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SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE
LYNYATES
University of Technology, Sydney
JULIE MCLEOD
Deakin. University
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 qf thing (male, Year 12 student, 1999).
'Social justice' is not a straightforward concept; and nor is the question of what
schools do in relation to it. In this article we want to elaborate a little on the first
of these claims, and illustrate the second by choosing to talk about two 'middle'
or 'ordinary' high schools and their apparent impact on the students in them
whom we followed in a study from 1993 when they were in grade 6
to the present year, when most have finished school.
What is 'socialjllstice'?
Earlier this year, at the conclusion of an international conference on Education
and Sociallusticel, David Hamilton was asked to report back to the conference
what he had heard to be its key themes. After two days of papers on a range of
topics and issues-educationally disadvantaged groups of various sorts; right
movements; system reorganisations that were reinforcing past inequalities; global
economic impacts on national education policies-Hamilton commented: 'I've
heard a lot of papers about social inju.stices, but not ones taking up the issue of
social ju.stice'.
As Hamilton observed, 'social justice' is a considerably more problematic
concept at this present point in history than social injustice.:! The claims of
different types of social movements (feminist, postcoloniaJ, anti-racist, disability
rights) have muddied the waters about what a 'socially society would look
AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER VOLUME 27 NO 3 DECEMBER 201H) 59
11 U III UJIIIIII
200110646
60
Y ATES & MCLEOD
like (Young 1990). Theorists are more sceptical and aware of the dangers of
unitary utopian models and the questions and interests these might silence (Butler
1995). And, as Michael Apple has argued at the Umea conference, there is not
today a powerful and popular vision of a 'just' alternative at work in the puolic
commonsense in the way that the vision or spectre of economic efficiency,
competitiveness, individualism has taken on.
Nancy Fraser (1997 j pp. 2-3) is one who acknowledges 'the current absence
of utopian vision' but sees it as a sign of expanded concerns which have not
easily come together in the contemporary world:
we are witnessing an apparent shift in the political imaginary, especially
in the terms in which justice is imagined. Many actors appear to be
moving away from a socialist political imaginary, in which the cen.tral
problem of justice is to a 'postsocialist' political imaginary,
in which the central problem of justice is recognition. Some celebrate the
shift 'from redistribution to recognition' as if struggles for distributive
justice were no longer relevant. Others bemoan the decentering of class,
which they equate with the decline of egalitarian economic claims, as if
struggles for racial and gender justice were 'merely cultural' and not also
addressed to distribution ... These, I maintain, are false antitheses ...
Michael Pusey' s Middle A ustralia Project (1998a, 1 998b), a study of the views
of 'ordinary' or 'middle' Australians today, also provides some empirical support
for the importance of expanding concerns about 'social justice' beyond a
narrowly distributional concept. The study reports some increasing inequalities of
income and increase in economic uncertainty that many in the middle are feeling,
but also taps people's even greater concern about the changes in family and social
forms and the inadequacy of public social arrangements in relation to these.
Taking up 'social justice' in relation to education raises broad questions about
social relations and social advantage and disadvantage, and a need to recognize
that there is not just a single scale of disadvantage. The production of immediate
distributional outcomes is one part of this, but not the whole. What schools do to
and for the students in those schools is also part of it, but not the whole. The
values that those students acquire and take with them in relation to other
individuals and social groups-what kind of society the schools are helping to
produce-is also worthy of attention. As Sharon Gewirtz (1998, p. 471) has
argued, we need to be conscious of the 'relational dimension of social justice',
the nature and ordering of social relations, _the formal and informal rules
which govern how members of a society treat each other
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE 6L
Gewirtz adapts (ris Marion Young's (1990) conceptualisation of social justice as
relating to concerns about five different 'faces of oppression': exploitation,
marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence to set out the
questions these raise for education:
How, to what extent and why do education policies support, interrupt or
subvert:
l. relationships (capitalist, patriarchal, racist, heterosexist,
etc.) within and beyond educational institutions?
2. Processes of marginalisation and inclusion within and beyond the
education system?
3. The promotion of relationships based on recognition, respect, care
mutuality or produce powerlessness (for education workers and
students)?
