Understanding the relationship between schools and the family

How useful is Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1977) concept of cultural capital in furthering our understanding as a teacher of the relationship between schools and the family. 

The Bourdieu theory of cultural capital is focused on three main areas education, family and social class, specifically the internal relationship between all three of these areas. The key question in the matter I think is how does the knowledge, skills and education they receive in school contribute towards their future success or status in society, and in this paper, how their parents and family can affect this, or is the effect of the family relevant in today’s society. I am of the opinion that the idea of cultural capital undermines what the education system should stand for. It is a sad state of affairs when an education system is in place purely to supply the needs of a country’s economic demands. It seems that even Ireland cannot get this right at a careers talk a number of years ago, the audience (almost all of whom are in the same position as I am) were told that one in one hundred of us (1%) will gain a fulltime teaching post upon completing our current course of study and training. With the number of students in my current year group numbering at approximately one hundred, surely if the economic and educational demands were correctly aligned only one person should have been trained. The economic and social yield of the educational qualification depends on the social capital (Bordieu, 1986). I think this thought has a lot of merit here, while the anecdote of the moment is that a master’s degree is the new bachelors and the doctorate is the new masters. This shows either the qualifications that young people spend a huge amount of their time working towards has become of less value, or that our work force is becoming more skilled and therefore more educated ie. Higher degrees are becoming more common. Reported in by Alex Dean (2015) that more than 50 Japanese universities are to close or downsize their humanities and social science departments after education minister Hakuban Shimomura urged the country’s higher education institutions to offer a “more practical, vocational education that better anticipates the needs of society”. While I think the concept is not a bad one, it really calls into question what the role of education is? Is it simply to supply the country with a workforce? Should a country be allowed to specify exactly what it wants students to study, purely to ensure that they can ‘serve’ their country once they finish? In my opinion while Bordieu does not specify a course of action such as this, I think this is an extreme method which runs parallel to this theory of cultural capital. Cultural capital, which is convertible, on certain conditions, into economic capital and may be institutionalized in the forms of educational qualifications (Bordieu, 1986). Again as I mentioned above, the cultural capital may be institutionalised into an educational qualification, but what happens if our educational qualifications are becoming of less value or more common. Surely that must see a decrease in the value of the economic capital. In times of global business activities, companies face an increasing need for a culturally competent workforce (Stahl, Chua, Caligiuri, Cerdin, & Taniguchi, 2009).

 In today’s society it is my opinion that the daily educational responsibilities are seen as the role of the teacher only, and therefore many families will hold teacher’s responsible for the success or lack of success that their child is achieving in the formal educational world. The respect that society has for teachers as diminished over the past decade, certainly in this country. Before, teachers were held in high esteem and seen their authority was seen as unquestionable. It seems to be a paradox that in a time where children can sometimes spend more time with teachers than their parents due to the latter’s work commitments etc. that the teacher is often not treated as though they might actually be able to provide insight into the personality and development of the child, to say nothing of the educational progress. A child has no say in the cultural capital they will receive from their parents. Neither, by extension, do schools have any influence on the cultural capital which a student has before they enter the school. As such, it makes it quite an uneven plain for teachers and students alike to educate equally. A society like the one Ireland is fortunate to have, is one where the majority of students all complete education up to the end of the secondary stage, but the backgrounds from which these students come will be as different as the next. 

To focus on the role of teachers and the relationship between schools and the family, in short I am of the opinion that families believe that whatever qualities and attributes they unconsciously inhibit their children with, are unwavering in the integrity of these qualities and attributes. Fundamentally, most parents would defend their children to the last, and describe them as ‘unique’ when challenged by a school or teacher as to the value of these qualities. Nowadays it is the school and teachers who have the majority of contact time with children and who are the main contributors towards a child’s development and education. Too rarely now do parents take any more of an interest in their child’s education than the knowledge that he/she will pass their exams, and for what reasons. Furthermore, too often it is seen as the fault of the teacher if this student does not do well, or if there are failings. In contrast with this, it is usually seen as the success of a parent if their child excels in education and goes on to reach top level positions within society or their own respective career ladder. Bordieu (1986) goes on to say that 

it follows that the least inexact of all the measurements of cultural capital are those which take as their standard the length of acquisition – so long, of course, as this is not reduced to length of schooling and allowance is made for early domestic education by giving it a positive value (a gain in time, a head start) or a negative value (wasted time, and doubly so because more time must be spent correcting its effects), according to its distance from the demands of the scholastic market

