Do students 'choose' or are they channelled? On myths and realities

Abstract

occasionally crucial choices to make. Parents have to decide whether to send their children to kindergarten or not, since they are not legally obliged to do so. They also have to decide whether they are going to make use of the state or non-state sector, and in terms of the latter, whether it is in the best interests of their child to send him or her to a Church or independent school. Once schooling commences in earnest, there are important cut-off points (Boudon, 1974), milestones in the passage of the child through the education system, where again choices have to be made. Should one send the child to private tuition or not? Should one invest one's utmost in getting one's child through the 11+ selection examination? What cluster of subjects should one opt for mid-way through the secondary level of schooling, since this choice effectively limits career options and opportunities? Should one remain in the academic school track, or should one switch over to the more vocationally-oriented schools? And if so, when should this transfer take place, at the secondary or the postsecondary level? What is there to gain from attending further education in the post-compulsory sector? Should one postpone entry into the workplace, forego a salary, and go to University, or is it better t6 first find a job, and then to exploit training opportunities that are made available by the firm or enterprise? Choice- and decision-making in education are clearly weighty matters, because of the short and long-term effects they have on individuals making them. One of the crucial questions that educational sociology raises however is: 'To what extent do students (and parents) actually make the choices they think they are making?' The implication of such a question is that while students and their parents might subjectively experience the decisions they make as freely-made 'choices' , the processes and structures they are - often unknowingly - embedded in severely limit their range'of options. In other words, could these individuals have truly acted otherwise? One of the most obvious reasons that make the problematisation of 'choice' a legitimate exercise is the fact that young people are asked to make crucial decisions in life when they are still relatively immature and inexperienced, and have therefore little to fall back onto when it comes to making rational choices (Gambetta, 1987). Furthermore, once some of these choices are made, the rigid and highly differentiated educational system makes it practically impossible for anyone to turn back and start again on a different path (Sultana, 1992). Indeed, there is an institutional recognition of dilemmas such as these, with many education systems - including the Maltese one - opting to postpone key specialisation choices till later in a student's school career, and creating what the French refer to as passarelles - bridges - between one sector and another to allow for flexibility and transfer in the case a student recognises he or she has made the wrong 'choice'. Over and above this, however, various sociological accounts, whether these focus on a macro and structuralist interpretation of school processes, or whether instead they look at the micro and interactionist dynamics of school life, suggest that education-related decisions which students and their parents make are not as freely or autonomously made as one might think. Thus, structuralist functionalist accounts of schooling tend to emphasise the extent to which pupils are channelled into separate educational spaces and given a different educational diet in order to satisfy the needs of society for a differentiated and stratified labour force. Authors such as Bowles and Gintis (1976) and Sarup (1983), among many others, therefore argue that' choice' is largely a myth: life-chances, futures, and aspirations are shaped by a school system which in turn is influenced by the economic structure and by the state system. In micro-interpretative accounts, authors such as Woods (1980) consider that decisions are the outcome of negotiated interactions, whereby pupils (and their parents) learn which options from a range of possibilities are 'feasible' and 'realistic' for them. Such interactions take place in a variety of contexts. At the school, for instance, subject teachers, guidance counsellors, and other significant adults can have considerable influence in channelling students towards particular options. Parents and peers can also determine a particular 'choice', as when a student takes business studies to please her father, for instance, or to remain with a group of friends. In all these contexts, the dynamics of class, gender, and race play a crucial, complex, and often confluent role in shaping the 'choices' that are made, as when a ~orking class student does not even consider the possibility of becoming a doctor, or when a female student shrugs off any suggestion that she could become a mechanic or engineer, given that this does not coincide with her construction of femininity and the role modelling she has been exposed to. Some sociological accounts consider both structure and agency in the modelling of the process of choice. Gambetta (1987) for instance draws on 'rational choice' frameworks to argue that the 'choices' that students make a~ best understood by looking at the two major forces pushing and pulling students in specific directions. 'Pushing' forces relate to the chooser' s past and recent history which form his/her frame of mind, and which lead individuals to think or act in the way they do. In the educational sphere, this includes past failures or success in schooling as well as social class, racial, cultural and gender identity. 'Pulling' forces are those factors which attract the chooser towards the choice itself, namely future and occupational aspirations, as well as learnt failure, since for most people, the latter is not only a ghost of the past, but a framework for their future lives. 'Choice', therefore, is a much more problematic concept than meets the eye, for many elements can come together in order to limit, if not subvert, personal freedom. Such a process can be even more devious since those involved might still experience themselves as freely choosing, unaware as they are of the forces that are channelling and shaping their lives. This chapter draws from a more comprehensive account (Rotin, 1993) in order to throw some light on the complex interplay of interests that play a part in decision-making at school. It looks carefully at the way a group of young female students attending an Area Secondary School experience one important decision, namely whether to continue within an academic general stream, or to transfer instead to a more vocational track, namely a Trade School.