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"So Many People ": Ways Of Seeing Class Differences In Schooling

From: Brice Curtis, D.W. Livingstone & Harry Smaller (1992) Stacking the Deck: The Streaming of Working-class Kids in Ontario Schools (Our Schools/Ourselves 3:24)

We should have absolutely no shame attached to what happened to us at school because ... we did not fail the system, the system failed us.

Gord Wilson, President
Ontario Federation of Labour (1989, p.18)

So many people, because they have been stifled or not given the opportunities through the education system, assume that they don't have to take the responsibility or get involved. I've heard so many people, usually working-class people, saying 'nothing we can do is ever going to change things, you know, the government is always going to have control.' They don't realize they put these people in power, they give them their agenda, and they've always assumed that it's someone else telling them. And I think it's a lot because they were taught that way in school. You don't have any input into what you're going to learn. They now think they don't have any input into how their country is run.

OFL conference delegate
Interview, November 30, 1988

Just how different is the schooling that members of different social classes in Ontario receive? What explanations are offered for these differences'? What roles do the political and economic powers in our society play in this matter?

There's no question that patterns of gender and racial discrimination persist in our schools. Girls are still discouraged from taking math and science in high school (Ellis, 1988). Even though as many women as men are now in school up to the university level, women are still seriously underrepresented in natural science, some professional programmes, graduate schools, and most university faculties (see Gaskell and McLaren, 1991; Smith, 1986). While women teachers outnumber men teachers in our schools, they have obtained only a small proportion of the available administrative positions (Rees, 1990).

Similarly, while students from East Asian origins have tended to be relatively successful in Ontario schools, many other visible minorities have lower than average educational attainments and continue to be streamed disproportionately into less advanced school programmes (Herberg, 1989; Cheng et al, 1989). School practices discouraging Blacks and native peoples are quite often harshly evident and can have devastating social and economic consequences (James, 1990; Our Schools/ Our Selves April 1991).

In the same way, we would argue, schools have discriminated against children on the basis of social class. As we will show in the following chapters, every study of schools that has paid attention to class differences has found that working-class kids have always fared much worse in school than middle- and upper-class kids. Working-class kids always have, on average, lower reading scores, higher grade failures, higher drop-out rates and much poorer employment opportunities. We emphasize this because these systemic class differences have been ignored or denied in many studies of educational inequality, as well as in educational policy-making.

We understand that all inequalities are oppressive. A working-class Black or aboriginal woman is often severely oppressed in a white-dominated, patriarchal, capitalist society. Our account tries to bring social class back into the story of current Ontario education.


Class Origins And School Success

Since the creation of mass public schooling, students rom working-class families have chronically received less schooling and a different quality of schooling than have students from upper-class and professional families. This finding has been consistently confirmed by studies covering Ontario and Canada as a whole (see Katz and Mattingly, 1975; Aniscf et al, 1980, 1985). Table 1.1 summarizes the results of the most recent Ontario survey of educational attainment by class origins.(1)

We can see from the table that most people in Ontario are staying in school longer than their parents did. Over 70% of younger people (those aged 25-34) have some kind of high school diploma. Most of their parents did not graduate from high school -in fact, less than 40% of the people now over 50 years of age did. It is clear that the average amount of time Ontario people spend in school grew quite rapidly from the 1950s to the mid-1980s. Because of this, because young people get more schooling today than their parents did, people often believe the younger generation "has it better." But while Ontario people on average received more schooling than their parents did, working-class kids still receive less schooling, and a different kind of schooling, than do kids from middle-class or employer-class backgrounds.

(1). Prior Canadian surveys have typically relied on measures of socioeconomic status involving the ranking of occupations as well as their imputed social prestige. The most commonly used measure has been the Pineo-Porter-NlcRoberts Scale (Pineo et al, 1977). This scale distinguishes 16 occupational categories which are frequently grouped into professional/managerial and semi-professional/supervisory "high" status categories, as well as skilled/semi-skilled and unskilled "low" status categories. The social class distinctions used in tire present analysis are based on the relations of production. Therefore, those who own the means of production and hire others for pay ("employers") and those who work in their own businesses without paid employees ("self-employed") both must be distinguished from employees. The remaining occupational groupings of employees are comparable to the Pineo-Porter categories, except that workers are distinguished by industrial production and service sectors rather than by estimated skill levels. More detailed discussion of these class distinctions may be found in Livingstone (1983, 1985). The term "working class" is generally used in the text to refer to those of all class origins except employers and professional/managerial employees.

