Social Class Differences within Elite Schooling

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to do research on an elite school in Ghana and gain insight about what the experience is like for students there. The Sankofa International College is a unique school that has a student body made up of half middle- and upper-class Ghanaian students and another half of orphaned children. Through listening to the interviews and reading the transcripts of students at the Ghana school, it revealed many interesting findings about their experiences that reminded me of some of the experiences I went through at my high school. My high school was a private school in the suburbs of Massachusetts composed of a majority of students from well off families and about a third of the students who were from low and middle-class families. The main parallels between the Ghana school and my high school that I will focus on are student pressure and friend groups.

So first, student pressure. By this I mean the pressure that students put on themselves or pressure they may face from their parents. In an interview I listened to from one of the Ghana  students, I found that the disadvantaged students push themselves a lot harder academically than the weathlier students do. This seems to be because they feel that as an orphan, they are at a disadvantage socially and economically. Therefore, by doing extremely well academically, it could get them the “ticket” to further their education and get a well-paying job. There was a similar pressure on students at my high school who were on financial aid compared to the students whose parents could afford full tuition. I felt this academic pressure personally. I remember trying to get in as much additional help from my teachers after class to go over concepts that I was struggling with. However, some of my other classmates would just rush out the door after class as if they were not worried if they understood the material or not. The difference was that those kids had private tutors that would come to their homes and help them with their homework whereas I did not. At both my high school and the Ghana school, it is clear that differences in class status and access to or lack of financial resources, have a great impact on the level of pressure that students place on themselves to perform academically.

The next similar component of my high school and the Ghana school is friend groups and how they are formed. In the student interviews, it was clear that the school put emphasis on limiting the appearance of social difference amongst students. However, it is inevitable for these differences to still show through. Although the orphaned students were not mistreated by the wealthier students, they still seemed to be more comfortable around students like them. It is possible that they felt a bit intimidated by the wealthier students who had many advantages and privileges that they did not have. This was true at my high school as well. Students on financial aid, and especially students of colors, usually had their own friend groups separate from the wealthier, white students. My personal experience with these social groupings was a bit more fluid however. I was friends with minority students that I could identify with, but I also had many friends who did not look like me. I think in large part this was due to my being an athlete and as a result, I was more welcomed into certain social circles that I do not think I would have been welcomed into if I were not on a sports team. 

Nonetheless, these social groupings play a major role in students’ experiences and how they view themselves as a member of the community. And furthermore, pressure that students place on themselves is not something to take lightly as it impacts students’ mental health which has an enormous effect on how they perform academically. It is so interesting to discover these similarities between my high school experience and the experiences of students in an entirely different country. I look forward to seeing what other similarities I may discover as this project continues.