Social Class and English Schools

Gene Maeroff

Gene Maeroff, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, participated in a study group that visited English schools in 1990. Members of the study group were struck by the extent to which many working-class students in England were alienated from education. Comparing what he saw and heard with our situation in the United States, Maeroff found both similarities and differences.

An American visitor to one high school asked a small group of students who had stayed on after age 16 why they thought their fellow students had left school. This particular school served some 900 students in a working-class neighborhood, in which an estimated 20% of the fathers were unemployed because the economy had shifted and former employers had closed down production. The students said of the school leavers:

"Many of them lacked confidence that they could do the schoolwork."
"They wanted to make money."
"They were tired of school."
"Their parents may have needed them at home."
"They may have wanted more independence than there is in school."

There appeared to be a tendency among students in such schools to hide their interest in education and in achievement. Said one teacher, speaking of those who remained enrolled after age 16: "A potential achiever must be strong-willed. He could be subject to ridicule. We chaperone them and provide them with a haven from the others [those not yet eligible to leave school]. There are instances of the others destroying the folders of the achievers on the way to and from school."

What are we hearing here? Clearly, England and the U.S. share problems when it comes to the schools in which students are having the least success. Peer pressure against academic achievement, especially among disadvantaged students, is an obstacle to learning in both countries. Whether in England or in the U.S., the outlook for such young people once they leave school is grim. Legions of youths in both countries depart school utterly unequipped to make their way in a world that demands certain skills and attitudes on the job and that expects a kind of mainstream socialization to fit comfortably into society.

In England, there is the overlay of a historically intractable system of social class that has a devastating effect on the aspirations of young people in the lower class, who in England are overwhelmingly white. These students assume that social mobility is nearly impossible and appear not to aspire to higher education to the degree that poor Americans do. In turn, higher education in England does not play the role that it does in the U.S., where the educational hopes of the disadvantaged are reinforced by nonselective admissions policies and lots of available spaces.

Questions

1. In what ways do working-class students in England appear to exemplify the operation of "resistance theory" as described in the chapter on Social Class, Race, and School Achievement? What might you do as a teacher to counteract this tendency and help alienated students stay in school?
2. Why do working-class students in England seem particularly likely to "assume that social mobility is nearly impossible" and to have little hope for advancement through higher education? Do you think that working-class students in the United States hold similar views? In your opinion, to what extent are such views accurate for the United States?
3. Why are educators and public officials in England and many other countries particularly concerned with improving opportunities for working-class students?

Source: Gene I. Maeroff, "Focusing on Urban Education in Britain," Phi Delta Kappan (January 1992), p. 357. Reprinted by permission of the author.