Self-explanation, self-evaluation, legitimation of social inequality: the case of community-college students in Hong Kong

Abstract

In order to understand the legitimation of social inequality, it is necessary to understand not only what legitimising ideology is explicitly taught or implicitly conveyed at the institution of school, but also such institutional impacts on students failed by the system and thus disadvantaged in it: how far have they integrated legitimising ideology into their inner consciousness? Referring to the accounts of 52 community-college students in Hong Kong as an example, this article seeks to examine their self-explanation – attribution of failure – and self-evaluation – perception of self-worth – in order to illustrate the legitimation of social inequality. Seeing themselves accountable for the failure and thus feeling inferior, research participants regard the education system as meritocratic and fair and thus as legitimate. Besides, they uphold a hierarchical attitude: what frustrates them is not the presence of an educational hierarchy but the fact that they fail to get to the top of the hierarchy.

Keywords::

• community college
• Hong Kong
• legitimation
• social inequality
• self-evaluation
• self-explanation

Introduction

In understanding how institutionalised social inequality is legitimised, sociologists have focused on the foundations of stratification beliefs, locating some set of justifications which is widely believed by the populace. For example, for functionalists (e.g. Davis & Moore, 1945), social inequality results from a hierarchy of occupational roles with unequal functional importance and is legitimised by value consensus over how to evaluate the functional importance of each occupational role; for Marxists (e.g. Marx & Engels, 1959), social inequality results from the exploitation of the dominant over the subordinate and is legitimised through an absence of fully developed class consciousness or a deeply ingrained dominant ideology (e.g. Abercrombie, Hill, & Turner, 1980, 1990). In addition, legitimation could result from individuals' aspiration for upward mobility; legitimation could also result from individuals' acceptance of their social positions as just, as equity theory suggests (Lerner, 1975).

Regardless of whether social inequality is legitimised through value consensus or false consciousness/dominant ideology or hope for upward mobility or perception of justice, what is crucial is how such legitimising ideologies/beliefs become integrated into people's inner consciousness? This issue is important for it may disentangle why the disadvantaged do not challenge social inequality, but would even be acquiescent to, if not supporting, the very social system that has disadvantaged them (Hochschild, 1981; Runciman, 1966; Sennett & Cobb, 1972). Education as an institution could perhaps play an important role in legitimising social inequality in industrial-capitalist societies where a basic education is usually compulsory.

Over the years, studies of the New Sociology of Education have addressed such an issue through examining how the mainstream ideas, including legitimising ideology, could be transmitted through the institutional arrangements at school – curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. However, their discussion focuses mainly on the potential impact of such institutional arrangements on students but the actual impact is rarely examined. What is of relevance is Della Fave's (1980) self-evaluation and Shepelak's (1987) self-explanation in bettering our understanding of such impact and thus how legitimising ideology is integrated into students' inner consciousness.

In this article, by referring to a qualitative study of 52 community-college students who are failed by the education system in Hong Kong – failing to get into university – and thus disadvantaged in the system, I seek to examine their self-explanations and self-evaluations in order to illustrate the legitimation of social inequality. This illustration could serve as an example of how a disadvantaged group come to see social inequality as legitimate. In what follows, I shall first underscore the contribution of the New Sociology of Education and discuss the relevance of the concepts of self-evaluation and self-explanation in understanding the legitimation of social inequality. Then, I shall provide a brief description of the social context of the qualitative study – Hong Kong and the education system – and discuss its research design. And, I shall move on to analyse how the community-college students – research participants of this study – explain their personal academic failure and others' academic success, how they evaluate themselves and how they see the education system and structured inequality in Hong Kong.

The legitimation of Hong Kong ideology: educational experience, self-explanation and self-evaluation

One main contribution of the New Sociology of Education is their discussion over how the mainstream ideas, including legitimising ideology, could be transmitted through the institution of education. Two stances could be distinguished (Giroux, 1981). The first is a content-focused stance examining the contents of school education – i.e. curriculum – so as to address what is taught at school, more accurately what ideology is passed on through curriculum (Apple, 2009). Through curriculum design – including the selection of material and the organisation of such selected material (e.g. Apple, 1988, 2000) – students are taught at school the ideology underlying such curriculum. In short, we could argue that legitimising ideology is deliberately transmitted through particular contents taught in formal education. The second is strategy-based stance examining how students are taught and assessed at school – i.e. pedagogy and assessments – so as to address what is implicitly conveyed. Through teaching students in a particular way and assessing them in a specific manner, teachers are teaching students a hidden curriculum so that students will adopt specific attitudes towards the existing social system and/or acquire personality traits desired by society in general and prospective employers in particular (e.g. Bowles & Gintis, 1976). Put simply, we could argue that legitimising ideology is indirectly transmitted through a hidden curriculum underlying specific teaching strategies.