4. Practices of cultural imperialism? And which cultural differences
should be affirmed, which should be universalised and which rejected?
5. Violent practices within and beyond the education system? (Gewirtz
1998, p. 482).
In relation to all these issues, it is of relevance to look closely at the subjectivity
of students as they develop in particular school contexts, and this is what we set
out to do in our qualitative, longitudinal research project.
The 12 to 18 Project, subjectivity, zeitgeists and social
justice
[n 1993, we began the 12 to 18 Project (Yates & McLeod 1996), to foHow in
some detail what happened to students who were about to enter four different
secondary schools in Australia. We came to it imbued by some of the research
traditions that have been important within the two different themes that Fraser
identifies, and that have fed the formulations that Young and Gewirtz take up3. In
terms of the politics of distribution, we were interested in revisiting the
longstanding interest in schooling's part in 'who gets what'; so we set up our
study to include an elite school and another in a disadvantaged area, as well as
two in the middle, and we set it up too to include students from different
backgrpunds (class, gender, ethnicity) attending the same school, and students
from similar backgrounds attending different schools. In terms of the politics of
recognition, we were interested in schooling's part in the 'construction of
gendered identity and the different forms this takes-in the values that are
62 YATES & MCLEOD
formed about what is constituted as the norm, as right ways of thinking, about
who, what and how is other. We set up the study to take the form of lengthy
interviews the sam'e twice a year, over the seven years from twelve
to eighteen.
By its nature, a small-scale, qualitative study is not a test of what each school
produces as retention, success rates, post-school outcomes; quantitative data is
necessary to check the overall picture (Teese 2000, Collins, Kenway & McLeod
2000).4 What our study assumed was relevant to understanding this bigger
picture, -and where its potential contribution lies, is in exploring the subjectivity
of the students being shaped in the course of this process. Like Fraser then, we
assume that 'distribution' and 'recognition' are not antitheses but intimately
linked when it comes to studying what school does to produce fairness and
unfairness, advantage and disadvantage, lesser and greater forms of social
equality.
Indeed, from the beginnings of the equal opportunity work in relation to girls
in the 1970s, the issue was never simply about 'distribution' of school success
(Yates 1986, 1993,1996, 1997, Collins, Kenway & McLeod 2000), but about the
creation of world views and identities that reduced women's power and
opportunities in later life. And, since the 19708, the most creative work on how
'class' differences are reproduced through education pays a lot of attention to
issues of identity and subjectivity and the reception these are given in school (for
example, Young 1971, Bourdieu 1998, Willis 1977, Walkerdine, Lucey &
Melody forthcoming, Teese 2000). Moreover, the focus on identity and
subjectivity has a particular imperative today:
Identity resources are increasingly critical to social actors in a society of
risk and uncertainty as opposed to a society of reproduction and roles
(McDonald 1999, p. 6).
And what the work around gender, 'multiculturalism', 'inclusive education'
brought to the fore, was that issues related to social justice and schooling are not
confined to what that school does for an individual in terms of 'equal
opportunity'. The work of schools is also part of the broader creation of a social
and cultural zeitgeist about who matters and what matters and what counts as fair
and unfair treatment of individuals and groups. These impact on citizenship, on
labour regulation, on discrimination, on interpersonal experiences; and they also
become taken up in each individual's sense of themselves, their capacity, their
significance, their potency in the world.
One way then of talking about issues of justice in relation to 'ordinary'
high schools to think of this in terms of questions about, 'what does this school
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE
63
open up or shut down for students?', 'what does the school make possible for its
students beyond the immediate post-school entry?' and 'what patterns of social
orientations and values beyond school are being produced by schooling and by
this particular school?' And, overall, 'what is this school producing in relation to
the various senses of exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, etc, discussed
by Young and by Gewirtz?' In other words, as we argue above, the issues of
social justice relate to what happens to individuals and groups in that school and
also to what is being developed through them as orientations to the social whole,
the 'formal and informal rules which govern how members of a society treat each
other' .
