Power and Education Volume 2 Number 2 2010 www.wwwords.co.uk/POWER
Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach ANDREW LAMBIRTH School of Education, University of Greenwich, United Kingdom
ABSTRACT This article reports on a small-scale research project that explored the classconsciousness and working-class identities of a small group of student teachers in a university in south-east England. It describes and uses classic Marxist perspectives and sociological theory as an analytical framework to interpret the views of eight student teachers who provide their perspectives in a series of in-depth interviews. It is argued that these student teachers’ identities and class experiences have sculpted their motivations to become teachers and that the form of class-consciousness that they exhibit ultimately acts to mould attitudes and perspectives that suit the objectives of twenty-first-century primary education in a capitalist society. Power relations are played out through the struggle between the potential social power that working-class-conscious teachers possess and the forms of professional labour power that are fostered through initial teacher education courses and the habitus from which these students emerge. A person who does not have seriously worked out convictions cannot be a leader of people ... where convictions are imposed from above like a military command, the educator loses her mental individuality and cannot inspire either children or adults with respect or trust in the profession she exercises. (Trotsky, 1923, p.194) This article explores the commitments and motivations of a group of working-class student teachers. They were studying on a 38-week Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) programme at a university in the south-east of England. This is an intensive programme for graduates that leads to a recommendation for Qualified Teacher Status in England. I intend to explore the extent to which the subjects of my study have consciously drawn on their own class histories, class-consciousness and experiences to sculpt their perceptions and attitudes to becoming primary school teachers. In many accounts of teachers in schools (Ball, 1999) emphasis on performance, efficiency (Shannon, 2000) and management (Alexander & Flutter, 2009) have begun to eradicate personal, political and emotional motivations from professional subjective identities. By so doing, forms of social power, intrinsic to the teaching profession, are removed. I wanted to examine if class was a factor in motivating young student teachers. It is conceivable that politicised, class-conscious, socialist teachers, embedded in schools amongst volatile young working-class people, who live in a society where the gap between the rich and the poor has widened considerably, can fan the flames of resistance and have enormous transformative potential (Allman, 1999). I wanted to explore in my research whether my sample of working-class-conscious young teachers was the potential vanguard for radical, critical, egalitarian pedagogy or whether their class awareness would produce other objectives. It is here that issues of power become central to my investigation. How do these student teachers plan to utilise the social power they possess – for reform or for revolution? Will the affordances their identity provides for being teachers lead to a position of resistance or compliance?
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Andrew Lambirth I also intend in this article to investigate some of the complexities of social class and my student teachers’ relation to it. In doing so, I will examine their perceptions and conceptions of class as an objective and subjective phenomenon. The subject of social class is extremely complex. I will draw on some academic sources and classic Marxist accounts to act as an analytical framework to assist in my understanding of the students’ perceptions. I should stress that although I have chosen classic Marxist arguments to contribute to a discussion of the data I present, I am aware that this form of analysis is one of many that also may be useful in this process. The field is very complex and I do not intend to suggest that this framework for analysis will produce truths in any final and conclusive way. The results of the analysis can only contribute to debates in this field of educational and social research. Included in this form of analysis, I wish to tentatively explore the concept and the perception of being a member of a ‘nonpossessing’ (Trotsky, 1980) working class; an oppressed group with an imposed cultural existence but with the potential to transform society. I begin by providing the conceptual frameworks for my research by describing both classic and contemporary conceptualisations of class to establish its subjective and objective categorisations Conceptual Background: social class In classic Marxist accounts (Woods, 2008) of the development of society, the earliest phase of human development consisted of a primitive form of communism when there were no classes, private property, or state. A class society emerged at the point a surplus could be produced above the needs of individual survival. It then became feasible for a division of society into classes to begin. On the broad scales of history, the emergence of class society was a revolutionary phenomenon, in that it freed a privileged section of the population –the ruling class – from the direct burden of labour, permitting it the necessary time to develop art, science and culture. Class society, despite its ruthless exploitation and inequality, was the road that human kind needed to travel if it was to build up the necessary material prerequisites for a future classless society. (Woods, 2008, p. 79) In this classic Marxist revolutionary perspective, the working class are conceived as those who have no means of production and consequently need to sell their ‘labour power’ in order to survive. The owners of the means of production buy ‘labour power’. Like other commodities, labour power’s value is measured by the quantity of labour invested within it – for example, the time spent in education and training and its quality. Marx’s contention was that the ruling class do not buy a determinate amount of work put in during a day, but instead buy the capacity: ‘ As against capital, labour is the merely abstract form, the mere possibility of value-positing activity, which exists only as a capacity, as a resource in the bodylines of the worker’ (Marx, [1858] 1973, p. 298). Marx contends that workers are paid for their capacity to work. This sum constitutes what is needed to keep the worker alive and able to produce new workers in the future. Marxist economics bases itself around this ‘labour theory of value’ – it is this that is seen as the basic regulator of capitalist economies and thus provides a theory of capitalism and a theory of class (Savage, 2000). The Labour theory of value posits the view that when a commodity is produced and then sold, surplus value is made over and above what is needed to cover the wages paid to the worker. When a worker sells her or his labour power, although it is sold at its full value, it can create even more value for the employer greater than its own. For Marx, the class struggle is nothing more than the struggle over surplus value (Woods, 2008) – for an increase in wages will reduce this surplus value whilst a lengthening of the working day adds to it. Thus, according to this perspective, the potential for irreconcilable differences between worker and employer comes into being (Cole, 2008). From a Marxist perspective, this could be perceived as being important to understanding what the student teachers say about perceptions of their own identities and their vision of what they can contribute to education. Working-class subjectivity, if one were to draw on this classic Marxist paradigm, can be conceptualised as being rooted within and around the experience of selling one’s labour power and the struggle to increase the cost of this labour power through a variety of means – education, training and industrial class action. Generations of family members have lived this life
