
by Reid and Ayris (2011) found that a large majority (68 per cent) of parents of
children with autism reported that, rather than working in cooperation with the
authorities, they had to fight for the support they felt their children needed. A
quarter of children with autism reported feeling unhappy at school and 20 per
cent did not feel safe. It is against this background that consultations were started
in 2011 by the coalition government to find out how parents and carers of chil-
dren with special educational needs can be more involved in decisions regarding
the education and future adult needs of these vulnerable young people.
The result was the very ambitious new SEND Code of Practice 2014, which
sets out a vision of high-quality personalised provision for children and young

people (0–25) with special educational needs, underpinned by coordinated ser-
vices involving local authorities and local health service providers that fully
include parents in the process. Much of the consultation process and the even-
tual framing of the SEND Code of Practice was based on the premise that parents
need to be much more involved in the planning, delivery and monitoring of
provision. Although this is likely to add an extra burden on schools and local
services, there is a good deal of evidence (Douglas, 1964; DfES, 2008; Feiler,
2010) to support the claim that greater parental involvement can have positive
consequences on children’s learning and achievement.
From ‘statements’ to ‘plans’

Under the SEND Code of Practice (DfE, 2015) all local authorities in England and
Wales must now make known, in writing, their ‘local offer’ of provision for chil-
dren with special educational needs and disabilities. The means of accessing
these services and facilities is by way of an education, health and care (EHC) plan
rather than a Statement of Educational Needs which focused primarily on edu-
cational provision. A child’s parents, a young person, a school or college have
the right to request a needs assessment for an EHC plan. Under the new code, the
legal test to determine if a child or young person requires an EHC plan remains
the same as that for a statement under the previous code.
The new EHC plan is supposed to be an integrated system relating to the care
and health of children with special needs and disabilities as well as their educa-
tion, with a view to preparing such children and young people for independent
employment and living (DfE, 2015: 1.2). A greater emphasis is placed on class-
room teachers to differentiate pupils and provide high-quality personalised
teaching for children with SEND which is informed by the insights of both
parents and children. Teachers are also expected to set ambitious targets, keep a
record of progress for each child and conduct regular meetings with parents to
review progress and to consider alternative or additional provision. Clearly, all
this requires a good deal of training and skill on the part of the teacher, as well
as for those entering the profession. Taken at face value, then, the new SEND
Code of Practice presents a very impressive policy. However, it is evident that
delivering such a service on existing budgets through greater efficiencies rather
than with the help of additional funding has raised concerns (Tickle, 2017).
A preliminary review of the new Code of Practice

It is too early to provide a comprehensive review of whether the relations
between local authorities and parents of children with SEN, and schools and

parents of such children, are improving. Norwich (2017) suggests that although
more reliable information is needed to make such an assessment, there are
reports of the inconsistent implementation of the reforms in different LAs and
their schools.
Case study 10.1

L. Tickle (2017) ‘People give up’: The crisis in school support for children with spe-
cial needs’. The Guardian, 5 September. Available online at: www.theguardian.com/
education/2017/sep/05/crisis-in-support-for-sen-children-ehc-plans
• Read about the experiences of Ben’s and Sam’s families with regard to their
requests for EHC plans.
• Does a request by a parent for a needs assessment for an EHC plan result in the
‘right’ to have one?
• According to Barney Angliss, a former local government commissioner, what

seems to be driving decisions by schools and local authorities on whether or not
to support children with SEN?
Nevertheless, in a preliminary review of the new SEND Code of Practice (2015) by

the SEN Policy Research Forum (Lamb et al., 2016), there is a very measured but
concerned tone in which the principles of the new code are seen to be ‘the right
thing to do’ by LAs (Lamb et al., 2016: 3), but that its implementation is affected
by the current climate of austerity. So, while celebrating the successes in terms of
an improvement in some parents’ confidence in the system, Lamb et al. (2016: 3)
state: ‘evidence from wider parent carer surveys and the recent acceleration in
tribunal cases indicates some doubts about whether the system has secured the
confidence of a significant number of families’. Recent research by Rogers (2019)
reveals that in some local authorities in the UK, exclusions have increased by 100
per cent since 2011. The unfortunate consequence is that, despite requests for help
from parents, many children with social, emotional and health problems end up
being dealt with by the criminal justice system (Rogers, 2019).
From the evidence collected so far, it would seem that the new SEND Code of
Practice, though welcomed in principle by those involved in SEN provision, in
practice is driven by the same priorities of parsimony and local authority cuts as
before, and the ideological principles of performance assessments, target setting
and testing which, many would argue, are not necessarily the most pedagogically
sound ways to run an education system. Indeed, the consequences are that the
most vulnerable in society not only tend to lose out, but suffer the most.

Chapter summary
In this chapter, we have examined the emergence of disability studies, which
pioneered the development of new ways of seeing and understanding the nature
of disability. In particular, it was responsible for identifying the social construc-
tion of disability, revealing how those with impairments are disabled by society
rather than by specific impairments. Sociology has been a relatively recent con-
tributor to both the academic and policy debate on SEN.
The insights of disability studies and sociology have undoubtedly had an
influence on policy makers and experts such as medical practitioners and psy-
chologists in bringing about a reassessment of their traditional assumptions
about disability and the education of those with SEN. With the increasing pres-
sure from the disability rights movement and international organisations such
as the UN, we have witnessed a demand for all children to be educated
together. However, such rights-based approaches to the education of children
with SEN are not universally accepted, even within the disabled community,
which is made up of a variety of groups, each representing their own disabled
culture and priorities. In addition, there is a good deal of disagreement as to
what an inclusive education system should be. Nevertheless, any model of
inclusion is required to fit into a National Curriculum that has been designed
with the ‘normal’ pupil in mind. As long as this is the case, children with SEN
are likely to remain disadvantaged, particularly in a policy climate that places
an emphasis on human capital and the importance of employability.
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11
The Social
Construction
of Childhood
Chapter aims
This chapter will examine the concept of the child against the background of its
social, cultural as well as biological context. There will be a focus on the shift in
the notion of the child as an incomplete and unformed member of society to
one of ‘the child’ as part of a social group in its own right with its own subject
matter – childhood. There will also be an examination of the claim that we live
in a child-centred society and a consideration of nineteenth-century children’s
literatures as an example of transmission of culture, thus making an impact on
the childhood experience. Foucault’s (1980) theoretical overview of schooling,
based on the ‘panopticon’ (Long, 1977), will be used here to challenge the
Enlightenment view of education as creating a liberated, rational and autono-
mous population by presenting the notion of schools as essentially places that
act like prisons for children whose actions and behaviour are controlled and
monitored very closely by those (adults) in authority.
Key words: childhood, life-cycle, life-course, socialisation, social control,

child-centred, panopticism.
Introduction
Every now and again our common-sense beliefs about the world are subject to
challenges that question our fundamental assumptions, often leaving our previ-
ous certainties in tatters. We can see this in the dramatic changes brought about
by industrialisation and urbanisation in Europe during the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries (see Chapter 2), and the civil rights movement in the last
century, which led to the increase in political, social and legal recognition for
women, oppressed racial groups, those with alternative sexualities and those
with impairments. That is not to say that there is a consensus in which everyone
agrees on the merits or desirability of such changes or the enhanced status of
these different groups. Nevertheless, the legal protection they have acquired and
their enhanced civil and political rights afford them recognition as well as pro-
tection, which they did not have before. We can see this in the recent change in
the law on same-sex marriage, which came into force in England, Scotland and
Wales in 2014. Although not everyone agrees with the changes in the law
(Squire, 2014; Williams, 2014), with some claiming that it fundamentally ends
the traditional notion of marriage, evidence shows (Park et al., 2010) that there
is a growing level of tolerance towards same-sex marriage in Britain. It could be
argued that over the past century there has also been a dramatic change in the

way in which children have been perceived as well as in the notion of childhood
itself, but accompanied by a similar degree of scepticism from some as to the
merits of the rights and benefits that children have acquired during this period
(Phillips, 1997; Postman, 1982).
The notion of the child

An interest in children as a distinct group is not new. As far back as 380 BCE,
Plato in the Republic wrote about the need for children to be educated according
to their abilities and future occupations (Plato, 2007), and Aristotle emphasised
the importance of instilling in children a strong sense of moral values, believing
that they could not be trusted to think independently (Aristotle, 1985; Verharen,
2002). Indeed, philosophers have long pondered over the nature of ‘the child’
who, according to James et al. (1998), has in turn been viewed as burdened with
the evil of ‘original sin’ and therefore in need of ‘saving’; as an innocent cor-
rupted by society – a view of the child proposed by Rousseau ([1762] 2009) in
Emile; as a blank slate, such as in Locke’s ([1693] 2007) idea of the child born
with no categories of understanding or ability to reason and who is therefore
infinitely malleable; as a naturally developing being going through specific
stages to become a ‘normal’ adult (Piaget, 1954); and as the unconscious child
of Freud (1953) and psychoanalytic theory, who is full of conflicting uncon-
scious drives that must be resolved if the child is to become a well-adjusted
adult. All these views of the child are pre-sociological according to James et al.
(1998). By this they mean that none of them places the child in her or his social
context – society, race, class or culture; however, they are the precursors of the
subject of childhood as a distinct field of study.
Early sociological approaches to the study

of childhood
The early sociology of childhood was very much based on determinist assump-
tions that the child is a product of society through the process of socialisation.
Institutions such as the school and family are identified as agents of socialisation
in which the child acquires the appropriate culture and values. This can be seen
most clearly in the work of Talcott Parsons (1961), who identifies the family as
the key institution in the process of primary socialisation. Children are rarely
looked at as children, with a focus primarily on the role of the institution doing
the socialising. If children were looked at as a group, it was usually in terms of
socialisation ‘gone wrong’ – for example, as deviants or criminal gangs. Such an
The social construction of childhood 247

approach has been criticised by Wrong (1961) for providing an ‘oversocialised
conception of man’, by which he means that there was little or no examination
of the world from the child’s perspective as an active agent in the process of
becoming an adult. Although early sociological attempts to deal with children
were rather too generalised and determinist, they do mark what James and Prout
(1997) describe as a newly emerging paradigm, which is beginning to put the
child at the centre of childhood research. A paradigm shift refers to a new way
of thinking about and conceptualising a particular issue or phenomenon (Kuhn,
1962). In this case, it relates to a ‘reconstruction’ of how we see children and
childhood. James and Prout (1997) are careful to stress that, although there is a
move towards new ways of thinking about and understanding children, there
has not been a complete break with the past in that children are still seen by
many as subordinate and in need of adult interpretation.
A shifting paradigm
The period we call childhood is regarded by most of us as a biological period
linked to the life-cycle in which we are born, develop, mature, age and die, bear-
ing in mind, of course, that not everyone will pass through those stages due to
premature death. While sociologists are interested in these biological processes
and their influences on such issues as body image, self-concept and stereotyping,
they would point out that biological age is not the only factor that determines
the stages of people’s lives. Indeed, each of these stages in the life-cycle is expe-
rienced differently around the world and at different times in each society. For
example, a person who may be considered ‘old and useless’ in one society may
be accorded high status in another. Hockey and James (1993) give various exam-
ples of societies where the signs of ageing such as dementia, grey hair and
wrinkles are seen in a positive way. The Sherbro people of Sierra Leone, for
instance, view the sometimes incomprehensible talk of the elderly as evidence
of communication with the dead ancestors of the tribe who are believed to play
a key role in the fate of the community. In other words, there is no universally
defined old age.
A universal child?
Similarly, there is no single experience of childhood, although the United
Nations (UN) has attempted to create one through its Convention on the Rights
of the Child (1989). In this declaration, which the UN expects will be adopted
by all signatories, there is a definition of the economic, cultural, educational,
civil and political rights of children, as well as an outline of the duties and

responsibilities of governments and adults for the welfare of children (UNICEF,
2009). Article 12 of the Convention identifies the right of children to be able to
express their views and for these views to be taken into consideration when deci-
sions that affect them are made. Reality, however, is very far from this ‘minority
world’ ideal of what childhood should be like. The term ‘minority world’ refers
to the more affluent developed industrial societies such as Western Europe,
which, it is alleged by some, are attempting to impose their views and ideas on
the majority world, which are the less developed countries of Africa, South East
Asia and Latin America (Boyden, 1997). The countries of the majority world may
be unable, for economic reasons, to end child labour (Article 32), or may have
cultural practices involving children that they are unwilling to give up. Article
19 of the Convention, for example, states that ‘any form of discipline involving
violence is unacceptable’. Countries such as Britain have refused to ban the use
of physical punishment by parents. In October 2008, the British Parliament
voted against ending the right of parents to ‘reasonable chastisement’ despite
the fact that the British government has agreed to comply fully with all the arti-
cles of the Convention.
Thinking point 11.1

1 Read the 45 Articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child (see References below).
2 Do you think that the UN is right in trying to create a universal concept of

childhood?
3 What might be the problem with such a concept? For example, Article 1 of
the Convention defines a child as anyone under the age of 18.
Social age
It is for these reasons that sociologists such as Ginn and Arber (1993) use the
concept of social age, which is how one feels in relation to one’s life experiences
as part of an age group, rather than one’s chronological age. A child soldier in
one of the many regional conflicts around the world, for example, will behave
in many ways like a person several years their senior, but may in some cases be
no more than 9 or 10 years old. Views of age-appropriate behaviour are therefore
socially constructed rather than based on some objective standard. This is not to
say that the experiences of such children are seen as unproblematic. However,

the age at which an individual or group can start to drink alcohol, smoke or
work for a wage is not based purely on their ability to do such things, but also
on cultural practices and traditions, and it is usually adults who decide what
children are, or are not, allowed to do. What we also find is that these practices
in terms of age change over time and vary from society to society.
To understand these differences in relation to age, sociologists refer to life-
course rather than life-cycle. The latter is based on biological or chronological
age and is particularly useful to medical practitioners and psychologists who are
interested in processes such as language acquisition and puberty, which are rela-
tively fixed in terms of timescale. Social age, on the other hand, relates to
processes that are more fluid and culturally dependent. This is not to downplay
biological factors, but to point out that they occur in a social context. In Western
societies such as Britain today, it is common for children to try to look older
than they are (Brooks, 2006; Madge, 2006; Postman, 1982). So, although they
may not be prepared for adult roles and responsibilities, they may feel the pres-
sure to develop the cultural and social characteristics of one who is.
This rush towards adulthood tells us as much about the status of adults in
Britain as it does about that of children. Indeed, while childhood and old age
occupy positions of subordination and marginality in this country, adulthood
represents a position of autonomy and power. However, although it may be the
case that childhood and old age occupy positions of subordination to adults, we
should bear in mind that adults are neither totally independent of children and
the elderly, nor are children and the elderly completely dependent on adults. It
is too easy to stereotype each group in this way when in reality each of them
contains a diversity of experiences based on factors such as social class, gender,
ethnicity and disability. To take one example, the UK Census of 2011 reveals that
there were over 166,000 young carers in Britain between the ages of 5 and 17
(UK Data Service, 2018) looking after other family members, both adults and
children, for a variety of reasons such as mental illness, sickness and old age,
although Charity Today (2018) believes that this probably underestimates the
true figure.
Life-course, like age, is socially constructed in that the ways in which differ-
ent age groups are perceived varies over time and from society to society. The
factors that shape these perceptions are social, political, historical, cultural and
ideological (Hockey and James, 2003). There has therefore been a shift away
from common-sense assumptions about childhood as primarily a biological
process in which the child is seen as a developing human in the making, to
one in which childhood is seen as much as a social construction in which
children are part of the process of constructing their own meanings and under-
standing of the world. In addition, the notion of childhood cannot be separated
from issues of class, gender and ethnicity; there is no universal experience of
being a child.

Modern childhood
One of the defining features of modern childhood is the growth in the right of
children to be educated (Ariès, 1962). Indeed, part of the definition of the
Western (minority) concept of childhood is an extended education. This is
derived from the Enlightenment view of education as a means of creating an
informed and rational population, which both liberates the human mind from
ignorance and superstition, and enables individuals to develop their full potential
(Usher and Edwards, 1994). However, many post-Enlightenment philosophers
and sociologists (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972; Foucault, 1970, 1972; Usher and
Edwards, 1994) take a more pessimistic view of the Enlightenment project and
the understanding of school as not only a place that offers education, but as a
mechanism of control in the management of large groups of children with the
implementation of discipline strategies and instruction on how to behave.
Panopticism and social control in schools

According to Deacon (2006), who explores Foucault’s theoretical overview of
education, schools have evolved as the chief mechanism of socialisation in
childhood, delivering not only a prescribed curriculum, but acting as a training
ground for the need to manage growing populations; as such, they concentrate
on specific areas, including ‘the implementation of discipline strategies; an
understanding of the apportionment of time; the management of sexuality; the
manipulation of bodies and the reconceptualisation of childhood’ (Deacon,
2006: 181). In this way, schools are understood as a disciplinary response to the
rapid changes in society and a rise in population.
The reconceptualisation of childhood is a powerful discourse that marks a
shift from the need to protect (Ariès, 1962) in the family, to the need to control
and maintain surveillance in the school (Gore, 1998), including the indirect
supervision of parents (Foucault, 1986) and society as a whole. Schools are noted
as powerful spaces of state control exercising what Foucault (1980) calls ‘episte-
mological power’ – a power to take over the knowledge of individuals from
individuals. This is made possible in the understanding of schools as prisons and
the notion of confinement itself where surveillance, accumulated knowledge
and segregation all ensure that the hidden curriculum of social control is the
scaffold around which schooling is structured. Based on this rationale, it is criti-
cal to view schools as institutions where relations of power and knowledge
connect. The education system is a prime example of government-imposed
regimes such as monitoring attendance, testing and segregation by ‘race’, class
and gender, and also from adults (Perryman, 2006). Concepts such as social con-
trol, the hidden curriculum, class-based ideologies, human capital and class-based

inequality all seem appropriate here, as well as the more conventional concepts
such as secondary socialisation, training, schools as sites for role allocation and
effective social stratification. This is illustrated by Foucault’s influential publica-
tion Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1995), in which he confirms,
‘whenever one is dealing with a multiplicity of individuals on whom a task or a
particular form of behaviour must be imposed, the panoptic schema may be
used’ (1995: 293). In this quote, the reference made to the panoptic schema is
based on Foucault’s social theory of panopticism (1995), which was influenced
by the work of the English philosopher and political radical Jeremy Bentham
and his nineteenth-century prison reforms. Bentham (1791) argued in The
Panopticon that the ideal prison would be structured in order to ensure that cells
would be open and face a central tower where individuals in the cells do not
interact with each other and are constantly confronted by the panoptic tower
(pan: all; optic: seeing). The element of wrap-around surveillance is located in
the idea that individuals cannot see when there is a person in the tower; how-
ever, the belief that they could be watched at any moment is the element that
secures their confinement. The transmission into a pedagogy of education is
swift in that theoretically the ‘panopticon’ functions successfully because it
requires little actual observation; it is the psychological fear or threat of being
observed that causes the individual (be it a prison inmate or a school pupil) to
take it upon themselves to control their own behaviour. In the school context,
pupils are socialised to internalise this fear by the surveillance gaze of teachers
and the language of discipline; the interplay of power constrains and controls
their behaviour; they become self-regulating in order to progress and succeed.
Central to this ideology is the fact that surveillance is carried out by an invisible
source reinforcing the omnipresent notion of school discipline and, ultimately,
the removal of this burden from teachers. Based on this vision of schooling,
childhood is noted as a time when social codes are embedded and understand-
ing of rewards and sanction, responsibility and conformity (Gallagher, 2011) are
transmitted via a powerful schooling culture.
Other postmodern examples of the surveillance gaze include CCTV, credit card
use, internet use (Hope, 2005) and even the fact that gyms are designed with walls
of mirrors to reinforce the notion that people are being watched and accordingly
must amend their behaviour (put in an energetic workout) in order to comply
with societal ideas about the perfect body. The anxiety and distress caused by this
form of surveillance is referred to as ‘privacy harm’ (Calo, 2012), and acknowl-
edges the idea that fear changes behaviour and that schools, in order to be
efficient, must operate on the basis of this rationale. To illustrate, Gallagher’s
(2010) ethnographic research based in a primary school in Scotland reports evi-
dence of ‘embodied docility’, where surveillance is a feature of everyday life so that
behaviour is monitored not just because children can be seen (by a teacher), but
because they might be seen. This panoptic school ethos is extended to sounds, what

Gallagher calls ‘sonic surveillance’, so that children are socialised to associate quiet
behaviour with good work. In a further development, the panoptic school encour-
ages children to become part of the surveillance of each other, and also of teachers
and adults in the classroom; in this sense, the illusion of control is all-consuming,
as the surveillance gaze is so widely spread between so many willing participants.
This final element is perhaps the most worrying in terms of contemporary dis-
courses on child-centred schooling, teaching and learning, as the inevitable
influence of the panoptic ethos would be very challenging to overcome.
A child-centred society?
In order to examine the claim that we live in a child-centred society, it is impor-
tant to reflect on the legacy of history to consider how and if changes have taken
place in our (Western) conceptualisation of childhood. Additionally, it is critical
to be mindful of the technological age we now live in and how this alone has
acted as a catalyst in the erosion of childhood innocence. The historian Philippe
Ariès (1962) has argued that childhood, as a separate stage of personal develop-
ment, did not exist in early medieval times; instead, children were depicted in
art and literature as ‘little adults’, and accordingly they dressed and worked as
adults (Jordanova, 1987). However, the eighteenth century is notable for the
change that took place when people began to understand children as inherently
different from adults, paying attention to their vulnerability and sense of being
impressionable and in need of protection and care from adults in general, very
much in line with contemporary discourses on childhood. A consequence of this
shift was the notion of a ‘new world of childhood’ where adults were able to
nurture affection and compassion for the childhood experience, as reflected in
the development of schools, toys, games and children’s literature (Kramnick,
1983). The explosion of industrialisation and the era of expansion in the nine-
teenth century saw a dramatic and damaging change in how children were
viewed: their physical and psychological welfare were not considered when
empire building was so pressing. The hard, cold reality is that it was partly child
labour in Britain that sustained economic progress during the industrial age
(Humphries, 2011), the legacy of which has left an enduring impact.
Reading and viewing suggestion

The Children Who Built Victorian Britain, Part 1 (Bev, 2011): www.youtube.com/
watch?v=87eVOpbcoVo
(Continued)

Watch this YouTube clip to provide a context, from the child’s perspective, of
the work and treatment they were subjected to before progressing onto the
academic journal reader below.
Humphries, J. (2012) ‘Childhood and child labour in the British industrial revo-
lution’, Economic History Review, 2: 1–27.
In this journal paper, Professor Jane Humphries explores a revisionist history of

child labour that takes account of an increase in the relative productivity of chil-
dren as a result of mechanisation, new divisions of labour and family instability.
Shuttleworth (2010) provides an alternative lens through which to view child-

hood, using literature and literary texts suggesting that:
Literary texts played a definitive role, opening up initially the internal spaces of the
child mind, suggesting hitherto unsuspected depths of emotions and thought, and
then responding to, qualifying, and questioning scientific and medical theories.
Literary texts did not simply supply material for medical case studies . . . they also
helped frame the questions and categories of an emerging scientific field.
(Shuttleworth, 2010: 362)
As a consequence, classical children’s books not only captured the creative

imaginations of children, but also offered a compelling narrative supporting
varied discourses on childhood. To illustrate, Peter Pan (1904) suggested that
childhood should last forever, despite obvious dangers, in a blissful state of hap-
piness; The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56) championed the child hero myth
alongside a powerful narrative of spirituality, the nature of God and eschatology;
The Hobbit (1937) captured myth and adventure with an enduring message of
seeking inner courage and strength; The Wind in the Willows (1908) reflects on
the challenges of facing change through lovable animal characters; and finally,
Charlotte’s Web (1952) delivers the message of friendship and how our identity is
formed through our relationships.
Children’s literature provides a compelling insight into the political and cul-
tural influences of the era and also acts as a vehicle for the transmission of
culture to the next generation. Therefore, it is important to consider the devel-
opment of thinking on issues around ‘race’ and childhood in the context of a
discussion of nineteenth-century children’s literature, in particular on the rise of
the orientalist (Said, 1978) mindset. As the British Empire changed, so did
Britain’s relationship to it, as noted in the representation of the exotic other in
children’s literature. As Said confirms, ‘nineteenth century writers were extraor-
dinarily well aware of the fact of empire’ (1978: 14).

