This article attempts to explore the construction of the ‘ideal student’ from an intersectional approach, considering the role that race, gender, and socioeconomic class play and their interrelation.
In the wake of education expansion in most western societies in the 1960s, the Coleman report (1966) was commissioned in order to monitor the progress in terms of social mobility. Its intention was to shed light into the still pressing question of how much, and in what ways, educational institutions are able to overcome the inequalities with which children come to school. The report concluded that socio economic factors, such as the social origin of the students and the social composition of educational institutions had greater impact on explaining educational outcomes than the curricular organization or the pedagogical models of the education systems (Coleman and Hopkins, 1966).
In line with these findings, Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) developed on the concept of educational inequalities, pointing out that social and economic factors largely disclose the differences in student’s academic achievement. However, Bourdieu’s work focuses on the cultural capital, and how the school, far from being a neutral institution, transmits the culture of the middle class, thus causing lower-class students to be at disadvantage. The concept of cultural capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) is multifaceted, and refers to the person’s cultural traits, such as education, intellect, abilities, taste, hobbies, and so on. Closely related to this idea, the concept of habitus is understood as the pillar that sustains our lifestyle, our modus operandi, values, expectations, etc. These two concepts are essential to understand the root of educational inequalities, in the sense that students from a middle or wealthy social class are more familiar with the culture of the school. Therefore, their way of acting and their attitudes towards school and education are in line to what the school values and expects of students (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). This idea corresponds to the concept of ideal student (Becker, 1952), which alludes to the fact that teacher’s expectations vary according to the socioeconomic profile of the students. Thus, middle-class students are conceived as those who present the appropriate dispositions for learning, and are the ones who mark the pattern of normality, to which other students must adapt (Demarrais & LeCompte, 1999).
Similarly, Bernstein (1990) introduced the role of the language in explaining educational inequalities. The author acknowledged the link between language and social class, and consequently, in social reproduction. Bernstein (1990) defines two types of codes, the elaborated code -characteristic of the middle and higher socioeconomic stratus- and the restricted code -characteristic of the working classes- and argued that this differentiation is a result of the context and social position of each socioeconomic class, which in turn generate disparate experiences, needs, and relationships between these classes. Thus, cultural and social reproduction go hand in hand. As long as the school operates using the elaborated code, working class students will face difficulties navigating and succeeding in the school environment. This can be understood as the elaborate code is characterized by dialogue and rational explanation, while restricted code is more direct and relies on authority. Therefore, middle class children, who are familiar with the elaborated code, are able to participate in their own education and socialization processes in educational institutions.
Willis (1977) conducted an ethnographic study aiming to uncover how and why “working class kids get working class jobs”. His main finding was that the culture of the working class is opposed to that which is valued and reproduced within school institutions. This manifests as school resistance, which entails that working class students feel disconnected towards schooling, as a reaction to a sociocultural system which stigmatizes and oppresses them. Similarly, Fordham and Ogbu (1968) agreed that this experience is shared too by migrant students, who are not familiar with the cultural capital valued at school. In addition, the education experience of migrant students is shaped by their cultural perception of whether integration into the majority culture has the potential to lead them to further social advancement. In other words, if these students perceive that their community is excluded from the dominant society, they have no incentive to succeed in school, as that will not necessarily guarantee them better opportunities. Ultimately, as Demarrais and LeCompte (1999) note, “schools serve to reinforce the knowledge and competences already acquired by middle class children. Since academic success tends to be associated with later success in the job market, the patterns of reinforcement act to reinforce the existing class structure” (p.18).
Western education systems’ ideal student appears to be one that is able to adapt to a specific type of teaching, learning, and assessment that allows perpetuating social hierarchies and societal power structures as they are. Indeed, it can be argued that Western education systems aim at creating docile citizens who will maintain society as it is, as opposed to critical citizens who would contribute to transforming it. Freire (1970) illustrates this idea by explaining that these education systems follow a banking approach in which the student is considered as an empty vessel that must be filled by the teacher with a specific type of knowledge, which Heany (1995, as cited by Ruiz Bybee, 2020) describes as “approved knowledge” (p.2). This knowledge includes what was described by Freire (1970) as a hidden curriculum that conveys a set of values, perspectives, and expectations determined by the dominant power and that schools transmit to students without them being aware of it, therefore reproducing the dominant ideological hegemony (Eisner, 1994; Hammer & Kellner, 2009, as cited by Nouri & Sajjadi, 2014). Thus, this type of education contributes to maintaining social inequities in several ways. First, it reinforces social hierarchies by giving primary importance to the opposition between the teacher who knows and has the power, and the students who don’t know anything and are passive (Ruiz Bybee, 2020). Moreover, Freire (1970) argued that the banking model of education aims at “changing the consciousness of the oppressed, not the situation which oppresses them; for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated” (p.72). Instead of giving students the keys to transforming society towards a more equitable one, this approach of education, encourages them to adapt to the current one without questioning it.