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach of struggle to secure a buyer for their labour power. Insecurity is a condition of the existence of those in the working class (Brooks, 2007) and for all those who depend on the sale of this commodity. Moreover, Rikowski (1992) highlights how Marx ([1867] 1977) depicted labour power as the aggregate of mental and physical capabilities and that consequently it becomes equated with what Rikowski (2002) calls our ‘personhood’. Labour power, seen this way, is an ‘active (individual) force that is socialised through its expression in commodity production’ (p. 17). Labour power’s inclusion of ‘mental capabilities’ as part of a person’s capacity to work consequently contributes to personality formation through its expression in attitudes and personal traits. This position, that suggests that the development of labour power can influence one’s personality as well as one’s skills, has been contested by forms of resistance theory (Willis, 1977; Apple, 1985; Brown, 1987; Walker, 1988; Kinney, 1993; Riseborough, 1993). Willis, in his analysis of working-class school students’ behaviours, showed how students can challenge the machinations of forces which attempt to make them conform. This is done by drawing on ‘home-spun’ ‘penetrations’, forming insights into how they are being manipulated. However, Dale (1991) argues that the resistance offered by the children in Willis’s study or others (for example, Adams, 1991) cannot claim to be any significant form of resistance due to the non-specificity to what or to whom this resistance is aimed. The classic Marxist account of labour power argues that, seen in all its forms – skills, education, and attitudes – labour power is created in different ways, and is determined by opportunities available to hone its quality and affordances through education and training. In advanced capitalist countries, for example, workers are now employed in a variety of jobs, instead of the more traditional manufacturing industries of a past age. Many, in what may be called the middle layers of society (the lower middle class), make a living from a working wage too. They may have benefited from longer periods in education and would have expectations of earning more financial capital and consequently more social and cultural capital too. Social capital, as conceptualised by Bourdieu & Passeron (1977), is the access one has to resources based on networks and membership of powerful social groups. It is ‘who you know’ that can lead to favour and advancement. Cultural capital is defined as one’s own dispositions of the mind and the body and one’s ‘taste’ in cultural activities. It also means the access and possession of cultural goods such as educational qualifications, which bring advancement. Professional labour power and the range of capital it brings arguably objectively and subjectively distinguishes those who have it from those exponents of lower paid forms of labour power. It also moulds attitudes to society and can determine political affinities. The student teachers in this study might be described as being new members of these middle layers of society. Yet, from the classic Marxist accounts provided above, they would still be classified as working class due to the necessity to sell their labour power. This is what separates Marxist theoretical positions on class and those formed from sociological analyses. It has been argued (Hill & Cole, 2001) that classification of the population based on notions of status and associated consumption patterns and lifestyles, although of interest and helpful in understanding these behaviours, is, from a Marxist position, fundamentally flawed. They ignore the existence of a ruling or capitalist class that dominates society; gloss over the fundamental antagonistic relations between the two main classes in society and portray the working class as divided into multiple categories and sub-divisions; and disguise the common interests of workers across society, discouraging class-consciousness. Increasingly there have been arguments made to suggest that professional workers have seen their own working lives proletarianised (Ozga, 1988). Like other wage earners, their employers have also been concerned to cut wages, and extend and intensify the working day. In addition, the process of proletarianisation has brought prescribed routines and a process of de-skilling in a range of service sector organisations (Ainley, 1993, Maguire, 2001). This has been noted (Apple, 1993) to be particularly true of schoolteachers and those in education across the sector. However, as has been stated, education, in the case of what the student teachers study, develops professional labour power. The students’ degrees and the initial teacher education (ITE) received on their PGCE programme could enable individuals from the working class to notice differences and perceive themselves to be in the middle layers of society and their lifestyles and consumption habits may begin to alter from that to which they have been used. Among its concerns, this study is interested to discern whether the motivations of new teachers are to assimilate to middle-class/layer
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Andrew Lambirth subjective values, or whether they are more concerned to utilise their class-consciousness as a motivation to sculpt their students’ ability to form a labour power, attitude or perspective with emancipatory potential. Class Experience, Awareness, and Consciousness Marx’s definition of class included a dynamic element (McLellan, 1980). A class only existed if it was conscious of itself and carried a common hostility to another social group. As part of its defining characteristic, a class must be organised politically to fight for its own interests (Marx, 1845-46). Individuals belong to a class in so far as that they carry this common cause of hostility against another class. The consciousness of individuals to recognise their membership of a class is vital. The consequence of not acting together would lead to hostility and competition against one another, as worker vies with other workers in competition over the sale of their labour power. According to Marx, the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat over surplus value (as described above) only becomes political when they become ‘a class for itself’ (Marx 1845-46, p. 48). Before this level of class-consciousness and class antagonism, they remain a theoretical ‘class in opposition’ (Marx 1845-46, p. 48). Furthermore, Trotsky contended that ‘the proletariat found its weapon in Marxism’ (1980, p. 51) and its description of class society and its antagonisms, as a means of transforming society. Marxism as a theory potentially facilitates crucial levels of classconsciousness