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Globally Elite

What Would Bourdieu Say? Connecting His Theories To Our Findings

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Despite his dense and sometimes complicated writing, Pierre Bourdieu has provided us with new perspectives and a deeper understanding of elite schooling. The purpose of this blog entry is to relate some of Bourdieu’s theories and concepts to some of the major findings from our research on the Sankofa International College, an elite school in Ghana.

The Sankofa school consists of nearly half disadvantaged students and the slight majority come from well-to-do families. The students who come from more advantaged backgrounds are what Bourdieu would call the “prize winners”. The prizewinners are the typical elite students whose parents have lots of social and economic capital and put their kids in prestigious schools which reproduce elites. Something that distinguishes the prizewinners from other students is that “they are more inclined to judge their work as very good or excellent and tend to use the same adjectives to describe the kind of student they are and the kind of student they would like to be” (Bourdieu 14). Elite students feel a sense of comfort and security in their high social status which makes it easier for them to display their confidence in the classroom. However, it is more challenging for disadvantaged students to exhibit this same level of confidence. Even though the disadvantaged have been selected as the “chosen ones” to attend this elite school, the fact that they are not inherently elite themselves causes them to feel insecure at times since they are non elites in an elite space. The way they adjust to this and carry themselves in the school relates to another one of Bourdieu’s concepts called habitus. Habitus refers to an individual’s embodied disposition and ingrained tendencies. Habitus strongly influences how students interact with their classmates and teachers and how they view themselves.

Another finding from the data is that the disadvantaged students said that they put a lot of pressure on themselves to do well academically. In a couple of interviews, students said that they try so hard academically because education is their “way out”, and will give them a chance to make a better life for themselves. Bourdieu touches upon this in his discussion of reproducing capital. He writes, “the interest that an agent brings to her studies depends not only on her current or anticipated academic success but also on the degree to which her social success depends on her academic success” (Bourdieu 276). This is a strategy that disadvantaged students use to generate their own capital. By doing well academically, students are then usually able to get into really prestigious colleges which can help them land a high paying job. This demonstrates how students accumulate cultural capital and convert it into economic capital. 

The last main point that I will touch on is how Sankofa puts a strong emphasis on assimilation and unity. They forbid students from openly talking about their social differences because they want all students to see themselves as equals. I think their reason for doing this could help be explained by what Bourdieu’s offers here: 

“Each of the members of the group of chosen people, in addition to sharing in the symbolic capital collectively held and concentrated in their title, also shares, in a logic that is truly one of magical shareholding, in the symbolic capital than each member of the group holds as an individual” (79).

This suggests that each members’ personal symbolic capital contributes to one another, thus giving everyone in the group additional capital that they would not be able to attain just on their own. By putting disadvantaged students around elite students, I think the school hopes that to an extent the eliteness will “rub off” on the less fortunate students. This would then allow them to access forms of cultural and social capital that they would not have otherwise.

Overall, reading Bourdieu’s theories helps us make sense of our findings on Sankofa and gain a better understanding of elite schools.

Is There a Divide Between Athletes and Nonathletes?

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Social circles are often formed by the people who are around you. It is human nature to connect with the people who spend time with you as well as those who participate in activities you enjoy. We tend to get to know these people better and are more likely to become closer friends. People are often friends with others who have similar interests or share common activities. Athletics, for instance, represent a popular way to build social circles. Through athletics, one not only shares a common interest and commitment but also creates a world in which you need to be a “member” in order to be included. Bourdieu (1986) explained the idea of social capital as “the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintances and recognition” (Bourdieu, 251). Athletics facilitate the growth of one’s social capital through group membership, relationships, and networks of support. 

At Everdeen, it became apparent that some students were very passionate about playing sports, while others participated to fulfill a requirement. The students who are most passionate about a sport often achieve higher levels in their sport, which may indicate that they spend a lot of time practicing and playing with their teammates. One student explains how Everdeen offers multiple levels for sports. This creates a wide variety of athletic endeavors for people to choose how seriously they want to play. People who were not as passionate about athletics fulfilled their requirements by engaging in sports such as table tennis which do not always require the same level of athleticism (though for some it can). It may also mean they were not putting in the same work, time, and effort into athletics as others. Students who did not spend hours of their week practicing their sport, may not have built a social circle based around that activity. 