Whereas there are disagreements between content-focussed and strategy-based stances, the two stances could both be criticised for under-estimating education as a liberating force that could enable students to think critically and thus to become critical of the existing system of social inequality. Nevertheless, the analyses of both types make clear that legitimising ideology could be transmitted through school education and school life (e.g. Jackson, 1990). That is, school education and school life, through what are deliberately taught and/or implicitly conveyed, could lead students to accept, or to take for granted, but not to challenge the status quo.

This body of work is certainly insightful in highlighting the potential impact of educational experiences on students; but, what seems overlooked is the actual impact of such educational experiences on students. With their educational experiences, how do students, especially those who fail in the education system, explain their educational outcomes and come to see themselves and the social system? More specifically, how do they account for their academic failure, and how do they evaluate themselves, the education system and structured inequality? By this, I do not mean to rule out that processes other than their educational experiences could influence students' evaluations on these aspects. Rather, I just point out the relevance of such evaluations in understanding the legitimation of inequality: whether legitimising ideology successfully imparts on individuals is assumed to be reflected in such evaluations. What is of relevance here is the concepts of self-explanation and self-evaluation.

In formulating a theory explaining why individuals come to accept their positions as just, Della Fave (1980) postulates how self-evaluation – reflective appraisal of generalised others (i.e. perception of self-worth) – could condition feelings of just deserts, thus linking perception of fairness to the legitimation of social inequality. And, in developing further from the concept of self-evaluation, Shepelak (1987) argues that individuals also use generalised others as an external standard to judge the bases of their attainments which then provides them with self-explanation for their attainment (i.e. attribution of success/failure) and thus enables them to determine who should be held accountable for their attainment. What is of particular relevance is this: when the disadvantaged attribute their lots in life to internal properties of the self rather than the structural arrangements (Stolte, 1983), responsibility for such outcomes is individualised and then internalised; then, the disadvantaged have no reason to protest against social inequality. In short, self-explanation and self-evaluation could be two important aspects in understanding why the disadvantaged would come to see social inequality as legitimate.

Research design and research questions

As in the case of many industrial-capitalist societies, social inequality exists in Hong Kong. But, how Hong Kong people make sense of social inequality is under-researched. Hong Kong people are commonly believed to buy in an achievement ideology – the Hong Kong dream: one will succeed in Hong Kong if one is talented and industrious. The spirits of such ideology were captured by the following finding of a local survey in the 1980s (Lau & Kuan, 1988). Respondents of that survey considered that Hong Kong was an unequal society and yet a land of opportunities; despite being pessimistic about their own personal future, they believed that it was possible for some select talented and industrious people to get ahead in Hong Kong.

There is no formal documentation of the exact timing for the emergence of the Hong Kong dream. But some local sociologists speculated that it emerged around the late 1970s and early 1980s (Wong & Lui, 2000). Room for upward mobility was rather limited in early Hong Kong (Chan, 1991); even after the Second World War, the great majority of its population had low-paid manual jobs and lived from hand to mouth (Hambro, 1955). Such situation remained more or less the same until the late 1960s, when the economy was about to take off. Because of the economic take-off, together with other structural changes, not only did a few tycoons make a fortune, but also a great number of well-paid secure professional, managerial and administrative occupations became available, meaning that structural opportunities for upward mobility became an option for many people, even for those of a humble origin (Faure, 2003). Indeed, the 1970s and 1980s of Hong Kong witnessed many self-made people who relied on their merit and effort to take advantage of newly available structural opportunities to get ahead. The social visibility of the career successes of this particular group of people in the 1970s and 1980s, together with the widely circulated rags-to-riches legends, provided a factual foundation for the Hong Kong dream. In brief, the very fact that upward mobility was possible in the 1970s and 1980s of Hong Kong, despite its coexistence with social inequality, led the general public to view Hong Kong as a place where social competition was governed by meritocracy and social inequality was legitimised as just and fair. Against this societal atmosphere, the first community college came into being in the year 2000.