in those who read and understand it. Maguire (2001) wants to assert that discussions of class-consciousness need to differentiate between different subjective levels. Giddens (1973) drew these distinctions between class awareness and class-consciousness. Class awareness means understanding and accepting that groups of people have similar attitudes and beliefs, connected to common lifestyles. However, this class awareness does not signify a perception that these traits define a particular class or that there are other classes that have other cultural similarities. Class awareness, for Giddens, may take the form of ‘a denial of the existence of classes. Thus the class awareness of the middle class, in so far as it involves beliefs which place a premium upon individual responsibility and achievement, is of this order’ (Giddens, 1973, p. 111). Class-consciousness, on the other hand, does make the connections that class awareness does not. Giddens (1973) advocates the possibility of classifying different levels of classconsciousness, from the most undeveloped, that involves ‘simply a conception of class identity and therefore of class differentiation’ (1973, p. 112), to levels of class-consciousness that show an understanding of the inevitability of class conflict: ‘where perception of class unity is linked to a recognition of opposition of interest with another class or classes’ (1973, p. 112). The third level for Giddens is revolutionary class-consciousness that recognises the possibilities of changing the power structures of society through class action. The ‘Nonpossessing Class’ Before proceeding to my data, I want to return to classic revolutionary Marxist writing to better understand definitions and descriptions of the working class which I will use to provide potential insights into an understanding of the student teachers’ position on their class identity. Leon Trotsky, one of the two main leaders of the Russian Revolution, wrote in 1922 and 1923 about culture and post-revolution literature. In doing so, he wished to argue against some of his comrades who were describing post-revolutionary artistic work as being a form of ‘proletariat culture’. He argued that the period into which they were entering was merely a lull in the progress of the revolution and that their main objective had yet to be reached. This objective was the creation of a classless society. Therefore, their ultimate goal was the demise of class in all its forms, including the working class. It is over this issue that Trotsky discusses the nature of working-class identity linked to culture: The proletariat was, and remains, a nonpossessing class. This alone restricts it very much from acquiring those elements of bourgeois culture which have entered into the inventory of mankind forever ... the proletariat is forced to take power before it has appropriated the fundamental elements of bourgeois culture; it is forced to overthrow bourgeois society by
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach revolutionary violence for the very reason that society does not allow it access to culture. (1980, pp. 47-50) Trotsky’s description of the working class lacking the means of acquiring a culture – a proletarian culture – of its own (and historically destined never to have one) takes the discussion about the nature of the working class a little further. He argues that ‘by taking into its own hands the apparatus of culture – the industries, schools, publications, press, theatres, etc – which did not serve it before ... opens up the path of culture for itself’ (Trotsky, 1980, p. 47). By the notion of a ‘culture for itself’, Trotsky suggests that culture has an almost autonomous quality and worth. Drawing on sociology to assist in understanding this position, (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Savage et al, 1992), the working class lacks the social and cultural capital that bourgeois society has kept for itself. Trotsky’s Marxist vision is of a society where the wonders of human culture are freed from class control of any kind, as class society is destroyed through revolution. In the meantime, part of the working class’s subjective and objective condition is non-possession. I want to argue that the student teachers’ comments concerning their identity may be linked to a conception of nonpossession as being part of their class in comparison with those they now have begun to meet from the middle layers of society who perceive themselves as being in more possession of more forms of capital. From a classic Marxist position, for most of those in the middle layers of society, this perception of possession is more of an illusion rather than a reality, but nevertheless their behaviours and patterns of consumption are in contrast to the student teachers in the sample. There may be objections here that Trotsky offers a deficit model of working-class identity. This is undeniably true in one sense. Yet, it is important to remember that Trotsky also endows the working class with the power, ability, and motivation to transform society forever. So far, I have outlined some of the complexities of class and class identity and the differences between class awareness and class-consciousness. I cannot claim to have provided a comprehensive review of these issues. By drawing on classic Marxist perspectives, I offer one analytical framework with which to consider the data from the student teachers. I do not make any claims for truth, and readers must come to their own conclusions about their feasibility and usefulness. My intention is to keep my analysis of the teachers’ subjective working-class identities framed by these classic perspectives. I offer the following analysis as being simply one of many. Each teacher in the sample had responded to an email asking all student teachers from the course to make contact with me if they considered themselves to have come from working-class families. In the email, I gave no definition of the concept of a ‘working class’. By responding, they created a self-selected sample of those who at least have class as part of their identity and exhibit some form of class awareness or consciousness. Out of the 200 or so students, only around 15 replied. The PGCE course is extremely work-intensive and this might explain the low numbers who responded. The eight discussed in this article are the students with whom I was able to arrange in-depth interviews. I met with them singly or in pairs two to three times over the period of the course. Like Maguire’s (2001) equally small sample of long-stay teachers, no great claims can be made for their ‘representativeness’. The narratives of the student teachers serve a similar purpose to Maguire’s teachers in that they disclose the ways in which class history and their levels of class-consciousness have sculpted their perceptions and attitudes to becoming teachers. These students believed they had come from working-class homes. They had been successful in school and all had been to universities with relatively high status. They were all white and British. Class Identity Like in Maguire’s (2001) sample of ‘long-stay’ teachers, all the eight students in this study were very clear about their class positions, but in my sample, they often emphasised the subjective experience of being working class rather than being from some form of objective category outside of themselves. Their perception of being working class was both psychologically and physically embodied (Skeggs, 1997). The objective categorisation became more apparent in their discussions of their cultural-experiential identity (Maguire, 2001). Furthermore, practically all could be categorised as having what Giddens (1973) would describe as being the most ‘undeveloped’ classconsciousness – ‘simply a conception of class identity and therefore of class differentiation’ (1973,
