Social Class : Curriculum

• Setting and streaming

  Children are allocated into classes based on their academic ability according to the teacher. This will be based on the habitus of the school and the cultural capital of the child. This is known as the hidden curriculum.
• Differentiation

  • Teacher categorises the child according to ability, attitude and behaviour
  • Children are streamed according to this category
  • More able are placed in high streams and 'less able' are placed in low streams
• • Polarisation
  • How children respond to streaming - they move to one of two opposing 'poles'
  • They move towards a pro-school subculture or an anti-school subculture
• Symbolic Violence

  Schools have a middle-class habitus based on middle class tastes and lifestyle have symbolic capital (status, recognition). School devalues working-class habitus and does not teach working-class children the skills they need to acquire or develop cultural capital - Bourdieu calls this withholding of symbolic capital - symbolic violence.
• Symbolic Violence

  Children will react to this loss if cultural capital with alternative ways to create self-worth and recognition in schools which leads to a 'Nike identity of wearing branded clothes and using branded equipment to create their own symbolic capital. This means that they are accepted by their peers and looked up to, but this is unacceptable at school and the child will be punished or sanctioned, leading to an anti-school subculture to develop.