To illustrate, Lewis Carroll’s fantasy classic Alice in Wonderland (1865) is an
example of this transmission process. Alice, the very representation of Englishness,
travels to fantasy lands occupied by unfamiliar beings living by strange rules that
are a total contrast to her own social order. In a croquet match with the Queen
of Hearts, Alice concludes: ‘I don’t think they play at all fairly, and they all quar-
rel so dreadfully one can’t hear oneself speak – and they don’t seem to have any
rules in particular: at least, if there are, nobody attends to them’ (Carroll, [1865]
2004: 97). The characters that Alice interacts with are a potent indication of
colonial discourse: they are savage, animal-like and ugly, whereas Alice has clas-
sic features, blonde, white and angelic. This theme is a dominant strand, as Alice
explores the unfamiliar ‘Wonderland’, so Britain navigates her fragile relation-
ship with her colonies (Bivona, 1986) and the only coping mechanism in all this
strangeness of new worlds, magical food and drink and interesting characters is
to emphasise her (British) sense of morality and nobility. This is the marker of
the colonial ideology, as explored by the postcolonial critic Homi K. Bhabha
(1994) in his influential study of culture, where the morals and social codes of
the coloniser are imposed on the inferior and uncultured colonised in order to
create balance.
In a further example, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911)
tells the story of Mary Lennox, who starts the story as a sickly, ugly child,
spoilt and unruly, a product of her environment in India, and ends the story
as an English rose living in England having experienced a spectacular natu-
ralisation through her interactions with varied characters and the discovery of
a secret garden. Abandoned by her parents, Mary is cared for by natives with
whom the way she conducts herself is a parallel to how the political reports
(Freeman, 1907) reflect the way that Britain conducts itself in India: ‘Indian
servants were commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom to
say “Please” and “Thank you”, and Mary had always slapped her Ayah in the
face when she was angry.’ The transformation of Mary is a central theme in
the book; a lengthy process that is dependent on unlearning the corrupt
behaviours of the colonies in the course of her travels. This point is reinforced
as her transformation and her understanding of Britishness takes place in the
garden, decorated only by roses and a robin, and symbolic of the heart of
England, the British countryside.
To conclude, this discussion of nineteenth-century literature as an example
of how ideas about ‘race’ become part of a culture that is transmitted to chil-
dren has included classic sources, however, they are by no means the exception,
as illustrated by the work of Kutzer (2000). The emerging picture of a popular
culture, framed by political and social changes in Britain, which shapes chil-
dren’s understanding of non-white people, is one of extremes, stereotypes and
powerful misinformation, as Little (1947) concludes:

that popular knowledge was pseudo-anthropological, and concerns the ‘mental
inferiority’ of coloured people; the biological ‘ill-effects’ of racial crossing and a
variety of other superstitions. It is in this cultural ‘atmosphere’ that most children in
English society grow up. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of them absorb
prejudicial ideas and notions concerning coloured people. (Little, 1947: 151)
Growing child poverty

A further important indicator of how child-centred we are as a society is the level
of poverty experienced by our children. It is also a sign of how children are divided
by class inequalities. Young people and children are among the most vulnerable
members of society, particularly those with disabilities (see Chapter 10), and yet
the evidence from a variety of sources such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
(Wright and Anderson, 2018), the Resolution Foundation (Corlett, 2019) and the
Child Poverty Action Group (2019a, b) suggest that child poverty has not only
grown since 2015 after a period of decline under New Labour, but is likely to
increase even further over the next five years (2019–24) if current policies and
trends continue (Corlett, 2019).
Under the Child Poverty Act of 2010, the British government had set itself a
legally binding commitment to end child poverty by 2020. Indeed, the Poverty
and Social Exclusion (PSE, 2019) research group states that ‘Labour governments
cut child poverty on a scale and at a pace unmatched by other industrial nations
during the period 1998–2010, campaigners have concluded’, but goes on to say
‘they warn that the government’s policies since 2010 risk wiping out all the gains
made’ (PSE, 2019). This seems to have been the case. In 2016, the Conservative
government abolished the Child Poverty Act of 2010 and with it the 2020 target
with the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Act (CPAG, 2019a, b). The
Resolution Foundation, which is an independent think tank with former
Conservative minister David Willetts as its current (2019) Executive Chairman,
forecasts a rise in child poverty to record levels between 2016 and 2017, and
2022 and 2023 (Corlett, 2019: 4). The reasons given by these organisations for
this rise are varied, but most are in agreement that they relate to the austerity
measures introduced by the coalition government in 2010, which continued
under the Conservative governments elected in 2015 and 2017. Moreover, it has
been pointed out that the consequences of these measures for the poor have
been further exacerbated by what the Resolution Foundation calls the ‘Article 50
period’ (2017–19) of uncertainty over Britain’s exit from the European Union
(Brexit) (Corlett, 2019: 3). Indeed, it was amid the continuing political noise
generated by the Brexit process that in May 2019 the United Nations released
Professor Philip Alston’s report on poverty in the UK: Visit to the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UNHRC, 2019a). Alston is an eminent

human rights lawyer appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council
(UNHRC) to examine extreme poverty in the United Kingdom.
Case study 11.1

Children and extreme poverty in the UK
The UK is a signatory to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (see
Chapter 10). However, in a report released in 2019 produced by a team led by Philip
Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the UK govern-
ment is deemed to be in breach of its human rights obligations (UNHRC, 2019a: 8).
As part of his research, Alston spent eleven days during November 2017 in the UK
holding consultations and meetings at various locations in England, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland. He also received over 300 submissions from a variety of public
organisations, charities, academics and individuals from all the nations and regions
of the UK (UNHCR, 2019b). For a nation that prides itself not only as a beacon of
democracy and human rights, but also as one of the first to create a comprehensive
welfare state specifically designed to eliminate ‘want, ignorance, disease and squa-
lor’ (Beveridge, 1942), this charge was met with surprise, if not incredulity, by many
including the government (Booth, 2019). Yet more than 70 years after the establish-
ment of the welfare state, it is claimed in a number of recent independent reports,
including Alston’s, that a significant proportion of households in Britain, particularly
those with children and/or a disabled person, are experiencing not only poverty and
homelessness, but also extreme poverty (Social Metrics Commission, 2018; UNHRC,
2019a). The UNHRC report provides graphic and disturbing accounts of the areas of
Britain with high concentrations of poverty and deprivation, including evidence of
increasing numbers of children turning up for school hungry, and whose families are
becoming increasingly dependent on food banks.
Under the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, the UK government no longer has
an official measure of poverty. As a result, Alston (UNHRC, 2019a) adopted the ‘new
poverty measure’ developed by the new Social Metrics Commission (2018). This is a
comprehensive framework for measuring poverty using a number of criteria including
family composition, immediate needs, available material resources and a comparison
of these needs and resources over time. Using this definition and data from the New
Metrics Commission Alston estimates that one in three (4.5 million) children in the UK
live in poverty (2016/17) (Social Metrics Commission, 2018: 112). This is supported
by a UNICEF study of food insecurity across the globe (Pereira et al., 2017) which also
(Continued)

found that 10 per cent of these children living in poverty in the UK were experiencing
severe food insecurity – that is, having to go without food and feeling hungry, leading to
potentially adverse health outcomes (UNICEF, 2017). The European average for severe
food insecurity is 4 per cent (Pereira et al., 2017).
The psychological, physical and social consequences of children living with hun-
ger and the stigma of having to rely on charity and food banks have been recorded
in a number of studies and inquiries, including Children’s Future Food Inquiry (The
Food Foundation 2019) and Hancock et al. (2016), and are corroborated by the expe-
riences of teachers in poorer areas of the UK (Marsh, 2019). Wilkinson (2019) uses
the phrase ‘bodies remember’ to highlight the physical effects of food hunger in the
most economically deprived parts of the country where hospital admissions for rick-
ets are at a 50-year high (Goldacre et al., 2014) and where children are on average
1 centimetre smaller by age 10 than those living in more prosperous areas (Hancock
et al., 2016). Such evidence relating to current conditions experienced by the poor
in Britain seem to be related to the government’s economic and social policies and
appear to be completely at odds with its stated aim of putting ‘government firmly
on the side of not only the poorest in our society, important though that is and will
remain, but also of those in Britain who are working hard but just about managing’
(May, 2016: 3). Moreover, such policies are unlikely to lead to Theresa May’s goal
of wanting ‘Britain to be the world’s great meritocracy – a country where everyone
has a fair chance to go as far as their talent and their hard work will allow’ (May,
2016: 3) (see Chapter 7).
Perhaps the most significant point Alston (UNHRC, 2019a) makes is that the pov-
erty he reports on in the UK is, he believes, entirely avoidable, despite the govern-
ment’s claim that there was no alternative in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.
Britain, he points out, is not a poor nation struggling to develop, it is ‘the world’s
fifth largest economy, is a leading centre of global finance, boasts a “fundamen-
tally strong” economy and currently enjoys record low levels of unemployment’
(UNHRC, 2019a: 3). He suggests that the country is well placed to mobilise the kinds
of resources that could prevent such levels of poverty occurring that threaten the
health, welfare as well the educational progress of so many young people.
Despite its very critical tone, the UNHRC (2019a) report does give credit to
the government where it is due and also makes a number of appropriate rec-
ommendations regarding how the current situation can be ameliorated. Indeed,
Alston commends the government’s attempt to simplify a highly complex benefits
system through the introduction of a single universal credit (UC) and also its deci-
sion to increase in-work allowances as part of its strategy to get people back into
work. However, he claims that these positive developments have been seriously
undermined by the benefit cuts imposed after the Budget of 2015, which includes
the limiting of benefits to two children per family. These, he suggests, have had

a profound impact on the income of larger families by around £2,800 a year per
child. Moreover, the way the UC has been implemented with its five-week delay in
the payment of benefits from the time of application and the harsh sanctions for
minor infringements are believed to be causing serious hardship for many families
and their children (Fitzpatrick and Patrick, 2019). It is significant that despite gov-
ernment assurances that ‘we are all in this together’ (Osborne, 2014), alongside
these austerity measures that mainly affect the poor, in 2018 it introduced large
income tax cuts for higher earners (Corlett, 2019: 6).
Alston concludes that the government’s policies on poverty reduction are not
working and instead are exacerbating the situation. However, despite the evidence
that he claims shows this, Alston states that the government has ‘doubled down’
(UNHRC, 2019a: 20) on these policies, suggesting that they are not being imple-
mented out of necessity but rather for ideological reasons. Some very strong lan-
guage is used in the report to describe the situation of the poor in the UK, and
the British government clearly took exception not only to its tone, but also to the
evidence presented, claiming in an official statement that it is ‘a barely believ-
able documentation of Britain based on a tiny period of time spent here’ and ‘a
completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty’ (Booth, 2019).
Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary, was so incensed by its contents that
she intends to submit a formal complaint to the UN.
You might like to read the relevant documents in order to judge the case and the
evidence for yourself.
• Alston’s UNHRC (2019a) report can be found online at: https://undocs.org/A/

HRC/41/39/Add.1
• Amber Rudd’s response can be seen in the following report by Booth (2019):
www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/22/amber-rudd-to-lodge-complaint-
over-un-austerity-report.
• The Social Metrics Commission (2018) report, A New Measure of Poverty for the
UK, is available online at: https://socialmetricscommission.org.uk/
• The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) (see articles 22 and 23(3))
and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (see articles 4 and 27) that
relate to the UK’s human rights obligations can be found online at: (UDHR) www.
un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
(CRC) www.unicef.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/UNCRC_united_nations_
convention_on_the_rights_of_the_child.pdf
(Continued)

From this case study, a number of discussion points arise. You will undoubtedly think
of more:
• How seriously should we take this report? After all, how much does Alston really
know about Britain if he only spent a few days here? After having read the UNHRC
report and other sources, do you think this criticism made by the government is
a valid one?
• Given that the poor, and in particular poor children and young people, are rela-
tively weak and are powerless in terms of what is done to them by the govern-
ment, they need someone with influence to speak on their behalf and to remind
the government of its obligations. What do you think of the way in which the UN
Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty represented their case?
• Given the information and evidence covered in this chapter as well as in Chapter 7,
how realistic is it to expect Britain to become the ‘great meritocracy’ that Theresa
May aspires to?
Chapter summary
In this chapter, the concept of the child was explored against the background
of its social and biological context, including a focus on the shift in the notion
of the child as an unformed member of society, to one of the child as part of
a social group in its own right with its own subject matter – childhood.
Foucault’s (1980) theoretical overview of schooling, based on the ‘panopticon’
(Long, 1977) was used to unpack the notion of schools as spaces of social con-
trol for children whose actions and behaviour are monitored very closely by
those (adults) in authority. Finally, the notion that we live in a child-centred
society was considered in the light of nineteenth-century children’s literature
as an example of the transmission of culture that can make an impact on the
childhood experience, and also in terms of evidence relating to child poverty.
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12
Education Policy
Chapter aims
This chapter aims to present an examination of education policy in Britain
since 1945 when the welfare state was established. It traces the key shifts in
policy from a period of post-war consensus between the two main political
parties in which equality of opportunity and meritocracy were key elements,
and how during the Thatcher period a new set of priorities relating to the
economy and efficiency came to dominate education policy and continue to
do so.
Key words: policy, welfare state, meritocracy, equality of opportunity, social

mobility, post-war consensus, Great Debate, human capital, extrinsic and
intrinsic purposes of education, decolonisation of the curriculum.
Introduction
What soon becomes clear in an examination of education policy in the UK since
1945 is the sheer number of policy documents, curriculum reports, teaching
strategies and legislation produced by successive governments. As a conse-
quence, it is extremely difficult to gain a comprehensive knowledge of the field,
given the quantity of information produced. Clearly, no single book can do
justice to this topic and it is even more problematic when covering it in a single
chapter. Inevitably, there will be a degree of selectivity regarding what is seen as
relevant in terms of current policy debates.
A further point of significance is that the Department for Education is one of
the biggest spending government departments and has experienced a real-terms
growth year on year since 1955–56, reaching a peak of 6.2 per cent of national
income between 2009 and 2010 (£90.5 billion) (Chowdry and Sibieta, 2011).
The level of importance placed by politicians on Britain’s international reputa-
tion in terms of education performance can be seen in their response to the
publication of international data such as the Programme for International
Student Attainment (PISA). The results for 2012, for example, which indicated
that the overall performance of Britian’s teenagers had stagnated since 2009,
were met with a good deal of hand-wringing and accusations as to who should
take the blame (PISA, 2013).
If we take account of public opinion, education consistently comes second
only to health in the list of the British public’s priorities for state spending (Park
et al., 2010). By any standard of assessment, the education system is a field of
extremes, of which much is expected by both government and the public.

Global processes
It is becoming increasingly apparent that education policy is influenced by
global processes and trends, and that the economy is the key priority for educa-
tion policy making in Britain (Ball, 2008, 2013). For example, in their report
University of the Future, Ernst & Young (2012) identify the potential future expan-
sion of the emerging economies of the Far East, Latin America and South Asia,
and what this means for the global market in education. The report suggests that
the British higher education sector is in a strong position to take advantage of
the situation, given its high reputation globally. However, it predicts that the
existing model of predominantly state-funded higher education with a minority
of independent private sector providers is likely to change, with private compa-
nies using their commercial expertise and networks to create new and more
flexible higher educational products either on their own or in partnership with
existing traditional providers. We are, in the opinion of the Ernst & Young
report, on the cusp of a new era in education.
Key themes since 1945

In any assessment of post-war education policy a number of key periods can be
identified that have thrown up significant developments and fundamental
debates. Between 1945 and 1979, a post-war consensus existed among the
political parties in which welfare policy generally and education in particular
was based on a social democratic agenda featuring such concepts as meritocracy,
social mobility and equality of opportunity. These terms relate to a belief that
education could be used as a means of equalising a very divided society in
which the privileged middle and upper classes had almost exclusive access to
secondary and higher education. In the words of the eminent English historian
R.H. Tawney (1931): ‘The hereditary curse of the English Education system is
its organisation on the basis of class’.
During the 1970s, however, there was a collapse of this consensus and a grow-
ing debate about what the priorities of the education system should be. The New
Right was already carrying out a lively debate in the form of a series of articles
by right-wing thinkers such as Rhodes Boyson (Cox and Boyson, 1975) and
Keith Joseph (1975). They were highly critical of the move away from selection
in the post-war period and what they saw as the excessive involvement of the
state in directing education policy in terms of equality of opportunity, which
they saw as an attack on Britain’s educational ‘crown jewels’, the public schools,
grammar schools and the traditional academic curriculum. Ironically, it was a
Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, who publicly opened the debate in
Education policy 267

1976 when he suggested that Britain was falling behind other industrial societies
because the education system was not providing the skills needed for an increas-
ingly complex global economy. This ‘Great Debate’ resulted in a new discourse
in education policy that has come to dominate the agenda on education ever
since (OECD, 2017).
The dawn of a new era

In 1945, Britain embarked on a new kind of politics and society: one based on
a social democratic agenda in which all citizens would be part of a ‘New
Jerusalem’ – in other words, a new promised land. In Britain, Germany and
France there was division on the political left between those who hoped for a
democratically elected socialist government and those who suggested that only
a proletarian (workers’) revolution could overthrow the political and economic
elites who refused to share power and wealth created in the new industrial era
with the emerging working class. Indeed, Durkheim spent much of his aca-
demic life trying to provide an alternative to socialism and revolutionary
change. In this instance, Britain had come up with its own democratically
elected socialist government without the bloodshed that so many in the estab-
lishment feared. This was no small feat given the terrible experiences resulting
from the socialist revolutions in Russia (1917) and China (1946).
The post-war agreement

What the British electorate voted for in 1945, particularly the British working
classes who constituted the majority of the population at the time, was a more
egalitarian and democratic society, in which the privilege of birth and wealth
would no longer determine a person’s future. It became known as Labour’s social
democratic agenda, and was even embraced by the Conservatives during the
1960s and 1970s – hence, the term ‘political consensus’. This involved a ‘cradle-
to-grave’ approach to health, education, unemployment and retirement, paid
for by general taxation and a system of social insurance into which everyone
contributed. Such a system was not based on the principle that one would
expect to receive from the welfare state as much as one put into it. Instead, it
was based on the idea that everyone received what they needed and that the
fortunate members of society in terms of educational achievement and occupa-
tional rewards – that is, the wealthy – would probably put more into the system
than they took out. There was also a policy of full employment, which, together
with free education from 5 to 15 years (later 16), would ensure a highly skilled

and educated workforce and the allocation of positions and employment based
on merit (Young, 1958).
This is the programme on which Labour won the 1945 general election and the
main reason why Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party, which had no alterna-
tive to offer the returning soldiers after the war, lost. Labour offered a new and
seemingly fairer society and a welfare state. For those of us who were not alive at
the time, it is hard to imagine Britain in the immediate aftermath of the Second
World War. Not only was there wide-scale destruction caused by bombing, but
there was also the huge class divide in education alluded to by Tawney in 1931,
the squalor caused by poor housing and the massive health divide that was a
product of these poor living conditions and the lack of a proper health service.
However, despite this popular vote for socialism, the programme itself was
based on weak foundations. Economically, Britain was very poor after the years
of war and when in 1951 the government decided to rearm and to build the
atomic bomb, there was a corresponding reduction in the funding available for
the health service, welfare and education reforms. In addition, critics of the new
welfare system on the left (Miliband, 1969) claimed that the main levers of gov-
ernment and the media, parliament, the civil service, central government and
the judiciary, as well as the press, remained in the hands of an economic and
political elite that, according to Ralph Miliband (1969), was unlikely to counte-
nance the collapse of capitalism in Britain. He suggested that even those
politicians from non-elite working-class backgrounds who manage to make it
into government tend ultimately to be inculcated into the values of the elite and
become part of the establishment.
The tripartite system

At that time, the ideas of Cyril Burt still had a great deal of influence on official
educational thinking and they played a key role in the conclusions of the 1943
Norwood Report, which was responsible for the design of the post-war education
system. There was an implicit assumption within the report of the existence of a
limited pool of ability in the population and that such talent could be identified at
11 years, by which age, Burt suggested, children’s intelligence is fixed – hence, the
establishment of a tripartite school system made up of grammar schools for the
academically gifted, and secondary moderns and technical high schools for those
demonstrating less academic talent. The selection process was administered through
the supposedly objective measure of academic ability known as the ‘11-plus’.
Despite the notional parity of esteem between these three types of school, the gram-
mar schools with their academic curriculum were held up as the model against
which all state education was to be judged.

A wastage of talent?
In addition to the myth of parity of esteem (Banks, 1955), it soon became evi-
dent that grammar schools were better resourced than the other types of school
and that recruitment to the grammar schools tended to be from the more afflu-
ent groups in society. Evidence such as the Early Leaving Report (Ministry of
Education, 1954) showed that working-class pupils (Registrar General’s Socio
Economic Classes 4 and 5) gained only half as many grammar school places as
might be expected in terms of their proportion of the population. As we have
seen in previous chapters, Burt’s notion of the heritability of intelligence was
highly flawed and made little allowance for late developers. For example, chil-
dren attending secondary moderns and technical high schools were denied the
right to enter for public examinations.
When the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) was introduced in 1965, it
was considered a distinctly second-rate qualification for which mainly working-
class children were entered (Smith and Tomlinson, 1989). Moreover, since access
to higher education was becoming increasingly based on public examinations,
this placed children from more modest backgrounds at an even greater disadvan-
tage. It is no surprise, then, that the majority of working-class children left school
as soon as they could at 15. In 1959, the Crowther Report referred to this as a
‘wastage of talent’ (Ministry of Education, 1959). The political debate regarding
this issue and the growing acknowledgement by politicians of both main parties
of the need to educate more young people to a higher level led to a huge expan-
sion of higher education during the 1960s. What had not been resolved, however,
was how to ensure that the potential talents of working-class pupils were not
wasted, but instead had a much fairer chance of being nurtured and developed
(Committee on Higher Education, 1963 (Robbins Report)).
English fudge
In the 1960s, both Labour and the Conservatives flirted with the idea of a
comprehensive system, though generally speaking Conservative politicians
were much less enthusiastic, seeing it as a threat to grammar schools and pub-
lic schools. In the end, neither party acted with conviction, so the result was a
traditional English fudge, which resulted in a mixture of comprehensive and
tripartite systems. The Labour leadership had always tended to be rather equi
vocal about creating a comprehensive system of education. Tony Benn (1994)
reflects in his diaries that even though comprehensivisation had become official
Labour policy by the early 1950s, Hugh Gaitskell, the Labour leader at the
time, still saw selection as the preferred policy for transfer to secondary school.

His successor, Harold Wilson, is alleged to have stated that grammar schools
would be abolished ‘over my dead body’ (Pimlott, 1992: 512), which might
explain why in 1965 the Labour government issued circular 10/65 ‘requesting’
local education authorities to submit plans for the implementation of a com-
prehensive system rather than requiring them to do so. It seemed that the
leaders of both main parties were torn between the pressure to create a fairer
and more open education system and a desire to retain the traditional educa-
tion of the past, from which so many of them had benefited.
A ‘comprehensive failure’
When the comprehensive system was introduced by Labour during the 1960s, it
became the focus of those who saw in comprehensive schools all that is bad in
the English education system. The writers of the Black Papers (Cox and Boyson,
1975) began painting a bleak and highly tendentious picture of schooling in
England (Tomlinson, 2005). The tone of these accounts amount to a ‘discourse
of derision’ (Kenway, cited in Ball, 2013: 104), which focuses on extreme and
negative images of public service and welfare with the intention of using them
to discredit the whole system. These right-wing thinkers condemned what they
viewed as the falling standards of teaching, declining respect for authority
among young people, the danger of pupils being indoctrinated by left-wing
teachers and profligate local authorities led by left-wing councils. In addition,
there was a warning of the threat to society posed by those intellectually
unsuited to higher education gaining access to it through social engineering
advocated by those on the left (Cox and Boyson, 1975).
These ideas have been reiterated more recently by Boris Johnson when he
gave the Margaret Thatcher lecture in 2013 at the Centre for Policy Studies, the
organisation set up by Keith Joseph in 1975 to promote neoliberal ideas and
policies (Johnson, 2013). In the speech, Johnson acclaims the virtues of greed in
encouraging competition and wealth, as well as of the market in promoting
human progress rather than a reliance on the state to do so. He suggests that
because we are all born with a given amount of intelligence, inequalities of
income, wealth and influence are natural and essential, and that it is these more
successful individuals who should lead society. Moreover, he speaks of the vir-
tues of charitable giving by the wealthy rather than taxing them to support the
poorer and less intelligent members of society.
It could be suggested that in Johnson, the classically trained graduate of Eton
and Oxford, we can see the modern-day incarnation of the nineteenth-century
Victorian upper-class gentleman who takes the Platonic view of justice (see
Chapter 1) as a state in which everyone knows their place and where the privi-
lege of a higher education should be reserved only for the most intelligent, who,

also knowing their place, help those less fortunate than themselves through
philanthropic giving. To disturb this natural order can only lead to social chaos
according to this view (see Table 12.1 below for a summary of neoliberal ideas).
Table 12.1 Left versus Right
Democratic socialism New Right/neoliberalism
•• State ownership of the key parts (commanding •• A challenge to the welfare state.
heights) of the economy such as transport,
energy (oil, coal, power stations), steel and
other key industries (e.g. ship building).
•• The creation of a fairer society through •• To reduce public spending on welfare in
a comprehensive welfare system (free order to be able to cut taxes and enable
healthcare and education, public housing) businesses to invest their profits, as
as well as equal opportunities for all in well as to reduce the dependency of the
education. public on benefits.
•• High public spending on these services •• To subject public services to market
based on the principle of a progressive system competition in order to increase their
of taxation. ‘efficiency’.
•• To counter the worst of the effects of market •• That educational institutions should
capitalism such as cyclical unemployment, become more like private businesses
low wages and their effects. responding to the needs of the market
and their customers through competition.
•• A system to be won through democratic •• To reduce the power of the trade unions,
means. which were believed to be reducing the
efficiency of (British) industry through
industrial action and restrictive practices.
The period of radical student activity during the 1960s and 1970s was evi-
dence enough for those who feared Labour’s social democratic programme. One
of the first acts of Margaret Thatcher when she became Education Minister in
1970 was to issue Circular 10/70, which effectively suspended Circular 10/65.
Thatcher, educated at Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ (Grammar) School, and
Oxford, was determined to keep the system of selection and grammar schools.
Her plans were interrupted, but only temporarily, when in October 1974 Labour
won by a narrow margin the second general election of that year.
The breakdown in the consensus

Under the Labour government of 1974–79 there was another effort to introduce
a non-selective secondary education system in the form of the 1976 Education
Act. This, however, was the last serious attempt by the party to do so. There had

been a shift of focus away from inequality of opportunity and social mobility to
one of educational standards, human capital, economic competitiveness and
concerns about increasing welfare spending.
This shift of emphasis was already evident as far back as 1957 when the ‘One
Nation’ Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan stated in a speech that
the people of Britain ‘had never had it so good’, referring to the growing post-
war prosperity of the nation. One Nation Conservatives were the dominant wing
of the Conservative Party at the time. They enabled the post-war consensus to
exist by supporting a significant number of Labour policies. Many Conservative
politicians such as Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath had grown up in the
interwar period and witnessed the terrible effects of the Great Depression that
ruined the lives of many. High levels of unemployment and deprivation were
still strong in their memories and resulted in their support for the ideas of a
mixed economy as a way of softening the harsher effects of free-market capital-
ism. However, as Macmillan had suggested, the country was becoming
prosperous and, though still fragile, the economy was creating undreamt of
prosperity. Nevertheless, the One Nation position of the Conservative leadership
was slowly being challenged by the more radical free-market neoliberalism of
Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher, who viewed the increasing role of the state
with growing concern.
The rediscovery of poverty

Some Conservative politicians and political thinkers at the time believed that
the welfare state had done its job and was outgrowing its usefulness. The cost of
free universal education, healthcare and other benefits was, in their opinion,
spiralling out of control and stifling individual responsibility. Poverty no longer
existed as shown by Rowntree (Rowntree, 1901; Rowntree and Lavers, 1951),
whose large-scale surveys on living standards in York since 1901 revealed that
poverty had fallen from 33 per cent of the population of that city in 1899 to
18 per cent in 1936, and to only 1.5 per cent in 1950. The conclusion many
people drew from this research was that poverty in England had been defeated.
So, when in 1965 Abel-Smith and Townsend suggested that 14.2 per cent of the
population, including 2.2 million children, were living on the margins of pov-
erty in 1960, it was greeted with incredulity by many politicians, especially those
on the political right. They suggested that it was preposterous to claim that what
Abel-Smith and Townsend had found was anything other than inequality
(Moore, 1989). As Rowntree had shown, only a tiny fraction of the population
was earning poverty-level wages and the assumption was that the welfare state
would provide a safety net for them.

