Bourdieu and Passeron 4: To Succeed in School You Need a Skill Not Taught in School

This week I will be blogging on Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society, which we are studying in my macrosociological theory class.

The higher classes also are likely to learn the language of school - the extended code, the ability to think and speak abstractly, the ability to think beyond your own circumstances, the ability to put yourself in the position of a quite different Other. It is the language in which this blog is written. They come to school with a hidden advantage. Their primary habitus matches the school habitus.

Bourdieu's signal contribution to sociology is the idea that cultural capital is the way that the richer classes can turn their economic capital into a productive social advantage. And when they teach that cultural capital to their children, the children reap that advantage. Part of the advantage comes in their greater ease in school. Their primary habitus matches the school's habitus, which is normally the authorized habitus of the dominant culture.

Beyond their greater ease with what the school does teach, advantaged kids come to their school years at ease with important cultural knowledge that the school does not teach. Their primary habitus is full of all the cultural knowledge that involved, informed parents drag their kids too. Beyond that, the primary habitus of the most advantaged children has an attitude toward learning culture that makes school success and social success much easier.

To really succeed in school, you need a code that the school does not teach.

Bourdieu and Passeron 3: Critically Thinking About Culture is Already Cultured

This week I will be blogging on Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society, which we are studying in my macrosociological theory class.

"The man who deliberates on his culture is already a cultivated individual."

Bourdieu and Passeron argue that schools pick some aspects of the culture to teach, which establishes the core of cultivated taste. The content of what schools teach tends to reinforce the dominance of the dominant class. The schools create a "habitus" of seeking to be cultivated, of seeking to better know and understand the official culture.

Part of the official culture, though, is critical thinking about the official culture. This is more true of higher education than lower, and more true of elite education than mass education.

A good education embeds one more fully in the dominant culture. A good education includes the ability to reflect on that dominant culture. More importantly, a good education inculcates the desire to reflect on that dominant culture. When we reflect critically on the pedagogic work of education itself, we see, say Bourdieu and Passeron, that its content bolsters the domination of the dominant class.

Reflecting on your culture makes you cultivated. Critical thinking about cultivation is itself a cultivated taste, and doing it makes you more cultivated still. Reading Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society as part of a school class is both an act of subversion of the dominant culture, and a deeper participation in the kind of cultivation that the dominant class cherishes the most and has the most opportunity to engage in.

Bourdieu and Passeron 2: The Competition for Taste

This week I will be blogging on Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society, which we are studying in my macrosociological theory class.

Bourdieu and Passeron argue that the school imposes uses its cultural authority to impose an orthodoxy of taste.

Other, competing, institutions often have a somewhat different taste. They can try to promote their specific taste as a counter-orthodoxy. They are at a great disadvantage, though, because the school, being the school, has a superior cultural authority to establish the standard body of authorized knowledge, including authorized taste. Every art class picks some art to teach, whether they intend to promote an orthodox style or not.

So, instead, competing cultural institutions often adopt a different strategy. They promote an alternative approach to taste. They promote eclecticism and syncretism, instead of any orthodoxy.

This seems to me a useful idea. I can think of uses beyond the realm of taste as such. I have often noticed that people who promote diversity or multiculturalism often drop that emphasis as soon as they are in power. Instead, they try to make their ideological position obligatory and orthodox for all.

There should be a way to differentiate institutions and people who are genuinely committed to eclecticism, syncretism, diversity, multiculturalism, from those who only strategically adopt those positions when they are out of power.

Bourdieu and Passeron 1: All Teaching Is Symbolic Violence

This week I will be blogging on Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron's Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society, which we are studying in my macrosociological theory class.

Proposition Zero:

“Every power to exert symbolic violence, i.e. every power which manages to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force, adds its own specifically symbolic force to the power relations.”

Reproduction in Education, Culture, and Society was first published in 1970. In their Afterword to the 1990 edition the authors note that the most misunderstood idea in the book was "symbolic violence." They were misunderstood to be saying that some teaching - the teaching that reproduced the domination of the dominant class - imposed a culturally arbitrary content with a false authority, an authority that ultimately rested on force. Bourdieu and Passeron clarified that they were asserting the more radical proposition that all teaching imposes a culturally arbitrary content with a false authority, whether it be from the dominant class or from any attempt to subvert the dominant class.

The reason they call this "violence" is to draw a parallel between the school and the state (which are, of course, often the same institution). Max Weber said that the state is the institution with a monopoly of legitimate physical violence. The school, Bourdieu and Passeron argue, is the institution with the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence. Each uses its authority to assert the dominant culture and to suppress threats to that dominant culture.