 

SCHOOL ATTAINMENTS OF ADULT POPULATION BY FATHER'S OCCUPATIONAL CLASS, ONTARIO 1988-90

School Attainment

Father's Class

Less Than High School Diploma %

High School %

Community College Diploma%

University Degree %

University Degree Representation %

25-35 Population

Employer

26

27

12

35

2.03

Manager

8

47

13

31

2.05

Professional Employee

0

33

18

49

2.87

Supervisor

20

36

31

13

.75

Service Worker

24

41

25

11

.63

Industrial Worker

33

40

16

11

.63

Self-Employed

35

37

16

12

.71

Totals

27

37

19

17

N=465

50+ Population

Employer

54

21

14

11

1.74

Manager

17

35

20

28

5.03

Professional Employee

25

12

29

34

5.37

Supervisor

53

37

6

4

.62

Service Worker

45

42

9

4

.61

Industrial Worker

64

26

7

3

.44

Self-Employed

73

16

7

4

.73

Totals

62

23

9

6

N=643

 

We can see this clearly by looking at the education people aged 25 to 34 have received. More than a third of the people whose fathers were industrial workers, or were self-employed, dropped out of high school. Nearly half of those whose fathers were unskilled workers dropped out. Those people from single-mother and poor visible-minority households probably fared even worse. On the other hand, less than 10% of the people whose fathers were company managers or professionals dropped out of high school. Many daughters and sons of employers and professionals can't drop out of a public high school in Ontario anyway because they don't attend one they go to one of the many elite private schools in the province instead. Almost everyone who goes to one of these private schools goes on to university (Clement, 1974). Employers' and professional-class kids are much more likely to go to university than are working-class kids - somewhere between two-and-a-half to four times as likely.


Investment in Education Can Make a Difference

In pointing out inequality, we are not interested in "school bashing." We think educational inequality can be substantially reduced. In fact, class discrimination in the amount of schooling people received in Ontario did diminish between 1960, when nearly all of those now over 50 had completed their formal schooling, and the early 1980s, when most of those now between 25 and 34 had finished theirs. There was a major expansion of enrolments in the educational system in this period, initiated by the 1960s construction of new commercial and technical schools, the community college system and new universities.

This public investment in education probably benefited most citizens - though some more than others. Ontario's post secondary enrolment rates have recently rivalled those of the United States as the highest in the world. Working-class students in Ontario have a better chance both to obtain a higher education and to use it to climb the class ladder than is the case in many European countries (see Halsey, 1982). For example, over 80%0 of Ontario-based corporate executives now have university degrees and roughly a quarter of them come from working-class origins (Livingstone et al, 1991). But while a quarter of corporate executives sounds like a lot, we have to remember that corporate executives comprise a tiny fraction of Ontario's population. Against serious odds, a handful of the working-class students who have managed to get an advanced education have used this education to climb to the top of the class ladder. This shows that the small proportion of positions at the top of the class hierarchy must be replenished from below in times of economic expansion and that, in countries with less rigid class structures, formal education permits some upward mobility. But only a tiny minority of working class people can realize such class mobility. The vast majority continue to have constricted choices among stereotypical working-class jobs despite their increased schooling, even in good economic times.

The past decade has seen an increase in structural unemployment. There also has been an increase in chronic underemployment; over 20% of the Ontario's workers are in jobs that require at least one educational credential less than they have attained. And there has been an increasingly polarized job market -into "good (credentialed, secure, full-time) jobs" and "bad (uncredentialed, temporary, part-time) jobs." The high school dropout rates of those from working-class origins in the 18-to-24 age group are rising. Relatively fewer working-class kids in this age group go on to universities, at least partly because of increases in tuition fees and entry grade-point averages.

The amount of schooling people get is more and more a criterion of eligibility for jobs. So a large part of the issue is not just what people learn at school, but how much schooling they are able to get. Ever larger proportions of people in professional and managerial positions have gone to the end of high school and beyond; yet very small proportions of those in unskilled working-class positions have university degrees. In fact, the education gap between classes widens even after people's initial school careers are over. Employers, managers and professionals are at least twice as likely as industrial workers and the self-employed to have taken a continuing education course in the past year (Livingstone et al, 1991).


