Koulutus ja yhteiskuntaluokka

Abstract

The nine articles in this edited volume [Education and Social Class] scrutinise the class question within the Finnish education system, as a hidden, lived and experienced phenomenon, entwined with power. The book is structured around three topical perspectives. The first part deals with the question of social mobility. Empirical research topics include examples of achieving prestigious fields of education and the inheritance of the most prestigious professions, connections of class position to education through the educational experiences of working-class-based business students, and the ways in which academic world encounters with working-class culture in the university work of working-class and academically educated women. The second part of the book examines education as a form of capital defining the life course and social class. Topics covered include the connections of life stage of adolescence and class position, Bourdieusian analysis of educational choices and class positions, and opportunities for on-the-job learning and self-development in accordance with the class position of wage earners. The third part focuses on the education system and its structures. The dynamics of education and reproduction are analysed by using as empirical research objects the cross-generational reproduction of social relations in the curricula of basic education, the meaning of the language used in school as cultural capital, and the links between class position and perspectives that promote the raising of the age of compulsory education.