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Disaffected Pupils: reconstructingthe sociological perspectiveV. J. Furlong aa Department of Education , University of CambridgePublished online: 02 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: V. J. Furlong (1991) Disaffected Pupils: reconstructing thesociological perspective, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 12:3, 293-307, DOI:10.1080/0142569910120302

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British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1991 293

Disaffected Pupils: reconstructing the sociologicalperspective

V. J. FURLONG, Department of Education, University of Cambridge

ABSTRACT During the last 25 years, the study of disaffected pupils has been a centraltopic in the sociology of education. Yet despite its popularity in academic circles the impactof the sociological perspective on policy has been negligible; today the individualised,psychologically orientated approach stills holds sway in most parts of the educationalprofession. This paper suggests that part of this failure at least is attributable totheoretical inadequacies in the sociological research that has been carried out to date,much of which is based on a one-dimensional notion of social structure and an over-rationalistic view of individual psychology. Three key 'educational structures' areintroduced (the production of ability, the production of values, the production ofoccupational identity) and a more appropriate model of human personality is outlined.

A weakness of much academic research is the product of two forms ofoccupational blindness—the inability of sociologists to recognise the complexities of the personand the unwillingness of psychologists to recognise the dimension ofsocial power (Connell 1987, pp. 193-194).

The study of disaffection from school has, until recently, had a central place inthe development of contemporary sociology of education. Whether one looks atthe classic British studies of the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s (e.g. Hargreaves,1967; Lacey, 1970; Willis, 1977; Ball, 1981) or the more recent work ofAmericans and Australians (Apple, 1982; Giroux, 1982; Connell et al., 1982;Walker, 1988) pupils who are disruptive or play truant have often been thecentral actors on the sociological stage. The deviant pupil has been analysed fromalmost every theoretical perspective within the sociology of education (Furlong,1985); indeed, so frequently have such pupils appeared in sociological accountsof schooling that an outsider might be forgiven for thinking that the majority ofchildren in British schools are a problem for their teachers. The last few years,however, have seen a change in this dominance. The policy debate about

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disruption and truancy continues unabated (Elton, 1989) and books on disaffec-tion continue to be published at an alarming rate, but with one or two notableexceptions (e.g. Mac an Ghaill, 1988), British sociologists have turned their backon this issue.

It is interesting to speculate on the reasons for this falling from grace. My ownexplanation would be that in the mid-1980s scramble to become 'policy relevant',sociologists examined the theories of deviance fashionable at the time—classcultural resistance—and realised that they were policy irrelevant—perhaps evendangerous to be associated with. Sociologists have, therefore, distanced them-selves from those heroes of the late 1970s—Willis' 'Lads'. This paper starts fromthe assumption that the topic of disaffection remains an important one forsociologists to study both in terms of the theoretical insights it can yield as well asthe policy issues that can be addressed.

Durkheim's Children—social perspectives on pupil disaffection

That there are important sociological questions to be asked about disaffectionfrom school has, of course, been established for many years. Since the 1960s,educational surveys have repeatedly shown that the incidence of disruption andtruancy in British schools is patterned in significant ways. There are, for example,well established correlations between disruption, truancy and age (Davie et al.,1972; Mitchell & Shepherd, 1980; Sammons & Mortimore, 1990); gender (Davies,1984; Elton, 1989); region (DES, 1973) school organisation (Rutter et al., 1979;Mortimore et al., 1988); educational achievement (Tyerman, 1968; Fogelman,1978; Croll and Moses, 1985); and class (Davie et al., 1972; Rutter et al., 1975;Farrington, 1980; Sammons & Mortimore, 1990).

In the search for sociological explanations, sociologists of education, likecriminologists before them, turned to the work of the Durkheim (1950, 1951).Durkheim's essential contribution to the establishment of criminology was tosuggest that crime and deviant behaviour were not pathological, but wereessentially 'normal'. Crime, Durkheim suggested, may certainly be unacceptable,but rather than understanding it as a pathology one should look at it as behaviourdesigned to respond to particular social circumstances. Through this assertion heinstantly shifted the focus for theorising and research from the individual ontothe social context in which crime takes place. Instead of exploring the individual'spsychology, this line of argument suggests that one's proper objective is to studythe social circumstances that criminals face; it is because groups of people facesimilar social pressures that the incidence of crime is patterned. It is this line ofargument that has been adopted by most of those working on the sociology ofschool deviance. During the last 25 years a wide variety of studies have beenundertaken in which disruption and truancy are seen as 'rational' and 'normal'responses to the social circumstances young people have to come to terms with.

