The physical location of a school can be indicative of the population it aims to serve, reflecting broader societal structures and boundaries between different socioeconomic classes. The Croft School in Chile is vastly impacted by its geography, as it is situated beside affluent neighborhoods and gated communities. A large part of its student population lives in these rich neighborhoods, thus offering rigorous education to elite families. These families have no issue paying the 9,522,000 Chilean pesos (or $11,500 USD) annual tuition, which prompts no need for the Croft School to offer any kind of scholarship or financial aid. This lack of monetary support ensures that only affluent students have access to the Croft School, which seems to align with its location in a wealthy area.
However, a closer look at the school’s geography reveals that it’s not that simple. As one Croft School student put it, the school and the wealthy neighborhoods reside “right next to the slums.” This illustrates that the school is not as separated from lower socioeconomic classes as its student body may suggest, but rather serves as a symbol for what is just out of reach for poorer families. In making certain spaces exclusive, particularly in the context of schools, gentrification creates physical barriers between lower socioeconomic classes and mobility. Similar developments such as high-end shopping centers and offices also contribute to gentrification, and have been changing Santiago’s landscape since the early 2000s (Sabatini & Salcedo, 2010). The geography of the Croft School offers a glimpse into the growing socioeconomic disparities in Chile that are facilitated by structural divides. These disparities can certainly be observed through the exclusivity of spaces and resources, but may also be seen in the ways that different class distinctions are perceived by others.
For example, when asked about how one could identify one from a lower class, a student interviewee from the Croft School said, “It’s the way they talk…But the lower classes talk, like, faster and it’s harder to understand, even for me.” The student’s comment about how lower-class speech is “harder to understand” reveals a subtle yet significant form of social discrimination. By virtue of being physically separated from lower-class populations, it seems as if the student interviewee has ‘othered’ their way of speaking. This suggests that language becomes an additional factor in social stratification––one that has a direct tie to education. Schools are significant contributors to the accumulation of cultural capital, which embodies knowledge about ways one should speak, act, and think.
In the context of the Croft School, the cultural capital that is emphasized to students is one that aligns with the values and behaviors of middle and upper class populations. These students are expected to speak, behave, and carry themselves in a manner that reflects dominant cultural norms related to their status and expected trajectories (e.g. leaders, professionals, etc.). Since elite schools like the Croft School are inaccessible to poorer families, children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are not given the opportunity to gain this type of cultural capital. And so, they are not prepared with the necessary skills to become leaders or professionals in the workforce, but rather imbued with the skills associated with their class status. This is the driving force of class reproduction, as the family (and circumstances) you are born into usually dictate the cultural capital you are able to accumulate and subsequently, the jobs you can have in the future.
When an elite school like the Croft School excludes lower-class populations, it strengthens class disparities and perpetuates the idea that high-class populations are superior to lower-class ones. The Croft School’s proximity to poorer neighborhoods can cause lower-class students to feel alienated in their own homes. The Croft School’s geographic location indicates wealth, while also causing other effects related to maintaining social stratification between classes.
References
Sabatini, F., & Salcedo, R. (2007). Gated communities and the poor in Santiago, Chile: Functional and symbolic integration in a context of aggressive capitalist colonization of lower‐class areas. Housing Policy Debate, 18(3), 577-606.