I quarrel with Bourdieu and Passeron for calling this action of teaching "violence." The term is almost always inappropriate and unnecessarily provocative.

My larger quarrel with them, though, is over the idea that all of the content of teaching is a cultural arbitrary imposed to bolster the social position of the teaching class and those they represent. The authors are making a large metaphysical claim that there are no fundamental truths that transcend class position.

I accept just about every claim of epistemological modesty that it is extraordinarily difficult to know with certainty what it fundamentally true. I contend as a claim of faith that there are some truths, though. I am happy to have my contentions compete with other faiths in the marketplace of ideas. Bourdieu and Passeron also allow what they call the "reality principle" or "law of the market": if the market validates a kind of teaching, it has more authority. But they do not grant that this authority reflects on the truth of the claim - only that it helps people believe it is true. Yet they also think that it is hopeless to try to teach with authority that all truth is relative.

I don't think Bourdieu and Passeron's claim about the truth of their own claims about truth are coherent.

1/3 of the World is Christian, 1/4 of the World is Muslim

I think there are a few basic numbers about religion that everyone should know. Here are two of my hypothetical top ten.

Let's Panic About Babies!

This is a wonderful, silly website about children and parenthood. The opposite of cutesy. My sister, a tough mom, recommended it.

I particularly like the ads from their "sponsors," such as these:

Jane Doe Now Wants to Know Anonymous Sperm Donor's Name. Too Bad.

A woman who conceived through an anonymous sperm donor is now suing to get his identity. She says "I don’t think it right that any person should be forbidden from knowing their fathers’ identities or family health information."

Hard cheese.

I support the movement to spell out more explicitly what the duties of sperm donors are, and just exactly how secure their anonymity is. But I think it wrong to try to get the court to break a contract or invent a rule. Making rules is what the legislature is for.

Louisiana Justice Denies Interracial Marriage

A justice of the peace in Louisiana will not marry interracial couples because "I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

So, so wrong.

Louisiana has given us more racial weirdness than any other state. Plessy v. Ferguson became a federal issue when Louisiana's counting of racial fractions pitted the "black" railroad car against the "quadroon" Homer Plessy. Louisiana law still recognizes racial fractions down to 1/32nd, though they are mostly dead letter. Mostly, but, as we see, not quite.

I hope this one can be laughed out of practice, and Justice Keith Bardwell can be shamed out of office.

Spirituality Makes Her Clothes Fall Off

I am not sure if this scientific study is really ripe, but it sure does have an interesting hook.

LiveScience, an MSNBC blog, reports on a study from Jessica Burris at the University of Kentucky on what correlates with sex for a sample of 353 undergraduates. Among other questions, Burris gave them a Spiritual Transcendence Scale measure (with which I am not otherwise familiar). This is the eyebrow-raiser:

For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom.

Burris reads both spirituality and sex as ways women seek intimacy.

I am inclined to think that sexually loose college women get detached from the churches they were raised in, but didn't want to go all the way to atheism, so they stopped at "spiritual."

Either way, I hope someone follows up on this with a fuller study.

Death Penalty Sunday School

In Sunday School this morning we were honored with a real pro talking about the death penalty.

Steve Bright, a Danville native and now president of the Southern Center for Human Rights was talking about some truly dreadful death penalty cases. The big picture of the death penalty doesn't look much better. The people on death row and already executed are almost all poor guys with terrible lawyers. They are criminals, and did horrible things. The injustice is not that they are in prison. The injustice is that rich guys who do the same thing can afford competent lawyers who plead them into life sentences rather than execution. The further injustice is that many of the poor guys committed their crimes in the few places where the prosecutor seeks the death penalty - especially if you live in Houston, the death penalty capital of America.

The most striking sociological point that Bright made was that juries that convict in death penalty cases are mostly in white-flight counties around non-white cities. The fear that led to the flight in the first place gets played out in court when the overwhelmingly white juries sentence to death predominantly non-white vicious criminals with bad lawyers.

I asked if there were any practical way to reserve the death penalty for the most dreadful crimes - Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson. Bright said, in effect, probably not. For one thing, the most dreadful criminals have been able to plead to life imprisonment in exchange for revealing further details of their crimes. For another, more important reason, it is up to the local, elected prosecutor to decide whether to seek the death penalty or not.

As a centrist, I think it would be possible to write a very narrow statute specifying when the death penalty could be sought that would distinguish cold-blooded mass murderers from stoned junkies who shoot clerks in the course of robbing liquor stores. That is a question best addressed by the professionals.