The length of acquisition all depends on the family from which the child was brought up. How much of an education has the child received before they enter the formal school environment? In my own subject of music this becomes more pronounced if the child makes the choice of music as a subject. Some children may have been learning piano since they were big enough to sit on the piano stool, they will have a good grounding in music literacy and performance. On the other side of this balance is the child who does not have any musical background, does not play an instrument, and who chooses the subject simply because they like it. Some would say they have a negative value on the cultural capital compared to the positive value which the previous student will have. Although I think to use the term negative value here is quite disconcerting, music is one of the few subjects where the plateau can be very uneven when teaching a class. Most students will have had the same grounding in English, Irish and Maths for example, but many may have taken music as an extra-curricular, and just as many may not have. One of the other types of cultural capital which can associated with music is the embodied category, the musical skills, which are usually seen as an uninheritable skill. A good example is a survey by Davis (1994) who asked educational psychologists, secondary teachers, primary teachers and members of the general public to identify activities that they believe require a ‘natural talent’ or ‘gift’. Davis reports that most of the respondents viewed musical skills as essentially innate. In fact, 75% of the educational professionals reported that playing instruments, singing and composing were the result of a special innate gift or natural talent. McPherson and O’Neill (2010) mention that there is a general public misconception that music is not a routine capacity but rather requires a special gift. However, a study in regard to this has shown that most laypersons do not endorse the strict environmentalism commonly observed in the social sciences and the media. Instead, a majority believe that individual differences in human abilities cannot be adequately understood without introducing a genetic component as well. The talented students in this study behave just like members of the general population; the large majority of them agree that human abilities have a moderate genetic underpinning. Because of its unique design, this study has also revealed that human characteristics are not perceived as equally heritable. (Tremblay, 2001). 

But the heritability is the interesting perception here, what are the skills or talents that we can inherit from our parents? It is assumed that Bordieu would qualify these as falling into his cultural capital theory. It is clear that this all relates to the cultural capital already possessed by parents, but to what extent does this affect the social capital and culture. What effect do/can teachers and schools have on this? As a music teacher it is sometimes hard to both encourage the extremely talented musicians and the less talented in the same way. It is easy for the less able students to feel unworthy as they feel they are ‘not as good as’ some of the other students who, may fit in with the above anecdote of the piano student. But the reproduction of these inequalities is argued by Bourdieu to be facilitated in schools where teachers?pedagogic actions promote the cultural capital of the dominant class by rewarding students who possess such capital and by penalising others who do not. Thus, the school becomes a central agent of social exclusion and reproduction. (Tzanakis, 2011). When so-called teacher bias has been reported, it is not clear whether such so-called bias is in fact an objective reflection of actual observed differences in student behaviour and performance. Alternatively, it could represent racist attitudes among teachers (Downey and Pribesh, 2004 cited in Devine-Eller, 2005). Alternatively, students’pro-academic orientations may be a cause rather than an effect of teachers’ assessments of students’ performance (Dumais, 2006). Parental family endowments necessary for educational success in adult life can be transmitted intergenerationally (Schoon and Parsons, 2002; Feinstein, Duckworth and Sabates, 2004). However, social class differentials in educational performance remain, net of both children’s ability and parental background factors. Authors have suggested that this leaves room for a family cultural effect to be influencing children’s development (Goldthorpe, 2007; Sullivan, 2007). The point made here is that it cannot be left entirely to parents to be accountable for the different abilities which a child may have. Linking together with the above mentioned heritability, it can be said then that not all abilities can be inherited, both the children and their parents must be responsible for any cultural capital, with neither claiming full responsibility. If anything, by the time children reach secondary school, they are doing the classic teenage ‘rebelling’ so if anything they would be moving away from the abilities and likenesses they have inherited from their parents. Again speaking from the point of view of a teacher, I know of some schools where a subject grade would consist of not only the academic challenges and work that a student has done, but also the behaviour, attitudes and homework submissions. So here lies one of the problems, where the teacher can be reinforcing behaviours which are not necessarily down to the actual academic achievement or as here, the capital which is so valuable. Farkas, Grobe, Sheehan and Shuan (1990) tested this hypothesis and found that teacher-reported work habits determined coursework mastery and net of such mastery, student grades. Teachers rewarded both cognitive and non-cognitive skills and the latter mediated considerably objective valuations of student performance (cited in Tzanakis, 2011). The problem lies in the fundamental assessment of students, surely in an educational setting all assessments should be undertaken objectively as was found in the research by Farkas et al and not subjectively as in my experience can happen. If schools are undermining the whole value and theory of cultural capital by evaluating students subjectively then it calls into question the value of the qualifications themselves. Having said that, it is hard as I mentioned before, certainly in my subject of music to maintain an equal footing when assessing students of differing abilities. 

Bourdieu claims that, since the education system presupposes the possession of cultural capital, which few students in fact possess, there is a great deal of inefficiency in 'pedagogic transmission' (i.e. teaching). This is because students simply do not understand what their teachers are trying to get across (Sullivan, 2002). In a multicultural society like we have in Ireland these days this statement rings especially true. While many students come from different cultures and background and countries, the language barrier that may present itself is hard to get around. Students from other countries may have very proficient language skills, but it is the cultural concepts and assumptions that teachers can sometimes make which can be the barrier. In addition, Bourdieu claims that social inequalities are legitimated by the educational credentials held by those in dominant positions. This means that the education system has a key role in maintaining the status quo.