The Effects of Streaming

Public schooling, especially through the mechanism of streaming, creates the kinds of social class inequalities discussed above. Children from dominant-class backgrounds are disproportionately represented in the growing numbers of elementary-level enrichment and second-language immersion programmes, while lower-class children predominate in the expanding slow learner behavioural and learning disabilities classes (Martell, 1988). In spite of policy now discouraging total segregation of Ontario elementary students by "ability", the vast majority of them are still placed in "ability" groups for various academic subjects. This practice persists despite tile weight of evidence from generations of research that those placed in "slow-learner" groups do much better in "mixed ability" groups, while those from "advanced groups" do little worse in "mixed" groups (Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association, 1987; Peterson et al, 1984). As Kenneth Leithwood (1991, p.84) concludes on the basis of an extensive review of recent studies: "The effects of ability grouping are the same as the effects of inflation - the rich get richer and the poor get poorer."

Ontario high schools now stream students into three different levels: Basic, General, and Advanced. Government policy seeks to teach students in Basic-level programmes to want to work and to respect their employers. Students in General level, if they study hard, can hope to go to a semi-professional college programme and perhaps to get a skilled job. Students in Advanced programmes are expected to go on to university to become professionals and managers.

These aims appear in official curriculum guidelines. They stress: "a positive approach to employment" in Basic-level programmes; sufficient "communication skills for success in the world of work" and, perhaps, community college for General-level programmes; and tire pursuit of acadernic interests enabling "contributions to society at large" and university entrance for Advanced-level programmes (Ontario Ministry of Education, 1987, pp. 14-15: Radwanski, 1987).

The evidence shows that the high school system streams people in keeping with their parents' class position and occupation. In tile past decade in Ontario, about 90% of students from professional families were enroled in Advanced-level programmes. Only about half of the students whose parents have unskilled occupations were enroled in Advanced programmes. Conversely, children whose parents had unskilled occupations were found to be about ten times as likely as those from professional families to end up in Basic-level programmes (Anisef et al, 1980; King, 1986; Cheng et al, I 989).

These class differences are greatly magnified by drop-out rates. Students find it difficult to tolerate school when they are placed in the Basic and General streams. Only about 20%0 of those enroled pit the Basic level stay in school long enough to get a high school diploma, and only 40% of those in the General level do so. About 90% of Advanced-level students obtain a general high school diploma (Radwanski, 1988). While more students from all class backgrounds have lately been enroling in Advanced-level programmes (Cheng et al, 1989), the proportion of Grade 9 students attaining the Honours diploma required for university entrance has remained constant since the early '70s (Buttrick, 1989).

Thus, although students from working-class families may be staying in school longer than a generation ago, their chances of attaining university degrees and higher status occupations remain very low, both in absolute terms and relative to students from the employer and professional classes. Good jobs increasingly require post-secondary credentials or at minimurn a high school diploma. The proportionately few working-class kids who do "make it" do so in spite of odds heavily stacked against them.


Why Do Working-Class Kids Get Less Schooling?

Recent empirical research (despite its flaws) has pointed to the existence of major class disparities in schooling. How we choose to explain these differences is decisive for what we can do about them. Tire most common scholarly explanations of the causes of class differences in school achievement point to innate differences in students or to differences in the environments in which students live. We will first look critically at innate-difference and cultural-deficit theories, and then consider some alternatives, including the class-power perspective that will guide our analysis in the remainder of the book.


Innate-Difference Theories

Socially powerful people tend to encourage the less powerful to blame themselves for their own misfortunes. A common argument holds that innate biological differences make some people rich and powerful, others poor and powerless. This kind of social evolutionary theory, or Social Darwinism, emerged in the 19th century. As Schiff and Lewontin (1986, pp.4-5) put it, "the precise mechanism claimed for individual differentiation has changed as ideas about human biology have altered, but the underlying theory has remained: the source of social inequality is the inequality in ability and temperament among individual human beings that arises from causes internal to the person."

The history of intelligence testing can be seen largely as an effort to devise more efficient means to sort people for their social destinies on the basis of supposedly fixed intrinsic capacities. The French psychologists Binet and Simon, who invented IQ tests early in this century, merely intended that they be used to teach more effectively those students who had difficulty with standard learning methods. Nevertheless, such tests quickly came to be used to infer the general intelligence of individual children and to label and stream them in schools. In North America, IQ tests were applied to army recruits during World War I and private foundations such as Rockefeller and Rusell Sage provided lucrative funding for the development of the educational testing business (Aires, 1913).