What was clear to me, though, is that even if you think that the death penalty is appropriate in a few rare circumstances, as I do, the current way we use the death penalty is grossly unjust.

Mind-Boggling Christo-Kitsch

A painter named Jon McNaughton has created "One Nation Under God." It shows Jesus, in glory, delivering the U.S. Constitution. He is backed by a body of dead patriots, some real and some symbolic. In the foreground are good people and bad people. My kind, alas, are presented in the latter group. Look for The Professor. He is the one right in front of Satan.

McNaughton explains all this symbolism in detail. There is a wonderful rollover feature on the picture itself, explaining each one. Even the sky is explained: "Fifty stars represents the fifty states of the union. Some shine brighter than others."

I do, seriously, praise McNaughton for a competent painting with a public meaning. I like this genre - the School of Athens is one of my favorite inspirational paintings. The text, alas, has many errors, both typographical and historical. But I appreciate the effort to make an argument in painting.

Two side notes:

Shame on the heirs of Martin Luther King for forbidding McNaughton to include King's image with the other Founding Fathers. McNaughton was obliged to name his exemplary soldier "King" in honor of MLK - surely a weird symbol-bearer for a notable war critic.

There is a good satire of McNaughton's rollover text at Shortpacked.

This may truly be the most important new painting of the twenty first century. How do I know that? Because McNaughton says so in an "interview with the artist" that he has with himself.

Three Science Moms Win Nobels

Three women won science Nobel Prizes this week - Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Ada Yonath. All three are married mothers. After the dust-up over Lawrence Summers' entirely correct comments about the several factors that limit the proportion of women at the top of math and sciences professions, I have been particularly interested in women who combine biochemistry and family life. I think of all academic specialties, biochemistry may be the most unforgiving of family life - long hours in the lab, on a schedule dictated by the experiment, in an environment too dangerous to take little kids to, and years of it to get a result.

Mrs. G. and I often counsel ambitious young women that they can have it all - but not all at once. To have a marriage, kids, and a successful career is much easier if launched in that order. Careers for moms can get fully started later than for people who are not home with little ones, but life is long. Ada Yonath said that when she got news of winning the prize, she was with her granddaughter. Go Science Moms!

Keys to Longevity: He Should Marry Education, She Should Marry Job Status

Married men and women live longer. Better educated men and women live longer. Higher job status men and women live longer. These facts are all well established.

A new Swedish study found some interesting cross-sex nuances in this greater longevity.

Her education matters more than his education to his longevity.

His job status matters more than her job status to her longevity.

Men should marry educated women; women should marry high-status men.

Racial Preference in Dating is Bad News for Black Women

The online matching site OKCupid has a fascinating analysis of how likely people are to respond to one another by race. The headline finding is that women of all races are disproportionately likely to send messages to white men, and men of all races are disproportionately unlikely to respond to black women.

I am particularly interested in improving the black marriage rate. I was, therefore, also drawn to two other points in the OKCupid report. When asked "Would you strongly prefer to date someone of your own skin color/racial background?" women in almost all racial groups said yes more than men. The overall yes responses to this question were 46% for women, 34% for men. For African Americans, though, the rates were 22% for women, 11% for men. Black men have the lowest percent preferring to date in their own race of any group.

Putting these facts together we get some pretty grim news for black women's marriage prospects.

I do not read these results as simply showing racism - that is, an absolute rejection of another race. When asked "Is interracial marriage a bad idea?" only 6% say yes. I do read these results as showing the status structure. There is still a racial status structure in America, with whites on the top and blacks on the bottom. Most people, quite reasonably, wish to marry at their same status level or higher. The groups at the bottom of the status ladder are the least likely to marry.

Now, race is not the only aspect of status, and status is not the only consideration in marriage. I am confident that race is declining in significance in all things, marriage chances included. Class increasingly beats race. Nonetheless, every status hierarchy makes some difference in the mating market, and race is still a status hierarchy.

(Thanks to BA for putting me on to OKCupid.)

I Can't Tell "A" Work on a Multiple-Choice Test

I have been involved in an interesting project lately giving advice to an outside agency on how to set A, B, C, D, and failing grades on a multiple-choice sociology test. I have never used a multiple-choice test, and am not likely to. Nonetheless, I am glad I took part in this research project, because it helped me articulate why, exactly, I can't use a multiple-choice test.

My standard for B (good) work is that students show mastery of the assigned material. If they tell me back what I told them or assigned them, that is good. If they can do it in detail, that is very good (B+).

A (excellent) work requires B work plus something original. Their addition does not have to be absolutely original - not even Weber could do that every time. Rather, I want them to make their own connection between what we are studying and something else. I urge them to draw from other courses, their personal experiences, or at least material that we studied earlier in the term.