Standardized tests are widely used by Western education systems to assess students’ acquisition of the knowledge transmitted by the teacher (Ruiz Bybee, 2020). Drawing on Foucault’s work on governmentality, Graham and Neu (2004) argue that standardized testing “functions as a mode of government control by helping to construct governable subjects” (p. 1). In fact, the authors explain that, according to Foucault, standardized tests are part of the new techniques used by modern governments to control the population. Indeed, test results are used to compare students, reward those who achieve a socially acceptable result and punish those whose results don’t fit the norm. Standardized tests, therefore, force students to conform to a specific type of behavior that will allow them to produce results that will be regarded positively by society in order to be accepted by it and avoid exclusion.
As a consequence, Western education systems tend to value only specific types of learning and skills, labelling those who have different abilities as underachieving or learning disabled. Only subjects and skills that are measurable through standardized tests are valued (Graham & Neu, 2004), that is to say, those that require linguistic and logico-mathematical intelligence (Hearne & Stone, 1995). Even subjects such as arts that involve different abilities are taught and evaluated in ways that require linguistic intelligence from the student. Schools devalue or ignore students who don’t possess these types of intelligence, focusing only on their deficits in these areas instead of trying to uncover the other talents and intelligence that they have and allowing them to develop them (Hearne & Stone, 1995). In fact, Hearne and Stone (1995) argue that research has shown that students labelled as learning disabled could perform better than others in tasks requiring skills such as divergent thinking or creativity that are usually ignored or even disregarded by schools. According to them, learning disabilities are therefore a social construction and those who are labelled as underachieving or learning disabled are only students whose abilities don’t match those that are valued and expected by school systems because they are not measurable.
In order for education systems to become more equal and allow each student to succeed, teaching, learning, and assessment must be rethought. According to Freire (1970), the banking model of education should be replaced by a problem-posing education system. Nouri and Sajjadi (2014) explain that, in this type of education system education, learning happens through an active dialogue to which both teachers and students contribute equally with their perspectives and knowledge. Through that dialogue, they become conscious of their own socio-political position and are given the opportunity to think about it critically. That way, education becomes an empowering process that allows students to emancipate themselves from oppression and to challenge and transform the society within which they exist to make it become fairer and more democratic.
In addition, Nouri and Sajjadi (2014) also suggest that within a problem-posing education system, standardized testing should be replaced by other assessment methods such as “self-assessment and peer assessment” that allow students to “critically analyze and reflect on their knowledge and their experience” (p.83), therefore making the assessment process contribute to the student’s emancipation. Moreover, Hearn and Stone (1995) recommend that the hegemony of linguistic and logico-mathematical intelligence within the school system should be put to an end, leaving room for all types of intelligence. For example, they claim that students would benefit from having the possibility to express themselves and learn through different verbal and non-verbal languages such as art, music, or drama and various teaching methods, for instance interdisciplinary curricula or cooperative learning. This way, each of them would be given the opportunity to build their understanding of the world they live in through the means that are the most helpful and relevant for them. Furthermore, Hearn and Stone (1995) also argue that it is necessary to end the predominance of assessment through standardized tests and give the possibility to students to show the knowledge and skills they have acquired through other assessment methods such as “demonstrations, performances, oral reports, and projects” (p.446) in order to allow students with diverse types of intelligence to succeed at school.
In conclusion, Western education systems seem to function as hegemonic systems that allow the reproduction of hierarchical societal structures that favor middle and higher social classes. Indeed, the attitudes, knowledge, and abilities of the middle-class students are considered by Western education systems as those to be expected from the ideal student, disadvantaging students from lower socio-economic backgrounds as well as migrant students. Moreover, schools in this setting follow a banking approach that only values skills and knowledge that can be measured through standardized tests. This allows governments to control the students and make sure that they become citizens that will ensure the stability of the societal structure, excluding those with different abilities and intelligence from attaining this very narrowly defined concept of academic achievement. Therefore, to move towards a more equal and inclusive education system, it appears fundamental to imagine and implement curriculums as well as teaching and assessment methods that value all types of knowledge and abilities and that encourage critical thinking. Only that way can education become a means of liberation for the oppressed and foster change towards a more equal and inclusive society.
References
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