Educational priority areas
While those on the right were inclined to see the poorer educational perfor-
mance of the working class as resulting from their lower intelligence and
inappropriate lifestyles (Cox and Dyson, 1969), those on the moderate left
believed it was possible to ‘compensate’ for the poorer home environments of
working-class families with more targeted state spending on the poorest areas of
the country (Halsey, 1972). In the Labour leadership, this position was seen as
more palatable than that of the radical left, which advocated a greater degree of
income equality. What was becoming evident is that although the welfare state
established in 1945 had alleviated the worst effects of the class inequalities in
Britain that had resulted from unequal income distribution, there did not seem
to be a significant shift of income from the top earners towards the bottom, nor
indeed any change in the rate of social mobility upwards from among the work-
ing class (Goldthorpe, 1980). Atkinson (1983) examined the trends in income
distribution between 1948 and 1979 and found that although the top 10 per
cent of earners saw a 3.7 per cent fall in their income after income tax from 27.1
per cent of total income in 1948 to 23.4 per cent in 1979, the poorest 30 per cent
of the population actually experienced a fall in their share of income after tax
from 14.6 per cent to 12.1 per cent during the same period. The main beneficiar-
ies were in fact the middle 60 per cent.
However, rather than address the issue of income inequality, Labour began to
place extra resources in parts of the country designated as Educational Priority
Areas (EPAs), the assumption being that the reason for the underperformance of
working-class children was their unfavourable home conditions. The Labour
Education Secretary Tony Crosland had adopted the recommendations of the
Plowden Report of 1967 (DES, 1967), which suggested that extra resources should
be centred on the schools and communities of the poorest parts of the UK in order
to help improve the educational environment of the children in these areas.
The lack of any discernible improvement in the educational performance of
the children in these EPAs, however, triggered a debate about whether it was
appropriate to apply a deficit model to working-class families. For those on the
right such as Cox and Dyson (1969), the results of the programme were confir-
mation of the cultural deprivation of the working classes and the inability of
such families to effectively socialise their children. Those on the left were very
critical of the assumption that the problem lay with the victims of poverty and
that working-class culture is somehow deficient (Keddie, 1973), or that a small-
scale temporary allocation of extra resources could make a real difference to
those living in poverty. A.H. Halsey, the sociologist who supervised the EPA
programme for Tony Crosland, was critical of the limited funding and lack of a
long-term strategy. The Plowden Report had recommended that 3,000 schools

should be involved, but in the end only about 150 benefited from the extra
resources. To have had any real impact, he suggested that the policy should have
been more sustained and widespread (Halsey, 1972). In addition, he acknowl-
edged that a structural approach would be needed, involving a more equitable
distribution of income. However, neither Conservative nor Labour governments
were prepared to take such radical measures.
The shift in educational priorities

Both Labour and Conservative governments, however, were beginning to
have little time for sociologists and their claim that it was the system that had
let ‘ordinary kids’ down. The political climate was changing and politicians
were starting to focus their attention away from issues of inequality and on
to wider economic problems. In the 1960s and 1970s, Britain seemed to lurch
from one economic crisis to another and in comparison to most of its foreign
competitors economic growth was poor (Walker, 1987). The Labour govern-
ment under Callaghan (1976–79) began to fear that Britain’s economic
decline was partly due to the lack of emphasis in schools on the vocational
skills needed by a competitive modern economy. What Callaghan did in his
Ruskin speech of 1976 was to identify some of the key themes that have
dominated the education policy agenda ever since. In particular, he identified
what he saw as the need for the education system to prepare young people for
their role in the economy, as well as their place in society. Resorting perhaps
to a discourse of derision, he pointed an accusing finger at teachers for, in his
view, failing to teach children basic skills of literacy and numeracy, and for
failing to implement curricula that were fit for purpose. The following year,
however, the education Green Paper Education in Schools (DES, 1977) reported
that there was, in fact, no evidence of a fall in standards in schools.
The neoliberal revolution

With the election of the Conservatives in 1979, many of the ideas contained in
the Black Papers were brought to life and there began a period of radical social
and economic reform that severely divided the nation. Thatcherism placed great
demands on the country, and the legacy of Thatcher’s rule is such that when she
died in 2013, alongside the mourning of her supporters, there was an unsettling
level of celebration among her detractors.
The Conservative government set about immediately reforming the econ-
omy and public sector driven by the conviction that the British public had

become too dependent on the welfare state and that the trade unions, including
the teaching unions, had become too powerful. Thatcher’s government
embarked on a programme to reduce public spending on welfare in order to be
able to cut taxes and enable businesses to invest their profits, as well as to
reduce what she saw as the dependency of the British public on benefits. In
addition, she subjected public services to market competition with the inten-
tion of increasing their efficiency. Keith Joseph, who had professed his hatred
for state education, was a prime mover in suggesting that educational institu-
tions should become more like private businesses responding to the needs of
the market and their customers through competition. This market was sup-
posed to provide choice by increasing the types of schools available, enabling
parents to choose where to send their children, rather than being allocated a
school by their LEA (Ball, 2013).
Although Joseph, as Education Secretary between 1981 and 1986, carried out
few actual reforms during this period, he was responsible for much of the archi-
tecture that subsequently brought about a quasi-market in education in which
market mechanisms would be applied to how schools operated, enabling a
greater involvement by the private sector in state education. Ball (2013) identifies
two periods during the 18 years of Conservative government between 1979 and
1997. The first was a period of cuts to public expenditure and the privatisation of
many of the nationally owned industries. This included telecommunications
(British Telecom, privatised in 1984), transport (the National Bus Company, pri-
vatised in 1985) and steel production (British Steel Corporation, privatised in
1988). In housing, there was the mass disposal of council houses during the
1980s under the right-to-buy scheme. It also involved the deregulation of the
trading system of the City of London. In education, the 1980 Education Act
promoted the role of the private sector through the Assisted Places Scheme,
which was intended to provide places for able children from modest back-
grounds with state grants to attend private schools. However, as Edwards et al.
(1989) found, most of the children who benefited from the scheme were actu-
ally from middle-class families that had fallen on hard times.
In terms of the government’s desire to cut spending on education, it is esti-
mated that between 1981 and 1987, as a proportion of gross domestic product
(GDP), this fell from 5.5 per cent to 4.8 per cent (Tomlinson, 2005). Ball’s sec-
ond period from the late 1980s to 1997 was characterised by the introduction
of new structures and systems of delivering education, which was to be achieved
primarily through the Education Reform Act of 1988. This would effectively
take education out of the hands of teachers and local authorities and put it
under the control of schools themselves and central government. Local
Management of Schools (LMS) was to give schools the freedom to control their
budgets, and the National Curriculum enabled the government to control what
was taught in schools and to regularly monitor this through a new inspection

regime administered by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) that was
established in 1992. Ironically, most of these structural and curriculum changes
introduced by the Conservatives during this period actually increased central
government control of education, which was the very thing that right-wing
thinkers such as Joseph had been campaigning against in the Black Papers.
Tackling the teachers

More clearly in line with the thinking that informed the Black Papers, Education
Secretaries, starting from Keith Joseph in the 1980s to John Patten in the 1990s,
viewed the teaching profession as the main reason for what was seen as a fall in
standards and as being the upholders of an inefficient and outdated state educa-
tion system. At the same time, however, teaching, according to Joseph, had
become a politicised profession that was prone to adopt too many progressive
methods of teaching. He believed that training in critical disciplines such as
philosophy and sociology was unnecessary. He viewed teaching as more of a
technical occupation transmitting basic skills and traditional religious, moral
and national values rather than as a creative and reflective profession. It would
seem that teachers were suspected of being at once both too progressive and too
conservative.
In order to deal with this perceived threat, Joseph started by reforming teacher
training and reducing the role of teachers in curricular matters by abolishing
organisations such as the Schools Council in 1982. In 1984, the Council for the
Accreditation of Teachers was set up to review teacher training policy and to
reduce the independence of universities and other higher education institutions
in developing their own teacher training courses. What seems to come across from
this position is the traditional Platonic view that philosophy, as well as sociology
and the other foundation subjects of many education studies programmes today,
should only be taught to those privileged few who have been chosen to lead the
nation, and that in the hands of others it could become a dangerous thing.
In 1987, Kenneth Baker, who had replaced Keith Joseph as Education Secretary
the year before, abolished teachers’ rights to negotiate their pay by passing the
Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act. If these reforms were aimed at reducing
the influence and power of teachers, then Kenneth Baker began to lay the foun-
dations for what the Ernst & Young report of 2012 describe as a new era of
education. The Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced the main mechanisms
designed to promote competition between schools through diversity, parental
choice, league tables, per capita funding where schools are allocated funds on the
basis of recruitment, and freedom of access to information about the performance of
schools through a Parents’ Charter. Putting the power to choose in the hands
of parents rather than local authorities was a key strategy in the government’s

policy of marketisation. This could only be effective if there was a choice not only
of school, but also the type of school available – hence, the establishment of
grant-maintained (GM) schools, which were financed by central government and
run by their governing bodies independently of local education authorities; City
Technology Colleges (CTCs), the forerunners of academies, which were spon-
sored by businesses and which offered a more vocational education; and a variety
of faith schools. In principle, the choice was there, but in practice the evidence
shows that the middle-class parents have been better able to use and manipulate
the system to their advantage (Ball et al., 1996).
The curriculum
The curriculum became segregated through the establishment of an academic
National Curriculum, which was based on the traditional hierarchical division
of subjects, and a new vocational curriculum, which together effectively revived
the academic–vocational divide. The ‘new vocationalism’ was promoted by what
Whiteside (1992) describes as a ‘loose alliance’ of politicians, trade unionists,
business people and civil servants who wanted to make the education system
more responsive to the needs of the economy. Under the new National Council
for Vocational Qualifications set up in 1986, a system of National Vocational
Qualifications (NVQs) was established relating to groups of occupations, includ-
ing construction, healthcare and childcare, and these were delivered by some
schools and further education colleges. These qualifications even provided entry
routes to higher education. However, the system suffered from the traditional
English prejudice against vocational education, with employers and universities
preferring academic over vocational qualifications. Children attending schools
with traditional academic curricula such as the public schools and grammar
schools were consequently advantaged when it came to university application.
Critics on the left such as Dan Finn (1987) saw the new vocationalism as merely
a way of keeping young people off the unemployment register and as a source
of cheap labour because most of the programmes included on-the-job training
for which the trainees usually received no pay.
Testing, testing
It is during this period of Conservative government that testing became an
increasing part of the experience of children in English schools. However, it seems
that the regular testing and assessment of children was, in fact, as much about the
monitoring and accountability of teachers as the assessment of children. Although

the Task Group on Assessment and Testing (TGAT) set up to implement the assess-
ment regime for the National Curriculum recommended that the new standard
assessment tests (SATs) be administered as just one element in a process that
should involve teacher assessments and be primarily formative in nature – that is,
as a means of supporting children’s learning. The government chose instead to
focus more on the summative nature of testing, which relates to the summing up
of what has been learnt and a level of attainment. Such summative information
provides the data for school league tables, which parents now take for granted and
which the government uses to identify ‘failing’ schools. Children’s education in
England (and Wales until 2005), therefore, is becoming outcome-driven rather
than process-led. High-stakes testing is the primary means whereby governments
measure educational performance of pupils, teachers and schools alongside a sys-
tem of inspection established in 1992 through Ofsted. Such an emphasis on
summative assessment derived from a narrow range of data has been seen as prob-
lematic by some experts in the field (Alexander, 2009). Because of the pressure put
on schools to perform well in formal testing, there is a tendency to ‘teach to the
test’ at the expense of a varied and stimulating learning experience (Badger, 2018).
New Labour, 1997–2010

Most comparisons between New Labour and the previous Conservative govern-
ment suggest that there was a good deal of continuity as well as change (Ball,
2013; Tomlinson, 2005). Although Labour was initially critical of the Conservative
government’s policies when in opposition, by the mid-1990s under the leader-
ship of Tony Blair, Labour began to adopt the language of neoliberal reform
summed up in what seemed to be Blair’s favourite word: modernisation. In order
to become electable, Labour had to appeal to a growing middle class resulting
from the decline of traditional industries such as steel making, coal mining and
engineering during the 1970s and 1980s, and the subsequent growth in service-
sector jobs. Labour had, in effect, stolen many of the Conservative Party’s
clothes. From 1997, it seemed like business as usual. There was continuation and
indeed an increase in the marketisation of education through further competi-
tion, with an added emphasis on making the market work properly (Labour
Party, 1992), a greater focus on standards through enhanced performance
monitoring, as well as increasing the choice of schools through the encourage-
ment of faith communities to set up their own schools, and the introduction of
academies, which are independent, self-governing schools sponsored by faith
organisations, business or other voluntary bodies, with the right to decide their
own policy regarding staffing and which have no obligation to follow the
national curriculum.

Social justice
These policies were part of the modernisation agenda followed by Tony Blair and
then Gordon Brown, who took over as prime minister in 2008. However, Blair
made the claim that he did not want to ‘run a Tory economy with a bit of com-
passion’ (Blair, 1994), claiming that New Labour did not just stand for standards
and modernisation, but also for social justice, which he suggested the
Conservatives had neglected. Under New Labour, there was a clear agenda to
enable certain groups who were believed to have been marginalised by 18 years
of Conservative rule to have a chance to engage more fully in society through
greater educational opportunities. This included those on benefits, the disabled
and certain minority ethnic groups.
When Labour came to power in 1997, it commissioned the Macpherson
Inquiry into the killing of the Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence, who was mur-
dered by a white racist gang. This is the first time a British government had
acknowledged the problem of institutional racism in British public institutions,
such as the police and schools, and this led to the passing of the Race Relations
(Amendment) Act of 2000, which obliged all public bodies, including schools,
to prevent racial discrimination and promote racial equality. In 1998, the gov-
ernment set up the Social Exclusion Unit to deal with the issue of social
inequality such as the disproportionate number of Black pupils excluded from
schools in England. Official estimates showed that during the late 1990s, chil-
dren with special needs and African-Caribbean boys were six times more likely
to be excluded than other groups (Denscombe, 1999). Also, through policies
such as the New Deal for 18–24-year-olds, which provided subsidised employ-
ment for the long-term unemployed, and the Sure Start Programme, designed
to help parents and young children from poor families through educational,
health and other professional support, New Labour invested heavily in some of
the poorest and most excluded groups in society. The results of such pro-
grammes were mixed (Tomlinson, 2005), but there does seem to have been a
commitment to tackle some of the divisions that had widened under the previ-
ous Conservative government.
The Third Way

New Labour’s education policy needs to be examined in the context of its
wider social and economic position, which was greatly influenced by what has
come to be known as the Third Way (Giddens, 1998). This was an attempt to
steer an alternative path between the old Labour position of high welfare
spending and low levels of accountability over such spending, which had made

Labour virtually unelectable during the 1980s, and the New Right approach of
the Thatcher and Major governments, which tended to ignore the effects on
communities of neoliberal economic policies such as the closure of coal pits, the
privatisation of industries such as steel or the lack of effective welfare support
and training during the high levels of unemployment. However, with the carrot
of opportunity that New Labour provided to marginalised groups, there were the
sticks of responsibility and accountability. Those receiving support and who
were deemed to have abused it were expected to take responsibility for their
actions or inactivity. For example, parents who failed to ensure that their chil-
dren attended school regularly faced the prospect of a fine or even imprisonment,
and public bodies such as schools that failed to tackle failure were held account-
able and faced the prospect of closure and ‘a fresh start’.
However, Labour’s policy initiatives relating to education and tackling social
injustice exposed it to accusations by the Conservatives of overspending and wast-
ing taxpayers’ money thereby causing high levels of national debt which, they
claim, cannot be dealt with without huge cuts in public spending. Whether this
is a fair assessment of the situation is debatable (Reed, 2012), and there is certainly
disagreement as to how the 2010 coalition government and the subsequent
Conservative governments have used cuts in public spending as a means of deal-
ing with the economic crisis which started in 2008 (CPAG, 2017; Bowman, 2017).
The coalition government

Although Labour lost the election of 2010 against a background of the global
financial crisis and accusations of profligacy, there was no clear winner. A coali-
tion was the only alternative to another general election and, as coalitions
inevitably mean compromise, the Conservatives managed to charm the Liberal
Democrats more than Labour into forming a coalition.
Although it was not a good start for the Liberal Democrats in the new coali-
tion, with the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reneging on a key manifesto
pledge not to increase university tuition fees in 2012, the Liberal Democrats man-
aged to win some social justice-based policies such as the introduction of the
pupil premium, which involved extra funding for schools with children from
disadvantaged backgrounds, although this had to be paid for by cuts in funding
on schools generally. There was also the announcement in 2013 of free school
meals for all infant school children from September 2014. There has been, how-
ever, a degree of tension between the two parties over education policy generally,
with Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, dominating the educa-
tion agenda with his push for academies and the reform of the National
Curriculum from September 2014, which places an emphasis on teaching facts
and testing basic skills in mathematics and English.

The National Curriculum
The reform of the National Curriculum has been highly controversial, in particu-
lar the changes to the teaching and testing of subjects such as history. In 2011,
Michael Gove announced a complete review of the history curriculum, stating
that he wanted a return to a more traditional approach. His initial draft was a
history curriculum inspired by the work of the eminent historian Niall Ferguson
(2002), whose bestselling book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, takes
a linear narrative approach and presents a positive perspective on Britain’s his-
toric role in the world. Ferguson acknowledges the darker side of the British
Empire, but claims that, on balance, Britain more than makes up for this in
terms of its positive contributions to the world which he refers to as ‘anglobalis-
tion’ (Ferguson, 2002). This British values approach was the guiding principle of
this first draft, which was to be delivered in a chronological manner with regular
testing of ‘facts’. What exactly are the facts is a very contentious point and, as
the Parekh Report (Parekh, 2000) states, we should be cautious of accepting one
‘official’ version of history.
This approach to the curriculum caused much concern among many mem-
bers of ethnic communities, who see in it an attempt to exonerate Britain of its
historic ‘crimes’ as well as to silence the voices of their ancestors (Mishra, 2011).
The subsequent version of the history curriculum published in 2013 recognised
the need for children to learn more than just facts, and also that the facts do not
speak for themselves, and Gove accepted the need to provide more coverage of
the views of ethnic minorities and the contribution of women to the world we
live in today (The Historical Association, 2013). However, this final version has
been criticised for making only a token gesture to the contribution of non-white
ethnic groups to British history, which, it is claimed, can only alienate Black, Asian
and other ethnic groups who may feel marginalised by such minimal coverage
(Edwards, 2013).
The Conservative victory of 2015 and the

2017 minority government
Under the coalition, spending on education had dropped from a record high of
£91.1bn in 2011 to around £85bn per year (ukpublicspending, 2019). Despite
its commitment to cut public spending, however, the new administration
pledged to maintain existing spending per school pupil until 2020 (Perraudin
and Wintour, 2015). Nevertheless, there were soon widespread reports of
schools in Northern Ireland, Wales and England in crisis over the lack of funds
(National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), 2018). Unfortunately, much of

the evidence and reporting of the alleged underfunding seems to have been lost
against the background noise caused by the process of Britain’s withdrawal from
the European Union. In addition, there has been a lack of clarity relating to the
government’s data and information on education spending. In a response to
those who claimed that there was an underfunding of schools, the government
asserted that not only was spending on education in the UK at record levels, but
it was also the third biggest spender on education in the world, the implication
being that schools and teachers have not used the existing resources effectively
and were therefore failing their children. Moreover, the minority Conservative
government elected in 2017 pointed out that it had pledged an additional
£4 billion pounds for schools over the five years to 2022.
If the government had been spending record amounts on education, why
were increasing numbers of schools claiming that they were in financial crisis?
Was there evidence that schools had been wasteful and inefficient in the use of
such large amounts of taxpayers’ money? It transpires that, according to the UK
Statistics Authority (UKSA), the DfE’s presentation of this data is a cause for
‘serious concerns’ (Coughlan, 2018). The UKSA is a non-ministerial department
that investigates independently of government and reports directly to
Parliament. Its findings are therefore highly significant. What it found is that
the DfE had been ‘exaggerating’ and ‘misrepresenting’ data on school spending
in the UK (Coughlan, 2018). Its presentation of the data was such that it had
effectively lumped together all spending on education, including non-school
and non-government spending, such as money paid by parents for private
school fees and students’ university tuition fees, thereby exaggerating the total
amount of government spending on education. The data was also presented in
such a way that, according to the UKSA, it could be misinterpreted by the pub-
lic as spending on schools and was therefore likely to present the government
in a more favourable light both to the British public and internationally.
It is hard to believe that this was done in error, and raises the issue of the ways
that official statistics can be used by governments to manipulate or mislead the
public (Boronski, 1987; Craig, 1998; Barlow, 2008). While it is clearly appropriate
for governments to fulfil their election manifestos and spending pledges, the act
of misleading the population about the failings of others and of exaggerating
their own achievements, either intentionally or otherwise, is obviously unac-
ceptable. It is also highly problematic, particularly in an era of growing distrust
of politicians (Dalton, 2005; Edelman Trust, 2018) in which such behaviour can
only add to this cynicism and the mistrust of our political leaders, and may
potentially have wider political consequences.
When Theresa May became prime minister in 2016, she set out a number of
priorities relating to education, one of which was to improve Britain’s poor
record on social mobility (see Chapter 7). However, as with many of the other
pressing problems that have been identified as being in need of urgent attention

in Britain, the negotiations over Brexit took precedence over the issue of social
mobility. Indeed, survey evidence suggests that the majority of the public believe
that Brexit had so overwhelmed government and the political agenda that other
pressing domestic matters were being ignored (Watts, 2017).
Demands for the decolonisation of the curriculum

In recent years, the debate about the History curriculum has, if anything,
become even more heated and in particular the issue of what and how it is
taught. It came to a head in the wake of events when in April 2015 at the
University of Cape Town in South Africa, students at the university managed to
get the administration to remove the statue of Sir Cecil Rhodes, the British-born
mining magnate and colonial administrator who was instrumental in setting up
and justifying the system of racial segregation when he was prime minister of
Cape Colony during the 1890s. The movement, known as #RhodesMustFall, also
led to demands for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel College,
Oxford, as well as the decolonisation of the curriculum in South African, British
and other universities. Although this was not the first attempt to reform the cur-
riculum or to have the statue removed from the University of Cape Town
campus, what is surprising is that it remained in place commemorating Rhodes’s
legacy for so long, despite the collapse of the apartheid regime in the early 1990s
(Le Grange, 2016).
Another of the catalysts that seems to have set off the decolonisation of the
curriculum movement is the response by students and young people to a ‘Call
to Action’ summit organised by the South African Department of Higher
Education and Training held in October 2015. The department recommended
changes to the South African higher education and training sector that would
make it more democratic, more representative in terms of gender and race, as
well as end the colonial-based curriculum. However, as the South African aca-
demic Kastouri Behari-Leak (2015) claims, the students were not prepared to
wait for a long drawn-out process of government-led reforms and declared their
own call to action, demanding an end to the symbolic violence experienced
every day on campuses across South Africa. They called for the reform of what
they describe as an insensitive curriculum dominated by white Northern intel-
lectual traditions, as well as an end to the continuing and relentless poverty still
experienced by Black South Africans more than two decades after the collapse of
apartheid. This clearly is a movement influenced by the ideas of Frantz Fanon
(Fanon, [1959] 1967) who claimed that in order for Black people’s minds to be
liberated from the negative psychological effects of colonialism, there needed to
be a challenge to a world dominated by ‘white’ ideas, philosophies, aesthetics
and culture.

