CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

This chapter will enable you to:

CONFLATING CLASS AND CULTURE

In Chapter 4, I introduced the term ‘hidden curriculum’ to refer to the things we learn in school although they are not explicitly taught. One of the central contents of the hidden curriculum the world over – and one that may even be explicitly denied in the ‘published’ curriculum – is that society is organised as a meritocracy: people who are smart and talented, who work hard and are willing to take risks will get ahead in life and they deserve their good fortune because they have earned it. On the other hand, there are people who are not so smart, who are lazy, who do not put in enough effort and lack enterprise. These people will not get far in life, they may end up mired in poverty, as teenage single mums and even engaging in crime. These people, too, deserve their lot in life because of their lack of effort. So the theory goes; but there is one problem with this key message of the hidden curriculum: it is patently not true and far fewer people ‘make it to the top’ than are left behind and, in particular, members of some groups are much more likely to get ahead than others. This is where another message of the hidden curriculum comes in: instead of learning that we live in an unequal socio-economic order that is hierarchically shaped and has far fewer spots on the top than at the bottom, and that class position largely determines our chances in life, we learn to see ‘culture’ as the prime reason why some groups fare so much worse than others.