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Andrew Lambirth p. 112). This should become apparent as I explore their perceptions of being working-class student teachers. All the student teachers’ names have been changed in an effort to keep them anonymous. The Student Teachers Cindy (aged 22) lives on an estate; she described the environment as ‘horrible, scummy, where Chavs originate from’ and with certainty she declared, ‘I’m working class through and through’. In her reply to my initial email, she wrote, ‘Yes, I’m scum, I’ll talk to you’. Cindy had a far from positive attitude to being working class, but expressed no real desire to change. Cindy here adopts irony and humour when she talks about the concept of a working class and this too may have deeper significance than this article has time to discuss Her class identity seemed embodied, cultural, and experiential; it exists ‘through’ her. Frank (aged 31) has come into teaching later than some. He described his own secondary education as being a negative experience, even brutal. He blamed his schooling for why he had to wait to attain the qualifications needed to gain entrance to university. Frank took a culturalist view (Maguire, 2001) of working-class identity: I know that people think that income is a large part of it but I think it is something a lot more complicated than that. It’s a combination of family history and their views on their own identity and well lots of things ... hobbies, interests ... I don’t particularly like the term ‘class’. I don’t think it is particularly relevant to me, but I know it’s still important, so if I had to class myself underneath a label, then I would say that I’m working class, so yes. Frank appeared to recognise the reality of a class society, but placed the reality of this phenomenon in the subjective. He also understood the link between cultural activities and social class. Cindy, Joan and Sarah (all three in their twenties) showed their awareness of the hybrid natures of their identity. Cindy’s comments could be interpreted as suggesting the environment affects one’s subjective relationship to one’s identity. ‘All the time I’m at uni. I suppose I am middle class and then when I’m at home I’m not, because I’m amongst all the [change volume of her voice to a whisper] working-class people. But to be honest, where I live, I’m actually considered well spoken, a bit like “Oh, she’s from Uni.”’ The hybrid nature of identity was put in even starker terms by Joan: I do change. I have different personalities. When I’m at university, I’m not so forthright as when I’m with my friends from home. I wouldn’t stand out so much. I’m definitely more comfortable when I’m with my friends. All but one of the students spoke of the transitional nature of class identity. One gains the impression that these students are aware of class and cultural distinctions and differences between middle layers of society and their own backgrounds and they see it when they meet different kinds of people. These transitions heralded a challenge to their subjective beings. The cultural capital (manifested in language use) demonstrated by different layers of society have needed to be negotiated and mastered, but for Joan, she appeared to be aware of where she really belongs and where she feels most confident and happy. Rose’s (aged 42) class-consciousness – her understanding of class differentiation (Giddens 1973) – made her determined to break away. Her parents were farm labourers in Devon. She recounted that from an early age she began to despise working-class lifestyles: My parents always said they thought they had taken the wrong baby home because I didn’t fit at all. I was very very conscious that I did not fit in from five or six years old. I didn’t play with the children that everyone expected me to play with. I didn’t ever want to be like my parents or my brother. Everyone I knew who were middle class were much more positive. Rose shows hostility to the working-class environment from which she derives. Marx’s definition of class-consciousness made class hostility a determining feature. However, Rose’s hostility is aimed not at the ruling class, but at the working class. A pattern emerges from these comments about, firstly, the subjective nature of being working class as expressed by all, but secondly, how much their discussion of identity was based around the capacity to make lifestyle choices – particularly in Rose’s comments. One does not get the impression that they thought working classness is imposed. However, it should be remembered
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach that these students have, and do, cross cultural barriers and environments regularly. They are able to do so, because they have accumulated education and training that have formed their labour power and social and cultural capital in ways that bring them into these different groups of people who possess different forms of capital. It may be these life histories that make social mobility a possibility and an expectation. Class, Labour Power and the Need to Work In discussing the concept of class and class identity, a number of the students emphasised the centrality of hard work – often low-paid manual work – and its omnipresence, coupled with an anxiety about redundancy. For Marx, unease about the ability to sell one’s labour power in the general class struggle to secure the means to offer this as a commodity on the market for the highest price is integral to working-class existence. This was reflected in some of what the students discussed. Iris, like all the sample of students, is the first in her family to go to university. Her account of being working class is scattered with references to labouring: I think that working class meant that you have to work really hard for the money you get paid. My dad had to work up a hierarchy to get where he was and his pay increased as he went up the ladder. My Mum worked at Marks and Spencer as cash till girl. I want to do the same. I want to have a good job and work for my living and that is how I see all workingclass people as those who work really hard for not a lot of money. Iris based her definition of being working class around hard work and, arguably, interpreted from a Marxist perspective, around the sale of labour power – the essential need to work for money. She implied a dignity in this form of work ethic. Yet, her approbation of her parents’ lifestyle lacked any hostility towards those who have assigned to her parents a life-sentence of drudgery for low pay. There is no sense of the exploitative nature of this economic contract between employer and employee. Indeed, the sale of labour power, it can be argued, appears to be a fair wage for a fair day’s work (Brooks, 2007). One would need to know the concept of surplus value to be conscious of the exploitation by capital. Again, Giddens’s (1973) ‘undeveloped’ model of class-consciousness could be applied to Iris’s perspective. Frank, too, recounted how work has been everything to him since he can remember: I’ve always worked right from the age of 13. I’ve never not worked. For me part of being working class is for me the work ethic. My Granddad was always saying: ‘you have to work, what you going to do starve?’ One thing I have realised is that I have a part-time job now and the thought of giving that up makes me feel uneasy that you are getting yourself in debt by borrowing. Here, fundamental to being working class is how one must earn one’s living through work. The alternative, according to Frank’s grandfather, is starvation. There is also a suggestion that in being working class one can rely on no one and nothing but one’s own capacity to work – one’s labour power. This may be a reference to the history of the working class, as, of course, modern social democratic capitalist states provide funding for the unemployed and for students studying at university. However, losing paid income can still have a catastrophic impact on one’s standard of living and for many this is a frightening prospect. From a classic Marxist perspective, the sale of labour power is fundamental to those who own no means of production and is central to the regulation of capitalist economies. The anxiety of becoming redundant is a constant presence. Tony (aged 22), too, disclosed the correlation between working-class identity and the need to sell one’s capacity to labour: Just the idea that you are not going to get anywhere without working. You have to work for it. Like to become a teacher you have to have a degree, you’ve got to get qualified. But it was not something I ever thought I would be able to do. Frank, Iris and Tony’s description of the values associated with a definition of being working class is close to Rikowski’s (1992) account of the effect of labour power on one’s personhood. Being working class for these students means a particular attitude to work – specific mental capabilities – to be successful in selling one’s capacity to labour. Iris and Frank recognise these mental traits and
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Andrew Lambirth wish to reproduce these values in their own personhoods. Rikowski might want to argue that this is the psychological impact of a dynamic subjective part of labour power in modern capitalist society. As well as being provided with the professional labour power to teach, these student teachers also possess another fundamental part of labour power that helps define their workingclass identities and personhood – their positive attitude for the need to sell their labour. It may also define their motivations and objectives for being teachers. If schooling is part of the cultural properties of the ruling class and the State (Trotsky, 1980), then these students can play a dynamic and productive role in reproducing and modelling (Grace, 1978) forms of labour power and attitudes of a class required for capitalist society. In these examples of the students’ opinion of being working class, although they recognise aspects of the assimilation of a different class and cultural position as they become teachers, it could be argued that they also appear to be reproducing the nineteenth-century teacher’s role – to model a healthy working-class perspective (Grace, 1978). The ‘undeveloped’ (Giddens, 1973) forms of class-consciousness they articulated preclude a subversive or hostile approach to capitalist schooling and society. Harris (1982) argues that teachers are involved in the dissemination of the dominant ideologies of a ruling class over which they have little control, and people can be identified, not just in terms of to which class they belong, but by which particular class interest they serve. Yet, as Marx observes, the potential for attitudes to change is ever-present and shifted by events. With this in mind, the class-consciousness the student teachers do possess may be the seed to the future change in attitude. Non-Possession I want to argue that a sense of ‘non-possession’ figures in the students’ perception of themselves relative to the middle layers of society they meet as they cross cultural boundaries. This nonpossession is in forms of capital (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) – financial, social, and cultural. Here the students’ description of working-class identity was much more objective. Sarah had been encouraged to go to grammar school by her mother: That was when I became aware of the class I was from, because people came in from villages and you could tell straightaway that we were not the same just from the way they spoke. I had a friend and I went to her house and it had about twenty rooms and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’ve never been anywhere like this before’. I felt uncomfortable. I suppose I didn’t feel as good as them. They did horse riding and my dad never picked me up because he felt uncomfortable. Sarah became aware of her class from how it was signalled by her friends’ way of speaking. Sarah recognised that she did not possess her friends’ embodiment of class (Maguire, 2001). Furthermore, she also did not possess some of the other forms of capital – namely the finance needed to live in a large house and the ‘cultural’ form of capital to engage in horse riding. The discomfort brought through introduction to these new lifestyles may be attributable to recognition of these stark differences in capital. Sarah’s father needed to maintain a safe distance so as not to be confronted by his non-possession. Cindy talked of her realisation of the differences between herself and other students she met on her PGCE course. Their parents had established the means to earn more money and therefore assist their children in all aspects of university life, ultimately leading to greater academic and cultural investment with the subsequent success it brings. Possession of capital – including the financial and cultural forms – tends to generate more capital. Having little in terms of capital makes these kinds of investments more difficult and the reproduction of this subjective and objective nonpossession more likely. This is the first year, I’ve had to pay tuition fees, I’m not used to it. But just things like, they never had to work while I did because I have to pay to rent my home. I don’t get money for things like clothes, I pay for myself, I learn to drive, I pay for my car, whereas with them ‘I’ve just passed my driving test and mum’s buying me a new car’. They don’t have to worry about money, or even they get more time to study because they don’t have to work so