One student at Everdeen, who is on the crew team, explains that she is primarily friends with her teammates. Although she did not intend this, because athletics play such a pivotal role in her life and she dedicates hours each week to practice, she finds herself spending a majority of her time with her crew teammates. When you do not spend a lot of time with other classmates who do not participate in the same sport as you, it is more difficult to build strong relationships. If the rower had the opportunity to spend time with more people outside of her team or put an equal effort into an additional activity, she may have opened up other opportunities to develop stronger relationships with other classmates as well. 

I have noticed a very similar atmosphere at Colby between athletes and non-athletes. During my first year at Colby, I found it very difficult to build the same strong relationships that people on sports teams seemed to form so quickly. The athletes at Colby were quickly introduced to other people with whom they had the chance to spend hours on end together. I can remember seeing teams walking together across campus, eating meals together, or even going to social events together. At first, I was discouraged because I didn’t know if I would form the same friendships that the athletes had formed since they were already spending hours each week together. 

An outsider looking at Colby may observe a large divide between the athletes and non-athletes. This would seem to prove Bourdieu’s idea that social capital grows from established networks and connections. I think this athlete and non-athlete divide stems not from the two different groups not wanting to be friends, but because they don’t spend the same amount of time with the other group. If they were put in a situation where they were compelled to spend time with individuals outside of their team, they might develop new friendships. This matches my experience. As my freshman year went on and I got to know my roommate (an athlete) and her friends (who were athletes), they became my closest friends at the school. The divide that I thought was so prevalent, and potentially divisive, quickly became bridged. As the Everdeen student says, she didn’t think there was a divide; it just happened to be that athletes spent a majority of their time with their teammates. I think that my roommate and friends dedicated the same level of time and effort into their sport as to forming a larger social circle, outside of their team. While I am not on their team, I have realized that it is possible to break the barrier of friendships with athletes and that I can support them from the sidelines. 

References

Both images are take from imessages #images 

Bourdieu, P. (1986). THE FORMS OF CAPITAL. 15.

Community Service: The Moon and Sixpence

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In “The Moon and Sixpence” by William Maugham, the author portrayed a man who gave up his “sixpence” (having a realistic, wealthy life) and chased his “moon” (the unrealistic dream of being a painter). Building off of Maugham’s metaphor, I like to use the moon and the sixpence to help differentiate between the types of community service. For me, the sixpence-style community service refers to the activity that provides physical or material support, such as donation and building infrastructures. By contrast, the moon-style community service refers to activities that usually involves greater spiritual engagement and relationship building, such as mentorship and companionship for people in need. Being educated in an elite high school that practices global citizenship education, I participated in different community services that fulfilled our school’s curricular requirement and, simultaneously, benefitted my college application. When I read the interviews with students and alumni from an elite high school in Ghana, I noticed that community service also took a significant position in students’ life.

Because the school practices the IB system, community service is mandatory to fulfill its CAS (creativity, activity, service) requirements to get a diploma. Students engage in both types of community service. The sixpence-style community service includes:

  1. Mapping out the surrounding areas of their school on Google Map
  2. Building a school
  3. Providing computers for a school
  4. Book donation and building a book database for a specialized school
  5. Fundraising for clean water supply and sustainable growth

Students also participate in many moon-style community services:

  1. Playing with kids in a specialized school for the blind and deaf
  2. Teaching in a local primary school for two hours every week
  3. Helping nursing mother and kids
  4. NGO that facilitates disabled people

The interviews revealed that CAS allows these students to choose community service based on their interests, and the services usually target local areas and local communities. This automatically reminds me of Pierre Bourdieu’s ideas about habitus. Habitus refers to the habits, skills, and dispositions that are so deeply ingrained in us due to our life experiences, and we use them to perceive, navigate, react to the world. For example, due to the difference in class, students in this elite school might possess a distinct type of habitus that is different from that of students in another local public school. According to Bourdieu, habitus facilitates our navigation of similar social environments but undermines our navigation of social environments that are too different. In this case, Ghanaian students in our study might be more comfortable and successful when traveling to another elite high school than visiting a underdeveloped school. 