Although attempts to decolonise universities and the curriculum in South
Africa and other countries are not new (Hendricks and Leibowitz, 2016), the
issue gained greater prominence more recently in the UK through the
#RhodesMustFall campaign and its connections to one of Britain’s elite universi-
ties. Sir Cecil Rhodes was a student at Oriel College, Oxford, in the 1870s and in
his will he left £6 million (equivalent to almost £1 billion today) to the College,
which is used to fund Rhodes scholarships. It was at Oxford that he developed
many of his ideas of a greater British Empire that he envisaged would come to
govern much of the world (South African History Online, 2017). However,
unlike the success of the students at the University of Cape Town, the campaign
by #RhodesMustFall to remove the statue of Rhodes from the façade of Oriel’s
Rhodes building was unsuccessful. Despite suggestions that the university
authorities gave in to pressure from their financial sponsors (Garton Ash, 2016),
they concluded that there was ‘overwhelming’ support to keep the statue in
place ‘in a spirit of free speech and open debate’ (Rawlinson, 2016). Nevertheless,
the campaign to remove the statue and for the decolonisation of the curriculum
at Oxford and other universities in Britain, the United States and other parts of
the world continues.
Case study 12.1

Decolonising the Curriculum: Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford
The Living Cultures initiative
The Living Cultures project is an InsightShare Network (ISNet) initiative designed
to bring together and celebrate indigenous cultures from across the world using
participatory video. The intention is to give voice and agency to such cultures in
order for them to be able to take control of the ways they are presented and written
about, as well as to identify and explain the current challenges they face in preserv-
ing their unique ways of life. A long-term aim of ISNet is the decolonisation of the
curriculum. The Living Cultures project is a collaboration between Oltoilo le Maa,
a community-based group from Loliondo in Tanzania, InsightShare, a community
development organization that uses communications technology to support mar-
ginalised groups to be heard and seen, and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. It
was set up following a visit to Britain by a number of representatives of indigenous
groups from Mexico, Tanzania and Nagaland in north-east India in 2017. During this
trip, Samwell Nangiria, a Maasai community leader, visited the Pitt Rivers Museum.
He was disturbed to see a number of sacred objects from his community on display.
(Continued)

Moreover, the information attached to them was incorrect and misattributed.
Following a ‘video letter’ to Dr Laura Van Broekhoven, Director of the Pitt Rivers
Museum, in which Samwell Nagiria raised his concerns about the way that Maasai
culture was presented by the museum, the Living Cultures initiative was set up and
was able to raise funds for five Maasai leaders to work with the museum in 2018 to
address some of these concerns. This also resulted in a project using a participatory
video to represent Maasai culture to a wider audience. Have a look at one of the
videos online at: https://insightshare.org/maasai/
Nick Lunch, a co-founder of InsightShare, states that ‘Confronting our imperial
past and bringing Maasai stories up to date, Living Cultures aims to raise aware-
ness of the ongoing struggles indigenous peoples face to protect their land, culture
and communities’ (Murphy, 2018). He is collaborating further with Oltoilo le Maa
to set up a Pan African Living Cultures Alliance (PALCA) using participatory video to
promote the causes of biodiversity, indigenous languages and forms of knowledge
as well as representing the history of indigenous African communities in museums
around the world. You can find out more about the Living Cultures initiative online
at: https://insightshare.org/network/
As we can see, the response to the #RhodesMustFall campaign in South Africa

and other countries such as Britain has been significant and has led some,
including academics and historians, to rethink their positions on colonialism
and the Empire. The Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash (2016) admits that
the campaign has started an important ‘debate’ about Britain’s colonial past and
suggests that there should be greater ‘representation of people of colour among
both faculty and students’ (Garton Ash, 2016), as well as more academic research
on the consequences of colonialism on its victims and their descendants, and a
greater number of Rhodes scholarships for African students. However, he does
not support the demands for the decolonisation of the curriculum. Nor does he
accept that the small and ‘obscure’ statue of Rhodes in Oriel College constitutes
a symbol of oppression to ‘most of those who live here’ (Garton Ash, 2016). This
seems somewhat inconsistent given that Garton Ash is at the same time advocat-
ing the rights of minorities to greater representation in the academy and also the
need for their history and its colonial legacy to be heard. Moreover, is it a neces-
sity for a majority of those who live in a particular community to feel a threat
of oppression in order for something to be considered a problem?
Garton Ash’s position is very telling and suggests that, for those who advocate
the decolonisation of the curriculum, there needs to be a dramatic shift not only
in the content of the curriculum, but also in the way that British society in gen-
eral and historians in particular interpret our shared past. In the words of Brian
Kwoba, one of the students at Oxford leading the campaign to have Rhodes’s

statue removed, this continuing commemoration of Rhodes at Oriel ‘demon-
strates the size and strength of Britain’s imperial blind spot’ (Rawlinson, 2016).
In a decolonised curriculum, figures such as Cecil Rhodes and other white intel-
lectuals are likely to still figure prominently, but in a much more critical way and
within a more ethnically and culturally diverse syllabus (Pett, 2015). In particu-
lar, it would require a shift in thinking from a balance-sheet approach to history
to one that shows a greater sensitivity to the Empire as a period of multiple views
and experiences, of which the ‘white’ British narrative is one, but not the one by
which the curriculum should be driven.
The events of the past few years that have encompassed the debate about
Britain’s exit from the European Union reveal that Britain is not yet prepared
for such a cultural and intellectual shift. Indeed, instead of looking for a new
identity in a post-Brexit world, there seems to be a harking back to the so-called
past ‘glories’ of Empire. This was certainly the narrative in the wake of the vic-
tory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the United Kingdom European Union
Membership Referendum when Grant Shapps, the former Conservative Party
Chairman, stated: ‘As an island, we need to rediscover that swashbuckling spirit
of the 19th century when we practically owned the concept of free-trade’
(Shapps, 2016). Shapps’s sentiments seem to be in tune with the wider popula-
tion, which sees the Empire and its legacy in positive terms. In a YouGov poll
in 2014, 59 per cent of the British public stated that they saw the Empire as
something to be proud of, and the Conservative government seems to have
tapped into this pride with an initiative known as Empire 2.0, set up to use the
Commonwealth as the vehicle to drive Britain’s post-Brexit economic trade
policy through closer trading relations with its former colonies. In what might
be seen as an example of Kwoba’s reference to Britain’s imperial ‘blind spots’,
the Australian academic Jullianne Schultz (2017) points out that no one both-
ered to ask the former colonies that make up the Commonwealth what they
thought of the initiative, nor what they made of its title.
Chapter summary
This chapter has examined over 70 years of education policy since the end of the
Second World War. It started in a spirit of optimism with expectations of equality
of opportunity and increased social mobility. What we have witnessed is an era
of great change and the expansion of education downwards to all classes in soci-
ety. However, as we have seen in Chapter 7, an important question to ask is
whether the educational life chances of the less advantaged have improved rela-
tive to those of the more affluent members of society.
In terms of the curriculum, there has been a growing debate about the
demands for it to be decolonised. The recent events associated with the

#RhodesMustFall movement and the victory of the ‘Leave’ vote in the 2016
Brexit referendum have brought to the fore how Britain’s colonial past still influ-
ences government policy in general and education policy in particular.
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13
Young People
and Pupil Voice
Chapter aims
In Chapter 11 there was an outline of the emergence of ‘the child’ as a dis-
tinct group worthy of study in its own right, the role of schools and the
impact of nineteenth-century children’s literature as a means of cultural trans-
mission. This chapter examines the changing status of children in Britain and
the ambivalent position they occupy in terms of the way in which adults
treat them and the policies that affect them. The debate relating to whether
children have too many rights or whether they need more rights and a
greater voice in society is also addressed, as is the way in which pupil voice
is employed in schools in the UK. Finally, there will be a discussion of the
increasing involvement of children and young people in one of the major
wicked problems faced by humanity today.
Key words: child-centred, children’s voice, children’s rights, new sociology

of childhood, moral panics, community of enquiry, pragmatism, structural
vulnerability, wicked problems, political and judicial activism.
Introduction
In its 2007 report on child well-being in rich countries, the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF) states that:
The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their
health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their
sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which
they are born. (UNICEF, 2007: 3)
In Britain, we live in an age that is supposed to be more child-centred than

ever, where young people have rights and access to extensive welfare and health
provision. There is legislation on child protection such as the Disclosure and
Barring Service (DBS) in England and Wales, and the Disclosure Scotland system
that requires checks on people who work with children; there is free compul-
sory education for children from 4 to 19 years, and laws against child labour
and exploitation. Young people have acquired rights through the greater
involvement of the state in issues of child welfare, as well as through the pres-
sure exerted by international organisations such as the UN, and there have been
since 2001 for Wales, since 2003 for Northern Ireland, since 2004 for Scotland,
and, since 2005 in England, Children’s Commissioners who speak on behalf of

children and young people. Legislation such as the Children Act of 1989 and
the Children Act of 2004 put the child first and require adults to consider the
views of young people when making any decisions that may affect them. In
1991, Britain ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
(CRC), a set of 45 articles laying down rights and minimum standards of welfare
for children globally. For the purposes of this chapter, the CRC definition of a
child as anyone below the age of 18 (Article 1) will be used.
The CRC includes articles relating to the provision of minimum standards in
health and care, the right to education and the protection of children from such
things as acts of violence, abuse and cruelty. It also contains articles concerning
the rights of children to participate in civil and political processes by having the
right to be heard (Articles 12, 13 and 14), particularly in relation to decisions
made by parents and other authorities that affect them.
And yet, if we examine the evidence relating to the treatment of children and
their own views about their experiences, it is evident that the reality does not
always match the rhetoric (Oakley, 1994). For example, in 2007 UNICEF, the
world’s leading organisation representing children’s welfare and rights, produced
the first study on the well-being and happiness of children in the most affluent
countries. Britain came bottom of the list of 21 countries on measures of happi-
ness, health, education and poverty. The figures for 2013 show that Britain is
doing better, but still came 16th out of 29 of the world’s richest countries
(UNICEF, 2013). There was a recommendation by the report’s authors that gov-
ernments should make it a priority to consult children regularly on how they
feel about their lives and how they can be improved.
The findings of these international studies are supported by national research.
A recent Good Childhood report by the Children’s Society (2017) found that levels
of happiness among children in the UK are at their lowest since 2010. The report
claims that children’s sense of well-being is linked to the different experiences
they have, as well as their circumstances. Those children who experienced mul-
tiple disadvantages such as living in a household in debt, where parents are
struggling to pay bills, are unemployed, and where a child may be a young carer,
tended to have lower levels of well-being than those with fewer or no such dis-
advantages (Children’s Society, 2017: 15): ‘The disadvantages also have a
cumulative effect – of children who had experienced seven or more disadvan-
tages, 29% had low well-being compared to 3% of children who had experienced
no disadvantages.’ It is possibly no coincidence that this decline in children’s
happiness and well-being in the UK also coincides with the growing levels of
child poverty and deprivation since 2015 examined in Chapter 11.
The Children’s Society (2017) report confirms that children in the UK are
keen to be listened to and have a good deal of constructive advice about how
those in authority and with the resources can make their lives in their families
healthier and happier.
Young people and pupil voice 295

Reading suggestion
Charlotte Todd and Sinead Brophy (2018) report on their study ‘Four ways chil-
dren say their well-being can be improved’. It is based on the views of a sample
of children aged 9 to 11 from a number of schools in South Wales on how their
lives can be improved. This can be found online at: https://theconversation.
com/four-ways-children-say-their-well-being-can-be-improved-104195
The problem of children

The child as a ‘problem’ for adult society is one that has been with us since
recorded history. Children have been seen as both an asset in terms of represent-
ing future adult citizens with the potential skills, talents and labour needed for
society to grow and prosper, and also as a potential threat to the stability and
moral character of society. We can see this in the dramatic account provided by
Plato of the trial and sentencing to death of Socrates in 399 BCE for ‘not wor-
shipping the gods the State worshipped but introducing other new divinities,
and further that he was guilty of corrupting the young by teaching them accord-
ingly’ (Russell, 1945: 85). We can also read of the Spartans’ practice of separating
their children from their families at age 7 and subjecting them to a rigorous
regime of training for their future roles as soldiers who would defend their city
state. For leaders of the Spartans such as Lycurgus, the greatest fear was that the
young men would become so used to the pleasures of life that they would put
themselves before their country (Russell, 1945). Despite the charges against
Socrates, who saw it as his mission to encourage young people to challenge
authority, fears about the inability of young people to act responsibly meant that
even philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle believed that children should not
be taught to reason and question things, and recommended a strong moral edu-
cation. In more modern times, we can see the problem of young people manifest
itself in moral panics over the hedonistic and rebellious youth cultures of the
late twentieth century (Cohen, 1972; Hebdige, 1980) and the regular demands
for greater discipline in schools (Gove, 2010; Phillips, 1996).
Childhood in any culture involves the preparation of young people for their
future roles in society, but, as we have seen in previous chapters, the form this
takes varies from society to society, and it is highly class, race, gender and
regionally based. This is what has been referred to as the social construction of
childhood. The modern Western (minority) concept of childhood only came
into existence as a global phenomenon in the last century. It started among
the upper classes during the Middle Ages (Ariès, 1962) and culminated in the

separation of children from the world of adults in the nineteenth century,
when they were prevented from working in places such as mines and factories.
This is not to say that children did not work at all, but that they were becom-
ing more and more separated from and dependent upon adults. Ariès claims
that the idea of childhood as we know it in Europe today did not exist in
medieval society. In his examination of historical evidence he found that chil-
dren were treated as miniature adults. From about the age of 4 or 5, they
entered the world of adults, dressing like them and doing similar work such as
agriculture or practising a craft.
During the fifteenth century, however, the upper classes started to treat their
children differently. They began to ‘coddle’ them (show affection and fuss over
them) and dress them in their own special clothes. Also, children were beginning
to be seen as ‘fragile creatures of God’ who needed to be saved through moral and
religious guidance. This gave rise to the desire to save their souls by educating
them, thereby separating them from the world of adults. Ariès shows the impor-
tance of class in this process in that modern childhood starts among the upper
classes in Western societies, the only social group that could afford the luxury of
not sending their children out to work. However, during the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries the increasingly affluent middle classes – merchants, traders
and professionals – began to educate their children (mainly boys) in the growing
number of public schools. Such schools provided educational grounding for the
growing number of jobs requiring prolonged training such as medicine, engineer-
ing and science. Girls, of course, had fewer opportunities. These public schools as
we have seen in Chapter 6 still play a significant role in England’s class divided
education system.
The lower classes, however, were unable to pay for such an education and
required the income of their working children. With the growth of industri-
alisation, restrictions on child labour and the expansion of compulsory
education, children from the working class were also separated from the world
of adults and began to acquire the status of dependent children. Their educa-
tion, however, was of a very functional nature that focused on a strict moral
education and a respect for the existing social order (Boren, 2001). Ariès claims
that no other society had developed such a concept of childhood before.
However, it would probably be untrue to suggest that other societies lacked a
concept of childhood at all (Archard, 1993). What we can say is that other
societies have not shown the kind of focus on children and their separation
from adults that places an emphasis on childhood as a period of play and
extended education as was emerging in Europe (James et al., 1998). The
Spartans, for example, did place their children in boarding schools from age 7,
but there was no desire to provide them with the opportunity to play as ‘a
child’ in the way that we do today.

The child as incomplete
Ariès’s research triggered an interest in the study of children as a distinct group
in its own right. Although they were already the subject of psychological and
educational research (see Chapters 6 and 10), the focus of these professionals was
on the incompleteness of the child (Mayall, 1994). In other words, they were seen
in terms of what they would become rather than what they were. So the dis-
course on children was one based on the concepts of immaturity, deviance,
disability, dependence, vulnerability and the need to educate and control them
until they became mature adults (Mayall, 1994). There was a particular focus on
the deficits of the child rather than on their competencies, such as the ability to
make important decisions or to have a valid opinion.
The ‘new sociology of childhood’, however, has encouraged a focus on the
experience of ‘being’ a child rather than on a period of immaturity and develop-
ment. This has enabled researchers to examine the world from children’s
perspectives rather than imposing adult interpretations on it. As Boyden et al.
(1998) point out, it is only by examining the experiences and views of children
that we can understand them. From such research, it is evident that children are
not merely passive actors, for although they are situated within particular struc-
tures such as the family and the education system, and are restricted by their
legal status, they still have the ability to influence and shape these structures
(James and Prout, 1997). There is no doubt, for example, that children have a
great deal of influence over the markets in leisure, music and food. The increas-
ing activism of children will be examined in more detail later in the chapter.
This desire to ‘listen’ to children, rather than just to focus on what adults expect
of them, has been quite significant and has had an impact on the way in which
welfare professionals deal with children. For instance, children’s claims against
adults of abuse are now taken more seriously, whereas before such children would
have been dismissed as ‘telling tales’. Nevertheless, those advocating greater rights
for those under the age of 18 believe that the hands of adults are constantly inter-
vening in the world of the child limiting the autonomy and freedom of children,
thus illustrating their subordinate status in relation to adults (Lansdown, 1994;
Oakley, 1994). This can be seen in terms of the regular ‘moral panics’ about chil-
dren in relation to drugs, sex, morality, crime and education.
Thinking point 13.1

Governments of any hue tend to be guided in their policies, especially those on
law and order and crime prevention, by the desire to be re-elected. Few politi-
cal parties want to look weak on such issues, especially when viewed against a

background of extreme events such as riots (witness the exemplary sentencing
after the 2011 riots in England; Lightowlers and Quirk, 2014), brutal murders
and knife crime. Boyden (1997) argues that the view of childhood in societies
such as Britain is based on the priorities of Western capitalism, which include
ensuring the welfare and safety of children but not at the expense of the rich,
and a desire to control undisciplined children, a fear created by moral entre-
preneurs through moral panics. In other words, according to Boyden, policies
relating to children are based on a ‘capitalist ideology’.
A moral panic is the arousal of social concern about an issue that has been
identified by moral entrepreneurs, such as politicians, campaigning journalists
or members of religious and child welfare groups, who often enlist the sup-
port of the mass media to highlight a concern that may be out of proportion
to the threat or danger posed. Such campaigns may focus on a group, which
often acts as a scapegoat, taking the blame for specific social problems. These
‘moral panics’ often make scapegoats out of children for the deficiencies of
government policies in dealing with child poverty, youth unemployment or
inadequate education and training.
It is highly revealing to compare the responses of the government and the
judicial system to two significant events in recent years: the first event, or series
of events, being the financial crisis of 2008 and the second that of the summer
riots of 2011 in London and other cities in the UK. The former was precipitated
by the criminal activities of a number of bankers and financial experts who
caused what Jesse Eisinger (2014) of The New York Times describes as ‘the larg-
est man-made catastrophe since the Depression’ that resulted in the jailing of
only one banker in the US (Eisinger, 2014). Similarly, in Britain, very few bankers
have faced prosecution (The Economist, 2013).
Regarding the summer riots of 2011, in which thousands of young people
as well as children took to the streets, evidence suggests that the underlying
causes of the violence were a general feeling of injustice resulting from accu-
sations of police racism, government austerity measures, such as the ending
of Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for those staying in education
beyond 16, as well as the outrage surrounding MPs’ expenses (The Guardian,
2011). However, politicians such as the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Prime
Minister David Cameron, and Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Justice,
dismissed such factors, referring to the participants as ‘mindless’ (The Guardian,
2011). Indeed, there does seem to have been a stark difference in approach to
the two events by the justice system and in particular the ‘zealous advocacy’
(Lightowlers and Quirk, 2014: 5) adopted by the Crown Prosecution Service
(CPS) in relation to the prosecution of those involved in the riots, which was
(Continued)

glaringly absent in its treatment of the financiers responsible for very serious
criminal activity that adversely affected the lives of many millions of people.
Compared to the handful of bankers prosecuted in Britain resulting from the
financial crisis, over 1,500 people were convicted of offences relating to the riots,
with over 1,000 of these receiving prison sentences. Over half of those pros-
ecuted (53 per cent) were between the ages of 10 and 20, and average sentences
were 14.2 months, which is ‘almost four times longer than sentences for similar
offences in 2010’ (BBC, 2012).
Despite the developments in children’s rights in the UK over the past century,
there is still a good deal of suspicion of young people and their capacity to make
decisions about important aspects of their lives. Grace (1995: 202) identifies this
as ‘an ideology of immaturity’, which still seems to affect attitudes to children’s
competencies and limits their capacity to influence issues relating to their educa-
tion (Rudduck and Flutter, 2004). This ideology takes various forms depending
on time and place; however, Oakley (1994) identifies the status of children in
Britain today as being that of a minority group with experiences similar to those
of women. Young people have no voting rights in England and Northern
Ireland, though changes are occurring in Scotland and Wales.
Case study 13.1

Young people: the right to vote and United Kingdom
European Union membership referendum, 2016
The lack of a vote by young people under the age of 18 was one of the most contro-
versial subjects during the 2016 referendum on Britain’s continued membership of
the European Union. A key issue in the debate was that 16- and 17-year-olds were
denied the chance to participate in a national vote on an issue that is likely to affect
them more than any other age group among the existing electorate. Moreover,
they might have made a significant difference to the outcome of the referendum
had they been able to do so. In Scotland and Wales, however, the situation is differ-
ent and politicians have been more prepared to extend the voting rights of young
people. In Scotland, for example, 16- and 17-year-olds were able to vote in the
Scottish independence referendum of 2014, and can vote in Scottish parliamentary
and local elections. In Wales, it is likely that 16-year-olds will soon have the right to

vote in Welsh parliamentary elections. The following article by Andrew Mycock and
Jonathan Tonge (2018) examines the debate and the rules regarding the voting
rights of 16- and 17-year-olds in the UK:
‘Votes for 16-year-olds should be based on wider evidence, not just a need
for participation’. Available online at: https://theconversation.com/votes-
for-16-year-olds-should-be-based-on-wider-evidence-not-just-a-need-for-
participation-90898
Children as a minority group

Oakley (1994) suggests that children as a group share many of the characteristics
and lack of status experienced by women within a patriarchal system of power.
Because they are both labelled with characteristics and qualities that are believed
to be essential to their group, it is seen as justifiable to treat women and children
differently from the rest of the adult male population. This ‘essentialising’ of
such difference means that both groups are seen as incapable of making impor-
tant decisions for themselves. For Oakley, women have been infantilised by
patriarchal ideology and, like children, have had little or no power or voice
regarding many issues that directly affect their lives. Both children and women
have been separated from the wider society through the roles deemed to be
appropriate to their ‘natural’ characteristics and limitations: for women, who are
seen primarily as mothers, the home is seen as their sphere, and for children,
who are viewed as needing control and socialisation, the school is seen as theirs.
With specific reference to the issue of voice is the notion that due to their
childlike qualities, both women and children need others to speak for them or
on their behalf. A key difference here, however, is that women have over the past
century been able to create a political and social movement with its own lan-
guage to articulate its experiences and ideas. Children, on the other hand, are
still located in a legal and social position in which adults ‘know better’ and are
required to speak for them, so, despite the rights of children to be consulted and
listened to under the various children acts and the CRC, ultimate decisions in
relation to health issues, education matters and rights over their bodies are still
controlled by adults. In 2008, for example, contrary to Article 19, which states
that children should be protected from all forms of violence, the UK parliament,
with no attempt to consult children, voted to retain the right of parents in
Britain to use ‘reasonable chastisement’ such as smacking as a means of control-
ling and punishing them.
On wider issues such as education and health matters, although the CRC
requires governments and parents to involve children in decisions affecting

them, there is still no legal obligation for the government or parents to do so.
For example, children have no right to refuse medical treatment unless they are
able to pass a test of their maturity to comprehend the implications of their
choices. Policy in Britain, according to Lansdown (1994: 34), is still based on the
idea of the ‘inherent vulnerability’ of children rather than on their rights. This
situation was challenged in 2008 by Hannah Jones aged 13 who was suffering
from a fatal heart condition and who won the right to refuse lifesaving treat-
ment, despite the threat from her local health authority to take her from the
custody of her parents and to enforce the treatment through a court order.
Like Oakley, Lansdown (1994) makes the comparison between children and
women, both of whom can be seen as weak and vulnerable status groups that
are dependent on men. The effect of this, she claims, is to increase children’s
‘structural vulnerability’, their lack of economic power, political and civil rights.
However, with the growth of women’s rights over the past century, their struc-
tural vulnerability has decreased, though not disappeared. Lansdown claims that
the CRC has the potential to do the same for children, but there seems to be a
lack of political will in Britain. Moreover, there is a strong current of opinion, as
epitomised by the New Right, which claims that children should not be given
more rights and that they have indeed acquired too many already.
Too many rights?