Since the year 2000 the education system in Hong Kong has been undergoing a lot of changes; in order to enable readers to understand better the educational experiences of research participants of this study, I shall briefly describe the education system that they have experienced. While all students were entitled to a nine-year free basic education (then changed to a 12-year free basic education in 2008), the number of places in higher education was, and still is, limited. In short, the system is selective. Before 2012, in competing for a place in a university, students first had to sit for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) at the end of secondary form five. About 34–36% of them could stay on to do two more years of senior secondary education and then had to sit for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE); finally about 50% of them could get a place in a university. That is, a set quota of students – 16–18% of students of the relevant age group – could get a place for first-year first-degree at university. Since 1995, this set quota has remained the same (Education Bureau, Hong Kong, http://www.edb.gov.hk and also see http://www.ipass.gov.hk). While having no intention to increase this set quota, in 1999 the Hong Kong government wanted a greater number of students to receive a post-secondary education rather than a university education and brought in the idea of community college to Hong Kong in 2000 (Education Commission Report, 2000). Despite this initial design, community college is then taken mainly for transferral purpose: nearly all community-college students do an associate degree because they want to get transferred to a university (Ng & Cheng, 2002).

Data for this article are drawn from a qualitative study of community-college students in Hong Kong that I began in the academic year of 2005–2006, when I was teaching the course of ‘Introduction to Sociology’ for students doing an associate degree in a community college. Fifty-two students I taught were recruited as research participants and interviewed between February and June 2006. 20 were male and 32 female; their age ranged from 20 to 24 years (in 2006), an average being 21 years. The taped interview was semi-structured: after filling in their demographic data and HKCEE/HKALE results, I asked each research participant to talk freely about five main areas: first, their current situation at community college, educational aspirations and future plans; second, their educational experiences at primary and secondary schools; third, their relationship with parents, perceived parental aspirations and parental support; fourth, their evaluation of themselves and their classmates as students, their perception of teachers, their views on the education system; and fifth, their views on social success and evaluation of Hong Kong as a place for people's career development. On average, interviews took about one hour, ranging from 45 minutes to 2 hours. The interviews were then transcribed and translated to English from Cantonese, the major local dialect in Hong Kong.

Using data derived from this research design, in this article I sought to address the following research questions. How did students who failed in the education system – failing to get into university – explain such academic outcome? Did they see it as failure? With such educational experiences, how did they evaluate themselves and the operation of the education system? More generally, how did they evaluate structured inequality? Did they accept such academic outcome – academic failure – as justified? Did they see the operation of the education system as fair, and did they see an educational hierarchy as legitimate? How far could the concepts of ‘self-explanation’ and ‘self-evaluation’ enable us to make sense of their explanatory accounts and evaluations? And, did the Hong Kong dream play a part in their explanations and evaluations?

Data analysis: integrating the Hong Kong dream into consciousness

To reiterate, bringing community colleges into being in Hong Kong in the year 2000, the government did not mean to provide an alternative route for students to get into university. Despite this, none of the 52 research participants saw an associate degree as a final degree, but desperately took it as a stepping stone to a bachelor's degree. Aspiring strongly to a bachelor's degree but failing the necessary public examinations, all the research participants admitted that the community college was their second chance.

Attributing their academic failure to laziness and incapability and feeling ashamed and inferior about themselves

All 52 research participants considered that getting into university was a successful academic outcome. Failing at the public examinations and thus failing to get into university, all of them saw such academic outcome as failure. When asked to explain their failures at the public examinations, nearly all research participants attributed to laziness and incapability (if not stupidity), although some distinguished general ability from academic ability and examination skills, as shown in the following quotations.

I worked hard for HKCEE and passed it but HKALE was too difficult. I'm just not talented enough. (Connie, 20)1

I should have worked harder. … But, deep down, I feel I'm not an academic material; I just don't have the talent or the examination skills. (Judy, 36)

I was just too lazy. … But actually it was a vicious cycle – I found the material difficult and didn't want to study it; and when I didn't study it, I couldn't catch up and found the material even more difficult. (Larry, 47)

Their explanatory accounts of their personal academic failure are consistent with how research participants explain others' academic success. When asked why some students could pass HKCEE or HKALE and thus get into university, most of them invariably named two individual characteristics: capability and diligence. In short, they attributed their personal academic failure or others' academic success to individual factors, rather than structural factors or factors related to one's social background (cf. Della Fave, 1974). In other words, the research participants, as with MacLeod's Brothers (2009), basically see themselves accountable for their academic failure. With such self-explanations, they put the blame on themselves. Individualising the blame, they felt ashamed about their failure and saw themselves as inferior. In particular, when asked ‘Are you a successful student?’, most of them immediately gave me negative self-evaluations, if not self-defeating commentaries, seeing themselves as second-rate students, if not downright unworthy. The following three quotations were rather typical:

I'm so ashamed to mention my HKALE results to anyone. … I'm not successful – how can a student failing HKALE be a successful student? (Irene, 32)

Failing HKAL is a great setback in my life. … Failing HKALE means that I'm not a successful student but a loser. (Rita, 45)

I'm here, meaning that I'm a failure. … Community college is a place for losers who fail to get into university. (Iris, 33)

Seeing the education system as meritocratic

Viewing their academic outcomes as failures, research participants were in a way seeing themselves through the public's eyes (Bourdieu et al., 1999). While putting the blame on themselves, how did they view the education system? When asked ‘What do you think about the role of education in Hong Kong?’, nearly all of them considered that the education system served one of the following functions: differentiation, allocation and selection; the following quotations were common responses.

Differentiation:

Education is meant to differentiate good students from bad students. (Keith, 43)

Education is a device differentiating the talented or industrious from the rest. (Alice, 2)

Education is designed to differentiate the capable from the incapable. (Gary, 19)

Allocation:

Education is to allocate students to different jobs. (Alex, 3)

Education is to allocate students to different social positions. (Calvin, 8)

Education is to allocate students to schools of different bandings and eventually to jobs of different pays and social statuses. (Brian, 7)

Selection:

Education is to select the cream of the top students – the elite students. (Nick, 51)

Education is to rank students so that the best students could be screened off. (David, 14)

Education is to rank students so as to get rid of bad students. (Ben, 4)

In brief, many research participants were analysing the education system sociologically: consistent with functionalist perspectives (cf. Davis & Moore, 1945), they considered that education played the roles of differentiation, allocation and selection in industrial-capitalist societies. One may then suspect that the research participants saw the roles of education as such because they were familiar with some sociological analyses of education after taking an introductory course in Sociology. Be that as it may, but when we delved into their accounts, it was not difficult to see that research participants were able to offer such sociological analyses of the education system, not because they recited sociological analyses of education but because of their very first-hand educational experiences. As the research participants recalled, throughout the course of their educational career, there were countless quizzes, tests and examinations in each academic year before they sat for the two public examinations. While at school, many of their teachers only praised students who scored highest in each quiz or test or examination, in society the media drew so much attention to students who got the greatest number of ‘A's at public examinations. In brief, only a very small number of students in the education system would be praised or recognised. Unsurprisingly, many research participants were not top students while at primary or secondary school, in that most of their educational careers were usually full of failures, as will be shown below; this made them feel tired of being constantly ranked and frustrated greatly with not being selected. In particular, many of them saw failing HKCEE or HKALE as their greatest setback in their educational career, as suggested by some quotations above.

I argued that because of their first-hand experiences and also academic failure, research participants were well aware that the education system was competitive; many somehow felt strongly about the cruelty of such a competitive education system and some were even indignant about it. My argument could be supported by how research participants described education; the following quotations are few examples:

Education is a means to put people in order: we are constantly ranked. Schools of different bandings are ranked in a league table; students in the same school are allocated to the elite class and non-elite classes; and students in the same class are still ranked further every semester. (Ivan, 34)

Education determines the life and death of students although it is efficient for administrators to classify, rank, or label students. (Harry, 26)

Education is like a sieve, a tournament, a very cruel tournament with only very few winners and a lot of losers. (Fred, 18)

When asked about their views on education, many research participants said, rather sarcastically in some cases, that they were tired of being ranked by the education system, semester after semester, year after year. Some even got rather emotional and few even burst into tears. In addition, as the quotations right above showed, some research participants used such metaphors as ‘sieve’ and ‘tournament’ to describe the education system and used such words as ‘life-and-death’ and ‘cruel’ to evaluate the education system. Judging from such tone of expressions and emotional responses and their metaphors and words used in describing and/or evaluating the education system, we could argue that research participants were well aware how competitive the education system was, and that many found their failing experiences, one after another, in their educational careers rather discouraging and hurtful; some of them even made it explicit that they found it rather painful to struggle in such a system.

However, as we shall see below, despite their failing experiences, and despite their frustration with the education system being selective and competitive, research participants are convinced that all education systems are inevitably selective and competitive. In addition, they also believe that selection or competition in education has to take the form of examination. In their elaboration on this, most of them pointed out that because they had sat for so many examinations, albeit in different formats, throughout the course of their educational career, they simply could not imagine how competition was possible without examinations of any form (Apple, 1995).

