Contributing to my intellectual stimulation

Think I should have done this earlier, immediately after the Battle of Ideas, rather than waiting for some spare time at practically 11pm on a Monday night. I obviously haven't learnt much from my fieldwork and fieldnote taking experiences in May and June. I went to the Battle of Ideas festival in the lush suburb (can it be called a suburb?) of Kensington, London on Saturday and Sunday. And I certainly got my intellect stimulated in rather unintended ways too. I went to talks that ranged from looking at the white working class in Britain, debating development, listening to music-developing a cultured ear, choice, rights and ethics in reproductive health, whether teachers should be role models, the role of critics in the arts, recession, the US and Obama and of course…South African 15 years after apartheid.


So a range of topics, facilitated in a very participatory and inclusive manner where dissident and divergent views were constructed, often in the makeup of the panel, and also encouraged by the engagement of the audience. An interesting theme that seems to resonate for me, and what I took from this event, was the role of ideological and political forces in shaping socio-cultural norms and values. What was also illuminated for me, was the hegemonic mechanism through which the status quo on all levels, is maintained; from how the working class is viewed in this country (who are referred to as chavs, basically a derogatory name given to mainly working class white people who unashamedly display their lack of taste in relation to fashion and style, seem to resist aspiration to better their lives, and generally behave poorly), down to the roles we think teachers should play in children's lives and whether classical music is inherently better than any other genre of music. Certainly on Saturday I came away thinking – Oh my goodness, I am looking at the 'other' with a value-laden, judgement lens, while recognising that these very values I personally hold have a socio-political and structural basis. So while I have been super resistant to being 'sucked' into middle class ideas, eager to assert my working class upbringing, the hegemonic forces where/are doing their work pretty well. And a key element of course, in all of this is the notion of education as the only valid means to social mobility and success.
So much research (including my own) has shown how education is more like to reproduce the inequalities between students of different class and racial backgrounds and entrench privileges already enjoyed by those with social, political and cultural power, education as the key to more choice and opportunity as been my mantra for years. I guess in my own defence I have always promoted learning for learning sake, rather than learning as a means to enhance your social or economic standing. Which brings me back to my fast becoming, favourite theorist of educational sociology at the moment, Basil Bernstein (interesting how once you start to understand what the hell a theorist is saying, you start to like them more). His whole theoretical project was to find ways to ensure that the curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation systems in schooling and education in general would accommodate working class kids in more meaningful ways and allow them to achieve and overcome a system specifically designed to exclude them. I am starting to see relevance in his work, or aspects of his work, for explaining how educational outcomes are linked to macro level socio-political influences and structures.