Phillips (1996) argues that the growth of the rights agenda and child-centred
education have led to the collapse of authority in schools and the important
distinction between adults and children. This, together with the increasing
influence of the media and peer groups, she believes, has also led to the declin-
ing importance of parents. She sees children as having rights that they lack the
maturity to cope with. Phillips’s views echo those of Plato and Aristotle. She
suggests that children need to be given more care and discipline, not rights.
Child-centred philosophies derived from the teachings of Rousseau and Dewey
are seen by Phillips as dangerous because they destroy the distinction between
children and adults. Adults such as teachers and parents, she argues, have been
infantilised by bringing them down to the level of children who have in turn
been burdened with responsibilities and decisions they are not mature enough
to shoulder and should not be expected to carry. For Phillips, child-centred
theories and the children’s rights movement are destroying childhood in Britain.
A further point that Phillips makes is that child-centred education has harmed
poorer children most. Refusing to accept the effects of inequality and poverty on
poorer children, Phillips claims that schools and educational experts have been
far too prepared to impose lower expectations on poorer children, and fewer
rules and standards of discipline. This, she claims, has resulted in poor levels of

literacy and numeracy among children from more deprived backgrounds. For
Phillips, as for former Education Secretary Michael Gove, the answer is for there
to be less child-centred teaching and more discipline, as well as an emphasis on
standards (see Chapter 11). However, writers such as Lansdown (1994) argue that
children should instead be listened to more, and are also in need of greater pro-
tection. This has perhaps been given added impetus in recent years by revelations
of child abuse by those in authority (mainly men) in schools, hospitals, care
homes and other institutions, as well as families. The evidence that suggests that
the victims of such abuse were not listened to or taken seriously (Gray and Watt,
2013) seems to lend support to those who advocate more rights and a greater
voice for children rather than less.
Giving children a voice in schools

In England, there can be no more iconic image of pupil voice and decision mak-
ing than Summerhill School in Suffolk, which was established by the liberal
educator A.S. Neill in the 1920s. In order for children to be themselves and to
achieve happiness, Neill believed that children should be free from all discipline,
as well as moral and religious teaching. They should be able to discover and
decide for themselves on such issues, including whether or not to attend lessons.
He had absolute faith in the potential of all children to make the right choices
on such matters, as he believed that we are born inherently good and therefore,
all things being equal and if the child is given complete freedom, there can be
no other outcome. The main obstacle to this, for Neill, are the moral and reli-
gious ideas imposed on children by adults.
At Summerhill, pupils are fully involved in decision making in the school at
every level. There are regular weekly meetings during which rules are reviewed
and changed on a democratic basis, in which each pupil and teacher has one
vote. Sanctions for such things as anti-social behaviour, bullying or theft are
also dealt with at these weekly meetings. Although Summerhill was criticised
by Ofsted in 1999 for its poor academic record and was threatened with closure
if it did not bring in reforms related to its policy on non-compulsory lesson
attendance – a key principle of the school – it won an educational tribunal held
in 2000 that allowed it to maintain its core principles relating to pupil choice.
In an inspection in 2011, Ofsted awarded the school an ‘outstanding’ grade in
all areas except that of teaching. Summerhill no longer faces the threat of clo-
sure and is able to continue with its key principles relating to pupil voice and
choice and, despite the issue of academic standards, research shows that pupils
who attended Summerhill tend to feel that their experience has made them
feel more confident and better able to deal with adults and those in authority
(Bernstein, 1968). Summerhill is a private school, which, unlike state schools,

is free from many of the restrictions over its curriculum and organisation, and
clearly stands out as an exception in terms of the freedoms and rights it affords
its pupils. However, it is not the only school that believes in the rights of chil-
dren to have their say in educational matters that affect them.
Researching pupil voice

Rudduck and Flutter (2004) have conducted extensive research on the use of
pupil voice in a variety of schools that employ systems of consultation and pupil
participation in decision making. They suggest that evidence collected from
across the UK shows that pupils are very capable of engaging in responsible and
constructive dialogue with teachers and heads in helping to bring about
improvements in their schools. More specifically, Rudduck and Flutter believe
that it has enabled pupils to take greater control of their learning and for teach-
ers to be able to adapt their teaching to the specific needs of their pupils. In
addition, they point to the changing nature of employment and work practices,
which require greater levels of team work, consultation and flexibility, and they
suggest that many schools are not adequately preparing their pupils for their
future roles (Rudduck and Flutter, 2004). Evidence collected by the Cambridge
Primary Review (Alexander, 2009) also suggests that there are good pedagogical
and civic reasons to seek children’s voices in educational matters.
While Rudduck and Flutter make a convincing case for the inclusion of
pupils’ voices in schools through the processes of consultation and pupil par-
ticipation in decision making, they acknowledge that pupils often lack the
language and skills to articulate their ideas and needs.
For philosophers such as Verharen (2002), an important way in which chil-
dren can develop such a vocabulary and skills is through the teaching of
philosophy in schools. Focusing primarily on the potentially liberating effects of
philosophy teaching on Black children in American schools, Verharen suggests
that the methods of philosophical thinking can be used as a means of challeng-
ing what he sees as a ‘slave mentality’, which Black Americans have inherited
from their slave ancestors. The general message, however, is that all children
need to be able to develop an understanding of fundamental concepts such as
justice, fairness and equality in conjunction with the reasoned and logical meth-
ods of philosophical enquiry in order to be able effectively to articulate their
views and ideas.
In his suggestion that philosophy should be taught to Black children in the
USA, Verharen is effectively challenging the beliefs of Aristotle and Plato, who
argued that the teaching of philosophy should be restricted to specific age and
class groups, as they believed that philosophy is a dangerous thing to teach chil-
dren, and the lower orders such as slaves, workers and soldiers. It is still rare for

children to be taught philosophy in state schools in both the USA and Britain,
and the subject is certainly not part of the National Curriculum in England and
Wales. For Verharen, this is probably because of assumptions by those in author-
ity regarding children’s lack of maturity to deal with philosophical questions
and the potential abuse of the knowledge and skills they could acquire.
Nevertheless, he claims that philosophy is an essential means for the children in
our society to articulate their views and that ‘Teaching children philosophy
might be the best form of defence against their abuse by authority figures’
(Verharen, 2002: 309).
Teaching children philosophy

So what does Verharen mean by teaching philosophy to (Black American) chil-
dren? He does not mean that we should teach children the kind of philosophy
associated with academic philosophy. Instead, he suggests that they should be
encouraged to philosophise, to think and to act philosophically. This involves
being able to theorise and understand abstract concepts that help us study all
aspects of human experience, be they natural, spiritual or social. Verharen insists
that children are able to philosophise on the basis of their own experience. They
may not be able to generalise on the basis of this, as Plato and Aristotle claim
that philosophers should be able to do, but they can reflect on such concepts as
beauty, justice, equality, fairness, love, truth and tolerance.
The teaching of philosophy to children has been taken up by a number of
scholars and organisations such as P4C (Philosophy for Children), which has
been guided by the ideas of Matthew Lipman (2003). The intention is to enable
children to think and discuss ideas regarding fundamental concepts such as
equality, fairness, justice and tolerance, in ways that are appropriate to their
level of understanding, thereby creating a community of enquiry (CoE). Dawid
(2006) believes that this will be a means of creating responsible and aware
citizens from an early age. These, however, are the very kinds of practices that
Plato warned against. Bleazby (2005) also advocates the creation of such com-
munities of enquiry, which she believes should enable children and other
groups to create meaning in relation to important issues that affect their lives
and that of their community, but she is critical of the fact that Lipman does
not include the Deweyian notion of pragmatism. By this, Bleazby means that
for Dewey, who is the principle influence on Lipman, philosophy should be
about providing practical solutions to problems or issues in society: pupils
should not just have a voice, they should be able to change things for the bet-
ter. Lipman, however, does not go as far as to propose that children test their
ideas in real-life situations, and this she believes is a weakness in his approach.
Bleazby suggests that philosophy in Deweyian terms should be about changing

or transforming society and not just limited to the classroom. Such transforma-
tions, however, should be pursued in terms of intended consequences: the
achievement of justice or the elimination of homelessness in the community.
We might add to this the protection of children by giving them a voice.
A growth in the involvement of children

In a review of the literature on the involvement of children in research and their
influence on policy and practice in organisations such as schools and youth
organisations, Halsey et al. (2006) suggest that there is an increasing commitment
by such organisations to seek children’s views when considering changes and
reforms. In the 26 documents they reviewed, they found that children were
involved in five main ‘impact areas’ (Halsey et al., 2006: ii), which included not
only areas of service delivery, but also policy development and staff recruitment.
However, Halsey et al. (2006) found that there is limited information on the
impact of children’s voice and involvement in policy changes, and recommend
that organisations not only involve children more in such consultations, but that
they also do more to evaluate the impact of any reforms carried out.
Despite the generally positive tone of these documents on the involvement of
children and their impact on the areas identified, such as a greater feeling of
confidence and self-esteem among the pupils, there was also some evidence in a
minority of the literature of a sense of disillusionment on the part of children
where it was felt that consultations led to little in the way of real change and
that the institutions were merely going through the motions.
Children’s voice and children’s action: part of the

solution to our ‘wicked’ problems?
At the start of this book in Chapter 1, it was suggested that sociology is a sub-
ject that should do more than just describe society. It should be used to
question why things are the way they are, and to encourage critical thinking.
We often approach issues in a ‘taken-for-granted’ way that may be based on
tradition, ideological position, common-sense assumptions and even preju-
dice. Clearly, not all accepted wisdom or practice is inherently ‘bad’, harmful
or worthy of challenge. Indeed, as we saw in Chapter 12, there is a need to
celebrate and to preserve the cultures and ways of life that have been almost
destroyed by colonialism. However, as Rittel and Webber (1973) suggest, in
most pluralistic societies there is no agreed position on ‘the public’ good or on
the idea of ‘justice’ and, as a consequence, there is no clear view on whether a

problem exists in the first place and therefore whether it needs to be addressed.
Whereas Rittel and Webber (1973) believe that science as a discipline deals with
‘tame’ problems – that is, with practical problems of everyday life such as the
provision of clean water, constructing housing and infrastructure – once we
move from these tame scientific problems to issues of policy, problems become
‘wicked’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973: 155). This is because the language of policy
such as equity (or fairness) in relation to housing provision and homelessness,
dealing with poverty, health services and environmental policy, or concepts of
right or wrong, such as the ‘right’ way to teach the history of Empire, are all
highy contested concepts (see Chapter 12).
Some of the problems we face today, such as climate change and nuclear
weapons proliferation or global water shortages, are considered so serious a
threat that they are in need of urgent resolution if humanity is to avoid global
catastrophy. These super wicked problems, as Levin et al. (2012) call them, are
characterised by an ‘irrational’ approach to their potential threat to humanity
and its future by those who are responsible for them. This is partly due to the
fact that those same people or organisations are also responsible for finding
the solutions, and are limited in their ability to act because of particular inter-
ests they may have that conflict with the sorts of policies that are needed to
act in the interests of all and not just a powerful minority. The obvious exam-
ple that comes to mind is the economic policy of Donald Trump, President of
the USA, who has been determined to promote America’s economic growth
through the continued extraction and use of fossil fuels (Davenport and
Pierre-Lewis, 2018), despite the extensive scientific evidence showing that
continuing to do so is likely to raise planetary temperatures irreversibly to
levels that may cause a chain reaction, creating further super wicked problems
(National Geographic, 2019).
Where the policy of one society or state on economic growth is placed before
anything else, that state may view the evidence and the consequences on other
countries as irrelevant. This is exacerbated in the prevailing neoliberal economic
‘climate’ in which there are still significant and powerful groups of economists
and politicians who are prone to justify such a position on the grounds that for
the economy to function at its optimum level of efficiency, there should be as
little government interference and regulation as possible, and there is even a
refusal to accept the evidence of ‘experts’. Moreover, in the absence of an effec-
tive central authority with the power to enforce appropriated decisions for
remedial action to address the problem, such as the dramatic reduction of green-
house gases, a solution becomes increasingly nebulous.
Despite attempts by the UN to broker such agreements through the Kyoto
Protocol on Climate Change of 1997 (United Nations, 2019) and the Paris
Agreement on Climate Change of 2015, the US, one of the world’s biggest pollut-
ers, refused to ratify (give legal effect to) either of them (Climate Analytics, 2018).

We can see in the issue of climate change most of the dimensions of a super
wicked problem identified by Levin et al. (2012) and, in particular, a ‘reckless’
disregard for the future of the planet and the generations to come. It seems that
these ‘responsible adults’ are incapable of reaching an enforceable global climate
policy and continue to use ineffective systems and remedies. As a consequence,
most of us can only look on, seemingly powerless to do anything to avert the
impending disaster.
It is therefore highly significant that, as Hudson (2018) suggests, children and
young people are becoming increasingly frustrated over the way that adults
seem to be merely paying lip service to the idea of dealing with climate change
while things get progressively worse. In recent years, we have seen the increasing
involvement of young people in political and judicial activism on this issue. By
July 2018, there had been over 1,000 such cases taken out against 24 govern-
ments around the world and young people figure prominently in many of them
(Scott, 2018). Miko Vergun, a 17-year-old youth plaintiff involved in the land-
mark Youth Climate Lawsuit known as Juliana v. US, sums up the mood of the
30,000 young people in the USA who are part of the Zero Hour movement when
he states:
I’m part of an amazing group of plaintiffs who won’t put up with adults jeopardiz-
ing our futures any longer. I am so hyped to see how many other young people feel
empowered to support us in this amicus brief* and push for change for our futures
and future generations. The amount of young people, in the United States and
around the world, who added their names to support this brief is a representation
of all the youth who know that their futures and their planet are at stake. (Our
Children’s Trust, 2019a)
* Amicus brief: a person or organisation not involved in a court case, but is pre-
pared to provide the court with expert opinion in support of a litigant. In this
case there are environmental experts, medical professionals and legal experts
who have pledged to lend their support.
Zero Hour is the name of a group of young American environmental activists
formed in 2017 that is dedicated to bringing about climate justice, racial justice
and economic justice through political and judicial activism (Zero Hour, 2019).
It was responsible for organising the march through Washington, DC in July
2018 to highlight the threats of climate change and, in the case of Juliana v. US,
the young activists are suing the US government because they claim that it has
‘violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and prop-
erty, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources’ in its current
energy policy (Our Children’s Trust, 2019b). Children in other parts of the world
have also been moved to take action. In Sweden, Greta Thunberg started her solo
protest against the Swedish government’s environmental policies. Her action has
inspired protests in a number of cities around Europe (Thunberg, 2018).

Case study 13.2
Greta Thunberg’s ‘solo school strike’
Greta Thunberg is a 15-year-old schoolgirl who, in August 2018, started a solo protest
outside the Swedish parliament building every Friday instead of going to school. She
says she will continue to do so until the Swedish government conforms to the Paris
Climate Agreement emissions targets. Her Friday protest has now attracted other
children in Sweden and inspired those in other parts of Europe to go on strike. Her
arguments are powerful and compelling, highlighting the lack of will by those pow-
erful adults who control the political, economic and environmental agenda to take
the difficult but necessary decisions the experts claim are needed to save the planet.
Have a look at her video in which she explains her vision for the future of the planet
(Thunberg, 2018): www.youtube.com/channel/UCQbz6u1CyABskXzDhav3vxw
By early 2019, there were weekly protests by children in up to 270 towns and
cities globally (Taylor et al., 2019). In February 2019, there were strikes by school-
children in towns across Britain, including Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and
England organized by Youth Strike 4 Climate (Youth Strike 4 Climate, 2019).
Thousands of young people defied threats of detention and other sanctions for
being absent from school to make their views heard. The mood of the strikers was,
once again, a feeling of having been betrayed by so-called responsible adults, and
there was a call on the government to declare a ‘climate emergency’ (Taylor et al.,
2019). Although there was a good deal of support for their action, even among
teachers and head teachers, the response by the government in Westminster
was to claim that these children should have been at school rather than wasting
their teachers’ and their own time. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister Theresa
May stated that being at school rather than on strike ‘is crucial for young people,
precisely so that they can develop into the top scientists, engineers and advocates
we need to help tackle this problem’ (Taylor et al., 2019; BBC News Online, 2019).
However, the response by Greta Thunberg, and presumably many of the other
child protestors, to such comments has been to question the relevance of going to
school when their future continues to be threatened by the very adults who claim
to know what is good for them (Thunberg, 2018). Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First
Minister, was altogether more positive, tweeting: ‘It’s a cause for optimism, in an
often dark world, that young people are taking a stand on climate change. @scot-
gov is a world leader but, given the urgency, it is right that we are all challenged
to do more and that we hear the voice of the next generation’ (BBC News Online,
2019), once again revealing the growing differences of approach to children and
young people’s rights, as well as climate change, between the two nations.

These events and the debates they have thrown up raise some very significant
questions relating to the rights of children to engage in such action, as well as a
number of pedagogical questions, including whether school is the best or only
place for children to learn about issues of citizenship and, indeed, what is the
purpose of education? The responses by those in authority still seem to be
dominated by notions of children as lacking the capacity to know what is best
for them and the need to control them, rather than to allow their views to be
heard and taken seriously. In relation to the case of Juliana v. US, the US govern-
ment has taken very drastic legal measures to silence the Zero Hour movement
and to prevent them from having their case heard in court. It has taken out a
writ of mandamus which is a request submitted to a higher court to order a lower
court to either hear or to dismiss a case. In this instance, the US government
applied for a writ via the US Supreme Court requesting that the Oregon District
Court dismiss the case, claiming that the plaintiffs had no right in law to sue the
government on such grounds and thereby also challenging the preliminary
opinion of the district court judge. In that opinion, judge Ann Aiken asserted
that the young litigants did have a constitutional right to a clean and sustainable
environment and was therefore minded to allow the case of the plaintiffs to be
heard. As of March 2019 the case was still subject to a stay (halt) on proceedings
pending the resolution of the appeals by the US government.
Despite these responses, it could be argued that the young people involved in
such processes and activities are, in fact, learning as much, if not more, of rele-
vance to their lives and futures than they might be within the confines of a
school classroom. They appear to be creating communities of enquiry with peo-
ple of all ages and backgrounds on complex scientific issues in order to solve
real-life problems. Moreover, the potential consequences of their lawsuit against
the US government being heard could be highly significant as the young activ-
ists are part of the process of developing environmental law. In particular,
through Judge Aiken’s landmark decision (Our Children’s Trust, 2019b) they are
helping to place at the forefront of the debate on climate change policy the
principles of public trust doctrine. This is a guiding doctrine of atmospheric trust
litigation that emphasises the existence of a citizen’s environmental rights and the
responsibility of states, as trustees, to safeguard the natural resources of the
nation as a common property that should be preserved for future generations
(Oregon School of Law, 2016). But as the Oregon School of Law suggests, this is
likely to entail the incorporation of public trust doctrine as part of the environ-
mental policy-making process through an amendment to the US Constitution.
Hudson (2019) reminds us that these examples of youth activism are not
unique, nor the first of their kind. Certainly, the movements in the 1950s and
1960s against nuclear weapons and in support of civil rights were made up pri-
marily of young people. During the Cold War in 1987, a group of children met
the leaders of the USA and the Soviet Union to present them with some of the

230,000 letters written by children asking for world peace (Cassata, 1987), and
in terms of environmental matters there have been a number of earlier cam-
paigns by children and young people. In 1970, the Australian Society for Social
Responsibility in Science sponsored a project called INSPECT (the Inquiry into
the State of Pollution and Environmental Conservation by Thoughtful People)
inviting schoolchildren from Queensland and Canberra to take part in environ-
mental projects and to present their findings to the community. For some time,
therefore, we have known of young people’s potential to ‘make a very significant
contribution to their community’s future’ (Ellyard, 1970). However, what
appears to be a key feature of more recent activist groups involving young people
is that they seem to be very much youth led and include a high proportion of
children. Moreover, instead of waiting to be invited by adults to participate in
major causes, as in the case of INSPECT, young people seem to be taking the
initiative and leading from the start.
Case study 13.3

Can ‘climate kids’ take on governments and win?
Katy Scott (2018) looks at some of the young environmental activists from around
the world, some of whom are less than 10 years of age. Rabab Ali is a 7-year-old girl
from Pakistan who in 2016 submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Pakistan
requesting a change to the government’s energy policy, invoking her fundamental
rights and that of other children in Pakistan to a healthy life and a safe world for future
generations. The petition asserts these rights using the doctrine of public trust.
The article provides many more examples of child litigants from India, Colombia,
Norway and the United States with links to relevant legal and other documents relating
to the cases. Read the article online, available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/07/24/
health/youth-climate-march/index.html
It would seem that it is the actions of children and young people that are increas-
ingly alerting us to the risk of a potential global disaster. This is certainly helped
by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Articles 12 and 15, which not
only establish children’s general right to be heard and their views to be taken into
consideration on issues that affect them, but also emphasises the right of the child
to peaceful association and assembly (Lansdown, 2011) as part of this process.
Many nations have to varying degrees incorporated these principles into their
constitutions. Moreover, Article 12, paragraph 2, asserts that, while taking account
of a child’s capacity to comprehend and make informed decisions, they should

have the ‘right to be heard in any judicial or administrative proceedings affecting
[them]’ (Lansdown, 2011: 24). However, it would be unrealistic to expect children
per se as a group of political and legal actors to save the planet. Instead, it is chil-
dren and young people as symbols of the future of humanity that need to
dominate the political as well as scientific agenda on climate change, instead of
the narrow national and economic interests of the most powerful nations.
Chapter summary
Children in the UK are members of a group whose status has clearly changed
over the past two centuries. Although they have gained many more rights than
they ever had, they still occupy a position of subordination and ambiguity in
terms of the way that adults see them and the way they are treated. On one
hand, they are defined as a precious and vulnerable group in need of protection
and education, as seen in the various welfare rights and legislation protecting
them, and yet on the other hand the government seems to tolerate high levels
of child poverty compared to other developed nations (see Chapter 11), despite
the UK being one of the wealthiest countries in the world. In addition, children
are viewed with suspicion and concern in terms of their corruptibility and the
potential threat they pose to society in terms of their moral, criminal and sexual
activities. As we have seen, there is nothing new in this position and it is a pos-
sible reason why many of those in authority – politicians, religious leaders and
other moral campaigners – are reluctant to give children more rights. This is a
position that is becoming more difficult to maintain given the revelations about
the behaviour of some of these political, religious and moral leaders towards
young people (Gray and Watt, 2013). Moreover, with their growing rights and
their increasing willingness to assert these rights through the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child, children are becoming significant actors
in both national and global issues such as climate change. The governments of
Scotland and Wales seem to be more active in developing the rights of children
and young people in their jurisdictions than seems to be the case in England.
In terms of education, young people are the biggest consumers of a service
that, in general, provides them with little in the way of choice on issues of where
or how they are educated and on matters of testing and assessment. The work of
Rudduck and Flutter (2004) suggests that including children in decision making
in schools has a positive effect in terms of enabling pupils to take greater control
of their learning and helps teachers to identify the needs of individual pupils.
However, writers such as Verharen (2002) argue that pupils need to be equipped
with the appropriate language and skills to be able to articulate their views and
ideas effectively. The work of the P4C movement is an important initiative in
this direction, but the teaching of philosophical methods and ideas in schools

in England is not widely practised. Verharen (2002: 309) claims that ‘Children
have as much right to this martial art as their parents, perhaps even more, given
their relatively defenceless nature’. Others such as Phillips (1996), however,
argue that children already have too many rights.
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14
Transformations
Chapter aims
In this chapter, a discussion about what transformation means in the context of
higher education will take place. An exploration of widening participation as the
strategic government priority to increase the number of students from backgrounds
that are underrepresented in UK higher education will include policy changes and
cultural transformation. The notion of diversity and leadership in higher education
will capture participant voices from qualitative studies and the myth of transfor-
mation is explored in the context of Teach First. The chapter concludes with the
analysis of data linked to students’ experiences of higher education.
Key words: widening participation, meritocracy, elitism, inclusion, leadership,

diversification.
Introduction
In this chapter, a sociological consideration of transformation as a concept and
as experienced by students in higher education will be explored. A deeper under-
standing of how engaging with higher education can so powerfully impact on
the lives of the participants to bring about transformation overlaps with many
sociological themes, including primary socialisation, identity and belonging,
and the means by which values are transmitted and internalised.
The higher education journey is a fertile plain for discourses on transforma-
tions. The university as a site of the experiential has been the focus of extensive
research by the Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells (2001) who presents four cen-
tral functions of the university. Castells notes that universities have historically
played a major role as ideological apparatuses, expressing the ideological struggles
present in all societies. Second, they function as an organised and respected
domain of hierarchy, another layer of socialisation of dominant elites. Third, the
university is a place of knowledge production, thus always valued and a focus of
national debate. Fourth, and perhaps most relevant to modern-day understand-
ing, the university is a place where the training of a labour force takes place.
This chapter acknowledges the key forms of transformation in the context of the
higher education setting. These include economic transformation (the formation
of human capital), social transformation (the mechanisms of mobility by different
groups) and cultural transformation (the production and transmission of ideals to
a wider societal base). The myth of transformation is also considered in the context
of Teach First, the fast-track route into teaching for the elite graduate. Finally, the
chapter will capture first-hand experiences of transformation as shared by students
in a small-scale research project based at a post-1992 institute of higher education.

This exploration of the student voice is central to the notion that transformation
is an experience of personal transition from experience to being. The inclusion of
case studies of transformation supports the reimagining of the traditionalist role of
the university as the alma mater, literally meaning ‘nourishing mother’, a space
where the love of learning can excite, motivate and transform.
Widening participation
The link between education policy and the needs of the economy has been the
preoccupation of many educationalists, including Tomlinson (2018) and Ball
(2017) who have explored the momentum created by the widening participation
agenda that continues to challenge all universities to work towards, providing
opportunities for non-traditional students to have access to higher education,
regardless of their background. As a result, this interventionist strategy has blurred
the lines of exclusion and elitism in some of the more prestigious institutes of
higher education. The issue of higher education being the space for accelerated
social mobility is reflected in popular culture, as illustrated by the inclusion of
Educating Rita as an exemplar from literature later in this discussion, and box office
hits such as Dead Poets Society (1989), Good Will Hunting (1997), Mona Lisa Smile
(2003), The Social Network (2010) and, from Netflix, Candy Jar (2019) and Coin
Heist (2019). In a further exemplar, the British film adaptation of Laura Wade’s
play Posh, entitled The Riot Club (2014), set among the privileged elite of the
University of Oxford, tells the story of how a distorted sense of values and behav-
iours are embedded in certain social classes, as played out by members of an
exclusive dining club. The links to the infamous Bullingdon Club, the all-male
dining club at Oxford whose ‘class of ’87’ included Boris Johnson, David Cameron
and George Osborne, are transparent and the film is a toxic representation of a
society (all male) when the prerequisite for entry is a privileged, elitist schooling
background. According to studies on social mobility and class (Friedman et al.,
2017) and education (Kirby 2016; Sibieta, 2016), countries like the UK have high
levels of income inequality and low levels of social mobility. The lack of move-
ment between social classes, as portrayed in the exemplars from the films above,
can be understood at a deeper level as ‘inter-generational – between generations
and intra-generational – within lifetimes’ (Rolfe, 2018: 2), presenting any widening
participation strategy with a colossal undertaking.
Widening participation in particular has created an opening in higher education
for working-class people. Contestably, New Labour’s ideas about education – what
it does, how it works, whose interests it serves – have fuelled and strengthened the
construction of what Ball (2017: 5) describes as the ‘inevitable and the necessary’
relationship between education policy and the needs of the state and the economy.
The social reality of interventions such as widening participation is evident in the
Transformations 319
vast expansion within higher education post-1997, as New Labour tried to achieve
a cohort participation rate of 50 per cent by 2020. As Table 14.1 illustrates, the 1992
Further and Higher Education Act created a provision within the sector primarily
to meet the needs of the widening participation agenda. However, as universities
are increasingly competitive and survive on healthy and sustained recruitment,
this provision has faced stiff competition.
Table 14.1 Key dates of UK policy changes on widening participation (WP) in higher
education
1919 University Grants Committee formed

1944 Education Act with notion of equality of educational opportunity
1963 Robbins Report on Higher Education
1966 Antony Crosland, Labour Secretary of State, gives speech on a Binary Policy for Higher Education
1970 Thirty Polytechnics created from Local Authority Colleges
1986 Start of Research Assessment Exercise in Universities
1987 White Paper on Higher Education: ‘Meeting the challenge’
1988 Education Reform Act
•• Created Universities Funding Council (UFC)
•• Polytechnic and Colleges Funding Council (PCFC)
•• 1992 Further and Higher Education Act
•• Created new universities based on former polytechnics (hence pre-1992 and post-1992 universities),
abolishing the binary ‘divide’
•• Set up Higher Education Funding Councils for the UK nations
1997 Publication of Dearing Report on Higher Education in the Learning Society
1997 Labour government in power, committed to ‘education, education, education’, accepts a
revised version of Dearing
2003 White Paper on ‘The future of higher education’
2005 Higher Education Act created Office of Fair Access (OFFA) and post of Access Regulator
2006 Department for Education and Skills (DfES) Paper ‘Widening participation in HE: Creating
opportunity, releasing potential, achieving excellence’
2010 ‘Securing a sustainable future for higher education: Browne review’
2011 The Browne Review – removal of a cap on higher education tuition fees
2010 White Paper ‘Higher Education: Students at the Heart of the System’
2014 Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) ‘National Strategy for access and
student success’
2015 Green Paper Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice – WP targets for 2020 set out
2016 White Paper ‘Success as a Knowledge Economy’ – WP targets for 2020 confirmed
2016 Green Paper ‘Schools that Work for Everyone’ WP extended to school pupils to raise attainment
2017 Higher Education and Research Act – established ‘Office for Students (OfS) to oversee WP,
promote competition between universities and to enhance student choice
2017 DfE ‘Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential’ – strategy to improve social mobility through
education. To promote transparency so that more socially disadvantaged students access the more
selective universities.