Apart from seeing the inevitability of examinations for the sake of social selection, research participants also considered that what counted in social selection were ability and effort. The following quotations are some examples:

Whether you can score high boils down to ability and effort. It is true for HKCEE, HKALE, and also examinations at community college. The trick is to master the examination skills and to practise specifically for the examination. (Ivan, 34)

As long as you work hard and are talented, you can do well at HKCEE or HKALE or here. … And I will work hard this time. (Edith, 25)

No matter what kind of examination, you do well if you are capable and industrious. Perhaps, you also need to have the examination skills. But such skills could also be seen as a kind of capability. (Gordon, 21)

In brief, research participants believed that both the public examinations and examinations at community college were meritocratic and their main difference just laid in the subjects examined: they believed that what made one do well in examinations, of either kind, was one's ability (academic ability and examination skills) and effort (making effort to understand subject material and to practise for the examination). In other words, they believed that the education system was meritocratic wherein achievement was solely determined by ability and effort; we could say that the research participants buy in the Hong Kong dream, implying that they hold the following attitude: if individuals fail to get ahead, they have themselves rather than social structure to blame (Hochschild, 1995; Kluegel & Smith, 1986). Then it became apparent why the research participants essentially blamed their incapability and laziness for their academic failure.

Regarding the education system as fair

When asked to comment on whether the education system was fair, many research participants saw the education as meritocratic, as mentioned above, and they were quite certain that such a meritocratic system was fair. However, despite their certainty, what should be noted was that some research participants simultaneously expressed their indifference and ambivalence about the fairness of the education system, as shown in the following four quotations.

Indifference:

I don't know. … But, the current system is the only ‘game’ in town. Even if it is unfair, what can we do? And, what is the substitute? (Alex, 3)

What do you mean by fair? … I don't think we could ever have a system which is fair to everyone. … If any system is unavoidably unfair to some people, what's the point of discussing whether the existing system is fair? (Ivan, 34)

Ambivalence:

I think it's unfair. Only those who score high at examinations can win. … But does it mean that those scoring low are dumb? I don't think so. … But, I don't know how to tell you exactly what I think; I just feel that the system is unfair to some people. … But perhaps, we'll never have a fair system in the world. (Keith, 43)

Of course, the system is unfair. … If my parents had had more money, they could have sent me to expensive tutoring classes and I may have done better at HKCEE. … Well, I'm not so sure if it'd actually help. … So, I don't know. … Maybe the system is fair after all, because only those extraordinarily talented could get through HKALE and get into university. (Ben, 4)

Some ambivalent research participants seem as analytical as sociologists who research in the field of education (especially reproduction theorists) (e.g. Brint, 2006) by pointing out that advantaged-class students are at an advantage in the education system because they have more resources for education, implying that they have more opportunities than their disadvantaged-class counterparts to do well: advantaged-class students could pay a higher tuition fee for studying in a private elite primary or secondary school, or hire personal tutors to help with their homework or even study abroad so as to bypass the local public examinations (e.g. Ball, 2003). However, in spite of their analyses of class effects operating at different educational stages, those ambivalent research participants were uncertain of whether such analyses could lead them to conclude that the education system was unfair. What makes them so doubtful is the fact that social selection is conducted through a series of standardised public examinations and an application of the same assessment standards to each contender. To all research participants, it is clear that every school-aged student is entitled to a free basic education and to sit for the same public examinations, and that each is graded by the same marking standards; so, it seems unjustified, if not unreasonable, for them to say that the Hong Kong education system is unfair, as is revealed in the following elaborations on the fairness of the system:

I think the education system is fair: all of us can study at primary school and then secondary school for free, as long as we are willing. (Linda, 40)

The system is fair: for each subject at HKCEE/HKALE we are doing the same examination script answering the same set of questions. (Ann, 9)

Everyone has the same chance to perform well for all of us sit the same HKCEE and HKALE and our examination scripts are graded in an identical manner according to a standardised marking scheme. (Rita, 45)

It seems rather difficult for those ambivalent research participants to reconcile their vague sense of unfairness working in the education system – concerning class effects as argued by reproduction theorists – and the fact that the same standards of assessments are applied to each student. These ambivalent research participants, despite feeling puzzled, did not have the ‘language’, so to speak, to articulate their perception of the unfairness of the education system. Their sense of puzzlement, if not ambivalence, was accentuated by their previous failing experiences: the fact that they failed either HKCEE or HKALE seemed to make them anxious about their criticisms against the system being discredited; such insinuation could be found in the following articulation:

Some classmates of mine complain that the education system is unfair saying that well-off children have more advantages. … But I wonder if that is true. Well-off children aren't necessarily smarter. If they aren't intelligent and don't work hard, I don't think they could get good grades. … And I'd say that if you aren't intelligent but work hard, you could still do well at HKCEE, but never at HKALE. HKALE results truly reflect your ability and effort. You can't say that the system is unfair simply because you fail to meet its standards. … And, I won't say that the education system is unfair because I fail there. … My failure just shows that I'm not intelligent enough or not industrious enough to meet its very high standards. (Connie, 20)

In other words, because of their academic failure, these research participants did not feel confident to dwell on their ambivalence about the fairness of the education system. Rather, they brought themselves to be convinced that the system was fair by emphasising on the arrangement that the public examinations are standardised and the practice that the same assessment standards are applied. Such reconciliation of their ambivalence is not simply a reaffirmation of their belief that social selection in Hong Kong is conducted through meritocratic competition, but also an exacerbation of their view that results of the public examinations are essentially determined by ability and effort and are thus fair; this, in turn, reinforces their belief in the Hong Kong dream. In short, research participants accepted their second-rate or inferior status because they, despite their ambivalence in some cases, were convinced that if the education system was meritocratic, then its selection would let the capable win and the incapable lose and such meritocratic selection was fair; the fact that they lost simply meant that they were incapable.

Put simply, research participants saw the education system as meritocratic in performing its function of social selection and thus brought in the Hong Kong dream. Holding up the Hong Kong dream, they saw themselves accountable for their academic failure. Being failed by such a meritocratic system, they did not feel that they could complain but felt ashamed and inferior, although they felt hurt by the cruelty of the system and were frustrated with it. And, despite their feelings of shame and inferiority and their hurtful feelings and frustration, they basically regarded such a meritocratic system as fair, although some of their ambivalence, and even indifference, to the fairness of the system was noticed. In spite of such ambivalence, given their academic failure, they did not feel they were in a legitimate position to criticise the system for fear that their criticisms might be discredited. In other words, self-explanation and self-evaluation that are supposed to be generated by the Hong Kong dream, be it explicitly taught or implicitly conveyed through curriculum or hidden curriculum, come to a full circle: attributing their failure to internal properties of the self (or individual characteristics) rather than structural factors (including class effects) make research participants feel accountable, individualising the blame for their failure make them feel ashamed and inferior, and internalising their responsibility, despite some ambivalence about it, make them feel they have no cause to criticise the education system; all these, then, lead them to make negative or self-defeating commentaries about themselves and to view the education system as meritocratic and fair, and such comments and views, in turn, reinforce their belief in the Hong Kong dream.

Supporting an educational hierarchy

Despite being indignant about the education system being examination-oriented and selective and thus competitive, despite commenting such a competitive system as cruel, and despite their feelings being hurt by such a cruel system, many research participants did not consider that the system should be changed. Perhaps that is partly because they have internalised the ideas of competition and examination, as somehow discussed above: they come to accept not simply that examination is the most, if not the only, meritocratic and thus fair means for social competition (Apple, 1999), but also that social competition is inevitable. Put simply, many research participants embraced the competitiveness of the system. True, when asked to comment on themselves and their classmates as students and to talk particularly about what they thought made a successful student, some research participants said that ‘it was very difficult to define and such definitions varied depending on how you looked at it,’ and quite a few were rather ambivalent in defining a successful student. However, what was clear was that as mentioned briefly above, all of them actually realised the mainstream standards – i.e. those who do well in public examinations and then get into a competitive university being considered as successful students – and many applied the standards to judge themselves and others, and that some were being cynical saying that they were definitely a failure by the mainstream standards (as quoted above in the first session of the discussion). In addition to making self-defeating commentaries about themselves, some research participants also made very harsh comments on other students, as shown in the following quotations.

Not sure if my classmates are successful. … But, successful students should get into a very selective department at university. If it's easy to get into a department, then a student's getting into such a department means that the student is not that successful. (Iris, 33)

All community-college students are losers; successful students should get into university straight away. (Irene, 32)

Students here are all in the same boat – we are all losers of the education system failing either HKCEE or HKALE. … None of us is successful; successful students would get into university straight away but won't take this route. (Jack, 37)

