ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an examination of the informal pupil culture, to show how the school is experienced as a collective process involving typical ways of being a working-class pupil. A study of the informal pupil culture is important because it represents the social and cultural context in which school is experienced on a daily basis, and the sociological context needed to bring the study of pupil orientations 'to life'. The school has its own cultural politics within which what it teaches and the demands made upon pupils are constantly open to question. Three subcultures can be detected in all schools, characterized as the rems, swots, and ordinary kids. The idea of the rem is taken from the term 'remedial'. It has strong moral overtones when applied by various groups of pupils in the school. The ordinary kids are somewhere between the swots and rems.