Genetic explanations of social inequality ebbed considerably during the post-1945 expansionary era, when more people from working-class origins were needed to replenish middle and upper-class positions in the economy. Meritocratic versions that recognized the possibility of upward mobility if one combined effort with innate ability - gained some currency (e.g. Young, 1959). But, with economic stagnation since the early 1970s, a new broad emphasis on innate causes of behaviour has emerged, notably in sociobiological theories which posit fixed genetic determinants for all things human.

The work of Richard Herrnstein (1971, 1973) provides tile clearest expression of the basic logic:

  1. Social and economic success demands cognitive ability
  2. IQ tests measure cognitive ability
  3. IQ is highly hereditary
  4. Thus, social and economic power arc biologically hereditary
  5. What is hereditary is unchangeable
  6. So, class position necessarily runs in families because it runs in the genes.

The flaws in this logic are immense. First, IQ tests have long since been proven to be biased in favour of a white, middle-class culture. For this reason alone, they have been banned by a large number of school boards in North America and in legislation relating to the evaluation of students. Second, it has been clearly demonstrated that IQ scores are not fixed measures (whether of genetic or acquired capacity), but rather often vary greatly over time and in response to environmental conditions (Schiff et al, 1978; Snyderman and Rothman, 1988). Indeed, we are all aware of the "late bloomer" syndrome and the fact that many people score differently on the same tests from one week or month to the next. Third, even psychologists who believe in such tests admit that they address only very partial measures of general intelligence or multiple intelligences and certainly do not provide a complete or overall picture of human ability (Luther and Quarter, 1986). Finally, it is clear from the data that most of the difference in IQ scores occurs within a given social-class group, as compared to the differences in scores between such groups - roughly 80% in fact (Schiff and Lewontin, 1986). Therefore, to suggest that whites or the middle class have generally higher scores than Blacks or the working class is patently false. Tile variations are much greater within than between such groups of people. These criticisms do not necessarily (icily that there is some genetic basis to intelligence. But they definitely- refute the long-standing claim that there is a primary biological basis for either class differences in schooling, or tire intergenerational reproduction of social classes.


Cultural-Deficit Theories

During the post-War expansionary era, the notion of "equal educational opportunity" became a goal of educational reformers. Many social scientists studying educational inequalities came to reject explanations based on innate differences. They sought accounts of class disparities in schooling in terms of environmental conditions that could cause some people to be deprived of a fair chance for an education. Many of them believed that working-class people did less well al school because they suffered from some kind of "cultural deficit," a lack of the skills and habits demanded by middle-class teachers and schools.

Three variants of cultural-deficit theory lave been influential in the literature: (1) value deficiency, (2) culture of poverty, and (3) cultural capital theories. During the 1950s, value-deficiency explanations were common. The argument was essentially that working-class people held the same value orientations as the upper classes did, but, because of their particular circumstances or traditions, they were not usually inclined to defer gratification of baser subsistence needs for nobler ones like formal education (Hyman, 1953). During the 1960s, the culture-of-poverty variant stressed that social disadvantages in terms of lack of acquired skills and attitudes among workingclass parents were typically handed down to children, thereby producing a self-sustaining culture of limited educational aspirations (Lewis, 1966). More recently, it cultural-capital version has focused on the general cultural knowledge, the elaborated language codes, and the information about how schools work that students from higher-status origins acquire from their families. Their possession of these cultural tools leads to greater returns from schooling than working-class kids usually are able to obtain (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bernstein, 1977).

While these cultural-deficit theories have sometimes dealt quite accurately with some of the discriminatory educational conditions faced by working-class children, their prime intent has been to describe the cultural reproduction of inequality within fixed institutional forms. This makes them inadequate in three ways. First, they lend to ignore or discount the material conditions, such as inadequate food, housing and clothing, that can limit poor people's learning potential. Second, they deny or denigrate the continuing capacities of working-class people to create cultural forms and meanings for themselves, however submerged these may be within the dominant-class culture (see Willis, 1990). Third and most critically, they remain one-dimensional descriptions of the status quo rather than real explanations of it. Schiff and Lewontin (1986, p.4) note that these descriptions do not: provide an explanation either for (lie origin of the environmental variation or for its continuance in [lie face of a claimed social commitment to equality. If people are simply the products of social circumstances, and if we all agree that freedom and equality are our ideals of social construction, then why have we failed to abolish privilege and poverty? Without a deeper analysis, the cultural explanation of inequality is simply a description and not a causal story. Such a deeper analysis, however, soon challenges the basic assumption that our society is indeed devoted to equality and ends by prescribing revolutionary social reorganization, a result not widely welcomed.

