ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three characteristics of the meritocratic schooling process shared in the two case schools in Beijing. This chapter first demonstrates that both case schools have portrayed working hard on the education path as the sole way for rural migrant children to avoid reproducing their parents’ manual working-class status. Meanwhile, teachers’ negative descriptions of rural migrant parents also reinforced migrant children’s perceptions of the inferiority of manual labourers. Last but not least, as teachers’ promotion of educational pursuit went hand-in-hand with their low educational expectations for migrant children and highlights students’ alleged responsibility for educational failure, migrant children also face a hidden school culture supporting their education abandonment. The findings of this chapter reveal that meritocratic schooling reinforces rural migrant children’s belief in individualism and meritocracy rather than collective resistance when dealing with social inequalities.