The sociological approach is still best illustrated in classic books such asHargreaves' (1967) study of Lumley Secondary Modern School or Lacey's (1970)study of Hightown Grammar and Ball's (1981) work on Beachside Comprehen-sive. All three books adopt an unequivocally social interpretation of deviance,documenting the development of pupil subcultures amongst educationally unsuc-cessful groups of pupils. Other researchers have studied the impact of teachers'labelling on pupils' deviant 'careers' (Sharp & Green, 1975; Bird, 1980). More

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recently, interest has focused on the relationship between disruption and truancy,and a variety of social and cultural factors: race (Fuller, 1983; Furlong, 1984;Walker, 1988; Mac an Ghaill, 1988); working class culture (Willis 1977; Brown,1987); masculinity and femininity (McRobbie, 1978; Connel et al, 1982; Walker,1988). Despite important theoretical differences, the underlying thrust of muchof this body of work follows Durkheim's suggestion that we should explore thesocial circumstances that lead young people to act in unacceptable ways ratherthan seeing them as maladjusted or pathological. In this sense, sociologistsworking in this area are all Durkheim's children.

The sociology of school deviance is then, despite it current neglect, a rich anddiverse field—at least in academic circles. Yet even at its height it made relativelylittle impact on policy. In Britain at least, policy initiatives have remainedoverwhelmingly based on the psychological perspective; 'treatment' is directed atthe individual child rather than at the school or other social factors associatedwith disaffection.

Presumably, there are many reasons for this failure. Tomlinson (1982) andFord et al. (1982), for example, suggest that the reason that the psychologicalperspective is so dominant in Britain is because it has become institutionalisedthrough the Schools Psychological Service; promoting an individualistic approachis in their interest. Yet I would suggest that part of the problem also lies in theweakness of the sociological research itself. At first sight the arguments may seemconvincing, but the underlying analysis in such studies is often simplistic. Forexample, researchers often focus on the influence of one aspect of the socialworld at a time (school organisation, working class culture) thereby denying themultiplicity of factors that may influence children in their rejection of schooling.Moreover, they frequently adopt a highly simplified view of social structure,analysing complex issues such as social class or teachers' expectations in a onedimensional, 'categorical' manner. Finally, in their enthusiasm to explore thesocial dimensions of deviance, sociologists seem to deny that there are importantpsychological questions to be addressed as well.

In the remainder of this paper I want to begin the process of developing analternative, and I hope more satisfactory approach to understanding the social aswell as the psychological dimensions of school deviance. My hope is that byencouraging a reconceptualisation of both dimensions an approach can bedeveloped that is both intellectually rigorous and more amenable to use by policymakers and practitioners.

Emotion and the Hidden Injuries of Schooling

It may seem somewhat contradictory, but I want to argue that the starting pointfor the reconstruction of a sociological perspective on deviance must be at apsychological and particularly at an emotional level. All sociological theories havewithin them (sometimes explicitly, but usually implicitly) a model of how indivi-duals function at a psychological level (just as all psychological theories trade,often implicitly, on sociological assumptions). It may be by default rather than bydesign, but I would argue that the psychological model implicit in sociologicalresearch in this field is often the same and is frequently inadequate. In almostevery case young people are seen as rational and knowing individuals. The

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implicit assumption seems to be that they logically and rationally appraise thesituation that they are in, and then devise an appropriate strategy whether that bedeviance or conformity. There is some evidence of disagreement about the degreeto which pupils are 'free' or 'determined' in their choices (Furlong, 1985) andthere is also some debate about the extent to which they are fully conscious ofwhat they are doing (Young, 1981). Nevertheless, however the concept is inter-preted, there is an assumption of an overriding rationality in pupils' behaviour;whether they are conscious or not they always manage to act in their own interestsgiven the social situation that they face.

I want to suggest that this rationalist view of human action is far too limited forthe task of understanding why pupils reject school. Pupils may indeed offer a fullyrational and conscious explanation of their behaviour, and it is important to takethis seriously. Their own story will always be one dimension of the truth; for somepupils it may give us insight into their primary motivation. However, for manyothers, the rational explanations that are presented to sociologists are perhapsonly part of the story.