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach many hours and it’s always like ‘Oh God it’s cold, I need a new coat, I’ll get some money from Mum’. Frank provided a graphic description of the way his past school students were treated by their peers if they appeared to try to take possession of any alternative forms of social and cultural capital. This aggressive and violent attitude to those who wanted to gain qualifications cannot be thought typical of all working-class approaches to education. It does provide evidence of how schooling (its unofficial traits) sculpted his identity through intra-class hostility. I went to an all boys’ comprehensive. It was quite a violent atmosphere. Anyone who tried during a lesson was thrown down the stairs, for example on the first day if you wore your blazer you were beaten up by the older boys, so the blazer went in the bag on the first day and didn’t come out. If you got an A in anything you were picked on ... They didn’t like seeing anybody doing well. Now, I’m someone who picked up on this very quickly and made sure that I was in the middle of the road and wasn’t picked on. I had noticed these boys being thrown down a flight of steps and everybody crowding round and spitting on them and beating them up and I thought I didn’t really want this to happen to me so I thought I’m not getting an A and that was when I was twelve. One could argue that Frank made an ‘investment’ in the habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) of the social field he inhabits within the school. It was a necessary conscious investment, due to the real threat posed by alternative actions. Bourdieu’s (1985) emphasis on social practices led him to formulate the notion of the habitus. The habitus is an internal organising mechanism of learning how to ‘play the game’ within the cultural fields in which one finds oneself. The habitus exists through and because of the practices and interactions with others. It is embodied through ways of talking, ways of moving, our body shapes and all our behaviours enacted through our physical being. It is the objective homogenizing of a group or class habitus. It enables practices to be objectively harmonized (Skeggs, 2004). In this case, Frank made the conscious decision to remain nonpossessed of cultural and social capital (Reay et al, 2005) needed to enter other social fields and beyond the habitus within which he is bound. As these student teachers appeared to cross cultural barriers, meeting those who possessed a variety of forms of capital, they spoke of the unease and insecurity they felt in making cultural and financial investments in these new fields (Bourdieu, 1977). In Sarah’s case, this investment caused some guilt: We go to the theatre, I’m quite happy doing these things like that but then me and my husband are beginning to get a double set of values, we are saying we’re not materialistic and then we will go and stay in a five star hotel. And there’s conflict now because we have stepped into the middle class but we feel guilty about it. Because we are spending money instead of buying clothes from Primark, I’ll go to Monsoon and I think I should be in Primark. Despite her familiarisation and investment in middle-class/layer cultural capital, Sarah maintained a working-class identity, as all the students said that they did. Following the analysis centred on the concept of ‘non-possession’, the unease about spending money on clothes and theatre trips may, in addition to other possible explanations, have its source in a life history of ‘non-possession’ of capital. Sarah recognised the difference in behaviours she was exhibiting by her relatively extravagant spending on clothes. It might be argued that shopping at Monsoon is one sign of middle-class or middle-layer cultural investment and of which Sarah appears aware. Sarah’s shopping habits also may suggest ambiguity and complexity in defining class with any regularity and precision. Yet, using the classic Marxist arguments on the objective nature of class, shops like Monsoon sell clothes at higher prices to those in the working class who are able to sell their labour power at a higher price and consequently are able to afford them. Shopping at Monsoon may culturally signify a middle classness and behaviours typical of the middle layers of society (as identified in sociological categorisation models),and Sarah may feel extravagant in spending more money on clothing than is necessary, but ultimately in an objective definition of class related to labour power, Sarah remains in the working class. This objectivity appears to be matched by Sarah’s subjective identification with the working class as evidenced by her sensitivity to her new shopping habits which appear to signify class distinction. Subjectively, Sarah also retains her working-class identity.
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Andrew Lambirth Levels of Class-Consciousness and the Motivation to Teach So far, I have put forward the argument that the student teachers in this sample had an ‘underdeveloped’ class-consciousness (Giddens, 1973). Yet they were convinced that they were and, in most cases, will always remain – if nothing else – psychologically part of the working class. Themes emerged from the interviews that suggested the centrality of agency and membership of the working class being associated with cultural practices and a work ethic. Whilst conceding the complexity of this field of study, I have chosen to connect this work with the Marxist conceptualisation of labour power and its inclusion of mental capacities as a trait, manifested in the form of attitudes and approaches to working. My interpretation and analysis of the data based on classic Marxist perspectives argues that the students also discussed their working-class identity in terms of a distinctive experience of ‘non-possession’ – both financially and culturally. I now want to look at the data on how these forms of class-consciousness have influenced the student teachers’ commitment to and motivation to becoming teachers. Empathy and Cultural Investment With the exception of Rose (who loathed being working class from the age of five), all the students wanted to work in schools with children who came from working-class or deprived areas. Jane was clear about the empathy she feels: Coming from a working-class background you understand the difficulties these children will be going through. So in many ways I think I’ll have an advantage there. I will choose to work in challenging areas. That’s definitely what I’m interested in doing. I don’t want it to be easy, I want it to be challenging. There was a belief in some of the students that working-class children will be more prone to misbehave. Cindy contends that ‘someone a bit posher might not understand that. Give them space to do that. I don’t think a middle-class person would understand that’. Cindy implies that children’s ‘inappropriate’ behaviour needs to be understood, sourcing it to class. Frank added to this by indicating that the children’s behaviour needed to be ‘culturally translated’ by teachers who recognised the cultural codes that working-class children exhibit. Frank’s first experience of working in a primary school was as a classroom assistant: I could just see what they were going through and could empathise with them. So obviously experiencing everything with my working-class background helped me understand about their views of life and how they should behave and what’s acceptable behaviour. The main thing was, was that acceptable behaviour was something I recognised. Jane saw her working-class experiences as motivation to persuade children to make the ‘right’ cultural investments in school and to adopt positive attitudes to the education being offered. This is consistent with how the others felt about their role. Yet, she also felt that school could disadvantage working-class children. Their behaviour can be misinterpreted, and that someone needs to be there to represent them. ‘I feel I could make a difference in that area, I could relate to the children and actually help push them forward and get them more of a chance. I know because of my past that sometimes children get overlooked and they might not be given the same opportunities.’ Skeggs (2004) describes some media representation of the working class in history as being associated with excess ‘low moral value and the potential for disruption’ (p. 99). This is contrasted with middle-class representations of themselves as being reasonable, modest, and possessing selfrestraint. These teachers want to act as cultural decipherers, able to decode, mediate, and rationalise the tensions that exist between the differing cultures. They wish to counter these misconceptions around working-class behaviour. They also want to recommend cultural investments to the children to whom they are responsible. Tony demonstrated his desire to mediate and rationalise the processes at play in educational settings: There were kids who did not do well. I do understand how it happens. If you are more wealthy, than you do have more access to facilities ... if the parents are not academically
