Cultural Arbitrariness of School and Childrenstudents’ Identity Behaviours

Abstract

Introduction: The school as a culture’s institution provides ready-made models of identity in direct and subliminal cultural messages, confronting the child-student on a daily basis with the necessity to (successfully) cope with the (mis)comprehension of meanings produced by the school culture. Research Aim: In article I make an attempt to (re)cognize how narrations conducted and/or imposed by the emerging school culture determine the (un)conscious acquisition by children of meanings that describe their school reality and build their identity as learners. I have embedded the study in the theoretical framework of the reconstructed psychocultural concept of school culture of J. S. Bruner and the theory of cultural reproduction of P. Bourdieu. Method: The research material that I analyse and interpret in this paper using the hermeneutic-phenomenological method of coding are narrative interviews conducted with ten-year-old children at risk who have become fourth grade students. Results: The results of the research relate to the perception of school by children who have crossed the 2nd educational threshold in terms of school rules and norms. The research focuses on the process of implementing the child into the role of a student, indicating the oppressive nature of the school's culture. Conclusion: In the discussion of the results, I seek to draw attention the hidden beliefs about students, who become a material, an object or a product of the school (culture)'s operation and contrast them with Korczak's idea of openness and sensitivity to the child's potential.

Keywords

• school culture, children at risk, children's culture, identity, cultural reproduction, exclusion