ABSTRACT
Responses to notional institutional ‘goals and means’ provide a useful starting point, and yield an overview of pupil reactions to school. We can take in this broad spectrum of adaptations ‘at a glance’, and say that in general this is how groups of pupils typically react in the main. However, it is not sufficient to tell us how an individual pupil reacts, or the criteria by which he judges his reactions. As pointed out, the schools’ ‘goals and means’ can be variable. Moreover, they are multi-faceted institutions, and reactions to different aspects of activity or organization can also be variable. According to my conversations with pupils, they distinguished between three such sub-divisions — curriculum, institution and teachers — and for practical purposes, ‘goals’ and ‘means’ should be seen in relation to these. Thus individual pupils can differ in respect of each of these, and among them, accepting some subjects or some teachers and rejecting others, or possibly being so swamped by institutional factors that no teacher or subject can compensate. Also, of course, the typology tells us nothing about the criteria of acceptance or rejection, which again might differ among pupils. The initial conceptualization provides a basis for comparison here. In this chapter I examine the reactions of two sets of representatives of these two groups in the shape of the top ‘examination’ form, 4A, and the ‘non-examination’ 4L. This particular study shows common curricular acceptance, though for different reasons, suggesting instrumental conformity on the part of one, and a form of colonization on the part of the other. Equally, both groups show common opposition to certain ‘institutional’ factors. In their appraisal of teacher qualities which they are likely to accept or reject, both groups are inclined to accept ‘teacher-person’ qualities and reject ‘teacher-bureaucratic’ qualities. Interestingly, this is even more significant with the more bureaucratically oppressed examination form. Aspects of teachers that are disliked are often in the area where the teachers are impinged on by the 85institution, or where they are acting in strict interpretation of their ‘teacher’ role. This supports the main thesis of this book, that it is the bureaucratic apparatus of the school, rather than its educative function, that divides and oppresses, and that this bears on all pupils regardless of their social background.