Rejecting schooling is nearly always a strongly emotional experience. Even themost hardened pupils will experience intense and often contradictory emotionswhen they are challenging school. Feelings of anger, fear, frustration, elation andguilt may all be present. In the classroom the peer group may be shown the morepositive side when feelings of bravado and elation may be to the fore (Furlong,1976) while in the privacy of the head teacher's office the same pupils mayexpress guilt and remorse at their actions. The truth is that all of these differentfeelings are experienced by disruptive and truanting children in contradictoryand often confusing ways.

Rather than ignore this emotional level I believe that sociologists should use itas a starting point. If emotion is inherently bound up with school deviance thenwhat we need to construct is a 'sociology of emotion'. We must ask why it is thatsome pupils express such strong emotional reactions to school. Specifically, thatmeans disentangling two very different things. We must recognise that for somepupils their emotionality will be a product of their educational experience;schools make all sorts of demands on pupils and for some this can result in'hidden injuries' (Sennett & Cobb, 1977) that are the basis of disaffection.However, we must also recognise that for other pupils, school may not be theprimary cause of their emotional difficulties; it may merely be a 'site' where theygive vent to an emotionality that has quite different roots (see, for example,Mongon & Hart, 1989). Clearly, though these two are interconnected. It isbecause school is so often a demanding experience that children who arealready emotionally vulnerable choose to reject it. Even when the initial causeof emotional disturbance is clearly outside the school—for example, in thefamily—there remain important questions to be asked about why schoolbecomes a focus for the expression of their hostility.

A fuller sociological analysis of school must, therefore, begin by making a morecomplete analysis of what the emotional demands of schooling actually are, howthey can result for some pupils in 'hidden injuries' and how pupils deal with theemotional consequences. As I will argue below, that means looking again at theimpact of educational structures and particularly power in schools. It also meanstaking unconscious motivation and repression more seriously than sociologistshave in the past.

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Structure, Power and Disaffection

Central to all existing sociological studies of pupil disaffection is a concern withsocial structure and power. The argument within such studies has been thatdeviance at school is to be understood as a way in which pupils come to termswith social and especially educational structures. Put in less sociological terms,disruption and truancy are ways in which young people respond to the demandsof school and other social pressures. This, for example, is the argument inHargreaves' classic study of Lumley School. The boys in the bottom stream, 4D,were coming to terms with the structure of the educational system that wasdivided between high status grammar schools and low status secondary moderns;they were also responding to the internal structure of the school—it streamingsystem. It was the impact of these social structures that resulted in the 'hiddeninjuries' of school for the boys of 4D. Similarly, more recent studies such as thatof Willis (1977) have focused on how young people deal with the structure that issocial class. This too is profoundly important in young people's lives and it isapparent that it has a significant influence in how they respond to school—weknow only too well that it is overwhelmingly the children from lower working classfamilies who choose to reject schooling.

If we are to understand school deviance in sociological terms we therefore needto locate our analysis within a debate about the impact of social structure; it ishere that we will find the key to the social dimension of emotion at school.However, for the most part, the way in which social structures are understood inthe sociological literature seems quite inadequate; too often they become crudeand one-dimensional. Children do not reject school simply because they areworking class or because they find themselves in a secondary modern school; bothof these factors, and many others besides (peer group pressure, the local jobmarket, personal relationships within the home) may be significant at the sametime. What is more, pupils do not reject abstract social structures, they reject realteachers going about the day to day business of schooling. As Connell notes,social structures

are neither abstract nor simple, being real in other people and theiractions with all their complexities, ambiguities and contradictions. (Con-nell, 1987, p. 62)

Part of the problem with existing studies, therefore, concerns the way in whichsocial structures themselves are understood. What then are social structures?Perhaps the best way of explaining them is again to quote from Connell (1987)who describes the constraints of structures as "the experience of being up againstsomething; of limits on freedom" (p. 92). Structures are constraints on the waywe act—they may even be constraints on the way we think. Such constrainsts canbe material or financial, but in education the most frequent constraints thatpupils run up against are political. When we think of political constraints it is torecognise that, in some situations, other people have the power to determine howwe act, however we think.