I argue that making self-defeating commentaries about themselves and making harsh comments on other students are two sides to the same coin showing research participants’ acceptance, if not internalisation, of an educational hierarchy where only few students could get into university, the top of the hierarchy, and thus be seen as successful and also of applying the very same standards for judging each contender. To repeat, by policy only a set quota of students would get a place in a university and over 80% of students of the relevant age group are doomed to fail to do so. However, no research participants mentioned this education policy in explaining their academic failures. Instead, many of them embraced the existing education system to an extent that they even did not want to change such a policy. The following quotations were some common responses to the question of ‘What do you think if the government were to change the policy, letting a greater proportion of students do a local bachelor's degree?’:

If the policy changes, more people could benefit. But then, university students will be seen as less successful than they are now. Then, will studying at university still be seen as an achievement? (Keith, 43)

If the government changes its set quota, the system would become less competitive and the status of university students would become lower. … Then you won't be so proud of being a university student. I'm not sure if I like it. (Rita, 45)

I don't know. I want the system to remain as competitive as it is now. I lost out in this system but I could still try to win later on. It's painful to be a loser; but I'm not sure if I want myself to be a winner in a less competitive system. (Ivan, 34)

It then becomes apparent that many research participants actually support an educational hierarchy. This confirms further that they indeed see themselves as second-rate students. And, it also shows that the research participants actually consider that they as second-rate students deserve to feel inferior. A corollary is that students who get into university deserve to feel superior. In other words, despite being failed by the existing system and feeling inferior about themselves, research participants did not want to abolish such an educational hierarchy; rather, they held a hierarchical attitude and hoped that one day they would get to the top of the hierarchy and thus could enjoy the superiority of doing so. The essence of their concern is not to abolish/challenge an educational hierarchy or to discuss whether the educational system that generates such a hierarchy is fair, but to get to the top in such an educational hierarchy. So, given a hypothetical choice, nearly all research participants chose the status quo; seemingly, they preferred being failed by a competitive system to being passed in a less competitive one.

Actually, research participants view structural inequality in the same way. When asked about whether Hong Kong is a good place for people to develop their careers, what makes a success in Hong Kong and whether social competition is fair and just in Hong Kong, many research participants are sure that Hong Kong is a good place for career development because Hong Kong is a place of opportunities, and they consider that talented and hardworking people will undoubtedly get ahead in Hong Kong, and that every society, including Hong Kong, is inevitably unfair and/or unjust in some way and, therefore, the point is to do one's best in Hong Kong in order to get to the top. The corollary of such a view echoes the essence of the research participants' concern about whether the education system should be changed, as discussed above: seemingly, what they consider crucial is not making an unequal structure more equal but becoming upwardly mobile in such an unequal structure.

In sum, we could say that self-explanation and self-evaluation generated by the system of structured inequality in Hong Kong founded upon the Hong Kong dream do not merely make research participants, failed by the education system and thus disadvantaged in it, feel accountable for their failure and individualise the blame and see themselves inferior or less worthy, but also generate in them a hierarchical attitude in judging others and the structure; in turn, this hierarchical attitude works together with self-explanation and self-evaluation to legitimise the system of structured inequality. In this sense, we could probably argue that the existing social hierarchy is legitimised by some self-sustaining processes (Collins, 1990).

Concluding remarks: legitimation operates through self-explanation, self-evaluation and hierarchical attitude

In examining how education as an institution could serve the purpose of legitimation, many studies of New Sociology of Education focus on the institutional arrangements of the education system – curriculum, pedagogy and assessments at school – so as to examine what ideology, legitimising ideology in this case, is explicitly taught or implicitly conveyed. While insightful, I suggest that attention should also be directed to examining such institutional impacts on students: how far have students integrated such legitimising ideology into their inner consciousness? To this end we could examine students' self-explanation and self-evaluation in relation to their educational experiences. Specifically, with their educational experiences, how do students see themselves, the education system and structured inequality? Referring to the accounts of 52 research participants – community-college students – in Hong Kong, I sought to illustrate that such evaluations of the research participants could be relevant to understanding how social inequality was legitimised.