Both innate-difference and cultural-deficit theories of inequality ignore how schooling itself is shaped by political and economic relationships that produce educational differences. For innate-difference theorists, the major current problem with schools is not their structured class or status inequalities as such but "declining standards." They claim that democracy in schooling degrades the quality of education. Their official solution involves the restoration of more intense competition and the reconstituting of meritocratic and largely mechanical standards of "excellence" to select the "best" and the "brightest" individuals for enriched and advanced education regardless of socio-economic background (e.g. Bercuson et al, 1987; Bloom, 1987).

To cultural deficit theorists, the problem with schools is that they are not providing sufficient supplementary programmes and resources to help disadvantaged individuals overcome their deprivation. A wide variety of reforms have been proposed, ranging from pre-school Head Start programmes to sensitivity training for teachers in the world views of subordinate cultures (e.g. Bereiter et al, 1966; Tnarp and Gallimore, 1989). Perceptive ethnographic analyses inspired by cultural-capiiai theory recently have documented class differences in schooling that are directly produced through parent-school interactions (Lareau, 1989). There is certainly some merit in school reforms that would address such culturally a grounded learning differences. But for both innate-difference and cultural-deficit theorists, a systematic scrutiny of the relations of domination that promote class differences in schooling remains safely beyond the terms of inquiry.


Dominance Theories

In contrast to the "blaming the victim" tendencies of innatedifference and cultural-deficit theorists, other scholars have concentrated on exposing the connections between political dominance and class discrimination (e.g. Nearing, 1922). Recent studies have pointed to the success in the past of working-class and popular self-education. During the formative years of industrial capitalism, autonomous workingmen's organizations offered very effective forms of education to workingclass men, both through technical apprenticeships and broader programmes for cultural and political literacy (Johnson, 1979; Willensky, 1991). In rural areas, the children of self-employed farmers learned most of what they needed to know to pursue their livelihoods on the family farm and in small, locally-controlled schools (Curtis, 1988). Since the rise of compulsory state schooling in the mid-1800s, however, political and technical control has largely been in the hands of representatives of the dominant employer, managerial and professional-class groups (Hartnett, 1971). Both how schooling is organized and what students learn have been shaped by the viewpoints of members of the dominant classes. This is why working-class children persistently experience a "cultural deficit," somewhat more accurately known as middle-class bias (Connell 1973).

Dominance theories of educational disparity became more common during the 1960s with the rise of poor people's movements. There have been two main tendencies in explaining the production of educational inequalities through class domination; they might be termed "structures-of-dominance" and "elite-politics" theories.(2)

(2). This account leaves aside status-based dominance theories of educational inequalities (see Collins, 1979; Murphy, 1983).

 

The structural-dominance theories show similarities between the forms of schooling and the structures of capitalist society in general (Althusser, 1971). Major changes in forms of schooling are shown to be responses to changes in the economic structure (Bowles and Gintis, 1976). The limited success of lower-class kids in schools is determined by the continuing correspondence of the relations of production in schools with those occurring outside school in a hierarchically organized class structure (Baudelot and Establet, 1971).

By comparison, elite-politics accounts of the education gap focus on the powerful people who promote dominant forms of schooling, and oppose other forms of education. The basic claim here is that highly motivated leaders representing dominant-class groups have played pivotal roles in gaining popular support for schooling that serves the interests of these small groups, whereas subordinate group leaders have lacked either the resources or the vision to promote any alternative form effectively. This clearly was the case when the age-graded, hierarchically organized, compulsory, free public schools were started in general (Katz, 1971; Simon 1974), and in Ontario under the ambitious leadership of men like Egerton Ryerson (Prentice, 1976). The influences of corporate-elite leaders, through sponsoring research and conferences on the future of education and the economy, and lobbying the Ontario cabinet both directly and via the University of Toronto Governing Council, also appear to have been vital factors in the early 1960s organizational changes (Arvay, 1984). Tracing the often informal and sometimes covert political influence of elites on education is always difficult, perhaps especially so when dealing with current issues. But advocates of the elite-politics approach insist that the views and actions of the leaders of dominant-class groups are always very influential in educational change, and that attention to their role will provide the most valuable insights into the construction of programmes favouring dominant-class children.