Perhaps the complex nature of social structures can best be illustrated byanalogy. The law is an example of a structure that operates primarily throughpower and, as such, it is extremely influential in the way that all of us act. One ofthe most significant things in understanding how the law operates as a structureof power is to recognise that, for most of the time, we do not have to be forced to

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act in accordance with its principles. I, in my everyday life, automatically act inaccordance with the law. I drive my car in accordance with the principles of thelaw; I even run my family life—births, marriages, deaths—in accordance with theprinciples of the law. The law is something that I take into my own life even whenI do not particularly like it. The fact that I am an active agent in the realisation ofthe law in my life does not mean that there is not a very forceful power structurein society which can force me to conform if I do not do so willingly. There arepolice officers, magistrates and prisons that can be used to make me conform.However, it remains the case that in most of my day-to-day life these powerfulbodies are not necessary to make the structure that is the law influential in mylife. It is also important to recognise that in another mode we can gather togetherin an attempt to change the law if we do not like it. It may be very difficult andthere may be powerful forces ranged against us. However, we all recognise thatthe law is, in principle, a human product which changes over time through apolitical process.

There are certain similarities between the law and education. Like the law, theeducation system is a complex social structure fundamentally organised aroundpower relationships. We may choose to ignore the fact for much of the time, butone of the central elements of the relationship between pupils and schools is thatteachers have a very significant degree of power over the pupils in their charge.

One of the interesting things about arguing by analogy is to observe where thatanalogy breaks down. Where the analogy between law and education breaks downis here. As far as the law is concerned it is of no importance whether we actuallybelieve in the principles it enshrines. No one cares whether we agree with payingour poll tax as long as we actually pay it. What is different about education is thatpower is used in school to do more than merely secure conformity. When we, asteachers, use our power in school, when our actions become part of the politicalstructure for the pupils that we teach, then what we are trying to do with ourpower is to change our pupils in very fundamental ways. Through our power, weattempt to get children to accept certain values, to aspire to certain futures forthemselves, and to accept and understand their own strengths and limitations.Educational structures—the power of education—is used not just to imposecertain sorts of behaviour, but to construct young people in particular ways. We donot use our power simply to force children to act in these ways. Rather we insistthat they come to see themselves and organise their lives in these ways.

Education, then, is about changing people and this is why it is potentially such astrong emotional experience. Once they have gone through school young peopleare different—they are constructed and they are expected to construct themselves bothobjectively and subjectively in ways made available through school. To say this isnot to make a value judgement about whether this process is good or bad, merelyto show that it is inherent in what education is. As such, it will on some occasionsand for some pupils be a highly positive and for others a negative experience.However, what I want to suggest is that it is only by developing a deeperunderstanding of the way in which we are constructing young people—it is onlydisentangling the ways in which, through schooling, we use our power to changeyoung people and to insist that they change themselves—that we can start tounderstand the roots of disaffection. The demands that we make on young peopleare for some the cause of 'hidden injuries'; for others who are already emotion-ally vulnerable they can become the focus of conflict.

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If we want to understand what it is about schools that encourages somechildren to reject their education then we must ask more carefully than in thepast what the structures of education are. What is it that pupils 'fetch up against';in what ways do we use our power to try and change young people and get themto change themselves? Disaffection is one way in which pupils come to terms withthese demands.

Before trying to set out some of the structures of schooling that I think areimportant I want to make three preliminary points about the nature of educa-tional structures. The first point is to emphasise that education is not a structure,rather it is made up of a number of different structures. As such, many of theseeducational structures, many of the ways in which power is used in school, will bein tension or contradiction. Different structures will offer pupils different con-straints and opportunities in how to construct themselves.

The second point is that the structures that young people meet withinschool—like all structures—are human products. As human products, they have ahistory; they themselves are the object of political debate and struggle within theteaching profession and (increasingly) elsewhere. As a result, the educationalstructures that impose on young people change over time and different structureswill change at different rates which can add to the contradictions.

The final point to note about structures is that children are not necessarily fullyaware of them when they are young, rather they are 'emergent' in children'sconsciousness. It is only as they grow up and particularly as they becometeenagers that the "contradictions hard edges, relations with other dimension ofpresent and future life become clear" (Connell, 1987).

With these preliminary points in mind I now want to begin the process ofsetting out what I see as the most important structures in education—the mostsignificant ways in which we use power to construct young people at school. I say'begin the process' because I do not assume that the structures that I am going todiscuss are the only ones that there are within education. I merely offer them as astarting point.