In terms of this argument, the discussion of 'social justice' and education
should not be restricted to the study of 'disadvantaged' and'ruling class' students
or schools: what every school does (and what all schools together do) warrants
scrutiny. In this article we have decided to focus on the two 'middle' schools in
our study, rather than the two that were more obviously elite and disadvantagecP.
Schools like these, ordinary high schools that ar.e neither elite nor extremely
disadvantaged, form the great bulk of schools in Australia and yet they have
received relatively little attention from researchers specifically interested in broad
patterns of social inequalities and social relations (Watson 1993, Yates 2000c).
The 12 to 18 Project is now in its final stage. This year (2000), the students
are 18, and all except a few whose study has been interrupted have left their
schools. In familiar ways, students from richer backgrounds, students with plenty
of 'cultural capital', got high results, and are on track to reproducing their initial
advantages; students from poorer backgrounds, in poorer neighbourhoods, are
more likely to now be not in tertiary studies, and to be unemployed and facing
future economic uncertainty (though in bot_h cases, there are exceptions; and a
more complex picture could be given) (Yates 1999, 2000a, Yates 2000e, McLeod
2000a, 2000b). But here we want to talk about the two schools in 'the middle',
and what happened to the students who went to them.
6
Two ordinary high schools and questions of 'social
justice'
The two 'middle schools' of our study, which are the focus of this article, both
drew students from a range of family backgrounds-from poor and unemployed
to small business people, and parents working in professional occupations. In
other words, these were high schools not so typed as 'disadvantaged' that no
'middle class' children entered them; they were schools with some positive
reputation, and where some students have gone on both in the past and in the
current study to tertiary studies; but they are not selective s'choo)s or confined to a
64 YATES &. MCLEOD
narrowly middle-class population. One of the schools (,Suburban High') is
located in a largely middle-class suburb of Melbourne, the other (,Provincial
High') in a large provincial city. The questions we want to raise here are, what is
being done in these schools, schools at least as common in Australia than the
extremes which attract so much more research, that is contributing to social
justice or social injustice?
Given the constraints of space in this article, we will not focus here on intra-
school issues, of what each school does to distribute success and failure, or to
expand or contract self-understandings of their own capacities among the
students of different backgrounds who attend. Rather we want to focus on the
way, overall, each school seems to be producing a different form of outcomes, a
different form of seeing oneself and one's place in the world, a different form of
thinking about other social groups.
We want to begin, then, with the end point of the study. All of the students
began secondary school in 1994. By this year, 2000, at Suburban High, of the
seven students who were our initial focus at this school:
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, and
the other was continuing and had found a subject area she enjoyed
(Women's Studies).
The impression we had overall of these somewhat diverse students was that they
did not feel highly driven to get on the career track, and were unlikely to express
a strong commitment to a particular job or field of study. Many conveyed an
'aimlessness', a sense of uncertainty about their immediate and distant futures.
For some students this uncertainty caused some concern, for others it was
understood as part of growing up, of 'finding yourself', but most did not convey a
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE Ml DOLE 6S
strong sense of work-related ambition to 'get on in the world' (with the partial
exception of two boys from different ethnic backgrounds).
At our second school, Provincial High, all except one of the students we
began with now seem firmly on a vocational track. Three of the six students we
studied are now at university (all doing directly vocational courses); one is doing
a TAFE course in her chosen field (hotel management); one was accepted at
university but is working prior to applying to join the police; and one left school
as soon as he was old enough (Year] 0), and when last wc made contact was
doing casual work in a supermarket. The impression we had of these students
from the interviews this year (we were not able to interview the student who had
left earlier) is that they all had clear plans about what they were doing and where
they were going, and indeed in most cases were not only taking a vocational
course or path but had further plans about what they were going to do next, and
were taking steps to make that happen (for example, going to the gym regularly,
to pass the police fitness test; applying for a RAAF scholarship with plans of
completing nursing within the airforce; finding out options for continuing beyond
the current degree to do a graduate degree in medicine).
Students from the two schools also volunteered different reflections and
memories of their school experience. Those who had attended Suburban High
spoke very warmly of teachers and the caring they had received, of the fact that it
gave them second chances. Those who had been to Suburban High also spoke of
the student mix and culture at the school both positively (appreciated its
diversity) and, in some cases, as something that made it hard to excel.
