Transcript Making Modern Lives: schools, values, inequalities and

Making Modern Lives:
schools, values, inequalities
and social change
Lyn Yates
University of Melbourne
Do you think the school you’re at makes much
difference to where you end up in life or what
kind of person you become?
“Well it does. I think so. Because different
schools attract different sorts of people,
and they also I think help mould you
into sort of beliefs and that sort of
thing.”
(male, year 12 student, 1999)
Research and evidence
“... people always ask you what you want to
be when you grow up, and I just have no
idea...”
“...sometimes you say it because you don’t
really want to go into it…”
[extracts from 12 to 18 Project interviews, 1994 and 1995]
The 12 to 18 Project 1993-2001:
a qualitative longitudinal study of young
people and secondary schooling
Lyn Yates (University of Melbourne) and
Julie McLeod (Deakin University)
funded by the Australian Research Council
Focus of the project:
• Revisiting inequalities:
– school effects on individuals over time
• Gender and identity-making
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a qualitative longitudinal study of students
through each year of secondary school
twice-yearly interviews 1993 to 2000
four schools (all co-educational):
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one metropolitan high school
one metropolitan large private school
one provincial 'academic' high school
one provincial secondary college (ex-tech)
students from different backgrounds at the
same school; and from similar backgrounds at
different schools
In a study that followed students from
different backgrounds in different types
of schools, what came out in common
across the four schools?
What do you think this school thinks is
important?
“probably our appearance and what the public
thinks”
“the right uniform and that”
“uniform”
“wearing the uniform”
“uniform”
“setting a good example after school if you are
wearing your school uniform”
Findings common across schools
• Schools emphasize school reputation (more
than morality and in year 7 more than learning)
• Individual teachers matter
• Mathematics huge symbolic effect as measure
of academic achievement
• Year 7 decline in physical lunchtime activities
• Year 8-10 ‘turning off’
• Choice of specific career directions little
influenced by school practices.
What difference do particular schools
make?
SCHOOL 1:
What I'm going to do, I'm going to go
through Year 10, to Year 10, and
then and then do Year 12. If I fail
that, I'm just going to quit
altogether. I might have another go.
I don't know. This is what I'm going
to do.
Girl in year 8, regional tech.
SCHOOL 2:
It’s like introducing you to other sports so,
in case you want to learn them later, or
you go to a place where a lot of people
play it and you want to join in.
year 7 boy, private school.
SCHOOL 2:
“I can’t see where they’re getting this
diversity thing from, because you’ve got
to play all this sport; you’ve got to get up
on Saturday and play your sport and you
don’t really have that much time to open
up to anything else… but you know, it’s
a nice thing to put in the brochure… I
don’t think it’s really that genuine when
it comes down to it.”
ex-private school female at 18
SCHOOL 2:
With unemployment in Australia, what do you
think are the causes of it?
“Um, I don’t know. I something think it’s just
because people are really slack and because
they have top qualifications they’re not even
going to try. But I mean all my friends at
school, we’ll just walk into a place and say, “oh
excuse me, do you have any work,” and you
know about three out of five times they’ll get a
job, and that’s how I got my job.
female, private school, year 10.
SCHOOL 3:
“Yeah, they have a higher VCE, but they
don't have like a too good a reputation.
'Cos all fights and stuff break out over
there, and it's a dirty school. That's what
a lot of people say and that. So I think
we have a better reputation than a lot of
other schools.”
(year 7 girl, regional high school with good
reputation,1994)
SCHOOL 3:
Do you think much about the future?
Yeah, the future’s… you’ve got to have, got
to have a goal… because otherwise you
just, you’re going to university and you
think, oh what’s the point you know, so
you’ve got to be focused on the end.
male from Regional High in first post-school year
SCHOOL 4:
Do you think much about the future?
M: “Um, I try not to…”
What would you really like to happen for
you in the future?