Educational Structures 1—the production of ability

The first structure or complex of structures that I want to discuss concerns theproduction of ability. At first sight this may seem a rather odd idea. How, youmight ask, is ability 'produced' through schooling and how can it be seen as astructure in the way that I have described it above? I want to argue that ability isessentially a social construct which is produced mainly through the process ofschooling. When I say that ability is a social construct that is not to deny thatchildren come into the school system with different intellectual capacities andtalents—of course they do. However, by the time they leave school, young peoplehave more than different capacities, they have different abilities. Through theprocess of schooling they 'receive' an ability—it is an active process—they are'abilitlED'. Differences between pupils are accentuated, (even the most minordifferences can land pupils in a different class or set) certainly differencesbetween pupils are legitimated (by the time they leave school some have certificatesand some do not) and those differences are lived—I suspect that for all of us theview that our teachers had of our ability has become part of our subjective view ofour selves.

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The production of ability in these terms is a product of schooling, but how doesthe structure of schooling contribute to the production of ability as a public andpersonal fact?

At one very general level, differences in ability are enshrined in and, indeed,produced by the organisation of schooling itself. This, of course, varies histori-cally. If we go back between the wars when my father was at school then by andlarge those in Britain who could not pay for it did not receive a secondaryeducation. In the 1950s and 1960s when I went to secondary school there was atripartate system with grammar schools, secondary moderns and a few technicalschools. Today, the majority of young people in Great Britain spend theirsecondary education within a comprehensive school. What is significant about thisrather obvious history is that, depending on which historical period one went toschool in, ones' ability, in both a public and personal sense, would have beenconstructed differently. The way in which I understood my educational ability wasprofoundly affected by the fact that I was educated in a selective grammar schooljust as the boys studied by Hargreaves were profoundly affected by the fact thatthey were educated within a secondary modern. How young people develop asense of their ability and how they are seen publicly, will in part be dependent onthe organisation of the schooling system at this general level. The public andsubjective production of ability will be very different for young people going toschool in a contemporary, mixed ability comprehensive from what it was forpupils educated in the selective system 20 years earlier or for those pupilseducated before the war. The very organisation of schooling therefore becomes astructure that influences the production of ability in the broadest of terms.

However, ability as a social construct is not only produced through theinfluence of organisational factors such as those described above—it is alsoproduced by more fine grained educational factors. Here, following Bernstein's(1971) lead, it is sensible to examine the curriculum (what counts as knowledge),pedagogy (how knowledge is communicated) and evaluation (how knowledge isassessed). These three factors, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, also varyover time and establish a complex pattern of positive and negative opportunitiesfor the construction of ability.

I can perhaps make the point clearer by giving some examples. First, thecurriculum. If one looks carefully at tne physical education curriculum in schoolsover the last few years one can see something of a 'quiet revolution' has takenplace in many schools. When I was a pupil the emphasis was almost entirely oncompetitive team sports in which some pupils were included as highly successfuland the rest of us were excluded as failures. Today in many schools, competitiveteam sports have been marginalised and, instead, the curriculum is made up of awide variety of individually based sporting activities—sailing, golf, horse riding.The hope is that by providing a very different curriculum a much wider range ofpupils can experience success in physical education than before. The changingnature of the curriculum has set up a different pattern of possibilities for successand failure from when I was at school. What I realise now is that if I had gone toschool today I might have developed a quite different sense of my ability in sportsbecause the distinctions between success and failure have been redrawn by thecurriculum.

The nature of pedagogy is also highly significant in the construction of abilityand that too changes. Whether one really characterises the primary school

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curriculum as child-centred or not, it is certainly true that the pedagogic style ofprimary schools is often very different from that experienced in secondaryschools. There is, in many British primary schools, an emphasis on non-didacticmethods, on adapting the content to the interests and 'needs' of the individualchild. As children are only too well aware, the pedagogical style adopted in manysecondary schools is rather different—it is less person centred. In moving fromthe primary to the secondary school children move between different pedagogicalregimes and these regimes have profound effects on the production of success orfailure. Because of the reduced emphasis on the individual the differencesbetween these two states—success and failure—is more sharply focused.

Finally, if we look at forms of evaluation—how knowledge is assessed—we cansee that these too have a very significant influence on the production of ability. Atpresent in Britain it is possible to point to two different trends which work indifferent directions in the production of ability. On the one hand, recent yearshave seen the development of profiling which encourages a broadly based view ofachievement and in some schools even allows the participation of pupils in theselection of criteria against which they are to be judged. At the same time,through the national curriculum, nationally defined targets of achievement seemlikely to sharpen the demarcations of ability. Once nationally defined assessmenttargets are in place, teachers will have to use their power in the detailedconstruction of 10 levels of pupils' ability in each of the major subject areas.