At Provincial High, when we asked the same questions, 'Do you think this
was a good school?' and 'Do you think it was the right school for youT, the ex-
students of the school were more likely to hesitate before replying. Their story
also was positive about their school being a 'good' one; but they were more
likely to offer some criticisms about the teachers; and were much less
enthusiastic about their teachers than the students at Suburban High. They
thought their school had good facilities, but many made comparisons with
students at private schools, and said they did not get as much individual attention
as those students.
In both cases, the themes in these final interview comments reflected a picture
of the two schools that had been consistent through the previous six years of
interviews.
7
In the remainder of this paper, we want to draw out some aspects of
what seems to be happening here in terms of the two schools' roles in and
relationship to social hierarchy; and in terms of maintaining a focus on both
distribution (who gets what) and recognition (how individuals and groups are
advantaged or harmed) in terms of what these schools are doing.
YATES& MCLEOD
First, let us consider social hierarchy and 'distinction', especially as theorised
by Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu & Passeron 1977, Bourdieu 1984, 1998) a theorist
whose work is now being quite widely called on in education (eg. Ban 1998,
McDonald 1999, Teese 2000). In very simple summary, Bourdieu's argument is
that schooling contributes to social inequality by giving success to those groups
who possess existing cultural advantage, and by appearing to be not doing that
but rather rewarding individual intelligence and effort. One of the ways this
occurs is by unstated 'distinctions' whereby those whose background is not
already one of familiarity with and success in the education system are made
conscious of their otherness, the closer they get to' the levels and markers of
academic success. More commonly, 'habitus', the acquired dispositions related to
particular family social locations, ensures that groups learn to value the things
that lead to the reproduction of their situation-just as, in his classic study of
workingc1ass lads, Willis (1977) found that bright working-class boys valued
behaviour marked by disdain for academic schooling.
Bourdieu's theories have been extremely useful for understanding some
elements of how students from different backgrounds (habitus) see and are seen
by their schools. But it is tempting in terms of this work to slide into a
reproductive model in which habitus of family and school are conflated, and in
which particular forms in which different schools may operate are glossed over.
This is where some comparison of Suburban High and Provincial High is of
interest. Accepting broadly some of the arguments of Bourdieu and Richard
Teese about the big picture and class-based cultural advantages and
disadvantages of different students in Australia, we have in these two schools,
with some broadly similar (though certainly not identical) intake, two different
ways of relating to the 'cultural arbitrary', two different representations of what is
valued. At one school, relativities of positioning in the economic and status social
hierarchy are emphasised and taken as an explicit agenda for both school and
individual; at the other, it is a submerged background, not part of the school's
strong agenda. One would expect these different modes might create some
difference both in terms of the fate of the individual students, and in terms of the
broader values they produce.
Provincial High is a school that takes very seriously many of the things that
Bourdieu sees as important markers of social hierarchy and power, and as keys to
what might be called social injustice, or the reproduction of inequality. (The
quote at the beginning of this article is from a student at this school.) The school
overtly values winning and academic success and has the reputation of being an
academic and sporting school; but it is attuned also to the types of distinctions
that mark out social hierarchies and the claims to be among the elite. When we
ask students at this school what they think of the school, or how the school
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE 67
compares with other schools, they talk at great length (compared with students
from the other three schools in our study) about the comparisons involved. They
constantly refer to material facilities, behaviour, reputation with the public, and,
above all, participation in a sporting activity associated with elite schools as the
things that mark this as a 'good' school. Making a comparison to another high
school in the same city, one student says:
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 [ think we have a
better reputation than a lot of other schools (Year 7 girl, ] 994).
)n terms of distributive social justice, this school produces respectable results
though not as good as its reputation might suggest. On the 'valued added' scale of '
VCE results
R
now published annually, this school hovers around 100, which is
interpreted to mean that the school produces results that neither add nor detract
much in terms of advantages to the (relative, school-assessed) 'intelligence' of
the students who enter. (Interestingly, Suburban High produces a similar pattern
on this measure-though the two schools have different reputations in their
respective communities, with Provincial High positioned very much as a 'good'
successful, academic school; and Suburban High positioned as somewhat
alternative, and not highly academic.)