As a rule of thumb, I tell students that mastering the assigned material is a high school A and a college B.

A multiple-choice test only gives students room to show that they have mastered the assigned material. Even if they were able and ready to add original work, the format of the test gives them no place to show it. Thus, I can't tell A from B work on a multiple-choice test. And so should not use them. Which I don't.

Is Universal Health Care a Religious Issue?

61% of Americans say they favor a government guarantee of health care for all, even if it means raising taxes.

When we get down to cases, the Pew Forum found that the proposals on the table split the population evenly - 42% for and 44% against.

A coalition of liberal religious groups, Faith for Health, backs universal health care. A coalition of conservative religious groups, the Freedom Federation, opposes government health care. Freedom Federation favors more choice and incentives, but holds back from saying the government should guarantee health care coverage for all.

The system we have now, in which the government guarantees health care for sizable hunks of the population - old people, children, poor people, veterans, government workers - is added to a system in which most people get their health insurance through work. That reaches perhaps 85% of the population. Some of the remainder are actually eligible for health insurance, but don't take it.

Still, even with a large government guarantee and a strong system of health insurance for workers, some fraction - say, 10%, or about 30 million Americans - are without health insurance. I don't see any good way to cover them without a government mandate and some kind of government money.

So, is universal health care a religious issue? The Washington office of my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), says yes. 56% of mainline Protestants, including the PC (USA), say yes. I say yes.

I think a church that says yes to this question has two options. Either the church supports a state mandate for health insurance for all, or the church offers to provide health care for those who can't afford it.

Lex Luthor Buys Small Montana Town

A mysterious, and mysteriously well-funded "private security" company bought an unused prison in Hardin, MT for a "training facility." They are named "American Police Force" and use a double-headed eagle with a crown as their symbol. This is the same symbol that the sometime royal family of Serbia uses. Yes, nothing says American like a crowned symbol of European nobility.

This story reminded me of Blackwater, the Bush administration's favored mercenaries, who were led by a character right out of "Superman," Erik Prince. After Blackwater got lots of bad publicity for shooting civilians they changed the company name to Xe, heading further into the blackwater of comic book world.

Sure enough, American Police Force seems to be a spinoff of Xe.

"Loss of Consortium" Should Not Apply to the Dead

Kentucky law, like many states' laws, allows you to sue if someone incapacitates your spouse, causing you to suffer "loss of consortium." That means you are deprived of the "emotional and physical comfort" that a spouse can give - emphasis on the physical. If, for example, a hospital makes a mistake that leaves your spouse in a coma, you can sue for loss of consortium. The law does not apply, though, if your spouse dies.

Until now. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled yesterday that widows and widowers can sue for loss of consortium. Judge Mary Noble, writing for the court, wrote that it "defies common sense" for the law to let you sue if your spouse is incapacitated, but not if your spouse dies.

No, it doesn't. If your spouse is incapacitated, you can't enjoy consoritium, and there is nothing you can do about it. If that condition is due to someone else's error, you can sue them, and rightly so. If your spouse dies, then obviously you can't enjoy consortium with them. But there is something you can do about that condition: get married again.

The loss of consortium law was not created to give people a legal right to sex. It was a recognition that marriage was meant to be exclusive and to last until death.

African American Marriage Index

Yesterday I posted on the National Marriage Index created by the Institute for American Values. They worked in conjunction with the National Center for African American Marriages and Parenting at Hampton University for produce a parallel index for black families. Each point on the African American index for 2008 is lower than the corresponding national number, and, therefore the overall index is lower - 39.6 vs. 60.3 (out of 100).

The main element dragging the black marriage index down are the rates affecting children. Nationally, 60.3% of children are born to married parents, and 61% of children are living with their own parents. The corresponding numbers for African American children are a dismal 28.4 and 29%, respectively.

The good news, though, is that the percent of intact first marriages among African Americans crept back up over the 50% threshold since 2000 - to 50.1%. This is movement in the right direction.

National Marriage Index

The Institute for American Values has produced a National Marriage Index. This is a valuable tool for charting the basic strength of marriage as an institution. It is composed of five measures:

• Percentage of adults married
• Percentage of married people "very happy" in their marriage
• Percentage of first marriages intact
• Percentage of births to married parents
• Percentage of children living with own married parents.

The bad news is that index is only 60.3, a straight-line decline from 76.2 (out of 100) from 1970. The good news is that the declines in two of the five items - happy marriages and kids living with the parents - have leveled off, and one - intact first marriages - has increase since the turn of the century.