Comparing Angela Whitiker's Class Matters And The Lad

If education is truly of meritocratic design, then why do we not have diverse class backgrounds in every job type? Some scholars argue that the tendency for students, and people more generally, to end up in the same type of jobs and life they grew up in is because of impressing shared ideals and perceptions by the group you belong to. In particular, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu argues that “objective structures tend to produce structured subjective dispositions that produce structured actions which, in turn, tend to reproduce objective structures.” While I agree that Bourdieu can be a bit deterministic, particularly in light of Angela Whitiker's within the book Class Matters and the Lad's individual decisions in Paul Willis' study of …show more content…
She went back to school, got her degree, and moved out of her class into the middle class. However, because of her movement upward, Whitiker is uniquely aware of the ideals and lifestyle of the middle class. Therefore, once she obtains the income, she must now adhere in with the classes structures and dispositions. This idea represents two ways Angela Whitiker's story can fit into Bourdieu's theory. Firstly, one of the most important reaffirmations of this class is picking the right education for her children. Isabel Wilkerson notes that Angela had put Christopher in "the gifted program that she hand-picked on the middle-class side own town," all because she has "grafted all her middle-class hopes" onto him (218). And it seems to be working for Christopher himself knows that his place in school is because he is "smarter than the other kids" (Wilkerson 218). Here, we can see Bourdieu's theory at work. Angela, being mindful of the effects of social ideals, sends her kids to schools that reaffirm and project the aspirations and success mindset of the middle class. In turn, she expects and witnesses her children becoming and staying apart of that