The history and situation of Provincial High was one where the interest in
distinction, and in the way public (state) schools might measure up to elites, was
prominent. Students in our study already could speak about these issues when we
first interviewed them in grade 6, prior to coming to the school. As they went on,
the interest in the comparisons and social distinctions remained high, The
students both explicitly and implicitly reflected this school's values in their
ongoing concerns about success and about artefacts of success; their belief in the
importance of public appearances, reputation and achievements as being more
important than some of the processes along the way. For example, this seemed to
be a school where bullying of boys in the junior years was particularly rife; and
where students did not feel that such issues were likely to be seen by or
adequately addressed by, their teachers. At the end of school, compared with the
other schools in our study, we heard few warm' comments about the teachers and
about their time at school. This did not seem to be an environment which was
sensitive to racism, or concerned in an explicit way with 'inclusi veness'.
In the course of our study, one of the six students left school as soon as he
reached the legal age-a likelihood that had been by the Pupil Welfare
Co-ordinator three years earlier when we first interviewed him in Year 7! The
68 YATES & MCLEOD
boy was following a pattern of his older brothers, and the school seemed simply
to accept that this would happen. But the other five people in our study, though
they come from different types of family backgrounds in terms of SES, ethnicity
and family values, are doing a range of courses and work now, and all have
strong and strategic plans for where they intend to go over the next five years.
To summarise, in terms of what the school produced as outcomes, and in
terms of how students talked, ProvjnciaI High generates a sense of a world in
which individual effort and hard work bring rewards, and constant effort and
vigilance is needed to keep up with those at the top of the social hierarchy, who
are always an explicit point of cO!l1parison. The outcomes for individuals are
positive in terms of the types of things parents and policy-makers worry about:
attachment to career routes, taking action, being strategic, being hard-working,
being energetic. Students who make it through to Year 12 here acquire a strong
sense of their own responsibility and efficacy to take action to shape their own
future. At the same ,time the students are accepting a rat-race in which they
compete at a disadvantage. Listening to their experiences over the six years of
second.ary school makes clear the amount of disciplinary work that goes into
being seen as 'as good as' the private schools-and of course 'as good as' itself
carries the message that you are not one of them. These students are also being
nurtured into individualist ways of thinking that puts the responsibility for one's
fate on the individual, and that carries with it relatively little empathy for victims
of bullying or racism.
Where Provincial High was a school whose central motifs were concerned
with distinction, hard work, and winning; Suburban High was a school with some
pride in a tradition of being a bit alternative, or being inclusive, of looking after
its students. When we started our study, enrolments had been dropping (a sign of
the increased competitiveness and focus on outcomes that recent times have
generated), but although the school took on some of the markers of new
discipline (for example introducing a uniform) and was successful in reversing
the dropping enrolments, the ethos of the teachers, and the school publicity to
itself in its newsletter and noticeboards maintained a quite different set of values
than at Provincial High.
From students' comments over the years of our study, we had a sense that this
was a school that paid a lot of personal. attention [0 students, tried to help them
and give them second chances, and where there was genuinely less racism than at
other schools. (Of course all the schools in this study formally declared racism
and sexism to be unacceptable; but in Suburban High it actually carried through
into students' broader answers about incidents and social issues related to
difference and racism in and out of school; and in their own judgements about
what they thought the school valued, and what they thought the strengths of the
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE
school were.) Students spoke very warmly of teachers-both in general and in
. relation to particular teachers, and reported one of the strengths of the teaching as
being its ongoing commitment to 'giving you another chance'. For the individual
students, the result seemed to be that they felt nurtured, treated therapeutically,
but not highly pushed. Though drug-taking was present and talked about by
students at all of the schools in our study, at this school it seemed more
normalised. Students not only found it easy to get involved in drug-taking, but
found it easy to talk about this, and difficult to give up, even when they were
wanting to do so in the run-up to the final Year 12 certificate.
