ABSTRACT
The relationship between education and social class is a central problem in the sociology of education. This chapter demonstrates why an adequate account of the educational experiences of ordinary working-class pupils can be achieved by transcending existing theories. It outlines what the available literature has to teach us, why its lessons are inadequate, and what an alternative interpretative framework needs to look like. Most of the writings on education and the working class have been presented within a wider debate about social justice, inequality, and equality of opportunity. The focus on working-class educability led to an examination of cultural, emotional, and psychological consequences of material and social disadvantage, the enduring features of which were believed to be manifest in class inequalities in educational attainment. This way of understanding the issue of education and the working class not only had a significant impact on liberal attempts to explain the persistence of educational disadvantage despite greater equality of opportunity for educational policy.