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach minded I could understand why they might impact on the children. If they have not got the things to stimulate that way. Here, Tony displayed his awareness of the need for learners to obtain cultural and social capital. There is an implicit acknowledgement that the student teachers could build a bridge between the two cultures. Aspiration Agents All the student teachers spoke of figures in their lives who I want to describe as ‘aspiration agents’ within their own families – mothers were the most common. These people act as a social catalyst for change within families; they have understood the necessity of acquiring forms of social and cultural capital, sometimes through contact with members of the middle class, or from experiences that have led them to recognise the importance of decoding and adopting powerful forms of cultural practice. In this sample, they were the ones who taught their children a love of reading and spent time emphasising the importance of cultural investment in the practices of schooling. Bourdieu (1986) contended that women are the main markers of taste. They convert economic capital into symbolic capital for the consumption of their families through their display of tastes (Skeggs, 2004). Sarah’s mother was typical of the aspiration agents’ role: Mum actually is living her education through me. She didn’t have opportunities. My mum always pushed me on and I think she would have liked to have gone up the path if my dad had wanted it. The students appeared to want to recreate this role in the classroom for the children. The cultural work of the aspiration agent was distinguished from those in their families and outside who played an opposite role – those who worked against aspiration at school and contributed to the habitus and social reproduction processes. This knowledge made the student teachers’ new professional task particularly important. Iris wanted to right the wrongs that she felt were done to her by these anti-aspirational figures: I want to put right what was done to me very much, so every child is an individual and that’s how they should be treated, just because they are in a particular class or just because they family is not rich. Iris appeared to aspire to a fairer schooling, based on individualism rather than class. The form of aspiration they wish to inject into the children in their care is crafted from the student teachers’ own experiences of their social trajectories. Despite the indisputable altruism of being an ‘aspiration agent’ in classrooms, ultimately, it could be argued, the objectives are relatively conservative. The nature of this aspiration, a result of the teachers’ undeveloped classconsciousness, is the reproduction of the class nature of society with all its inequities and injustice. Aspiration from a Marxist perspective would be towards an organised class-conscious working-class vanguard prepared to transform society forever. Yet, as I wish to conclude, this may be the role of wider events in society rather than the work of school teachers alone. Conclusion – back to the future These student teachers all appeared passionate about the role they can play as teachers in the future. All but one was keen to work in schools that contained children from poorer working-class families. They wished to act as mediators in the acculturated environments of school. Their empathy with working-class children and their ability to decode the dominant ideologies of middleclass curricula would position them as surrogate aspiration agents for those to whom they are responsible. They hoped to persuade children to make cultural investments that could stimulate forms of social mobility in the future, replicating their own cultural trajectories and acquisition of different forms of capital. The genuine conviction of these teachers to teach and facilitate social mobility in their children demonstrated democratic liberal ideological positions that wish to reform society within capitalist economic conditions. This is manifested by their strong conviction of the possibility of encouraging
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Andrew Lambirth working-class children to make life-choices that could mean success in school. This is in marked contrast to class-conscious, socialist teachers’ perspectives. There are a number of models of revolutionary or transformative pedagogies (Freire, 1970; Giroux, 1981; McLaren, 1998) based around the ideas of Marxism or transformative and radical postmodernism (Stronach & MacLure, 1997; Atkinson, 2002; see Atkinson & Cole, 2007). These writers advocate forms of critical pedagogy that facilitate the possibility for school students to critique and understand the class nature of society. In doing so, school students begin to appreciate the unjust and exploitative nature of capitalism – in other words to transform the nature of their class-consciousness to being revolutionary (Giddens, 1973) in outlook. According to Rikowski (2002), teachers are afforded with a unique social power that potentially can awaken their students to human possibility through a vision of an equitable and classless society. For Rikowski, this makes teachers a constant danger to present forms of social democratic capitalist societies and consequently they find their professional approach monitored and controlled. Modern teacher education (or training) in England, within which these students studied, is under the control of the Teacher Development Agency (TDA) and is monitored by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted). The prescribed teacher training curriculum ensures that issues pertaining to socio-economic or culturalist positions are rarely raised (Hill, 2007) even by university providers on degree programmes. It would be unlikely that these students on the PGCE course would come across these more radical pedagogical approaches mentioned above. Like in the study by Grace (1978) that examined the social and pedagogic world of teachers who taught working-class children, my student teachers did recognise how circumstance had led to forms of disadvantage. Consequently, part of their role as new teachers would be to persuade their charges in school to invest in specific cultural practices rooted in the school curriculum. Also comparable to Grace’s teachers, the student teachers did not locate the children’s disadvantage in a wider socio-political context, but took a far more culturalist view which included the notion that the life-choices the children made could lead them out of hardship. Furthermore, the student teachers’ comments could be interpreted that they wished to be ‘class models’ similar to the teachers of the nineteenth century, resisting assimilation to the middle layers of society. At present, the tiny sample of student teachers who talked to me is not the working-class