Table 14.1 captures key dates and policy developments in the widening participa-
tion narrative. A consistent picture of reform and reimagining is evident. However,
the current climate of marketisation of higher education and demands for height-
ened accountability and transparency at government level, and better services and
facilities at student (consumer/customer) level, means that the coming-of-age
experience of attending university of the post-1919 graduate could not be further
from the part-time, mature, stay-at-home, full-time employee characterisation of
the post-2017 student.
Widening participation is currently delivered through the Office for Fair Access
(OFFA), the Office for Students (OfS), which replaced the Higher Education
Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 2018 and by individual institutes of
higher education. Historically, widening participation has offered financial support
to target groups when they attend university. The provision now concentrates on
social mobility and student choice, and the ‘student life cycle’ that potentially
commences at school with creating awareness and includes support with applica-
tions, as well as interventions such as mentoring, campus visits and residentials,
and continues up to graduate employability (DfE, 2017). Additionally, charities like
‘The Brilliant Club’ (www.thebrilliantclub.org), which supports pupils from under-
represented backgrounds to study at highly selective universities by mobilising the
PhD community to share its academic expertise with state schools, offer a varied
range of interventions. Co-founded in 2011 by teachers Jonathan Sobczyk and
Simon Coyle, ‘The Brilliant Club’ is an exemplar of endemic elitism in that their
outcomes of success are recording numbers of students entering Oxford, Cambridge
and Russell Group universities. Their strategy of ‘pupil targeting’ and making dis-
tinctions between the preferred destination of ‘highly selective university’ with
‘medium and low-tariff universities’ also speaks volumes in wider discourses on
higher education as a vehicle to advance social mobility and understanding the
lived experiences of social disadvantage. While policy statements aim to ‘unlock
talent’ – targeting the same groups as ‘The Brilliant Club’ – from 2018, universities
and colleges in England can charge up to £9,250 a year for higher education
courses, meaning that in real terms economic transformation for the most margin-
alised groups is at best problematic and a labyrinthine life-changing commitment.
Reading suggestion
Who is higher education for?
The Higher Education Policy Institute (www.hepi.co.uk) is the only UK-based
independent think tank dedicated to higher education. In May 2018, they
(Continued)
Transformations 321
launched a publication entitled ‘Reaching the Parts of Society Universities Have
Missed: A Manifesto for the New Director of Fair Access and Participation’
aimed at Chris Millward who took up his post in September 2017. The publica-
tion acknowledges the changing landscape of widening participation policy
and practices, and sets out the tools to dismantle the barriers that prevent
so many from benefiting from higher education. The call for radical change
in how universities prioritise quotas and funding over student experience and
bespoke support that secures not only retention and completion, but achieving
the higher degree classifications, also marks a shift from the ‘one size fits all’
approach, which is a significant barrier in and of itself.
A Fly Girl’s Guide to University (Olufemi et al., 2019) is a collaborative publica-
tion made up of memoirs, essays and poetry by four women of colour, reflecting
on their time at Cambridge University. Dominant themes include imposter syn-
drome, disruption, othering, student activism, colonialism and feminism. The
book, argue the authors, is in response to their invisibility while at Cambridge, a
testament to self-validation. They aim to voice previously silenced truths, while
at the same time supporting potential future students.
Cultural transformation
In discussing cultural transformation in this part of the chapter, a consideration
of how an educational experience can be understood as a transformational part
of one’s life is explored, as well as how values are changed by education, thus
bringing about a cultural transformation. In relation to the latter point, the cul-
ture of part-time study in higher education is considered as a stepping stone to
social mobility, and how the university experience itself has undergone a cultural
transformation in order to meet the needs of the twenty-first century student.
To unpack cultural transformation, Lewis Gilbert’s (1983) cinematic produc-
tion of Willy Russell’s (1980) stage play Educating Rita provides a powerful and
timeless narrative of self-discovery, or, as Foucault (1926–84) describes, ‘self-
fashioning’. Inspired by Russell’s experiences in evening classes, the film shows
the experiences of a working-class, non-traditional student called Rita, who is
notable as she dresses, speaks and behaves differently from her middle-class
counterparts, thereby exposing her working-class heritage. However, through a
desire to transform her mundane life, Rita abandons her working-class identity
in order to fit into university habitus. In this context, habitus means a person’s
predisposition to be affected by something and, when applied in the Bourdieuian
context, incorporates a sociological transformation of culture. To use an
American expression, this can be understood as Rita attempting to hide her feel-
ings of ‘imposter syndrome’ (Bothello and Roulet, 2018), a mechanism employed

by non-traditional students to fit into academia – literally, the feeling of being
an imposter in a public space; not belonging, the outsider.
Diane Reay (2018a), a sociologist who has conducted research on social class and
educational attainment, argues that there are multiple and overlapping barriers for
working-class people in terms of access and engagement in higher education.
However, the most significant is the theoretical assumption that students suffered
from ‘imposter syndrome’ and feeling undeserving of their place. Rita experienced
all these negative feelings as her attempts to fit in meant that she not only com-
promised, but opted to distance herself (initially) from her working-classness,
marking a psycho-sociological internal conflict between her social identity and her
undeveloped learner identity. This conflict has an enduring impact and can subse-
quently affect retention and attainment, leading to possible self-hatred and
reinforcing the notion of the imposter in the higher education environment.
Through the story of Educating Rita, the desire to transform is viewed as a moti-
vational factor, demonstrating how processes behind class advantage and
disadvantage work through the individual. This, it can be argued, is perhaps the
most critical stage of cultural transformation termed by Foucault as ‘self-fashioning’;
essentially, this is an act of (self)-empowerment and is understood as an act of crea-
tive representation or reconstruction to form a new identity from the social
environment in question.
Thinking point 14.1

Educating Rita – Act 1
Rita’s dress sense changes in the course of Act 1. Initially, she wears ‘tarty’
dresses, while after summer school she is wearing ‘new second-hand clothes’.
This is Willy Russell’s way of showing how she has become more ‘middle class’
and started becoming a ‘proper student’, more independent of her working-
class identity. Rita gives up smoking; this is shown by the quote ‘no, ta, I’ve
packed it in’ after Frank offers her a cigarette. Here, Willy Russell applies a meta-
phor to symbolise Rita giving up her old working-class life and starting a whole
new life. This commentary of Act 1 concentrates on the physical changes made
by Rita as part of her transformation.
To fully understand Rita’s transformation, discuss and investigate the many
structural, social and cultural barriers students face when entering higher edu-
cation. Explore strategies that institutes of higher education can implement to
support students facing such barriers.
Transformations 323
Understanding the place of part-time study as a stepping stone to social mobil-
ity is an important part of the cultural transformation of higher education as an
experience for some students. Callendar (2012) reports that a third of all UK
undergraduates study part-time – a trend that reflects a cohort of students with
relevant and recent work-based (life) skills, with a vision for self-improvement and
a flexible approach to lifelong learning and with choices, as the sector has changed
to meet their needs. Attending university was once the domain of 18-year-olds
packing up their bedrooms and moving into university halls for their initiation
into adulthood, where being at university was a life experience in itself. Now, a
cultural transformation in higher education reflects a mature (over the age of 21)
student, often managing several home and family responsibilities, as well as
employment, and still making a significant financial and personal investment
into their higher education; life carries on while this student (over a longer period
of time) completes their higher education.
By way of a conclusion, it is apparent that an unintended outcome of the
widening participation agenda has been that not only have universities had to
take on the changes demanded of them by external funding bodies, but also a
cultural transformation from within has facilitated more significant changes
that have resulted in a reconceptualisation of the provision of higher education.
The historic traditional seat of the elite (Oxford and Cambridge) is now a distinct
minority in comparison to the university based in the community and meeting
the needs of the community, thus delivering on their corporate social responsi-
bility, while at the same time being open-minded about how the university
operates in terms of a business model.
A dominant theme of the post-war era was equality of opportunity working
hand in hand with the ideology that education was the social instrument that
would help to shape a new vision for a changing society. A two-tier system per-
sisted throughout the 1970s and 1980s, where the foundations were created for
a higher education system that was linked to employability and a stronger eco-
nomic position for the country as a whole. This ultimate goal was met with an
increasing demand for a skilled workforce, emphasising employability as
opposed to higher education qualifications.
New Labour’s mantra ‘education, education, education’ as a principle for
addressing social exclusion has meant that in recent years universities have been
given a multidimensional remit in the development of disadvantaged regions.
To illustrate, first, the university is understood as a space for lifelong learning for
all learners, embedded in equality and access; second, the university is known
for knowledge creation and transfer, and cultural and community development;
third, the university has a role in serving and shaping the community – in effect,
a stakeholder in the community and leading the way in international, cultural
and economic networks at a local and global level. Finally, the role of the uni-
versity in raising the aspirations of the next generation (through outreach and

community-based interventions) is recognised as a valuable long-term invest-
ment, which may pay dividends via part-time study – a less economically sound
business model, but nonetheless a pivotal role in the changing conceptualisa-
tion of the university as a space for public good.
Diversity and leadership in higher education

Widening participation in the context of higher education must also challenge
and seek to advance issues of diversity and leadership so that the very students
they are committed to supporting are able to see leaders like themselves, and
that in and of itself is a further motivating factor (Law, 2017; Mirza, 2017;
Shepherd, 2017). Diversity in this context is about equal representation from all
marginalised and minority groups in society. However, this discussion will
explore ‘race’ and educational leadership, and will reflect on the experiences of
Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) academics as this has been the focus of consid-
erable research in recent years (Alexander and Arday, 2015; Bhopal and Brown,
2016; Williams, 2013). This body of literature explores many factors, including
the demand for the Academy to shift from tokenistic talk about equality to the
reality of representation at leadership level, and the realisation that there is a
resistance within the Academy to doing this. Additionally, patriarchy and hier-
archy are significant barriers alongside organisational cultures that undermine
their own diversity agendas by creating inclusive spaces.
When Olufemi et al. (2019) speak of their experiences of invisibility, leading
to their attempts to disrupt the status quo as students, they refer also to repre-
sentation by people they identify with among the academic staff, as well as the
colonised curriculum, as combined these factors confirm that diversity was both
restricted and resisted at their university. The strategy of developing diversity
statements and agendas by individual universities, as directed by OfS, has been
heavily criticised by researchers (Law, 2017) as empty rhetoric when compared
to disparities regarding BME leadership roles, resulting in a contradiction
between words and actions (Adserias et al., 2017). To illustrate, there are only
three BME vice chancellors and 20 UK-born pro-vice chancellors compared with
530 white leaders (Singh and Kwhali, 2015). The very presence of BME leaders
threatens white academics (Alexander, 2018) as their decision-making powers
and leadership capacity are met with resistance, micro-aggression and racism.
This acute experience is captured in the participant voice (female, Black senior
leaders) in Arday’s (2018: 197) study of BME leaders in higher education:
It is very hard to discuss my position as a BME senior leader in a university and not
separate the issue of ‘race’ and gender from my leadership position because both
are interchangeable and both affect me on a daily basis. I am in a position where
Transformations 325
I manage a large majority of middle-class White men who often remind me
through subtle, racial micro-agressions that I am not their equal. They are often
quick to undermine me and my authority [. . .] going above my head to discuss
issues with my line manager the Pro-vice Chancellor that should be discussed with
me. This is exhausting when it is your daily routine. For me, I am done [. . .] they
have won [. . .] they have successed in what they have been attempting to do
because I plan to step down in 12 months and leave the Academy completely. I
value my sanity and wellbeing. This is what everyday racism eventually does to
you, it grinds people down’.
The disruption of these complex and inequitable cultures means that BME aca-
demics are diverted from their actual work and instead are required to address
claims of hypersensitivity, a lack of co-operation or, as the participant quoted
above demonstrates, they choose to walk away for the sake of their own well-
being. Alexander (2018) describes these inequitable cultures as being excluded
from decision-making processes, unconscious bias (where senior staff look to
appoint candidates who reflect their own culture, gender or ‘race’), complacency
on equality issues and hyper-surveillance which takes the form of questioning
professionalism.
The author of this chapter relates to the latter exemplar played out in formal
and public settings when casual conversation suddenly shifts to direct questions
about prior qualification and work experience, aimed only at the one BME per-
son in the group. My own experience of leadership in higher education was
similarly marred by a lack of understanding of my racialised plight (Rollock,
2016), as I did not fit into established and limiting narratives about BME staff
lacking competence and ambition or an inability to organise, strategise and lead
(Tate and Bagguley, 2017). Puwar (2004) refers to BME academics who progress
in traditionally white spaces such as the elite university settings as ‘space invad-
ers’ and ‘out of place’, and that their very presence can lead to a disorientation
of whiteness. If BME academics do secure leadership positions, it is more likely
to be in post-1992 institutions where the demand to mirror the student com-
munity and support them in their specific cultural needs is greater.
Offering an alternative lens, Miller (2016) writes of BME staff required to
invest in ‘white sanction’ where they secure indirect support and endorsement
from white staff in order to progress in a professional capacity. ‘White sanction’
occurs where the capabilities of a BME academic staff are acknowledged and
promoted by a white colleague who may be in a position of authority in the
institution. This can take the form of a written reference, a nomination for an
award or support for funding. Miller (2016) argues that a key component of
‘white sanction’ is brokerage, which is about creating opportunities for BME
staff, including legitimising their work and enabling them as an ally; in effect,
white staff are a significant element in BME staff securing promotion in white
spaces as the extracts from two BME academics demonstrate below:

It’s no longer enough to be qualified. Meritocracy will get you only so far. You have
to have connections with white colleagues, and those connections must be more
than surface level. Surface-level connections are ‘invisible’, but you need connec-
tions that are ‘visible’ – connections with white colleagues in influential positions
who will write your job references, deliver an address at your book launch, submit
the next research bid with you, co-author a paper with you, and co-present a paper
at a conference/seminar with you. Anything less than this is not going to get you
anywhere. (Black academic, male, plate-glass university)
I have been at my current university for over nine years. I am still a lecturer. I do
think being a black female has to do with my non-promotion. However, I feel it
has much more to do with the fact I am a black woman. It took me a while to
realise, but I think I now get it. To get a promotion, as a black academic, you need
an ally – preferably a white person who is in a position of influence and who can
therefore influence things for you. Without this ally, your journey to promotion is
going to be tedious, messy and possibly non-existent. (Black academic, female,
Russell Group university) (Miller, 2016: 212)
In essence, Miller’s research presents differing values associated with capital.

In the Academy, traditionally a white middle-class space, BME capital is
restricted, but white capital, though invisible, has power and influence. In this
world of sophisticated racism, BME academics must, albeit reluctantly, under-
stand that equality statements and their performance alone will not support
their ambitions and that accessing white networks is an integral step to career
progression. Once in those leadership positions, opportunities to influence and
disrupt might begin to take place, over time. Similarly, cultural practices need to
be challenged, such as compulsory unconscious bias training for senior staff and
mentoring for new BME leaders.
From a global perspective, similar studies tracking transformation and the
experiences of BME staff in higher education in South Africa (Habib, 2016) cap-
ture participants sharing their experiences of ‘battle fatigue’ in the face of
continued marginalisation. ‘We would argue that those with a genuine desire to
meaningfully transform the higher education landscape, should look to the per-
ceptions and experiences of those previously excluded [. . .]. South African
higher education is riddled with legacies of prejudice, hierarchy and systemic
inequality [. . .] there is urgent necessity to engage critically with the ambiguities
of negotiating change within the Academy (Habib, 2016: 124).
To conclude, understanding that racism is endemic and has an enduring leg-
acy demands that higher education must invest in rigorous and challenging
continuing professional development for all staff, so that the social justice they
speak of to attract new students is evident in the professional experiences of
their BME academic staff. Combined, these steps may direct policy makers and
stakeholders in higher education to reimagine what leadership in a contempo-
rary university looks like.
Transformations 327
Case study 14.1
Higher education in the Indian context
Higher education in India was solely a state subject in the Indian constitution.
However, rapid expansion via budget allocation and new spaces to deliver courses
(Government of India, 2016; Gandhi, 2011) marks a shift from public to private,
thus defining a landscape of inclusion and transformation. India, a country synony-
mous with widespread poverty and extremes of rich and poor, boasts 370 state
universities and 282 private universities with 15 exclusively for women, with enrol-
ment figures of 35.7 million (19 million male, 16.7 million female) in 2017 (Ministry
of Human Resource Development, 2017).
Education is a highly valued commodity in India – it is the vehicle to drive social
mobility and life chances, as well as sustain survival in the face of the most brutal
and challenging complex and multilayered lived experiences of social and eco-
nomic disadvantage, caste exclusion, gender and discrimination based on gender,
social class and rural location. So valued and desired is higher education, even by
the most economically challenged groups, that the state has intervened in the
form of the Supreme Court in order to reinforce Article 21 of the Constitution,
which confirms that a citizen cannot be denied their right to education by the
exorbitant charging of fees. This reinforcement came in the form of widespread
media support, which made the links between the right to education and the
right to life, as demonstrated in the landmark case of Mrs Mohini Jain v. State of
Karnataka in 1989, where a private medical college charged their government
quota students extortionate fees. The court briefing makes reference to the fulfil-
ment of life as one that requires dignity to better oneself (Nagasaila and Suresh,
1992). India’s top universities offer expansive and picturesque settings (Indian
Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee),
links with British and American institutes of higher education, low staff–student
ratios, are ranked competitively high for their proportion of staff with a PhD, are
internationally recognised (Institute of Technology, Bombay) and have celebrated
recruitment and retention rates.
Rai (2017) reflects on higher education in the Indian context by identifying four
key purposes. First, it benefits not only the individual but society as a whole. Second,
higher education is now a tradable commodity which draws on choice. Third, the
capability argument – higher education will ensure the better functioning of the
individual. Finally, Rai expands on education as transformative, making associations
to social justice and the democratisation of society, a movement gaining increasing
momentum in India on many sociological levels. In the broader spectrum of access and
engagement, higher education in India has phenomenal transformative potentialities.

Geographic decentralisation, specialist colleges, vocational access careers, a creative
curriculum, affirmative action and financial support from the super-rich sections of
Indian society are just a few of the many factors that can combine to transform India
within a generation.
Teach First and the myth of transformation

‘An Argument and Plan for the Creation of the Teacher Corps’ is the title of
Wendy Kopp’s undergraduate thesis at Princeton University (1989) which encap-
sulated the ‘teach for America’ ideology. In 2018, Kopp is CEO and co-founder
of ‘Teach for All’, a global independent, not-for-profit network that aims to sup-
port education opportunities. She is also the founder of ‘Teach for America’
(TFA), which boasts over 60,000 leaders impacting the lives of millions of
American students over the past 30 years.
In England, Teach First is rooted in initial teacher education and aims to recruit
high-calibre graduates who may not have considered teaching (Blumenreich and
Gupta, 2015; Blumenreich and Rogers, 2016) into shortage subjects such as
Science, Maths and Modern Languages and in areas where teacher recruitment is
a problematic issue. Teach First consists of an intensive two-year leadership pro-
gramme commencing with the summer institute – a five-week whistle-stop tour of
educational theory culminating in a residential full cohort networking opportu-
nity. The leadership development programme means that new recruits are
immediately placed in schools as unqualified teachers and are closely monitored
and supported to achieve qualified teacher status (QTS). In the second year, the
focus is on accelerated progression in the role of the newly qualified teacher (NQT)
and ‘contribution to create lasting change’ (www.teachfirst.org.uk). The two-year
course is completed with the award of Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE).
Inspired by Kopp’s highly idealistic vision, this discussion will explore whether
Teach First simply delivers on the myth of transformation, despite its high-profile
sponsors, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Procter & Gamble, and Accenture.
According to Sam Friedman, Teach First’s Director of Research, Evaluation and
Impact, ‘one of the most common criticisms of Teach First is that many partici-
pants see it as a stepping stone to something better’ (Teach First, 2017). This,
alongside research conducted with Teach First candidates (Rice et al., 2015),
which explores the neoliberal foundations of competition, choice, corporate-
style leadership and the acute focus on the individual hero teacher, perhaps it is
unsurprising to learn that in comparison with teachers on the Postgraduate
Certificate in Education (PGCE) route, 31 per cent fewer teachers remain in the
profession after four years (Hitchcock et al., 2017: 65). Furthermore, an analysis
Transformations 329
of the literature notes that in place of the word ‘teacher’ is ‘participant’ and
‘ambassador’, and instead of teacher training the course is referred to as a ‘leader-
ship development programme’. The mismatch of a historically vocation-driven
commitment to a profession with a brand that seeks to draw on an elitist pool of
graduates and furnish them with further access to privilege, albeit after a short
stint as a school teacher, cannot be overlooked. To illustrate, Elliot (2018) notes
that Teach First participants refer to themselves as ‘privileged and high calibre
graduates – a meritocratic view of themselves as individually special, gifted and
superior’ is inherent in the language used about and by the teachers (2018: 269).
The subsequent hero teacher narrative (La Londe et al., 2015) is perhaps the
most compelling one and builds directly on the mission encapsulated in Kopp’s
teacher corp that perpetuates the moral project ideology. In the American con-
text, recruits embark upon ‘a crusade for justice – they challenge educational
inequality, doing a noble missionary-like redemptive service through giving
back to the community’ (McConney et al., 2013). According to Teach First,
recruits are drawn in by a manifesto to ‘challenge the impossible . . . change
lives . . . solve conflicts . . . ’ (Teach First, 2016). In addition, the charitable
status draws on a benevolent narrative that seeks high-profile sponsors to pro-
vide funding and pro bono work all for the benefit of the ‘ambassador
communities’. Teach First would not be in a position to ‘work to improve the
life chances of thousands of children from low income communities each
year . . . without their transformation partners . . . dedicated to our mission’
(Teach First, 2017). A compelling rhetoric is created which has successfully
recruited graduates with a first-class degree classification into a route into leader-
ship via teaching for a fixed period of time. It is here that Teach First is particularly
guilty of perpetuating the myth of transformation by speaking of teaching in
temporary terms before guiding participants to management positions in other
careers. The established, traditional career of teaching is eroded to an alternative
route to middle management. The traditional conceptualisation of the teacher, a
vocation-driven lifelong career commitment to a pupil-centred pedagogy is
eroded to ‘I get that we’re going to schools, but we’re still doing a job . . . Teach
First is the company I work for . . . it allows me to go and teach in a school . . . to
do a job sort of thing’ (Elliot, 2018: 273).
The network culture of Teach First, supported by its alumni network and cor-
porate sponsors, justifies and reinforces the understanding of the two year
course as ‘work in school’, rather than the first steps into a career in teaching.
Subsequently, the mission driven approach, adopted from the American model,
to address social injustice is equally short term. This is evident in the routes into
managerial positions in multinational companies made available to Teach First
participants and the low retention figures in teaching beyond the compulsory
two years. Looking at a wider global lens including western European (Olmedo
et al., 2013) and Australian (McConney et al., 2012) perspectives suggests that

ambassadors readily take up management positions in the corporate world, ben-
efitting from an intense upskilling experience at the expense of the taxpayer.
The intense focus on the individual as the main driver of change, competition
and an elitist mission to be amongst the best ensures that a seamless transition
of values from Teach First into the corporate world takes place.
Most compelling of all in the realisation by Teach First/Teach for All global
recruits is that the moral project is, in fact, impossible (Elliot, 2018) and the hero
narrative presents an acute disconnect with the everyday realities of teaching in
challenging settings (Rice et al., 2015). This is reflected both in the issues with
retention and the two-year tenure in challenging schools where stability around
staffing is already a pressing concern. Placing participants in the most challeng-
ing schools in East London, Moss Side and Small Heath compounds the notion
of the mythical hero teacher setting out, single-handedly, to address the deep-
rooted structural issues that have affected the pupils, their parents and the wider
school communities for many years.
To conclude, Teach First sets out to reimagine the role of the teacher by
creating a dynamic and elitist route that captures many of the attractions
graduates seek – the promise of rapid promotion, exciting work experiences
in the best organisations and to be a success quickly. The promise of leader-
ship, the opportunity of challenge in a network of like-minded and equally
ambitious people becomes an intoxicating mix. The Teach First participant is
never just a teacher but a philanthropic activist, a change maker and poten-
tial global leader – the shift takes place from the classroom to the boardroom
effortlessly. However, what about the schools, pupils, parents and communities
outside the Teach First project?
Evidence of transformation
In the process of conducting research for this chapter, a small-scale research pro-
ject was undertaken to explore experiences of access, engagement and progression
with 20 third-year undergraduate students attending a post-1992 institute of
higher education in London. The purpose of this study was to interject theoretical
ideas about transformation with real-life experiences using focus groups and eight
unstructured interviews conducted over a 12-month period. The extracts captured
in this discussion are all taken from one-to-one interviews. It is important to
clarify that contemporary research, which aims to explore an experience of social
class, cannot forge ahead without acknowledging the influence of a range of sig-
nificant factors, including how parents’ own educational experiences play a role
in determining their children’s access to higher education; economic and cultural
capital; and the intersections of gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, religion and age, which
can be understood as compounding the consequences of class (Reay, 2018b).
Transformations 331
The data captured below reflect how the elements mentioned above not only
influence, but can direct and even motivate change-making in the process of
transformation in higher education alongside the experiential nature of higher
education. This is captured in the words of Reay (1998: 524), who explains: ‘My
own experience of growing up working class has left vivid memories of my social
origins imprinted on my consciousness. However, that consciousness, rooted in
working class affiliation, appears increasingly to be a misfit; a sense of self both
out of place and out of time.’ Similarly, Skeggs (1997) reports a compelling sense
of disconnection as she describes her awareness that she does not ‘fit’ in the social
space she now occupies as an academic, stating that she feels like a ‘fraud’ among
academic colleagues. In a further example, Rollock et al. (2011) describe how
upwardly mobile Black Caribbeans struggle with a sense of their self-identity, fac-
ing the dilemma of abandoning clear markers of culture and heritage such as
accent or social activities which are strongly associated with their ‘Blackness’. This
struggle is part of the process of fitting into white, middle-class, male-dominated
spaces in order to gain acceptance and to facilitate progression within the context
of this new space.
For South Asian academics (including the author of this chapter), an element
of geographical mobility is an additional expectation; the need to live and work
in certain locations as a factor of social mobility challenges established and val-
ued cultural networks, which can be understood as an experience of fracturing
and dislocation. Therefore, this spatial mobility can mean moving away from
cultural support systems built around family, religion and cultural practice, lead-
ing to a heightened sense of alienation in their new setting as a result of their
social mobility.
Vignette 1
Jamie, aged 30, has worked full-time in the catering industry throughout his
degree, having left school with no formal qualifications following permanent
exclusion. Jamie is the youngest of three (male) siblings. He lives in a shared flat
in London and aspires to be a writer.
On early schooling experiences