In each of these areas (the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment) structures—and they are structures because they are the way in which teachers use theirpower—have their own history and are subject to political struggle and change.Because of their complexity they also offer differing and sometimes contradictoryopportunities for the social production of ability as a public and personalproduct. For some children they will offer affirmation, while for others theexperience will be largely negative. Because of the highly personal nature of theexperience the complex way in which one's ability is 'produced' though schoolwill always be highly emotionally charged and have a major impact on the degreeof one's attachment to education.

Educational Structures 2—the production of values

The production of ability is the prime responsibility of schools—as such itsinfluence reaches right back into the earliest days of a child's career as apupil—though the differentiation process becomes more stark later on. However,the production of ability is not the only 'structure' of schooling that is significantin relation to deviance; it is not the only source of 'injuries'. Schools attempt to'produce' pupils in other ways, too. Here, we must examine the values enshrinedin formal schooling; values about knowledge, values about behaviour and valuesabout aspirations for the future. Although these values may appear more diffusethan the concern with ability, they too become structures for pupils; they becomeconstraints that young people 'fetch up against'. As such, they are particularlyimportant in relation to the differentiation of pupils in terms of class, race andgender.

In some countries today, and certainly at different historical periods in Britain,differentiation in terms of class, race and gender was formally part of what theschool offered. Only 20 years ago, schooling was part of the process by which we

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produced and certainly legitimated differences between boys and girls. It is also truethat in South Africa racial differences are still emphasised and legitimatedthrough the schooling system. However, in Britain, at least officially, we do notsee the purpose of education in these terms. How then do these factors becomesignificant in education? How do they impose on children in their day-to-day lifeat school and how are they linked to disaffection? In each case I think that theexperience of race, class and gender can be linked to disaffection through anemergent sense of difference and exclusion.

Let me try and explain. It is clear that school has a position on valuesconcerned with its central activities. For example, as teachers we value certainsorts of knowledge—in most places it is still liberal academic knowledge that isvalued. We also value certain sorts of behaviour in school—indeed, schools have avery clear moral code on what is appropriate behaviour, though there are oftenimportant differences in what is thought to be acceptable for boys and girls, olderand young pupils, etc. Finally, it is also clear that teachers subscribe to commonvalues about what are appropriate aspirations for boys and girls in relation totheir future schooling and work lives. In relation to all of these areas—knowledge, behaviour and aspirations—schools have a value position. Once againwe must recognise that these values change over time. Nevertheless, despite suchvariation the values presented in school are clearly those of a particular group—they are the values of the educated white middle class.

However, as with other aspects of schooling, these values are not held neutrallyby teachers—they themselves become structures. Through the day-to-day minu-tiae of school life there is an attempt to 'produce' young people in these ways.We, as teachers, try our hardest to encourage young people to value certain sortsof knowledge (indeed, it is enshrined in the curriculum); to believe certain formsof behaviour are appropriate (codified in part in school rules); to aspire to certainfutures (often exemplified in careers advice). As 'structures' these values are morediffuse and less tangible than those concerned with ability, but nevertheless highlyinfluential. Once again, though, young people will experience them as both anopportunity and as an exclusion. However, as an opportunity, they will be morereadily grasped by some children than others.

Pupils who are different will only very slowly come to understand that they areexcluded, separate. Probably the reason is that teachers try very hard to concealthe fact that certain pupils do not conform to these central values. Very often Iwould suggest pupils only develop a sense of 'difference' and 'exclusion' bynoticing how other pupils are 'included'. In relation to my own schooling I canwell remember that some other pupils, specifically those from upper middle classhomes, seemed to have a much closer relationship with the teachers than I did.They had what I might call a 'class cultural affinity'. They seemed to share acommon understanding of the value of science, art and literature. It was acommon value system that was both intangible and powerful, producing a bondwhich transcended the day-to-day conflicts of classroom life. It was the way inwhich these other boys were valued in the school that helped to develop my senseof difference—my partial exclusion. The differences extended to the playing fieldtoo. Here a different set of values were in play and many a lower middle class orworking class boy who was excluded in the classroom had the opportunity to be'saved'. What was valued on the playing field was a particular form of physicalmasculinity. Once again, it was the way other boys were valued on the playing

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field that marked my own sense of exclusion. These partial exclusions, thesefailures 'to become' what the school valued were only slowly emergent in myconsciousness (I was seldom told off for them—I suspect that I was merely adisappointment for my teachers), yet they were extremely powerful.