vanguard of socialist change. They resist this form of social power they possess. Yet, they demonstrated that their class identities and class histories had sculpted their hopes and visions of their future in the teaching profession. At the time of their discussions with me, the perspectives that emanated from their identities and the affordances they felt they could lend to their teaching constructs an arguably conservative vision. They intended to coax their working-class pupils to make the form of cultural investment that may lead to improvements in their lives within the present society. The student teachers’ role as ‘aspiration agents’ presently made the aspiration stop only at relatively modest forms of social mobility rather than radical transformation of society. ‘Non-possession’ for the working class in its Trotskyist conceptualisation would effectively be implicitly promoted by these teachers as part of the essential character of that class identity that they promote. The social mobility they encouraged was limited to offering working-class models of aspiration, modest in their potential for affecting significant change. Yet, from a classic Marxist position, one should not lose hope for the future. These teachers held the crucial seed of what Marx perceived to be the revolutionary future of mankind – awareness of their social class. The affordances that these teachers saw deriving from their working-class backgrounds meant a great deal to them and have sculpted their motivations to teach. A classconsciousness (be it only underdeveloped) was prevalent in how they conceived the world. It will affect the way they teach and will always be present. Despite efforts by governments to persuade people otherwise, social class for this small sample of teachers remains a predominant factor in how they conceptualise the social world. It seems possible to speculate that this form of identity may not be uncommon in others. Furthermore, the student teachers have come to their motivations for teaching themselves, but more importantly, they hold a collective identity as a class. In doing so, one may argue, they resist other discourses for their motivations that derive from government sources framed around efficiency, performance and management. This may well be seen as the ‘spectre’ that comes back to haunt those that presently hold power. Marx’s view of dialectics
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Class Consciousness, Power, Identity, and the Motivation to Teach considered the world to be in constant motion and change. Objective events can create eruptions in what appears to be a stable surface and which draws on subterranean activity. In addition, ‘it is the basic tenet of Marxism that it is through the experience of struggle that ideas change’ (Hatcher, 2007, p. 7). Although these teachers may not be adopting at this stage a revolutionary critical approach in their teaching, powered by an advanced form of class-consciousness like that expounded by Freire and others, their awareness of their class, coupled with future events and actions that may impact profoundly upon them and others around them, may be the most powerful lever for a fundamental change in society. Their class identity and location amongst other working-class families will continue to provide potential for action of a more radical kind in times to come. References Adams, R. (1991) Protests by Pupils: empowerment, schooling and the state. Lewes: Falmer Press. Ainley, P. (1993) Class and Skill: changing divisions of knowledge and labour. London and New York: Cassell. Alexander, R. & Flutter, J. (2009) Cambridge Primary Review. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Allman, P. (1999) Revolutionary Social Transformation: democratic hopes, political possibilities and critical education. Westport: Bergin & Garvey. Apple, M. (1985) Education and Power. London: Ark Paperbacks. Atkinson, E. (2002) The Responsible Anarchist: post-modernism and social change, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1), 73-87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425690120102863 Atkinson, E. & Cole, M. (2007) Indecision, Social Justice and Social Change: a dialogue on Marxism, postmodernism and education, in A. Green, G. Rikowski & H. Redunz (Eds) Renewing Dialogues in Marxism and Education. Vol. 1: Openings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Ball, S.J. (1999) Educational Reform and the Struggle for the Soul of the Teacher. Paper presented at the lecture given as Wei Lun Visiting Professor, Hong Kong. Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1985) The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups, Theory and Society, 14(6), 723-744. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00174048 Bourdieu, P. (1986) Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, C. (1977) Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London: Sage. Brooks, M. (2007) Historical Materialism, in M. Brooks, R. Sewell & A. Woods (Eds) What is Marxism? London: Wellred Books. Brown, P. (1987) Schooling for Ordinary Kids: inequality, unemployment, and the new vocationalism. London: Tavistock Press. Cole, M. (2008) Marxism and Educational Theory: origins and issues. Abingdon: Routledge. Dale, M. (1991) Social Science Knowledge and Explanations in Educational Studies, Educational Theory, 41, 135-152. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.1991.00135.x Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Giddens, A. (1973) The Class Structure of Advanced Societies. London: Hutchinson. Giroux, H.A. (1981) Ideology, Culture and the Process of Schooling. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Grace, G. (1978) Teachers, Ideology and Control: a study in urban education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hatcher, R. (2007) Social Class and Schooling: differentiation or democracy, in M. Cole (Ed.) Education, Equality and Human Rights: issues of gender, ‘race’, sexuality, disability and social class, 2nd edn. Abingdon: Routledge. Harris, K. (1982) Teachers and Classes. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Hill, D. (2007) What Neoliberal Global and National Capitals are doing to Education Workers and to Equality: some implications for social class analysis, in A. Green, G. Rikowski & H. Raduntz (Eds) 2007 Renewing Dialogues in Marxism and Education: openings. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hill, D. & Cole, M. (2001) Social Class, in D. Hill & M. Cole (Eds) Schooling and Equality: fact, concept and policy. London: Kogan Page. Kinney, D. (1993) From the Nerds to Normals; the recovery of identity amongst adolescents from middle school to high school, Sociology of Education, 66, 21-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2112783
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ANDREW LAMBIRTH is Professor of Education in the School of Education, University of Greenwich. His academic interests and publications are in the field of the teaching of literacy in primary schools – reading, writing and poetry and the effect of social class on identity, achievement and educational motivations for teachers and children. His new book, Literacy on the Left: reform and revolution will be published in 2011 by Continuum. Correspondence: Professor Andrew Lambirth, School of Education, Mansion Hill Site, Bexley Road, Eltham, London SE9 2PQ, United Kingdom (
[email protected]).
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