When students at High made comparisons with other schools, they
did not focus on social hierarchy so much as the style and the ,culture of this
, school. As individuals, students felt less pressure, and one consequence seemed
to be that in this immediate post-school year many have not advanced along the
educational pathways to the extent that they might have at another school.
Do you think the school was a good one, or do you think it was the right
one for you, the school?
Urn, I think I might have done better if I was at maybe one of the private
school's dad wanted me to go to, but I was happier there, like I think it
was a good school, yeah (18 year old female, May 2000).
This young woman goes on to say that a private school would have been 'more
disciplined' and 'stricter\ but that at Suburban High she liked her friends, and
she liked the teachers, and by when she went on to university 'it was
so daunting there was just so many people and you didn't know anyone' (and she
dropped out of that environment within two months of starting there).
Provincial High, at least as reported by the students, was not highly attuned to
differences in socio-cultural identity and background, but was highly sensitive to
the public circulation and markers of social distinction, and was highly directed
to an individualist view of progress and possibility. Suburban High, at least as
reported by students over seven years of interviews, was highly sensitive to
individual and group difference, and nurtured a sense of good relationships
('recognition') rather than having an impact on distributional inequalities (indeed,
students here were inclined to resign themselves in advance to not getting where
they would like).
So the schools seemed to have some impact on individu.al and short-term
identities and achievements; what were they producing in terms of the longer
term, and the broader politics, of a just or unjust society? Here, we want to
consider the things discussed by students at each school in relation to some
general questions we asked them all in an iriterview when they were in Year 10:
YATES& MCLEOD
Do you think long term unemployment is an important issue in Australia today?
What do you think are the causes of unemployment? Do you think long term
unemployment will have any impact on your life?
At Provincial High, here is a very characteristic way of answering these
questions:
I think everyone should be to get a job, because then they get
responsible and they have to, everyone has to learn how to be responsible,
how to be reliable, how to do things; because that's just the way society is,
that's the way life is) that's the ,way everything goes. And the world runs
like that. So for people that aren't employed and don't want to be or are
finding it hard to get a job, I would try to encourage them as much as I
could because you've got to, it's important and it's good for you, you'll
benefit from it?
What do you think causes long term unemployment?
Urn, sometimes people's attitudes ...
And do you think it's likely to have any impact on your life?
No, I've got my goals. I'm going to go for them. I'll do the best I can and
hopefully with my qualifications I get a good job at least. If I'm not
getting the one I want, at least rH get a good job. That's you know, that's
fine (Year 10 female, 1997).
This student, and the others from this school, have accepted the message that
one's outcome in life is a result of schooling and hard work. But they are also
conscious of the relevance of social distinction (how one dresses, for
and of the limitations of location and job availability. There is considerable stress
on individual responsibility, an awareness of lurking possibilities of a difficult
and competitive environment, and that they will have to work hard and be alert if
they are not to fall prey to this. These are some of the comments they made:
I see it as a huge issue because my brother has finished school and 1 can
see how hard it's going to be to get a job
Probably one of the biggest things is dropping out of a school and not
having an education to get a job over other people who have stayed in
school. .
Some of them I don't think want to go out and work.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE
A lot of people have been out of work for a while, and that sort of thing
just leads to alcohol and drug use in the, ah, how would you put it, lesser
richer popu lations of [this city].
What do you chink are the causes o/unemployment?
Probably the way they think about themselves, or the way they dress, or,
urn, yeah, the way they think because of where they live. They don't have
much self-esteem. [ ... ] They sort of don't think they can gel a job. If you
think like that you won't ajob (Year 10 interviews, 1997).
71
That was Provincial High, the young people whose views at the end of school,
were that it had been a good school, had been measuring up in a competitive
environment, but did not feel particularly warm about ,it. For the individual
student, it had generated a striving to work hard, to keep in there as much as
possible, a drive to self-improvement but a willingness to be realistic about
aspirations. In terms of orientations to a more long-term social whole, it was
producing a sense that the unemployed deserve little sympathy, that outcomes are
the result of individual application and effort. The existence of social distinction
might be recognized, but there was little railing against unfair distribution of
starting point advantages and power; wistful envy rather than resentment framed
their attitudes towards the advantages of private schools.
