Bourdieu: Theory of Class Distinction

We had our poster presentation last week on a Theorist in Education, Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu (1930-2002) was well-known for his book, 'Distinction: A Social Critique on the Judgement of Taste). He was famous for his key concepts such as species of capital, cultural and social reproduction, fields, habitus and symbolic violence.

One of Bourdieu's famous theories is the 'Theory of Class Distinction'.

In it, Bourdieu argues that it is the culture of the dominant groups, and therefore their cultural capital, which is embodied in schools. Such cultural capital is assumed by the school to be the natural and only proper type of cultural capital and is therefore legitimised. Students who possess this legitimate cultural capital use it to gain educational capital in the form of qualifications. Students of the lower classes are therefore disadvantaged, and to gain qualifications, they must exchange their own (usually working-class) cultural capital for legitimate cultural capital, i.e. they must act against their instincts and expectations to learn a new way of relating to the world. In turn, many such students will drop out of school. Hence, schools perpetuate social reproduction by encouraging less-privileged students to eliminate themselves from the system, leaving only a small number who have internalised the values of the dominant classes and used them as their own.

A way out of this cycle would be for schools to provide working-class students the cultural capital that middle-class students get from their families, hence ensuring more equality among students in schools. With self-awareness, teachers and intellectuals could also watch against teaching to the dominant class.

My personal take on this: In my daily teaching, I have also noticed that the lower class students also lack confidence as compared from their peers who come from a different class. From my own personal experience, I remembered my father trying to equip me with a higher 'social capital' (by providing me with a good conducive environment to study, providing me with a computer, buying additional General Knowledge books, subscribing to high level educational magazines which is really costly) although we came from a low-income family. As teachers too, we should try to be more aware of our students who come from the lower classes so we can provide more equality among the education system. There have been monetary schemes, such as the Financial Assistant Subsidy, which are also given to students from the lower classes, in the hope to bring about an equality in the classes. To quote Bourdieu, “Enlightenment is on the side of those who turn their spotlight on our blinkers.”