Nutshell Studies: Khan (2011)

The concept of cultural capital has assumed increasing significance in the Sociology of Education in recent times and Khan’s ethnographic study of St. Pauls, one of America’s most-prestigious boarding schools, is a useful and interesting way to introduce students to both the concept and how to apply it to understand an important dimension of social inequality.

If you want to go into the topic in a little more depth, this recent post on Rethinking the Hidden Curriculum shows how Khan’s work can be applied to give a new lease of life to an ageing sociological concept…

Khan: Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School (2011)

Illustration “The New Kid in Town”

Ellie, 17, arrives on a scholarship to St. Paul’s, to one of America’s elite boarding schools,. The campus with its sprawling manicured lawns, historic buildings and students who project effortless confidence, feels a world away from her previous school. Although she comes, by most people’s standards, from an affluent middle-class family, she feels out-of-place among peers whose parents – CEOs of major companies, national politicians, media celebrities – are seriously wealthy and can easily afford the $70,000 a year fees.

Keenly alert to the differences in her life and theirs, she notices how her classmates glide through conversations. At lunch, they casually mention summer internships with global tech companies, skiing trips to the French and Swiss Alps, backpacking in South America and the endless family parties attended by leading politicians, business leaders and film stars whose names Ellie knows well. Unlike her new friends she’s not (yet) on first-name terms with these people because she’s never had the opportunity to meet them. Strangely enough, these things don’t sound to Ellie like they’re said to impress: they’re simply the matter-of-fact minutiae of the world through which her fellow students move.

In her English class, students debate global literature with ease. One boy links a novel to his travels in India, while another girl compares it to a documentary her family watched during a trip to Kenya. Ellie has read the book they’re discussing and she has her opinions about it but hesitates to speak, worried her ideas won’t sound as worldly.

In the common room, Ellie’s peers switch seamlessly between joking about pop culture to serious discussions about climate change. They seem comfortable with every topic, never awkward, always confident. She wonders how they’ve learned to be so adaptable.

The following week Ellie is invited to join a group heading into the city. They move through cafés, galleries and shops with practiced – and monied – ease. Ellie enjoys herself but notices how her new friends seem to belong everywhere they go, while she feels like she’s still learning the rules.

At night, Ellie writes in her journal. She’s proud of her hard work and knows she can keep up academically, but senses that success here isn’t just about grades. It’s about something harder to define: a way of carrying yourself, of fitting in, of seeming to be perfectly at home in any situation.

What Ellie is starting to learn is that studying hard is only part of the recipe for future success in the circles in which she’s now starting to move. Where she struggles in her new environment is in matching the soft skills – the “natural” self-confidence, wide cultural experiences and general ability to adapt easily to any social situation – her peers have been cultivating since childhood.

Insights…

Khan (2011) adapts Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to show howprivilege is reproduced not only through wealth but also through “the habits of ease”: intangibleslikeself-confidence, cultural fluency and social adaptability. The key insight here is that elite students learn to move comfortably across and between different social worlds – from home to school to work. This confidence makes them appear “natural leaders”, even though this, Khan suggests, is a carefully cultivated perception.

Social class reproduction – ensuring the sons and daughters of the elite “earn” similar positions of power and influence in adult life while not appearing to be privileged – is increasingly a function of cultural rather than economic capital. The hidden advantages cultural capital confers on elite students disguises their privilege as “natural talent” in a way that eases their passage through school and into elite universities and occupations. Their apparent meritocratic rise through the system obscures the fact it merely perpetuates social inequality.

St. Paul’s students were an almost uniquely privileged group possessing high levels of:

• embodied capital (how they spoke, the language they used, their cultural knowledge of things like art, literature and media)

• objectified capital (the physical and cultural goods they owned, the labels they wore, the school they attended…) and

• institutionalised capital (the academic degrees, professional qualifications and certifications they gained).

While the idea of meritocratic achievement is framed in terms of individual achievement based on personal qualities of intelligence and hard work, Khan’s study demonstrates how something that appears meritocratic, such as educational achievement, is actually deeply influenced by a range of hidden class processes.

Although it’s easy to focus on the idea of privilege being a function of wealth, the gatekeeping role of schools in this overall process should not be underestimated. The ethos a school creates allows and encourages those with the “right” social background and “right” personal characteristics to flourish in an environment that legitimises privilege and shapes the reproduction of future elites.

Implications…

Perspective	Implications
Functionalism	Elite schools are a training ground for a society’s future leaders, thereby  maintaining a sense of order, continuity and stability.
Marxism	Schools reproduce social class inequality by legitimising privilege as merit, thereby contributing to class reproduction through ”meritocratic” education.
Weberian	In modern societies status groups, such as affluent parents, use elite schools to confer prestige and cultural advantages over and above economic wealth.
Feminism	Elite institutions are, by-and-large, patriarchal institutions that reproduce gendered privilege.
Interactionism	Shows how everyday interactions, from classroom debates, through shared dining and networking, reinforce confidence and privilege.

Exam Tips and Where to Apply Them

Hidden curriculum: Khan’s interpretation of cultural capital (the habits of ease) can be applied to show a knowledge, understanding and evaluation of the concept of a hidden curriculum. Khan adds a new and different dimension to how this concept operates within schools.

Class reproduction: Use the study to show how elite parents are able to ensure their sons and daughters reach similarly elite positions in their adult lives.

Meritocracy: Khan’s study is directly critical of the claim schools are meritocratic institutions.