I am asking the above questions because they are real interview questions that researchers asked Ghanaian students at the elite Sankofa International College to explore their understanding of privilege. The school consists of both wealthy students who pay full tuition and orphaned students who rely on financial aid, and it prohibits discussions of social class differences among students. Considering the school’s intention of erasing or hiding social class differences from students, I think that makes students’ answers to the above social class questions interesting. The students’ answers reveal that social class differences exist and can be noticed even when the school tries to erase them.
During the interviews, all four students discussed their experiences of noticing social class differences in a school-related setting. Two students noticed these differences after coming to the Sankofa, while the other two remembered events from earlier in their lives. One student recalled realizing his privilege at age five, saying, “I knew nothing about money, but I saw a lot of zeros for the cost of attending a year … I think that’s when I first realized that there was some privilege involved.” A lot of zeros can definitely surprise a kid, and the student was right about his family’s privilege because Ghana has free compulsory primary school education, and he could have attended a public school for free. The other student noticed differences among the children who attended her church, some of whom went to school for free while others paid tuition and she went to a school that required paying tuition. It’s fascinating that both students noticed social class differences at a young age, based on tuition fees. This suggests that social class differences are visible especially in education-related settings, indicating that such differences exist within the education system.
The two students who noticed social class differences at Sankofa pointed to differences in material goods, despite the school’s efforts to erase these distinctions by requiring uniforms and dorm living. One student remarked on the fancy cars, such as Porsches and Lamborghinis, that some students’ parents drove them to school in. Another student described how some students bought new iPods if they broke them, while others looked for cheaper ways to repair them or didn’t even have iPods. Students also noticed others’ travel plans during school breaks, which revealed differences in backgrounds. As one student noted, the school “did very well at hiding [social class difference] … you couldn’t tell unless you had an eye for it.” However, all students identified ways in which they could recognize these differences, indicating that social class distinctions are impossible to hide entirely.
If social class differences are noticeable, why would the school want to conceal them? That’s a question for us to ponder, but Pierre Bourdieu might argue that an elite school like Sankofa is probably trying to legitimize its elite status and hides its privileges by presenting an image of an equal playing field that’s “free” from social class distinctions. In reality, the school is still privileged and serves to benefit the elites. In fact, if we looked at students’ outcomes after high school, then one can notice that only the privileged students can go to whichever universities in the world they want with limited obstacles while others had to take tuition fees, financial aid packages, travel expenses, and many other factors into consideration.
Ultimately, the Sankofa students’ comments prompt us to think about the many ways that social class differences can appear, paying special attention to the subtle and hidden ways that elites and their institutions try to hide from us. By recognizing these injustices that elites may obscure, we can work towards breaking unfair rules and preventing elites from establishing new ones.