I was not able to focus on anything when I was younger, always in trouble. I
was even called ‘trouble’, like ‘Here comes trouble’, that’s what my brother, my
parents, our neighbours would say. I had a lot of energy! It took me too long to
calm down and I lost many years wondering why 18-year-olds could get into
uni and I could not. I did not care about GCSEs and that has been the reason

it has taken me so long to get to this stage. It’s not easy when you have bills to
pay and you are fighting with yourself every day.
On being at university
It’s very easy to become lost in this world, part of me is putting on a brave
face, a hard face, like I know what I am doing and why I am here. But inside I
dread being asked about my opinion or what I have understood. I might get
kicked out, someone will realise that I am not that clever to be here. Some of
the lecturers see this and try to have a quiet chat to get me to be myself, less of
a clown and a popularity seeker. It’s embarrassing, if I’m honest, that they can
see another person and I feel that I have to hide. Not sure still why I am hiding,
but it makes me feel safe. Secure.
Vignette 2
Kellie is 24, a single mother and lives at home with her parents and two siblings. As
a result of an abusive relationship, she was unable to progress in her A levels. She
works part-time as a cleaner and in a pub, and aspires to be a primary school teacher.

I would dream about going to uni. Everyone knew it was my dream. I worked
hard, but things were not straightforward at school, like failing to get in the top
set and not being ‘with it’ – you know, reading slow, can’t do homework, not
watching the news and stuff, and how my mum and dad never had time to
come to any parent’s meetings. I kept on trying my best and I liked the support
from my friends and teachers because they cared about my dream too.
Everything changed when I was expecting. I had a shock to my system and I
remember that feeling every day, so I drag myself out of my comfy bed and just
get on with it. Dad never read a book in his life and asks me what’s it all about
and we laugh. They are proud of me, but I am doing it for my daughter now.
Uni is very emotionally draining for me. I am always behind. They (the lecturers)
think we have nothing else to do all day but read and write. I have two parents
and a toddler, plus two jobs to look after; I make the time. I am not that intel-
ligent, but I know about hard work.
Transformations 333
Vignette 3
Sam is 21, an only child and works full-time in a garage. He is the full-time carer
for his mother; his father left when Sam was 5 years old. Sam is on course to
secure a first-class honours award. In the course of his studies, Sam has audi-
tioned for the X Factor and has secured modelling work.

School was tough, always having to take time off to be with my Mum, and
friends not really understanding. I got used to being on my own and after a
while I liked it. I love learning and this was something, the only thing, I was
good at and enjoyed. Teachers said nice things to encourage me; that helped.
No one really knows you at uni so you can escape in a lecture and just get on
with opening your mind and being a student. I had some happy times, push-
ing myself to get higher marks, to think carefully about every spare minute and
making the best of all this booky stuff. I loved it. I only had one friend at uni,
we shared notes, never socialised outside. I prefer private people, so we got on.
Lecturers pushed me, too. They made a big difference – for some reason, they
cared about me.
Analysis of the data

There are some common themes to all three case studies including first, the
experience of going to study somewhere where they feel they can fit in and
have a sense of security and belonging. This is a point of interest, as both Sam
and Kellie revealed that they did not seek friendship as part of their higher
education experience. Second, the understanding that prior educational expe-
riences effectively excluded some students from access to elite universities
cemented the notion that to feel part of an institute would be a factor in reten-
tion and engagement. Third, the level of support was a factor, as explored by
Reay (2018b), where a lack of understanding of the many other responsibilities
and concerns faced by some students constitutes a constant barrier to progres-
sion, as Kellie demonstrates: ‘They [the lecturers] think we have nothing else
to do all day but read and write. I have two parents and a toddler, plus two jobs
to look after; I make the time.’ Finally, the different experiences of ‘fitting in’
are solidified as a key element in the higher education experience, which can