My own exclusion was, therefore, a partial one, an exclusion in terms of a classculture and from a particular version of masculinity. Although that exclusion wasspecific to me—a product of a discontinuity between my own family backgroundand that of the school—the experience is common enough. For the most part,pupils are not 'made' at school; in almost every area apart from ability, the homeis far more significant. Throughout their lives in school, pupils live in a familyculture which has its own values. These values may well vary from those held outby the school in terms of class and, race as well as in more idiosyncratic ways.Particularly powerful will be differences between families in how young peopleare constructed as male and female. The opportunities held out by the school inrelation to its central values will, therefore, be differently received. For somepupils they will be a source of differentiation and rejection.

Educational Structures 3—the production of occupational identity

The structures that I have discussed so far—ability, the development of certainvalue positions in relation to knowledge, behaviour and aspiration—all of thesestructures are central to the activity of the school. However, it is also apparentthat factors outside the school are highly significant, too. Particularly important isthe employment structure. Again, I want to emphasise that the reason it is soimportant is because it is part of the way young people are 'produced'. Whenyoung people negotiate with an employment structure they are not merely'getting a job'; rather they are negotiating an occupational identity.

Clearly, employment structures vary historically. If we compare the 1960s withthe 1980s or one region of the country with another we can see that for someschool pupils there may be plenty of jobs while for others in a different historicalperiod or in a different region, there may be very few jobs. Therefore, theemployment market imposes constraints on the development of an occupationalidentity at the simplest level of whether jobs are readily available or not.However, the employment market is also influential in more detailed ways, too.Specific training opportunities, entrance qualifications, the possibilities for up-ward or lateral mobility—all of these features of the employment structure arehighly influential on the way in which young people negotiate an employmentidentity. What is significant about this process for the understanding of devianceat school is that pupils' ability to negotiate the structure that faces them is in partdetermined by their educational qualifications. Formal educational qualificationsare one of a number of 'resources' that they bring to negotiate that structure.Formal schooling helps provide some pupils with invaluable resources in thisnegotiation process while for others it will be a source of exclusions. Thesignificant point is this: formal schooling is not the only resource available forentering the employment market—family contacts, even family capital can also behighly significant. The perceived utility of schooling will vary both in relation toyoung peoples perception of the employment opportunities available to them, aswell as their view of the relative significance for them of formal schooling in thatnegotiation process.

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If we are to understand deviance in older pupils we need to spend a great dealmore time documenting their emerging sense of employment opportunities andthe role of education in that process, as well as developing a greater understand-ing of the role that other factors play in the achievement of an occupationalidentity.

In all of these ways then—in the production of ability, in the production of anoccupational identity and in the development of certain value positions in relationto knowledge, behaviour and aspiration—the school is involved in producingyoung people. Constructing their subjectivity as well as their public identity—their 'legitimate' differences. In each case there are positive and negative oppor-tunities. Through interacting with these structures, pupils can come to feelvalued, have a sense of achievement and sense of inclusion. Alternatively, they canfeel excluded, devalued and a sense of loss. Schools though are highly complexplaces and these different structures may offer competing or even contradictoryopportunities. Pupils may fail in maths and thereby feel excluded, but succeed onthe sports field. Alternatively, they may fail in both, but have a similar underlyingsense of values to their teachers and, therefore, despite their failure still feelincluded. Existing research does not plot in any detailed way how these structuresimpose on pupils in their day to day lives.

It is because schooling is about changing young people and offering them theopportunities to change themselves that it is potentially such an emotionalexperience. In the final section of this paper I want to return to this issue ofemotionality in order to outline the model of human personality that is necessaryfor such an understanding of deviant behaviour.

Repression and Contradiction

As I suggested above, most sociological accounts see pupils in a very one-dimensional fashion. They are seen as cool, rational and calculating in theirbehaviour, logically adapting it to the social situations that they face. I want toargue that if we want to understand the emotional dimension of schooling thenwe need a more complex view of human personality.

