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I really enjoyed reading Anjela’s comment and I would like to point out that what she describes does not only happen in India, it is a common practice around the world. Anjela commented that “both the discriminator and the discriminated against” see discrimination as ‘normal’, the same has been argued by Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, particularly in what he defined as ‘common sense’; exemplified by Birgitte’s dolls film.
Thus schools are not neutral institutions; they are structured in terms of class, race, and gender, reflecting the outside society. We find processes of alienation of students and of teachers, sorting or “cooling out” students of unfavoured classes or sections of a class, since what schooling values is the linguistic and cultural competence – of the dominant culture – that is transmitted within the family. However, these predisposition are never explicit, and remain disguised behind words such as ‘merit’ and ‘talent’.
But I also believe that social reproduction is not inevitable. The two conflicting trends in schooling – the hierarchical, unequal, capitalist vs. expansion in the economic opportunity for subordinated groups and democratic rights – are conditioned by the larger social conflict outside the school. However, schooling is not a passive body; it nourishes social movements, by being the arena where different ideologies fight. But schooling needs strong social movements to push in the same direction if it is to fight discrimination and inequality that seems to be advancing with the privatisation and commodification of education as commented by Salim and Tristan.
My question would then be: how can we change schooling so that it really fulfils its promise of upward mobility, allowing humanity to flourish, promoting a culture of peace, respect and understanding rather than reproducing social inequalities?