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Based on the idea of habitus, the process of community service can’t be smooth because of the inevitable conflict of habitus between students from an elite background and the people being helped. I believe that this conflict is less severe in sixpence-style community service than in moon-style community service, and sixpence-style community service makes the service more efficient and contributes more actual help. Because the needs are usually obvious and physical in sixpence-style community service, elite students take the main role in the service, and there are fewer requirements about the interaction between habitus. For instance, a local school facing a shortage of books has an obvious need. Without frequent visits to the school or interaction with its students, elite students can simply solve the problem by collecting and donating books. The return of their service will be efficient because students can easily understand and provide the exact support wanted by people in need. By contrast, the needs in moon-style service are usually less obvious and more spiritual, which requires deep involvement and frequent interaction between habitus. Consider teaching in a primary school located in an underdeveloped area that has students from a different SES status. Being raised in distinct educational backgrounds, elite students might struggle with teaching unfamiliar materials. They might also have trouble communicating and interacting with their students because there is a huge mismatch between their beliefs, perceptions, manners… These will result in a less efficient return of the service than elite students originally wished because people’s needs can’t be properly investigated and facilitated. 

The conflict of habitus urges us to question community service in elite education. In its essence, is community service a performance to show one’s eliteness and a bonus for the college application? Do targeted communities actually receive help from community service? How can we measure the outcome of community service to improve the quality of service? Should students participate in sixpence-style service more because the outcome is more “real” and efficient? Is there any training that fully prepares elite students before entering a service? More questions should be asked to examine elite community service in the future. 

Person First, PSU Second

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One of the most compelling pieces of the research I am conducting is how the students center the Prueba de Selección Universitaria, also known as PSU, in every aspect of their academic and personal life. At Croft, the customary dialogue within both the student relationships and the classroom space is concentrated around the importance of the PSU, as well as how much these tests will impact the remainder of your life. However, the value of the PSU does not just permeate in general discourse, but it affects the mental and emotional well-being of those who must prepare to take it. Students who attend the Croft School have displayed significant signs of fatigue, anxiety, and stress around the topic of the PSU despite attending an elite school that has all of the best teaching, training, and materials to ensure their academic success. What does this mean for the 4 out of 10 students who do not have abundant financial resources to attend private elite schools or receive additional preparation, and those without the networks of connection to lean back on?

To recognize the need for preparation prior to the exam, it is important to understand the conditions and consequences of the exam itself. The PSU is a standardized test that serves as a requirement for students to attend and gain admission to university studies. Students who have completed secondary education are eligible to complete the exam which is prepared by the Department of Evaluation, Measurement, and Educational Registry. The grading scale is from 110-850, with an average score of 500 points. (To the students at Croft a “good” grade is 700-850.) This grade indicates excellence on the exam and grants admission to the most elite universities in Chile. There are two compulsory tests and two elective tests, culminating in four total test options. The compulsory tests are broken down into three subjects, Mathematics and Language & Communication. Elective tests are Science, which covers Biology, Chemistry, and Psychics as well as Geography, History, and Social Sciences. If we add up all the time allotted to complete the exams, we are looking at about 7 hours and 40 minutes. (chileaneducation.info) The exam, which indicates the future pathway of a student’s life, is conducted within the same amount of time (or less) as one is in school for just a singular day. This factor lends itself to the fact that the PSU is inequitable in its evaluation, is vastly challenging/demanding, and perpetuates the stratification of higher/lower class students and assets within private/public institutions.

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Students from the Croft are said to be well-mannered, thoughtful, and ahead of their peers both academically and professionally. While reading through interviews, I noticed there were only a few actions admitted from students that were deemed worthy of disciplinary action. The two disciplinary actions that arose were in response to 1) students skipping class and 2) students failing class. Interestingly enough, when the students were asked about their reasoning for skipping class, it wasn’t the expected answer of hanging out with friends, going to the mall, etc. Students at Croft were skipping class to study for exams. A student from Croft explains, “Instead of going to class where they usually don’t let them study because they have to study that assignment they usually go to the library or somewhere else to study.” So, despite all of the resources, extra assistance, and preparation – these students still prioritize excelling academically to following behavioral rules. Both of these disciplinary actions lean on each other – students feel they can’t succeed academically if they are not given the time to study and their time is expected to be spent solely in the classroom space. In fact, many of the student interviewees iterated that Croft has the absolute highest of expectations for both in-school behavior and academic performance on the PSU. This is reflected by such disciplinary actions and through general student experience.

On another hand, low-income students in Chile are facing even harsher conditions and expectations when it comes to the PSU exam since they are unable to access equal training materials, academic advancement opportunities, and the resources to afford university studies. Just last year in January of 2020, hundreds of young students in Chile took to the streets to protest the PSU by disrupting test centers, blocking off entrances, tearing/burning tests, etc. (Nugent) These students were led by ACES, a long-standing far-left organization of students organized to demand educational equity. Students in Chile are politically powerful and this display caused 82,000 students to miss their PSU exam. Their ultimate goals are to end the PSU exam in general, create safer and more equitable classroom spaces, and increase the accommodations for low-income students when attending university. These students are doing radical work to end both economic and educational inequality in Chile, ultimately patching up some of the stratifications between public/private schooling systems and those who attend them. 