In this task I would suggest that there are two important principles that need tobe addressed. First, we must view the human personality as operating at morethan one level. We need to see human behaviour as motivated by both conscious-ness and unconsciousness. Juliet Mitchell in her book Psychoanalysis and Feminism(1975) suggests that most social science is not anti-Freud, rather it is pre-Freud. Ithas not taken on board the idea that there is such a dimension of the humanpersonality as the unconscious that is significant in the motivation of behaviour. Iwould suggest that some recognition of the unconscious is necessary in under-standing deviance because with such a notion comes the idea of repression. The'injuries of schooling', the emotional feelings that arise from the complexexperiences of being excluded and devalued need not be dealt with immediately;those feelings can be repressed. I would suggest that for those pupils who areexcluded and devalued, disruption and truancy involves giving vent to those longrepressed feelings. It is no coincidence that pupils often turn to each other forsupport when they are breaking the moral code of the school. It has long beenrecognised by group psychologists (Bion, 1948-51) that groups can encourage

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people to get in touch with emotional feelings that would normally be held incheck.

The second feature necessary for a reconceptualisation of personality moreappropriate for an understanding of deviance is a sense of contradiction andambivalence in our behaviour. Most of us, when we pause for thought, recognisethat we have highly complex emotional iives and this, in part, derives from thefact that our social world often makes contradictory emotional demands on us.Schools as I have suggested are highly complex and often contradictory places inthe demands they make on young people. Teachers offer love, approval and asense of achievement—all at a price, of course. However, pupils have to learn tolive with the fact that those same teachers at other times can be a source ofexclusion, devaluation and loss.

Given the cross-cutting demands and opportunities of schooling, pupils feelingswill inevitably be contradictory. Even the most conformist groups will sometimesgive vent to hostility while hostile groups may often feel remorse and guilt.

Conclusion

My argument, therefore, is that schooling is a highly demanding experience whichinevitably gives rise to many emotional injuries. Most children live with these'injuries'—they repress the emotion and carry on with the business of schooling,perhaps finding another more acceptable outlet for their feelings. There will betwo groups of pupils though for whom this will not be the case. Those pupils whoare particularly injured by their school experience will, on occasion, give vent totheir aggression and challenge those in authority. Because the expression of suchemotions is forbidden it is more likely that such pupils will draw on their friendsfor support and oppose schools as a group. There will, however, be other pupilswho are already emotionally vulnerable. For these pupils, even the most mundanedemands of school may be too much and may become the focus of conflict andrejection.

I would suggest that sociologists can, therefore, be accused of being romanticwhen they imply by their rationalist approach that all pupils who reject school areperfectly well adjusted. Children who challenge their teachers are often emotion-ally distressed especially when the injuries of school overlay difficult experiencesat home. Children who reject school are often very vulnerable, but perhaps theyare most vulnerable to those who would write off their emotional responses asevidence of individual maladjustment. When I suggest that school deviance has apsychological and emotional dimension I do not want to suggest that theindividual can be seen in isolation from the social context that is the source ofthose problems. To put it more concretely, pupils who reject school often doneed help—they may be in an emotional mess—but just because they needsupport as individuals does not mean that we can or should understand theirproblems in a purely individualised way.

However, it is also apparent that deviance does not always stay at this highlyemotional level. For some 'inconsequential' pupils it is apparent that theirdeviance is always associated with a high degree of emotionality (Phtiaka, 1988).They do not seem to come to terms with their school environment, are subject toaggressive outbursts and seem confused when they get into trouble as a conse-quence. But such pupils are a minority. The majority of pupils who suffer

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'injuries' at school find a way of coping with them. They evolve a subculture; inother words, they evolve a social solution to their psychological problem.

The form that these subcultures take can vary enormously depending on thecultural resources to hand. They may involve the development of physicalmasculinity or of an emphasised femininity (Willis, 1977; McRobbie, 1978;Walker, 1988); different racial groups may well have their own 'solutions'(Furlong, 1984; Mac an Ghaill, 1988). What these subcultures do is to give pupilsa rationale, a philosophy, a way of explaining and dealing with their experience ofschooling. By taking part in a subculture they may be able to find legitimatereasons for valuing different knowledge, for aspiring to different futures and forvaluing different ways of behaving. The problem for the school is that once pupilshave evolved such subcultures, once they have a rationale for rejecting school thenthey are much more difficult to bring back into line.

Of course, it is here, at the end of the line that sociologists have come in. It isthese groups where the pupils can espouse a philosophy and answer the resear-cher's questions readily that are so frequently documented in the literature.However, if we really want to understand what gives rise to deviant behaviourthen we must probe beneath the surface of what pupils tell us to the complexpattern of injuries that schooling can produce, as well as the emotional difficultiesthat follow.

Correspondence: V. J. Furlong, Department of Education, University of Cambridge,17 Trumpington St, Cambridge CB2 1QA.

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