"... it [education] is in fact one of the most effective means of perpetuating the existing social pattern, as it both provides an apparent justification for social inequalities and gives recognition to the cultural heritage, that is, to a social gift treated as a natural one." (Bourdieu, 1974, p. 32)

In sum, Bourdieu's view is that cultural capital is inculcated in the higher-class home, and enables higher-class students to gain higher educational credentials than lower-class students. This enables higher-class individuals to maintain their class position, and legitimates the dominant position which higher-class individuals typically goes on to hold. Of course, some lower-class individuals will succeed in the education system, but, rather than challenging the system, this will strengthen it by contributing to the appearance of meritocracy (Sullivan 2002). While I think that the opinion of Bordieu is somewhat slightly outdated there is still some relevance to this point here. Although running quite close to the Marxist opinion of a uniform unwavering system, the idea that schools should be the main agents to perpetuate the existing social patterns and norms is quite a solid idea, but I disagree with the idea that it should provide justification for the social inequalities. 

To sum up, I believe that Bordieu outlines some very important points that teachers can take on to improve our understanding of the role of families and schools. It goes without saying that nowadays almost all schools are a veritable honeypot of differing cultures, upbringings and backgrounds. This should not be seen as a disadvantage to some and an advantage to others depending on the families’ social standing or place in a theoretical hierarchy. To ensure that this does not take place, teachers should always ensure that they objectively evaluate students in the same manner. If students are evaluated on a one by one basis with no comparison to others then there can be no value to qualifications. If a student in third level education was awarded a first class degree which was mainly put down to his attitude/attendance/effort, it would have no value against a student who gained a first class degree through the quality of the academic work undertaken. 

While I do not agree entirely with the idea that the product of education should be a qualified workforce to serve a country’s economy, I will concede that the quality of the cultural capital (education qualifications) will directly affect the quality of the economic capital. Teachers must understand that the cultural capital i.e. the embodied capital that students enter school with are not entirely down to the family, both the student and the family shape each other. With regards to students from different cultures, of course there will be an unequal footing when understanding the social cultures and possibly the languages of this country, although this should be no barrier to them. The idea that the upper class families can provide a better education for students compared to lower class families is incorrect. I am referring to the idea that if you can pay for a more expensive education you will get a better education. While this might be the standard argument, high school fees bear no resemblance to the quality of teaching that might be taking place. More does not necessarily always equal more.

In short it is the duty of all teachers to ensure that there are no socio-cultural gaps within their classroom, the role of the teacher is to educate as best they can. They should do so with equity and equality. 

References

Dean, A. (2015, September 26). Japan's humanities chop sends shivers down academic spines. The Guardian. Retrieved March 31, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/25/japans-humanities-chop-sends-shivers-down-academic-spines

Devine-Eller, A. (2005) Rethinking Bourdieu on Race: A Critical Review of Cultural Capital and Habitus in the Sociology of Education Qualitative Literature. Rutgers University, 2 May 2005.

Dumais, S. A. (2002) Cultural Capital, Gender, and School Success: The Role of Habitus. Sociology of Education 75, 1, 44-68.

Dumais, S. A. (2006) Early Childhood Cultural Capital, Parental Habitus, and Teachers?Perceptions. Poetics 34, 2, 83-107.

Farkas, G., Grobe, R. P., Sheehan, D. and Shuan, Y. (1990) Cultural Resources and School Success: Gender, Ethnicity, and Poverty Groups within an Urban School District. American Sociological Review 55, 1, 127-142.

Feinstein, L., Duckworth, K. and Sabates, R. (2004) A Model of the Inter-Generational Transmission of Educational Success. Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, Report No 10.

Goldthorpe, J. H. (2007) “Cultural Capital”: Some Critical Observations. Acta Sociologica 50, 3, 211-229.

Schoon, I. and Parsons, S. (2002) Teenage Aspirations for Future Careers and Occupational Outcomes. Journal of Vocational Behavior 60, 2, 262-288.

Stahl, G.K.; Chua, C.H.; Caligiuri, P.; Cerdin, J.-L.; Taniguchi, M. (2009). “Predictors of turnover intentions in learning driven and demand-driven international assignments: The role of repatriation concerns, satisfaction with company support, and perceived career advancement opportunities”, Human Resource Management, Vol. 48, N° 1, p. 91-111.

Sullivan, A. (2001) Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment. Sociology 35, 4, 893-912. 

Sullivan, A. (2002). Bordieu and Education: How useful is Bordieu's theory for researchers? The Netherland's Journal of Social Sciences, 38(2), 144-166. Retrieved March 31, 2016.

Sullivan, A. (2007) Cultural Capital, Cultural Knowledge and Ability. Sociological Research Online 12, 6, 1.

Tzanakis, M. (2011). Bourdieu’s Social Reproduction Thesis and The Role of Cultural Capital in Educational Attainment: A Critical Review of Key Empirical Studies. Educate, 11(1), 76-90. Retrieved March 31, 2016.