range from self-exclusion (Sam’s experience) to entering the popularity stakes
(Jamie’s experience). The commonality of the experience that higher education
is for some and not others strikes at the heart of the principle of equality, not-
ing that embedded structures are essentially unfair throughout the education
system and that the case studies captured in this chapter are in spite of and not
because of the education they encountered as individuals.
Implicit in the transformation of the case study participants was the educa-
tional experiences of their parents and also early schooling, though for very
differing reasons. The impact of low teacher expectations and labelling effec-
tively resulted in Jamie’s personal struggles for acceptance, showing that aspects
of primary and secondary socialisation become spaces where the seeds of a cul-
ture of self-exclusion are planted.
The overlapping influences of individual aspirations and parental educational
experiences are also significant factors in the transformation experiences as
explored by Bauman (2005), who argues that aspiration can nurture a positive work
ethic and a belief in meritocracy, whereby individuals are encouraged to believe
that hard work combined with talent will (at some point) lead to economic
rewards. Kellie embodies this belief, as her daughter motivates her to ‘drag myself
out of my comfy bed and just get on with it’. Bauman’s work explores how those
individuals who do not invest in this positive work ethic are, in effect, a failure in
the system. Therefore, to avoid this scenario, there is a need to recontextualise pov-
erty as a primarily cultural problem; he describes this as a poverty of aspiration.
Moreover, the enduring nature of the notion of poverty of aspiration informs
‘deficit discourses’ (Goodall, 2019) that shine a spotlight on the individual (and
their parental influence) and away from societal economic and social inequali-
ties. To illustrate, a limited knowledge of the welfare system and the absence of
another adult for support meant that Sam was the sole carer for his mother from
an early age, leading to the emotive disclosure ‘School was tough, always having
to take time off’.
In a further illustration, Jamie – as a consequence of his own disrupted school-
ing, labelling and lack of parental support – questioned even his right to be at
university. This is despite the fact that he had met the admission requirements
and was a final-year student. So compelling is his lack of self-confidence in his
own ability, as he explains: ‘I might get kicked out, someone will realise that I
am not that clever to be here’, that the staying power of entrenched ideas of
working-class failure are indeed difficult to unhinge, culminating in a culture of
fear and of failure.
The barriers facing working-class students, such as social and cultural capital,
are discussed in Chapter 5 in the context of differing educational experiences.
However, it is important to note at this point that student transformation in
higher education can be a fragile state, which is subject to careful nurturing and
alongside pastoral and welfare support strategies.
Transformations 335
The case studies captured in this chapter are about students navigating their
own academic career trajectories and in doing so, they are transforming their lives
based on their experiences of higher education, and the opportunities and choices
that become available to them as a consequence of their higher education.
Chapter summary
In this chapter a discussion about what transformation means in the wider con-
text of higher education frames the discussion of economic and cultural
transformation, including a consideration of widening participation policy and
practice. Reflecting on diversity in leadership positions in higher education
informs the discussion alongside a consideration of ‘Teach First’ as a strategy to
attract high-calibre graduates into the teaching profession, which is challenged
as a route that perpetuates the myth of transformation as a quick-fix moral pro-
ject. The chapter also captured student voice in the inclusion of data based on
the experiences of students at a post-1992 institute of higher education, which
reflected a myriad of factors impacting on their access and engagement.
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INDEX
#AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh 114–15 apartheid 71, 143, 284
#RhodesMustFall 284, 285–6, 287 Arab Spring 214–15
#SayHerName (case study) 114–16 Arday, J. 325–6
Ariès, Philippe 253, 297, 298
12 Years a Slave (film) 183 Aristotle 10, 17, 35, 247, 296
Metaphysics 14
Abel-Smith, B. and Townsend, P. 273 Armstrong et al. 237
ability, researching 18–19 Aron, R. 57, 61, 62
Aboriginal religion 43 asabiyah 28
absolute mobility 153, 154, 155 Assisted Places Scheme 276
academic resilience 172 Asuwada Theory of Sociation (case study)
acculturation 184, 186 97–9
activism, political and judicial 308 Atkinson, A. 194
Addams, Jane 41 Atkinson, A.B. 274
affective action 63 attachment, importance of 39–40
affirmative model of disability 231 austerity 160, 256, 259, 299
Africa Australia 69–70, 185–7
Hegelian ideas about 15–16 Australian Society for Social Responsibility
philosophy 16 in Science 311
‘tragedy of’ 15 autism 238
age autonomy 40
old, cultural differences 248
social 249–50 Baker, Kenneth 277
Aiken, Judge Ann 310 Bakki, Y. 211–12
Aina, Tade Akin 43 Ball, Stephen 5, 87, 92, 139, 276, 319
Akiwowo, Akinsola 97–9 banking concept of education 108
Al-e Ahmad, Jalal 43 Barron, Lee 67–8
Alexander, C. 280 Bauman, Z. 335
Alexander, R. 19–20, 22 Becker, Howard 6–7, 84–5, 224
Ali, President Ben 214, 215 Bell Curve: Intelligence and the Class Structure,
Alice in Wonderland (Carroll) 255 The (Herrnstein and Murray) 18
Alston, Professor Philip 160, 256–9 Bell, Derrick 188, 189
Althusser, L. 87 Benn, Tony 270
altruistic suicide 58 Bentham, Jeremy 252
American Civil War 183 Bernstein, B. 80, 85
American Dream 84, 171–2 Bernstein, E. 303
American Eugenics Research Association Bhabha, Homi K. 255
129, 130 biculturalism 184
American Revolutionary War 183 in Australia 185–7
analytic philosophy (AP) 11, 12, 13 Binet, Alfred 128–9
Ancient Greece 9, 16, 35 biology 51
see also Aristotle; Plato; Socrates biometric state 71
Ancient Rome 35 Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) academic
Andreescu, F.C. 163–4 leaders 325–7
anomic suicide 58 Black British intellectuals 189
Black Codes 183 Callaghan, James 267–8, 275
Black masculinity 208, 210–11 Callendar, C. 324
Black Papers (Cox and Boyson) 125, 271, Cambridge Primary Review (Alexander) 19–20
275, 277 Cameron, David 299, 319
Black Power groups 184 Capital (Marx) 52, 54
‘Blackness’ 114, 181, 189, 192 capitalism 34, 52, 54, 64
Blair, Tony 279, 280 development, science of 52–4
Blanden et al. 155 capitalist exploitation 35–6, 86
Bleazby, J. 305–6 capitals, assets and resources (CARs)
blind personality 230 approach 164–5
Bonald, Luis de 31, 32 Carroll, Lewis 255
Booth, Charles 31 Carter, B. 160
Boronski, T. 141 Castells, Manuel 318
Bouazizi, Mohamed 214 Catholics, suicide rate of 58
Boudon, R. 6 Centre for Policy Studies 271
Bourdieu, Pierre 96, 139, 164, 193 Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education
Distinction: A Critique of the Judgement of (CSIE) 233
Taste 96 Inclusion Charter (2002) 234–5
bourgeoisie 35 Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) 270
Bowe et al. 212 Chadderton, C. 191–2
Boyd, T. 210–11 Charlotte’s Web 254
Boyden, J. 299 Chartered Institute of Personnel and
Boyson, Rhodes 267 Development (CIPD) 157
Breaking Bad (TV series) 209 Chicago School of Sociology 42
Brexit 256, 283–4, 287 child-centred education 302
Brigham, Carl 132 child-centred society 253–6, 294
Brignell, V. 226, 227 Child Poverty Act (2010) 256
Brisenden, Simon 229 childhood
Britain child as incomplete 298–301
benefits cuts 258–9 child, notion of 247
Britishness, contested notion of 181–3 child poverty, growing 256–60
directive to speak English 185 case study 257–60
discrimination against perceived ‘other’ cultural differences 296–7
180–1 minority world 249, 296–7
institutional racism 191, 280 modern 251
multiculturalism 180–1 new sociology of 298
New Sociology of Education (NSOE) 86–7 panopticism and social control in schools
racism and discrimination 181 251–3
sociology in 78–9 paradigms shifts 215, 247, 248
sociology of education 79–80 reconceptualisation 251
universal credit (UC) 258–9 social age 249–50
welfare state 79, 80, 85, 153, 257, 268, 273 social construction of 246–61, 296
see also England study of, early sociological approaches 247–8
BritCrit 188 universal experience 248–50
British Cohort Study (BCS) 155 children
British Empire 15, 254, 282, 285, 286, 287 deficits 298
British Psychological Society 235 happiness 295
Britishness 181–3 inherent vulnerability of 302
Brookings Institute 172 listening to 298
Brown, Gordon 280 as a minority group 301–2
Bukodi, E. 154, 155, 156, 158 moral panics 296, 298–300
Bullingdon Club 319 problem of 296–7
bureaucratisation 64–5, 66 research, growing involvement of 306
Burt, Cyril 132, 133–4, 223–4, 269 rights of 294, 295, 298, 300, 301–2, 302–3
340 Index
structural vulnerability of 302 critical pedagogy 13–14, 93–4, 106
well-being 294, 295 McLaren and 94–5
see also pupil voice and radical pedagogies 106–19
Children Act (1989) 295 Critical Race Theory (CRT) 187–92, 193
Children Act (2004) 295 critical theory 14
Children’s Society 295 Crosland, Tony 274
children’s voice see pupil voice Crowther Report (1959) 270
Chronicles of Narnia, The 254 cultural capital 139, 156, 159, 164–5, 166
citizens 35 cultural class analysis 164–6
City Technology Colleges (CTCs) 278 cultural-historical sciences 60
Civil Rights Movement 84, 184, 187 culture 19
Clarke, Kenneth 299 curriculum 278
class see social class case study 21–2
class conflict 34–5, 86 decolonisation of, demands for 284–7
class inequality 86, 193 case study 285–6
class relations 87, 93, 94 and knowledge 87–8
classical sociology 41, 42, 43–4 secular 38
Clegg, Nick 281 see also National Curriculum
climate change 307–9
clinical gaze 222–3 Dannett, Henry 222
coalition government, UK 238, 256, 281 Darwin, Charles 30
Coard, B. 228 Davis, Kingsley 80, 83
Cole, M. 188 Davis, Kingsley and Moore, Wilbert 82
Coleman, James 96 Dawkins, Richard 3
Coles, Tait 107 de Beauvoir, Simone 201
Collins, Randall 43–4 Dearden et al. 11
colonialism 43, 70–1, 255 decolonisation of curriculum 284–7
communities of enquiry (CoEs) 305 deductive theory 5
comparative sociology 56 deficit models 136–7
comprehensive schools 125, 137, 270, 271–2 Delgado, Richard 189, 190
Comte, August 30, 44, 51–2, 56 democracy 33
conflict Democracy in America (Tocqueville) 31
vs. consensus 35 democratic socialism 80, 272
Marxist 35 developments in sociology of education
Connell, Raewyn 20, 41–4, 68–9, 96 78–100
case study 42–3 American connection 80–1
Southern Theory 42, 45 American society, in mid-twentieth century
conscientisation (Freire) 94 83–5
consciousness 36 British sociology of education 79–80
consensus vs. conflict 35 critical pedagogy 93–4, 94, 94–5
Conservative Party 268, 269, 270, 275, 281 education and stratification 82
education policy 282–4 feminist classroom research 90
One Nation wing 273 functional prerequisites 81
Convention on the Rights of the Child hegemonic Northern sociology 95–6
(CRC) 248–9 inclusive sociology, call for 96–9
convergence 189, 190 knowledge 87–8
Coontz, S. 83 New Sociology of Education (NSOE) 86–7
corporal punishment 39 obstacles to class struggle 95
Council for the Accreditation of Teachers 277 political arithmetic 85
Cox, C.B. and Boyson, R. 125, 271, 275, 277 postmodernism 90–1
Coyle, Simon 321 and education 91–2
Crick, Francis 18 relativism 88–90, 93
critical consciousness 108, 111 sociology in Britain 78–9
Critical Legal Studies (CLS) 188 shift to the left 85–6
Index 341
structural differentiation 81–2 dominant classes 35, 35–6
structural functionalism 81 domination/dominance 91, 95, 184, 192
critiquing 83 downward intergenerational social mobility
deviance 6–7 152, 155
Dewey, John 13, 110, 302, 305 Dualism of Human Nature and its Social
dialectic, concept of Condition, The (Durkheim) 45
Hegel 53 Durkheim, Emile 26, 34–5, 36, 44–5, 91
Marx and Engels 53–4 attachment, importance of 39–40
dialectical debate 9 autonomy 40
dialogue 9 and discipline 38–9
Freire 94 Dualism of Human Nature and its Social
differential educational attainment 124–43 Condition, The 45
equality of opportunity 135, 138, 141 and education 37–40
eugenics 129–30 Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The 43
grammar schools 140–2 case study 69–70
independent schools 140–2 moral education 37–40
individual problems and public issues positivism 54–5
136–7 suicide 55–9
inequality, inevitability of 128 totemism 43, 70
intelligence, definition 128–9 Dworkin, Andrea 114
private education 138–9
case study 141–2 early sociology of education 26–44
schools 134–5, 137–8 attachment, importance of 39–40
statistical artefacts 136 autonomy 40
structural inequality 140 consensus vs. conflict 35
see also intelligence; IQ testing; discipline enforcement 38–9
meritocracy Ibn Khaldun 27, 28, 29
Dilthey, Wilhelm 59, 60 ideology, role of 35–6
disability individualism 32, 33, 34–5, 36, 37–40
affirmative model 231 industrialisation 28, 31, 34, 36
deficit approach 221, 222, 223 modern sociology, birth of 29–30
divisions within movement 230 new moral order, search for 36–7, 38
essentialist views, challenging 229–30 origins of sociology 26–8
individual problem of 221–2 philosophical debates 31–2
life chances 227–8, 231 sociological understanding of society 26–8
medical model 224, 228, 230, 232 sociology as a profession 37–8
myths 230 view from the South 41–4
rights-based 236, 241 and colonialism 43–4
social model 230, 232 Western European bias 41
studies, emergence of 220–1 see also Durkheim, Emile; Tocqueville,
see also special educational needs (SEN) Alexis de; Toennies, Ferdinand
discipline 38–9, 39 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (Marx) 52
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison economic capital 164, 166
(Foucault) 252 Economy and Society (Weber) 65
Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) 294 Educating Rita (film) 322–3
discourse 92 Educating Yorkshire (TV series) 107
discrediting stigmas 225 education
disruptive experiment 3 11-plus system 125, 269
Distinction: A Critique of the Judgement of Taste banking concept 108
(Bourdieu) 96 Durkheim 37–9
diversity 325–7 Foucault 92–3
division of labour 29, 36 liberal 11
DNA 18, 135 moral 38, 38–9, 40
Dobson, Gary 191 multidimensional approach 7–8
342 Index
philosophy of 10–12 Elementary Forms of Religious Life, The
and postmodernism 91–2 (Durkheim) 43
purpose of 237–8 case study 69–70
and radical feminism 202–6 elite class 165, 166
social and economic growth, importance elites, ruling 15
in development of 29 Eltahawey, Mona 215
and social mobility 152–4 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 31–2
spending cuts 282–3 empiricism 50, 51, 78–9, 89
and stratification 82 empowerment 14, 207
tripartite system 11–12, 125 self-empowerment 202, 323
twenty-first century challenges in 107–8 Engels, Friedrich 52, 53, 162
see also differential educational German Ideology, The 53–4
attainment; schools England, tension with Ireland 180–1
Education: A Different Vision: An Alternative Enlightenment 51, 89, 90, 251
White Paper (IPPR, 2013) 231–2 domination and oppression, potential for 91
Education Act (1944) 154, 224, 226 epilepsy 225
Education Act (1976) 272 epistemes 92
Education Act (1980) 276 epistemological power 251
Education Act (1981) 233, 236 equality of opportunity 135, 138, 141,
education feminism 203 142, 203
education, health and care (EHC) plans 239 Ernst & Young 267
education policy 266–88, 274–5 essentialism 90, 229–30
coalition government 281 ethnography (case study) 67–8
comprehensive schools 270–2 eugenics 18, 129–30, 223
consensus, breakdown in 272–3 Eugenics Society 224
Conservative Party 282–4 Eurocentric ideas 15–17, 194
curriculum 278 evidence
decolonisation of, demands for 284–7 collection of 5, 11
case study 285–6 evidence-based politics 8
National Curriculum 282 IQ testing 133–4
democratic socialist vs. New Right/neoliberal of transformations 331–6
views 272 evolution 30
educational priorities, shift in 275 stages of 51–2
Educational Priority Areas (EPAs) 274–5 exploitation, in capitalism 35–6, 86
global processes 267 extremism as political ideology 113–14
grammar schools 270–1
key themes 267–8 Fabian Society 79–80
neoliberal revolution 275–7 Factual Welfare Television (FWT) 161
new era 268 failing groups 85
New Labour 279 faith schools 3
Third Way 280–1 Fallon, James 127
post-war agreement 268–9 family/family climate 38, 82, 85
poverty, rediscovery of 273 Fanon, Frantz 284
social justice 280 Fat Cat Thursday 157
talent, wastage of 270 fatalistic suicide 58
teaching profession 277–8 Feinstein, L. 135, 136
testing 278–9 feminism
tripartite system 269 classroom research, growth 90
Education Reform Act (1988) 276, 277 origin of term 201
Educational Priority Areas (EPAs) 274–5 radical, and education 202–6
ego-identity 186 research, feminist perspective 212–14
egoism 32, 36 sociological theory 200
egoistic suicide 58 types 201
Elementary Education Act (1870) 222 see also gender roles
Index 343
feminist peace and conflict theory (FPCT) goal-oriented action 63
201, 202 Goffman, E. 224, 225, 226
Ferguson, Niall 282 Goldthorpe et al. 153, 154, 155
financial crisis (2008) 299–300 Good Childhood report (Children’s Society
Finkelstein, V. 222, 229 2017) 295
Finn, Dan 278 Gorard, S.A.C. 140–1, 155
forces of production 35 Gouldner, A. 84
formal rationality 64 Gove, Michael 136, 138, 281, 282, 303
formative assessment 279 grammar schools 125, 137, 140–2, 151, 270,
Foucault, Michel 92, 93, 222, 251, 322, 323 271, 272
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Gramsci, Antonio 72, 94–5
Prison 252 grand theories 5–6, 81, 89
truth and education 92–3 Grant, Madison 129–30
foundational knowledge 88–90 grant-maintained (GM) schools 278
foundationalism 13 Great British Class Survey (2015) 156,
Fourier, Charles 53 165, 166
Frankfurt School of Social Research 13 Great Debate 267–8
Free Speech Movement (FSM) 84 Great Depression 201, 273
Freeman, Alan 188, 189 Great Gatsby Curve (GGC) 171
Freire, Paulo 93–4, 95, 95–6, 108–9 Green, Francis 141–2
French positivism 51–2 Greer, Germaine 205
French Revolution (1789) 30 Grenfell Tower (case study) 161–3
Freud, Sigmund 247 Grime music (case study) 67–8
Friedman, Sam 329
frontier educators 110 Habermas, Jurgen 71
functional integration 233 Habib, A. 327
Further and Higher Education Act (1992) 320 habitus 193–4
Halsey, A.H. 274–5
Gaitskell, Hugh 270 handicap 226–7
Gallagher, M. 252–3 Harding, Sarah 213
Garton Ash, Timothy 286 Hayward Cooper, Anna Julia 41
gemeinschaft 33, 34 Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference
gender gap 202, 204, 205 (HMC) 142
gender roles 200–16 Heath, Edward 273
masculinity 208–11 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 15–16
reimaging 210 dialectic, concept of 53
sociological theories of gender 200–2 hegemony 95, 95–6
women and the Arab Spring 214–15 Hekman, S. 62
see also feminism hermeneutics 59, 61
gendered discourses on activism (case study) Herrnstein, R. and Murray, C. 18–19
206–8 heuristic devices 33
genderquake, concept of 205 hierarchy of needs 19
genetic determinism 134–5 high-stakes testing 279
German Ideology, The (Marx and Engels) 53–4 higher education 319–21
German Social Democratic Party 72 barriers for working class people 323
Gerth, Hans 42 diversity and leadership in 325–7
gesellschaft 33 Indian context (case study) 328–9
Gharbzadeghi (Westoxication) 43 see also universities
Gibb, Nick 137 Higher Education Policy Institute 321–2
Giddens, Anthony 4, 30, 96 hip hop
Gillborn, David 190, 191 culture 116, 117, 210–11
Giroux, Henry 111–13, 116 pedagogy 116–17
glass ceiling 204 Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School
Glass, D.V. 153 Education (Siedel) 117
344 Index
Hirsch, Nathaniel 133 InsightShare Network (ISNet) 285–6
historical materialism 53–4 INSPECT project 311
Hobbit, The 254 Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)
Hobhouse et al. 69 231–2
Holt, John 3 institutional racism 191, 280
hooks, bell 210, 211 integration 57, 58
human action 62–3 and inclusion 232–5
human capital 237 intelligence
Human Genome Project (HGP) 134–5 assessment of, caution 126–7
human nature 36 definition 128–9
human progress, concept of 69 and environment 135–6
Hume, David 79 inheritance of 125–6, 127, 128, 131,
Huxley, Thomas 30 132–3, 135, 224
hybridity 183 researching 18–19
and the wealthy 128
I, Daniel Blake (Loach) 66 see also IQ testing
Ibn Khaldun 20, 27, 28, 194 intergenerational mobility 171
and education 29 intersectionality 189, 190, 192
ilm al-umran 50–1 IQ testing 125, 128, 129, 130–1
Muqaddimah 27, 29, 44–5 evidence, unreliability of 133–4
ideal society 26–7 Flynn effect 132
ideal types 62, 63 MZ twins 133–4
and rationalisation 64–5 pure ability, measuring 131–2
identity 181, 183, 184, 185, 186, 192 Ireland 180–1
formation 224–5 iron cage concept 64
identity politics 94 Islam 28
ideographic sciences 60
ideology, role of 35–6 James et al. 247
Illich, Ivan 3 James, Oliver 135
ilm al-umran (Ibn Khaldun) 50–1 Jerrim, J. and Macmillan, L. 171, 172
immigration 18, 129, 130 Jetnikoff, Anita 186, 187
impairment see disability; special educational Jews, suicide rate of 58–9
needs (SEN) Jim Crow laws 184
imperial gaze 70–1 Johnes et al. 169
imposter syndrome 323 Johnson, Boris 128, 271, 299
inclusion Johnson–Lodge Immigration Act (1924) 130
and integration 232–5 Jones, Hannah 302
New Labour programme 235–7 Joseph, Sir Keith 79, 86, 267, 271, 273,
rights to 231–2 276, 277
income inequality 274 justice, Platonic concept 9
independent schools 140–2, 151
see also private schools Kant, Immanuel 37
India, higher education (case study) 328–9 Keim, W. 97, 99
indigenous societies 69–70 Kenney, Annie 113
indigenous sociology 97–9 Khan, Deeyah 208
individual problems and public issues Kilpatrick, W. 110
(Wright Mills) 4 King, Rodney 184, 191
individualism 32, 33, 34–5, 36 Klineberg, Otto 131–2
inductive theory 5, 62 knowledge 14, 17, 87–8
Industrial Revolution 30 epistemological approach 88–9
industrialisation 31, 34, 36, 82 foundational 88–90
and early sociology of education 28 see also critical pedagogy
inequality 82, 128 Kopp, Wendy 329, 330
growing, consequences of 159–60 Ku Klux Klan 184
Index 345
Kwoba, Brian 286–7 Marx, Karl 6, 29–30, 34, 45, 59–60, 95
Kyoto Protocol (1997) 307 Capital 52, 54
capitalist development, science of 52–3
labelling theory 6–7, 226–7, 228–9 method 53–4
Labour Party 268–9, 272–3, 274, 275 capitalist ideology 35–6
comprehensive system 270–2 conflict theory 35
see also New Labour dialectic 53–4
labour theory of value 30 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 52
lad culture 5 German Ideology, The 53–4
Lamb et al. 240 modes of production 35
Lamennaise, Félicité de 31, 32 Marxism 15, 53, 54, 72, 86
Landman, Maeve 213 and Critical Race Theory (CRT) 188
L’annee sociologique 68–9 masculinity 204, 208–11
Lansdown, G. 302, 303 Black 208, 210–11
latent class analysis 165 Maslow, Abraham 19
Laverty, Paul 66 Material, Cultural and Social Institutions of the
Lawrence, Doreen 190, 191 Simpler Peoples (Hobhouse et al.) 69
Lawrence, Stephen 190–1, 280 Mauch, Carl 16
leadership in higher education 325–7 May, Theresa 140–1, 142, 150, 151, 159, 166,
Liberal Democrats 281 258, 283, 309
life-course 250 McIntosh, P. 195
life-cycle stages 248, 250 McLaren, Peter 14, 109–11
Light, R. 230 and critical pedagogy 94–5
linguistic philosophy 11 obstacles to class struggle 95
Lipman, Matthew 305 postmodernism 94
literature, children’s 254–5 revolutionary pedagogy 94
Little, K.L. 255–6 McLaughlin, T. 12
Living Cultures initiative (case study) means-ends action 63
285–6 means of production 35–6
Loach, Ken 66 medical model of disability 224, 228, 230, 232
Local Education Authorities (LEAs) 233, 234 Mental Deficiency Act (1913) 224
Local Management of Schools (LMS) 276 meritocracy 150, 151, 326–7
locational integration 233 negative to positive 124–6
Locke, John 79, 247 rise of 126–7
London Paralympics (2012) 229 sociology and education studies 12
Lukacs, Georg 72 Merton, Robert 42
Lunch, Nick 286 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 14
Luther, Martin 58 Methodenstriet 51
Lyotard, J.-F. 6 Metropolitan Police Force 190–1
middle range theory 6
M4BL 114–15 Milani, Farzaneh 215
machine learning methods 168–9 Miliband, David 5
Macmillan, Harold 273 Miliband, Ralph 269
Macpherson Inquiry (1997) 280 Mill, John Stuart 52
Madhubuti, Haki R. 211 Miller, Arthur 84
Mahfouz, Asmaa 214 Mills, C. Wright 3–5, 6, 42, 85, 89
Maistre, Joseph de 31, 32 minority world 249
Major, John 182 Mirza, Munira 181
majority world 249 modern childhood 251
managerialism 204 modernity 91
Manzoor-Khan, Suhaiymah 207–8 modes of production 35, 53, 54
market competition 30 Momentum 114
Martin, Trayvon 191 Montacute, Rebecca 141, 167
Martineau, Harriett 41 Moore, Ruth 227
346 Index
moral development 40 Office for Disability Issues (ODI) 231
moral education 38, 40 Office for Fair Access (OFFA) 321
dimensions of 38–9 Office for Students (OfS) 321
moral individualism 36 Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education,
moral panics 298–300 Children’s Services and Skills) 5, 203,
moral society 38 227, 279, 303
morality 38–9 Oliver, M. 221, 229
Morgan, Nicky 205 Oltoilo le Maa 285–6
Morris, Jenny 227, 230 Olufemi et al. 325
multiculturalism Omobowale, A.O. and Akinale, O. 97–9
in America 183–5 ordinary language philosophy 11
‘Blackness’ in relation to ‘others’ 181 Organisation for Economic Co-operation
in Britain 180–1 and Development (OECD) 235
Britishness, contested notion of 181–3 Orientalists 43
Critical Race Theory (CRT) 187–92 Orwell, George 79
whiteness and white privilege 192–6 Osborne, George 319
Muqaddimah (Ibn Khaldun) 27, 29, 44–5 Owen, Robert 53
Murray, Charles 136 Oxbridge universities, applications to 141,
166–7
National Association for the Advancement Oxford Mobility Study (1980) 153
of Colored People (NAACP) 184
National Child Development Study panopticism 251–3
(NCDS) 155 Panopticon, The (Bentham) 252
National Curriculum 276–7, 278, 282 paradigms shifts 248
National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) 278 Parekh Report 182, 282
natural consciousness 15 Parents’ Charter 277–8
natural sciences 60 Paris Agreement (2015) 307, 309
Nazi Germany 18 Parsons, Talcott 6, 42, 67, 80, 247
Ndvolu-Gatsheni, S. 70–1 structural differentiation 81–2
Neill, A.S. 303 patriarchy 202
neoliberalism 272, 275–7 pedagogy 13
New Deal 280 definition 112
New Labour 140, 191, 203, 232 see also critical pedagogy
education policy 204, 279, 319–20 Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire) 109
SEN programme 235–7 permanent education, concept of 112
Third Way 280–1 Peter Pan 254
New Left 85 Pett, S. 21
new moral order 36–7, 38 phenomenology 66–7
new sociology of childhood 298 Phillips, M. 302–3
New Sociology of Education (NSOE) 86, 86–7 philosophy 8–10
new world of childhood 253 ambiguous status of 14–15
NHS (National Health Service) 154 analytic 11, 12, 13
Nisbet, Robert 42 elite minority, teaching to 14–15
nomothetic sciences 60 European 15–16
Norris, David 191 foundation subjects
Northern Ireland 181 critical pedagogy 13–14
Northern sociology 95–6 Eurocentric ideas 15–17
Norwood Committee (1943) 125, 269 meritocracy 12
philosophy 14–15
Oakley, Ann 205, 300, 301 philosophy of education 10–12
Obama, President Barack 184 post-analytic philosophy of education
occupational groups 36–7, 55, 154 12–13
OECD/PISA system of social classification postmodernism 13
169, 172 psychology 17–20
Index 347
linguistic 11 public schools see private schools
ordinary language 11 public trust doctrine 310
teaching children 16–17, 304–6 punishment 39
philosophy of education 10–12 punk learning 107, 108
Philosophy of History (Hegel) 15 pupil resilience 172
Piketty, Thomas 158 pupil voice 294–313
Pitt Rivers Museum 285–6 case studies 309, 311
Plato 9–10, 14, 17, 19, 35, 88–9, 296, 305 child as incomplete 298–301
Republic 9, 26, 247 children as a minority group 301–2
Plomin, Robert 134, 135 children, problem of 296–7
Plowden Report (1967) 274 researching 304–5
political arithmetic 80, 85 in schools 303–4
political consensus 268 teaching children philosophy 304–6
political economy 29–30 wicked problems 306–12
political ideologies 113 climate change 307–9
positive eugenics 18
positivism race 182
Comte 51–2 Race Difference (Klineberg) 131–2
Durkheim 54–5 Race Relations Act (1965) 181
post-analytic philosophy of education 12–13 Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000) 280
postmodernism 6, 90–1 racism 181, 191, 280, 325–7
challenge of 13 radical feminism 202–6
and education 91–2 radical pedagogies 106–19
McLaren’s view on 94 Rai, D. 328
vs. postmodern 91 Ramadan, Tariq 181–2
Postmodernism and Education (Usher and rational ideal types 62
Edwards) 91–2 rational philosophy 28
poverty 31, 138, 273 rationalisation 30, 64–5
child 256–60 rationalism 89
case study 257–60 reason, power of 89
Engels on 162 Reay, Diane 323
in Wales and Scotland 152 redlining, in the US 83–4
poverty propaganda 160–1 Reed, Raphael 205
case studies 161–4 regulation 57, 58
Powell, Enoch 182 Reinharz, S. 213–14
power structures 188, 189, 193 relative social mobility 155
pragmatism 305 relativism 88–90, 93
praxis (Freire) 94 religion 38, 43
precariat 157–8, 166 and Durkheim 69–70
privacy harm 252 and suicide 58
private schools 125, 138–9 Republic (Plato) 9, 26, 247
case study 141–2 research
see also independent schools children, growing involvement of 304–5, 306
productive relations 35 feminist 90, 212–14
Programme for International Assessment of intelligence 18–19
Adult Competences (PIAAC) 171 see also sociological research, early
Programme for International Student approaches
Assessment (PISA) tests 266 Research Excellence Framework (REF) 99
case study 168–9, 172 Resolution Foundation 256
proletariat 35 revolutionary change 15, 37, 52, 110, 214, 268
Protestants, suicide rate of 58, 59 revolutionary pedagogy 94
psychology 17–20 Rhodes, Sir Cecil 284, 285–6, 287
and the science of segregation 223–4 Ricardo, David 29
public issues and individual problems Rickert, Heinrich 60, 61
(Wrght Mills) 4 Riddell, R. 138–9
348 Index
rights-based model of disability 236, 241 social 194
Rise of the Meritocracy, The (Young) 12, 124 special needs 224
role allocation 81, 82, 83 Seidel, Sam 117
Romanians Are Coming (case study) 163–4 self-discipline 38–9
Rorty, R. 12–13 self-fulfilling prophecies 228–9
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 247, 302 self-interest 32
Rowntree, Seebohm 31 SEND Code of Practice (2014) 238–9, 239–40
Royal National Institute for the Deaf SEND Code of Practice (2015) 239
(RNID) 237 senses 17
Rudd, Amber 259 Shapps, Grant 287
Rudduck, J. and Flutter, J. 304 shared values 181
ruling class ideology 36 Shaw, George Bernard 79
Shuttleworth, S. 254
Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan 181 Simmons, R. III 189–90
SAD (social advantage and disadvantage) sink estates 161
thesis 87, 126 sites of learning 112
Said, Edward 189 Sivanandan, Ambalavaner 191
Salah, Alaa 206–7 slavery 35, 62, 183, 184, 189, 210, 304
Salamanca Statement (1994) 232, 234, 236 Smith, Adam 29
same-sex marriage 246 Sobczyk, Jonathan 321
Samuel, Judy 90 social action 60, 61
Sarkozy, Nicolas 15, 16 social age 249–50
Sartre, Jean-Paul 79 social bonding 28, 32
Saunders, Peter 87, 126, 131, 134, 135, social capital 139, 156, 159, 165
136, 159 social change 27, 28, 33, 36
Savage et al. 156, 157, 158, 164, 165, 166 social class
Savile, Jimmy 227 accessing advantage 166–9
Saye, Khadija 163 and capitals 164–6
School of Oriental and African Studies elite class 156–7
(SOAS) 21 enduring relevance of 150–1
schools 134–5, 137–8 Grenfell Tower (case study) 161–3
effectiveness of 137–8 multidimensional approach to 156–8
pupil voice in 303–4 poverty propaganda 161
social control 251–3 precariat 157–8
underperformance 151 see also social mobility
see also comprehensive schools; grammar social construction of childhood see
schools; independent schools; private childhood
schools; special schools social control 224, 251–3
Schools Council 277 social disability model 230, 232
Schutz, Alfred 66–7 social exclusion 109, 111–12, 116, 117
science of society 50–1 Social Exclusion Unit 280
Scotland social facts 44, 55, 56, 57, 81
poverty 152 social, importance of 19–20
social mobility 152 social integration 233
special educational needs legislation 236 social justice 109, 110, 280
voting age 300 social mobility 85–6, 124, 125, 126, 127,
Scott, R. 230 140, 141
Second Sex, The (de Beauvoir) 201 accessing advantage 166–9
Secret Garden, The (Burnett) 255 American Dream 171–2
Seeley, Sir John 182 capitals and social class 164–6
segregation and education 152–4
class 126 elite class 156–7
disability 222 Great Gatsby Curve (GGC) 171
racial 110, 143, 184 growing inequality, consequences of 159–60
science of 223–4 inconclusive evidence 155–6
Index 349
intergenerational 152–3 sociology and education studies 1–22
lack of progress 151 case study 21–2
machine learning methods 168–9 caution, need for 7–8, 17–19
measurement of 154–5 foundation subjects 8–19
multidimensional approach to 156–8 philosophy 10
Programme for International Student sociology 20–1
Assessment (PISA) tests (case study) lessons from history 22
168–9 sociological imagination 3–5
pupil resilience 172 theory, power of 5–7
in Scotland 152 sociology of education see developments in
self-recruitment 157–8 sociology of education; early sociology
stalling of 154–6 of education
in Wales 152 Socrates 9, 35, 296
and wealth 158–9 sonic surveillance 253
wider picture 170 Sons of Anarchy (TV series) 209
see also social class sophists 89
Social Mobility Commission 151, 152, 155 South African Department of Higher
social reconstructionism 110 Education and Training 284
social solidarity 34, 36, 37, 38 Southern Theory 42–5, 96
social structure 50, 63 Southern Theory (Connell) 42, 45
social suicide 57 Spartans 296, 297
socialisation 247–8, 251 Special Educational Needs and Disability Act
socialism 34, 53, 268–9 (SENDA, 2001) 236
socialist revolution 15 special educational needs (SEN) 220
society consensus, lack of 235
evolution 30 education, purpose of 237–8
Ibn Khaldun’s view of 27–8 handicap labels 226–7
science of 50–1 identity formation 224–5
sociological understanding of 26–8 inclusion 235
sociological ideal types 62 and integration 232–5
sociological imagination 3–5 New Labour programme 235–7
sociological research, early approaches 50–72 rights to 231–2
Comte 51–2, 56 parental involvement 238–9
critical reflections 68–9 professions, role of 222–3
Durkheim 54, 54–5 prospects, lack of 227–8
case study 69–70 psychology, role of 223–4
empiricism 50, 51 segregation 222, 223–4
French positivism 51–2, 54, 54–5, 56 as a self-fulfilling prophecy 228–9
Marx 52–4 SEND Code of Practice (2014) 238–9, 239–40
suicide 55–9 SEND Code of Practice (2015) 239
Weber 59–63 social origins of 221–2
ideal types 62, 63, 64–5 see also disability
influence 66–7 special schools 223, 224, 226, 227, 232, 233,
method 62–3 235, 236
application of 65 Spencer, Herbert 34
sociology Spender, Dale 90
classical 41, 42, 43–4 spirit, Hegelian concept 15
crisis of 42 standard assessment tasks (SATs) 279
emergence of 20–1 Standards in Scotland’s Schools Act (2000) 236
modern, birth of 29–30 Stanford–Binet Test 129
origins of 26–8, 41 Stanworth, M. 90
global 41–2 Stern, Wilhelm 129
as a profession 37–8 Stigma (Goffman) 225
shift to left, in Britain 85–6 stratification 82
350 Index
structural differentiation 81–2 Thunberg, Greta 308–9
structural functionalism 80, 81 Tocqueville, Alexis de 31–2, 36
critiquing 83 Democracy in America 31
structural vulnerability 302 Toennies, Ferdinand 32–4
structure ideal types (Weber) 62 Tomlinson, Sally 11, 220, 221, 229
Sturgeon, Nicola 309 totemism 43, 70
subordinate classes 35 Townsend, Peter 228
suicide 55–9 traditional action 63
and education 57–8 transformations 111–12, 318–36
types of 57–9 BME academic leaders 325–7
summative assessment 279 cultural 322–5
summer riots (2011) 299–300 evidence 331–6
Summerhill School 303–4 analysis of data 334–6
super wicked problems 307, 308 case studies 332–4
Sure Start Programme 280 myth of 329–31
surplus labour 29 Teach First 329–31
surplus value 30 widening participation 319–23, 324
surveillance 252–3 see also higher education; universities
Sutton Trust report (2018) 141, 166, 167 tripartite system of education 11–12, 125, 269
Swain, J. and French, S. 231 Truman Doctrine 84
symbolic violence 87, 88 Trump, President Donald 307
systemic functionalism 81 truth 9
discovery of 88–9
Tarde, Gabriel 56 Foucault 92–3
Task Group on Assessment and Testing Twins (Hirsch) 133
(TGAT) 279 typifications 67
Tawney, R.H. 267, 269
Teach First 329–31 UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) 283
teachers Ullah, Ahmed 190
characteristics for radical pedagogy 110–11 Umunna, Chuka 185
recruitment 329–31 unconscious bias 326, 327
reform of profession 277–8 underachievement
Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act (1987) 277 Black students 191, 204
Tebbit, Norman 182 of boys 5
Terman, L. 129, 130 female 203
Terman, L. and Yerks, R. 18 of working classes 87–8, 173
testing 278–9 underclass 136, 158
Thatcher, Margaret 86, 203, 204, 272, 273 undergraduates, Black 166
Thatcherism 275–6 UNESCO (United Nations Educational,
The Brilliant Club 321 Scientific and Cultural Organization) 232
theory/theories UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)
abstract 6 294, 295
critical 14 United Nations Convention on the Rights
Eurocentrism 15–17, 194 of the Child (UNCRC) 232, 234, 257,
formation 5 295, 302
grand theories 5–6, 81, 89 United Nations Human Rights Council
historical development 35 (UNHRC) 257, 258
middle-range approach 6 United Nations Universal Declaration of
power of 5–7 Human Rights (UDHR) 257
rationalisation 64–5 United States of America (USA)
whiteness 193 American connection 80–1
see also labelling theory Black Americans 83–4
Third way 280–1 Black girls and state violence 114–16
Thomas, G. and Vaughan, M. 232 civil and political associations 32
Index 351
Civil Rights Act (1964) 184 Webb, Beatrice and Sidney 79, 201
Civil Rights Movement 84, 184, 187, 188 Weber, Marianne 201
climate change agreements, refusal to Weber, Max 30, 59–63
ratify 307–8 bureaucracy 64–5
communism, fear of 84 Economy and Society 65
Critical Race Theory (CRT) 187–92 ideal types 62, 63
hip hop pedagogy 116–17 and rationalisation 64–5
immigration 18, 129, 130 influence 66–7
Juliana v. US 309, 310 and Marx 59–60
melting pot 129, 183 method 62–3
mid-twentieth century American society application of 65
83–5 Weberian Marxism 71
multiculturalism 183–5 welfare dependency 161
racial discrimination and injustice 183–4 Welfare Reform and Work Act (2016) 256, 257
racial inequality 83–4 welfare state 79, 80, 85, 153, 257, 268, 273
racial segregation 184 and education policy 268–9, 273, 274, 276
religion 32 Wells-Barnett, Ida B. 201
slave trade 183–4 wesenwille 33
universities white habitus 194
functions of 318 white privilege 189, 192–6
multidimensional remit 324–5 white sanction 327
undergraduate part-time study 324 Whitehead, W.N. 9
University of the Future (Ernst & Young) 267 whiteness and white privilege 192–6
upward intergenerational social mobility case study 195–6
152, 154 wicked problems 306–12
urbanisation 30, 31, 82 widening participation 319–23, 324
Usher, R and Edwards, R. 91–2, 93 diversity and leadership 325–7
utilitarianism 34 Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. 170
Willis, Paul 71–2, 90
value-neutrality concept 61 Wilson, Harold 271
value rational action 63 Windelband, Wilhelm 60
value-relevance concept 61 Windrush 181
van Gennep, Arnold 70 Wollstonecraft, Mary 202
Vergun, Miko 308 Women of the Arab Spring, The (Eltahawey) 215
Verharen, C.C. 16, 17, 304–6 Woolf, Virginia 201–2
verstehen (understanding) approach 63 working classes 35–6
vocationalism 278 education of children 87
Vygotsky, Lev 19 and meritocracy 150
underachievement 87–8, 173
Wales The World Inequality Report (2018) 160
poverty 152
social mobility 152 Young, Michael 87–8, 124–5
voting age 300–1 Rise of the Meritocracy 12
Warmington, P. 189 young people
Warnock Committee (1974) 220 right to vote (case study) 300–1
Warnock Report (1978) 232, 233 see also pupil voice
Watson, James 18
wealth 158–9 Zelinsky, Wilbur 183
and intelligence 128 Zero Hour movement 308, 310
352 Index

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Sociology

Los Angeles | London | New Delhi | Singapore | Washington DC | Melbourne

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British

Editor: James Clark

1 Sociology and education studies 1

2 Early sociology of education 25

3 Early approaches to sociological research 49

4 Developments in sociology of education 77

5 Critical and radical pedagogies 105

6 Differential educational attainment and the debate about

7 Social class and social mobility 149

8 Multiculturalism, ‘race’ and power 179

9 Reimagining gender roles 199

10 Inclusion: Disability and special educational needs 219

11 The social construction of childhood 245

12 Education policy 265

13 Young people and pupil voice 293

Nasima Hassan, originally from Lancashire, has worked in secondary school

Charlotte Barrow, University of Central Lancashire

Key words: sociology, psychology, philosophy, educated, education, sociologi-

2 Sociology of Education

Thinking point 1.1

Sociology and education studies 3

Thinking point 1.2

A key aspect of the sociological imagination according to Wright Mills is the

4 Sociology of Education

It could be argued that narrowing the issue of inequalities in educational

The power of theory

Sociology and education studies 5

it is hopeless and quixotic to try to determine the overarching independent variable

Sociologists now tend to adopt a middle-range approach to theorising (Merton,

6 Sociology of Education

Thinking point 1.3

Sociology and education studies 7

Thinking point 1.4

The foundation subjects of education studies

8 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 9

Thinking point 1.5

10 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 11

Post-analytic philosophy of education

12 Sociology of Education

The challenge of postmodernism

Sociology and education studies 13

Thinking point 1.6

The ambiguous status of philosophy

14 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 15

16 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 17

18 Sociology of Education

The importance of the social

Sociology and education studies 19

• The role of play in children’s development.

• The age at which children should start school.

• Effective teaching methods.

In addition, educational psychologists occupy an important professional role in

The emergence of sociology

20 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 21

Lessons from history

22 Sociology of Education

Sociology and education studies 23