When we asked students at Suburban High, a similar set of questions about
unemployment at the same point in their schooling, they gave a rather different
set of perspectives on society, jobs and individual effort relation to this. Where
students at Provincial High had responded to these questions as an invitation to
repeat the message about the importance of finishing school, of working hard,
these students at Suburban High responded to the question with a more distanced
reflection on the shape of social change, and respond in ways that is much more
in tune with a -left' view of the world. Social change has happened; it creates
problems; employers close down jobs.
Do you think that long term unemployment is a serious issue in Australia
today?
I guess so.
What do you think causes unempLoyment?
Well, there's not enough jobs, and then people get discouraged because
they can't get a job, so they give up. And some people are just lazy.
Do you think that long term unemployment will have any impact on your
life? .
Y ATES & MCLEOD
Urn, probably, I don't know really (female, Year 10,1997).
And what do you think are the causes of unemployment?
Things being closed. Not enough, like jobs within a job, like just say in a
factory there's not like, there could be more people working. Like they're
just making excuses [ ... ]
And do you thitlk long term unemployment will have any impact on your
life?
Yep, because it might mean that I. won't get a job. And if I don't get a job,
well then I can't, like if I leave home, well once it's time to leave home,
because I want to leave home like around 18, 19, because that's after I
finish schooL Urn, and if like I can't find a job, well then I'm going to be
in a bit of trouble. I mean like my parents are putting money in and stuff
into my over 18 account, and like I'll have a bit then, but it won't last me
long. Like when you think about when you've got your own house and
you have to pay all the bills and stuff, it won't last long (female, Year 10,
1997).
What do you think causes unemployment?
Urn, probably companies not offering jobs.
Do you think that unemployment will have any impact on your own life?
Oh, hopefully not. I hope it doesn't affect me at all. But I don't know what
the future holds (male, Year 10, 1997).
What do you think are the causes of it?
Probably people not being qualified and you know you need, more and
more you need qualifications to get jobs, so people, say, are getting a bit
older and are unqualified, and it '5 much harder to get a job because so
many people are looking for them.
And do you think unemployment will.have any impact on your own life?
Urn, if I decide to start, go on the art side of things. I would probably be
self if I did that. But, I mean, I could have a problem with
money coming in, but I wouldn't be unemployed, I'd never be
unemployed if I was self employed. But if I was, possibly if I was trying
to get, oh, I hope not, I don't think so, jbut could (male, Year 10, 1997).
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE 73
Even the final student quoted here, the one who associates unemployment to
some extent with lack of qualifications, is referring to ~ historical pattern that has
caught out some older people, not a message to himself (or others) to work harder
now.
Students at Suburban High do not take unemployment as a p'ersonal reflection
on the unemployed, but just as something that happens for reasons outside their
control. In relative terms, this school was doing well on 'the politics of
recognition'; but distinctly less well on the distributive side (at least at this
immediate postschoo! stage). The sense of the students sitting back, not sure
what will happen, not showing signs of wanting to take very active steps to make
things happen, which is evident in the Year 10 interviews just quoted, is sustained
and still evident in our most recent interviews when most have finished school. In
the recent interviews, for example, one student spoke of wanting to continue his
studies, but just could not get himself organized to do this; another was vaguely
dissatisfied with the university course she began, and found travelling there by
public transport too much trouble-and had dropped out within two months of
beginning the degree.
Final reflections
Schools distribute success and failure; they also teach people things; and they
impact on individuals and groups in both the short term and the long term. With
these students from two 'middle' high schools in our study, we see some 'school
effect> on where the students from each seem to be oriented by this first post-
school year, some different ways of seeing what matters and of thinking about the
relations between individuals, group characteristics and the social whole. In each
case issues of 'distribution' and 'recognition' are intertwined; in each case, the
directions set in train have some consequences both for the individuals
themselves, and for broader development of Australia's polity, economy, and
relations between its citizens.