In all, I hope to bring some flaws of the PSU exam into our view as well as how systematically, the educational force in Chile is disproportionately supporting/affecting students of ranging socioeconomic positions. Those in the upper-income levels can benefit from private and catered education which almost guarantees admission to more elites, creating a cycle of privileged wealth. However, those who are lower/middle-income that attend public school (some who also work alongside attending school), have less concentrated studies and structures to support their academic abilities and individual needs. By centering student effort, student-need, and discourses of inequality within – the breakdown of differing experience, access, and resources becomes more clear. In turn, reform and action can be implemented to address these historically rooted issues.

Sources: 

Nugent, Ciara. “Why Students in Chile Are Protesting College Admission Tests.” Time, Time, 23 Jan. 2020, time.com/5770308/chile-student-protests/. 

“University Selection Test-PSU in Chile.” Www.chileeducation.info, 2020, www.chileeducation.info/tests/entrance-examination-for-higher-education.html.

The Gamemakers

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When you Google the definition of “elite”, there are two interpretations that stand out. The first definition concerns itself with the superiority of a select group that exceeds “in terms of ability or qualities” (Oxford Languages). The second definition, on the other hand, is more about the perception of an elite group. An elite group is “seen as having the greatest power and influence within a society…because of their wealth and privilege” (Oxford Languages). The Urban Dictionary defines elites as those that hold disproportionate amounts of control over the lives of others (“Urban Dictionary: Elite”). In this sense, the elite group which controls those without elite status is controlled from within by key players, more distinguished elites with an even higher status. So according to these definitions, being elite is just being better than other people at whatever level and gaining notoriety and power for existing under the category. 

But in practice, what does being elite truly mean? Who decides what the qualifications for being elite are in specific eras and regions? And, how has the characterization of eliteness been transformed in response to social changes through history? Well for starters, many sociologists and researchers consider there to be different types of “elites”. According to John Higley, there are two main categories: political elites and cultural elites (“Elites”). To give a quick example, Bernie Sanders is a political elite and, through the association of elite institutions, students at Colby College or Olive Grove Academy (a pseudonym) are cultural elites. As a Colby student though, it is quite difficult to see this school as an elite institution, and even more difficult to see myself as an elite individual. To me, Colby College is just an expensive college in Maine that offers extremely interesting classes. Since taking this class, however, I am beginning to see the various ways Colby falls into the elite category. This is why I ask about the qualifications and conditions of being an elite individual or other entity. 

One of the main reasons I find it difficult to consider myself elite is because I am a Black woman from a low-income community in the South. In no sense of the word do I consider myself to be a person with notoriety or power. And it is nearly impossible to look back at a time in history where a Black woman with my political and economic standing would be elite. In the first civilizations, as the practice of patriarchy grew, men were the only people considered elite. After this, eliteness became connected to money, wealth, and land leading to the expansion of colonization. As colonization efforts grew and more settlements began to be concreted, status was not only tied to sex, wealth, and land but also religion and perceptions of race. Now, being elite can entail a variety of characteristics and behaviors. Still, I feel it heavily concerns race and wealth, but I feel the definition has grown so that those with high levels of education and those with other great achievements can be included. This history brings me back to my question of who exactly determines the qualifications of elite standing? 

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It can be assumed that the guidelines the elite population use to conduct themselves are formulated within the group by those key players mentioned before. I would think that these key players base many of the elite characteristics they seek off of the behaviors and attitudes they observe in undesired communities. By looking at these communities, they see everything they do not want in their exclusive group of powerholders. But, more important than who is actually making the rules of eliteness is finding out who gives them their power. I fully believe that the elite population is only elite because the general public allows them to be. If the non-elite population decided to no longer recognize elite people and institutions as power holders, sure there would be class conflict for a while, but eventually, there would be no choice but to enact change.

“elite.” languages.oup.com. Oxford Languages. Web. March 2021.

“Elite.” UrbanDictionary.com. Urban Dictionary, 2018 Web. March 2021.

Higley, John. “Elites”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 30 Nov. 2016, https://www.britannica.com/topic/elite-sociology. Accessed 30 March 2021.

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