Structural dominance theories have been criticized for being mechanical and abstract, for reducing education to an expression of narrow economic or ideological determinants, and for ignoring complexities and inconsistencies in actual educational change (e.g. Coles, 1988). Conversely, a focus on corporate elites has been judged to ignore tire constraints of both institutionalized practices and tire political demands of urn array of subordinate class groups, and thereby to overestimate elite influence on contemporary schooling (e.g. Useem, 1987). Recent approaches that explain (lie education gap in terms of power relations have responded to such criticisms while retaining tile insight that class oppression is reproduced through schooling in capitalist societies (e.g. Liston, 1988).

The perspective we use in this book could be termed :! "class-power approach," one which combines some aspects of both tile structures-of-dominance and elite-politics theories. We recognize that most major organizations, be they economic, political or cultural, have been developed on the basis of structural hierarchies that most benefit the dominant class, gender and racial groups in our society (including their children). We also recognize that control of these structures, and especially schooling systems, seems to have become increasingly complex to tile point where some argue that schools, with their formal, informal and private lines of authority, regulation and accounting, have become "an organizational theorist's nightmare" (Tyack and Ilansot, 1982). To be sure, whether schools continue to be run as they are now or undergo major changes will depend on tile actions of many people, not only the corporate elite, but active members of every class, race, ethnicity and gender group. Also, as we have already acknowledged, teachers themselves are pivotal, whether they push for change or maintain tire status quo.

At the same time, our class power approach pays more attention than do the abstract structural accounts to the actual class agents involved in the production of discriminatory schooling structures and practices without imputing unconstrained power to the elites in our society (Martell, 1974; Livingstone, 1983, 1987; Curtis, 1988). Dominant social classes have shaped school institutions but not merely in their own terms. Working-class resistance counts. A completely adequate account would require, of course, analyses of discriminatory structures and relations at all levels of tile school system, from federal and provincial-bodies to that of tile interpersonal relationships in classrooms (Persell, 1977). However, given tile space of one short book, our aim is more modest.

We will look at the historical development of streaming or ability-grouping programmes for Ontario schools. We will review the current streaming situation in the schools as well as tile recent public controversy over the future of streaming and destreaming. We do not intend to provide a thorough mapping of all the social forces involved either in tile past or at present, but we will attempt to identify some of tile views and actions of the major class agents who have played significant public roles in promoting or opposing streaming programmes in our schools. On the basis ,of this critical analysis, we will suggest a strategy for destreaming the schools and diminishing the class disparities in student attainments.


Class Leaders' Views On Educational Disparities

Class opinion leaders differ widely in explaining the education gap. Tile following quotations from a recent series of interviews are representative.'

Corporate Executives

In some areas of the community, people are in kind of a cycle of despair, a whole bunch of people congregated together all having problems and the teacher can't possibly cope with all the problems that are going on. But I think that in most cases, if you are taking the average person going to tire average school, it doesn't matter where they carne from. If they are willing to work hard arid apply themselves, if they've got some ability, they can be whatever they want to be.

Schools and teachers reflect the immediate community around them. So, if the aspirations of the immediate community are not to care at all about education, that's what the school and the children will reflect. Education should overcome what goes on at home instead of succumbing to it. Some children are not exposed to a lot of things at home, so when they go to school maybe they're not as fast.

Small Employers

Family attitudes are a factor in students' success and schools do provide some upward mobility, but on balance genes are the deans. Psychiatrists now tell its it's 90% genetics. Teachers like to think a child can be more than the parents were. They can to a degree, but not everybody can become a brain surgeon.

Self-Employed

Schools do a terrible job in providing opportunities for students from different backgrounds. Parental role models are not contested.

Professional/Managerial Leaders

Schools do try to encourage kids to go where they think kids should go to be successful. Lack of parental value for education is the strongest thing that keeps people from becoming mobile, achieving more. Schools are middle-class institutions. They assume a complicated support structure at (tome and don't adapt well to the lack of these structures in lower status families.

Trade Union Leaders

It's very hard to break out of your economic circumstances. If /'in in a miner's family, chances are I'm thinking of growing up in my home town, probably 80% of the people I go to school with are going to work in the same kinds of occupational fields as their parents. Since the '50s, we have made tire ability to go to school and get an education far easier, a potential open window. But now, with the growing control of free market forces over the economy and the political system, I think the window is going to start to close.