Whereas it seems a common sense to expect that students failed by the education system and thus disadvantaged in the system would be critical of the system, the literature suggests that they would be acquiescent. Somehow the two views are both true for the 52 research participants. On one hand, with their failing experiences, the research participants were somewhat critical in seeing the education system as a means for social selection, indignant about the cruelty of such competitive system and vaguely aware of some unfairness working in the system. On the other hand, they attributed their academic failure to incapability and laziness; seeing themselves accountable for the failure, they put the blame on themselves (rather than structural factors) and feel ashamed about the failure and see themselves as inferior. I assumed that such self-explanation and self-evaluation resulted in part from their educational experiences, both at school and community college. With such educational experiences, they were convinced that any education system was inevitably selective or competitive, and that examination was the most meritocratic means for selection/competition, although they were somewhat ambivalent about its fairness. Despite their ambivalence, because of their academic failure, the research participants still came to adopt the mainstream standards for judging themselves and others. And this also led most of them to see social competition in Hong Kong as meritocratic and its system of structured inequality as essentially fair. To be more accurate, many research participants actually did not really care about whether the system of structured inequality in Hong Kong was fair; neither did they want to change the system. This boiled down to a hierarchical attitude accompanied by their self-explanation and self-evaluation: research participants supported an educational hierarchy, wherein only few students could get into university and believed that such students must be more capable and industrious than students failing to do so; and therefore the former deserved to feel superior and the latter inferior.

In sum, the legitimacy of social inequality could be achieved by integrating some legitimising ideology into the consciousness of those failed by the system through their self-explanations and self-evaluations so that they would individualise the responsibility/blame, internalise lesser self-worth and develop a hierarchical attitude. Certainly, self-explanation, self-evaluation and a hierarchical attitude could each be seen as an individual process of legitimation. But, actually, all of them could be seen as being generated by the legitimising ideology underlying the inequality system of Hong Kong, and, in turn, reinforce each other and the ideology itself. In this sense, when taken together, they could be seen as constituting a self-sustaining process legitimising social inequality.

Limitations

Although I sought to address specific research questions in this study, there are some in-built limitations to its research design. This qualitative project is meant to be an exploratory study of a small non-random sample of self-selected community-college students formed by convenience sampling. All research participants were recruited from students in one community college doing an introductory course in Sociology. So, the results generated from this small convenience sample are not necessarily statistically representative. When asked to evaluate themselves, as well as their educational careers, research participants were actually reconstructing their experiences and might present themselves in a way that they thought would appeal to the researcher/former-teacher. In addition, one may also suspect that research participants did an introductory course in Sociology and therefore were perhaps familiar with sociological analyses of education. In short, validity of their accounts could be in doubt. Nevertheless, these limitations, I argue, do not, therefore, make the research participants' accounts less illustrative on the topic of the legitimation of structured inequality.

Given the research design, the research results here should be taken as tentative and applicable only to a specific group of students failed by the education system. This examination takes advantage of the insights of Della Fave and Shepelak to illustrate how self-explanation and self-evaluation could play a part in the legitimacy of social stratification. Surely, social stratification could be legitimised through a variety of mechanisms; I have no intention to assert that the processes reported here are the only mechanisms or the most important ones. However, this examination highlights the importance of agency in legitimation: without being duped, research participants, despite their failing experiences, come to see a system that has disadvantaged them as legitimate. More research is required to examine how processes of legitimation work for other disadvantaged groups, such as women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals, so as to find out to what extent and in what ways the findings reported here for the disadvantaged – students in the setting of education – are applicable to other disadvantaged groups in other social hierarchies.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Center for the Study of Social Stratification and Inequality, Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan) and also the Faculty of Education, University of Macau (Macao SAR, China) for funding and support of various kinds for making this project possible. More importantly, I am indebted to all the 52 students who agreed to participate in this project. But for their generosity with time and information, this project would have been impossible. I am particularly grateful to them for sharing with me their educational experiences, their feelings, and their genuine and critical views on different issues. While critical in analysing their accounts, I am sympathetic with them. And I also thank the editors and anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions on an earlier draft.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yi-Lee Wong

Yi-Lee Wong is an assistant professor at the Department of Educational Administration and Policy, Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She obtained her bachelor's degree and M.Phil. (Sociology) at the University of Hong Kong and was awarded her D.Phil. (Sociology) by the University of Oxford. Before joining the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she was a visiting faculty fellow teaching at various universities in Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova (2002-2005) and also an instructor and a director for a summer school held in Issyl Kuk, Kyrgyzstan (2003, 2004) and Istanbul, Turkey (2005); a lecturer at Community College in Hong Kong (2005-2006); a Center-Of-Excellence Fellow at the Center for the Study of Social Stratification and Inequality at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan (2006-2008); and, an assistant professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Macau (2009-2013). She has been researching into social inequality and social mobility. Of late, she is working on a number of qualitative studies on educational inequality: community-educational experiences of college students in Hong Kong; educational choices of high-school students in Macao; school-dropouts in Macao; and, school regulations in Macao. She is also working with a group of undergraduates in Macao on a project of youth culture.

Notes

^1. What are included in the parentheses after each quotation are the fictitious names of the research participants and his/her participant number.