M: Um, I’d like to find out what it is that I
want to do and go on and do it. I’d like to
travel. Yeah, I just want to land on my
feet, sort myself out…
female, 18, dropped out of uni course in first
month
SCHOOL 4
cohort in 7th year of project
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one left school in year 10 to take up an apprenticeship, but has dropped out
before completing this
one had hoped to get into a university course in an information technology
area, but got a disappointing VCE result, and is doing a TAFE one-year
course in a similar area
two are still at school because they dropped some of their studies last year
(in one case, there were medical problems involved)
one took up an overseas exchange in year 11, and has not, as he had
originally planned, returned to finish his schooling (though he has returned)
three began university courses, and of these
– one had dropped out by May when we did the interview,
– one was considering dropping out,
– the other was continuing and had found a subject area she enjoyed
(Women’s Studies).
Gender, self, the future:
What has changed?
What hasn’t?
Is gender an issue for individuals?
Is gender an issue for schools?
Do you think much about the future?
Belinda: Yeah. How famous I'd be.
Sally: About getting a job.
Steve: Sport.
Sally: Marriage, having kids.
Int: What do you think about Steve?
Steve: Oh, I just think about playing footy or basketball, which one
I'll choose. Oh, I don't know… if you are still friends with your
friends now.
Int: What about you Sally?
Sally: Yep, oh yeah, sometimes I think about getting married and
having children. Whether we would have enough money, and
getting a job. Getting a job mainly, probably.
Belinda: Yeah, it is mainly jobs, because I've never thought about
marriage.
interview in year 7, regional high
Equal opportunity language is now seen as
the norm – but there is also an
assumption that different things are
‘normal’ for girls and boys.
“Boys are just normal” (i)
Is body image important for to you?
No, if they say something to you, you just don't listen,
just ignore them.
Is it different for girls?
Yeah, they have to like... if they’re fat or something they
have to go on a diet, whereas males wouldn’t really
care. They don't really care how they look. Like if they
were really fat or something, they’d have to try and go
on a diet or something or exercise, but most males are
just normal.
year 8 boys
“boys are just normal” (ii)
Andrew: Well, most of the boys sort of piss, stuff around. Yeah, they stuff
around and they don't do a real lot in class and that.
Jeremy: Basically, they have more fun or try and have you know, mess
around and play up to see what they can get away with. Stuff like that.
The girls more or less just get straight down to work and stuff like that
and work hard. Not to say that boys don't work hard that is.
Do you think it is something schools should do something about?
Andrew: Um, well, there’s not a real lot you can do about it, um, because if
you send them out then they are only going to get further behind. If they
stuff around and you just send out, they are only going to get further
behind and teachers don't really have a say about what you do in your
spare time, whether you do your homework or not, so...
What’s your opinion on this?
Derek: I think that boys and girls have got the same chances to do well in
VCE, but as Andrew said, they, boys, tend to stuff around a bit more.
But you can’t stop that. Boys will be boys. So there’s not a lot you can
really do, it’s their choice.
[year 10 boys, regional school]
Some themes for boys:
• Friendships and relationships mattered –
both in present and in future
• Some inclination to turn away from an
activity if girls are doing well
• Bullying was an issue at all schools
• Present-focused and uncertainty about the
future, about where life was going
• For working class boys, the impact on
school attachment of concerns about
being a man
“You go to work, they treat you like an
adult; at TAFE they treat you like and
adult, but here (school) they just treat
you like a kid really, a little kid.”
year 12 male, regional school.
Being a (female) good student:
“I’ve had the same teacher twice in a
row, and I’m finding him really hard to
understand… he’s the sort of person
who could get a little bit offended if I
went and asked for help”
year 9 female, private school
Some themes for girls:
• School friendships with other girls
intensely important and one source of
disengagement from school
• Different patterns of relationship with
mothers of middle-class and working-class
• Sense of possibility about the future
• Pressures for middle class girls of
‘impossible expectations’
• Self-reflexivity a source of both opportunity
and pressure
VELS 2006
All students need to develop the capacities to:
– Manage themselves as individuals and in relation to
others
– Understand the world in which they live
– Act effectively in that world.
Students will need to create a future which is
– Sustainable
– Innovative
– Builds strong communities
Schooling is the social institution that we
subject all young lives to, and all those
lives matter.