In the case of Provincial High, in the short-term at least, the school is not
producing an overly sympathetic orientation to most of the issues for social
justice that Gewirtz set out. The students appear to be not highly sensitive to, nor
interested in, issues of group marginalisation and inclusion, of recognition and
respect, of violence, that have marked the new social movements around gender,
race, culture. But they are aware of some of the class-based forms of recognition
and the stress by this school on how one's individual future might be advanced,
the sense of self-efficacy that the school also generates and contributes to greater
individual opportunity for these students than they might otherwise have had.
Their future sense of themselves as capable and as responsible for their own
74 YATES & MCLEOD
outcomes is enabling, both individually and in terms of social patterns
9
, but it
also feeds how these young people see and relate to others, including some lack
of sympathy for those who are disadvantaged or targets of bullying and racism.
At Suburban High, students are more successfully schooled in a broad range of
'social justice' concerns, and, in our most recent interviews, are carrying their
sensitivities and willingness to speak out about racism and sexis'm into their post-
school social relations. But, at least in the immediate post-school phase, they
appear to be placed in a more uncertain relationship to the labour market.
Of course this has been an over-simplified picture. Our intention here was not
to finely account for the processes 'which fed the views we reported here, nor to
talk about some differences between students from different backgrounds or
gender in each school. Rather we wanted to put on the agenda the issue of that
big bulk of Australian students and schools that are roughly in 'the middle'; and
to raise questions about social justice that go beyond the simple accounting of
whether success and retention rates are proportional to a group's representation in
the school population.
Acknowledgment
The 12 to 18 Project has been supported by funding from the Australia Research
Council and with additional support from University of Technology, Sydney;
Deakin University and La Trobe University. The preparation of this paper has
been assisted by the work of the Project Officer on the project, Dr Michelle
Arrow (UTS).
Notes
Conference on New Directions in Educational Research: Education, Teacher Education and
SociLI.l Justice held at Umea University, June 2000. Papers from the conference will be published
in a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of lnclusi..,e Education.
AI this conference, Vates expressed reservations about the w,e of the term social justice' as a
banner for the Iype of discussions we wanted to have (Yates 20nOb). She argued Ihat Ihis phrase
seems to call up an agreed and set form of rules against which breaches can be measured; and
also begs the question of who set the rules and who comprise t h ~ j:Jdiciary. She preferred to
frame her discussion around concepts of fairness, ,)f power and inequalities, of structured
advantage and disadvantage, and to assume that movements ann claims around these will be
ongoing.
Gewirtz discusses some points of difference between Fraser and Young, and makes some critique
of Fraser's distinction. We do nol agree with all of the interpretations of Fraser that are made in
this article, but our point in this present article is to elaborate something of the range of issues
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND THE MIDDLE 7S
that are relevant to the discussion of 'social justice' and education, a point on which tbe three j
writers agree.
However our selected group of students and their varied outcomes did broadly reflect the pattern
shown in the broader figures for their schools.
Some discussion of the two other schools in the study can be found in McLeod 20003, 2000b and
Vales 2000a, 2000c.
Our arguments about a case for giving attention to what happens in 'the middle' are nol intended
to imply that all disadvantages and inequalities and discriminations are equal or deserve equal
priority in a situation of limited resources. In submissions to the recent inquiries about boys and
for our respective universities, we have both argued for the need to direct government
resources to the groups who are most clearly losing oul from school: poor children, Aboriginal
students and in these cases loo we would argue, like Fraser, Ihal issues of 'recognition' and issues
of 'distribution' are not antitheses but intimately connected.
Our study is an interpretive account built on seven years' of twice yearly interviews with each
studenl--over 300 interviews in all. Explanation and justification of our methods is given in
earlier writing on tbis project: (Yates & McLeod 1996, McLeod & Yales 1997).
Produced by Tim Brown of Melbourne University. This concept and measure glosses over many
dubious assumptions about what is measured in the 'general achievement test' that serves as the
intelligence measure.
In the context of Victoria as a stale where those who 'make it' to positions of power and
influence overwhelmingly are products of privileged backgrounds and of private schools, this
school is one which has produced a number of prominent people and contributed in some small
way to altering the composition and experiences of social eliles.
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