My sense is that there is a self fulfilling prophecy supported by the school system, whereby for people who come from working-class homes the expectation is that if they do as well as their parents in terms of jobs that's okay, and the exception that goes beyond proves the rule. Teachers think that children will do what their parents do and so they're not surprised by that and they lead the kids to expect to do that. As for the division into academic and non-academic streams, there may be some bias there giving benefit of the doubt to children whose parents have education. There again, it's a matter of expecting things to happen.

"Underclass" Leaders

The schools stream kids according to background and neighbourhood. If you're in a public housing area, ,schools stream to non-university programmes, and stress punctuality, etc. The educational system is set up to do this. (Welfare Mothers' Group)

Streaming of low income, immigrant children is obvious. More well-to-do parents make sure their children are directed in the proper direction, they have much more pro-active involvement in the school system. Poor working-class families don't have the time or wherewithal to fight. (Immigrant Women's Organization)

Virtually all employer spokespersons espouse some version of either cultural-deficit or innate-difference theory to explain educational disparities. They insist that educational opportunities are already distributed as fairly as possible. Most professional and managerial leaders accept cultural-deficit theories, but some are sympathetic to the educational barriers such deficits set up for working-class kids. In contrast, working-class leaders generally have some sense of the relations of dominance preventing most of their children from obtaining an equal education.

Among the public-at-large, there seems to be a widespread faith in the individual and societal benefits of schooling (Livingstone et al, 1991). There also tends to be an uncritical acceptance of the view that equal educational opportunities already exist. For example, opinion surveys over the past decade in Ontario have found majority support across all social classes for the view that students from families of all occupational backgrounds now have an equal opportunity of getting a higher education (Reid, 1986; Livingstone et al, 1989). While such findings can be discounted as merely tacit acceptance of an abstract principle frequently proclaimed by dominant-class spokespersons, they do suggest an uncritical popular assumption of educational equality at the same time as a growing mountain of research shows a systematic discrimination against lower class and status groups in schooling. However, it is also true that, when asked about concrete issues such as class bias in the treatment of children in the schools, workingclass people have much more mixed views (Livingstone et al, 1991). This suggests that many working-class people have ambivalent or contradictory views on these matters.


For A Clearer Vision

The contradiction between popular belief in the equality of educational opportunities and actual experience of educational discrimination has been an enduring enigma in the post-World War II era. It appears to be a classic example of "ideological hegemony" (Gramsci, 1971). That is, most people come to regard as natural and universal a state of affairs that has been established by dominant groups and alliances to serve their particular interests. Only fairly recently have these popular assumptions about the established form of schooling as "natural" and "universal" been challenged. Creative thinking about educational alternatives requires a critical understanding of how this identity between education and the current form of schooling was constructed in the past century, a matter to which we turn in the next chapter.

More education is usually better than less. But just as clearly, the level of education that most people think is desirable is impossible for most people to get in the current form of schooling. With the economy rapidly being polarized into "good" arid "bad" jobs, working-class kids are likely to get both poor educations and bad jobs (Economic Council of Canada 1990; Livingstone and Bowd, 1990). There is no reputable scientific evidence that working-class kids have less innate ability than their dominant-class peers. Therefore, there is no social justification for children from dominant-class families to be more than twice as likely to finish high school, and more than five times as likely to complete university, as unskilled workers' kids. So, working-class people have been sold a bill of goods, and the waste of human potential is gigantic.

What the dominance theories have in common is a recognition that the dominant classes profit from the obscurity of the power relations involved in the creation of such social inequalities.

As Lamont and Lareau (1987:11) put it:

What makes a class dominant is partly its success in legitimating as natural and authoritative its particular cultural preferences and practices. These become standard through society, while shrouded in a cloak of neutrality. They become institutionalized as legitimate culture in part by tile educational system, which transmits these practices and tastes, and adopts them as standards for evaluating students.

Using a class-power perspective, we hope to make clear how identifying working-class kids as inferior and slotting them into dead-end programmes has happened in Ontario. After examining briefly the origins of compulsory public schooling in the class struggles of the mid-19th century, we will trace the debates over ability grouping and streaming that have gone on since then. Following this, we will scrutinize the policies and programmes that maintain the class-based inequalities ill elementary and secondary schools. Throughout this account, we will identify the forms of working-class people's resistance and alternative educational practices that have worked toward tile creation of a truly egalitarian system.