Elite schools, class disavowal and the mystification of virtues

ABSTRACT

Elite schools claim an enticing array of virtues – superior educational standards and an elevated morality. This paper examines their moral claims and their relationship to such schools’ social class practices. Through research at seven elite schools around the world, we distil their appeals to moral discourses and show how they involve both class avowal and disavowal. We incorporate insights from Karl Marx on the ideological functioning of capitalist social relations and Alasdair MacIntyre on modern moral understanding. We argue that while elite schools profess particular virtues in claiming and disclaiming their elite-ness, in both cases virtues are employed to assert status and to deflect criticism.

KEYWORDS:

• Elite schools
• social class
• virtue
• ideology
• Marx
• MacIntyre

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lindsay Fitzclarence, the editors and reviewers for valuable feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jane Kenway is Emeritus Professor at Monash University and Professorial Fellow at Melbourne University, Australia. Her research focuses on educational power, politics and injustice. Her most recent, jointly written, book is Class Choreographies: Elite Schools and Globalization (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2017).

Michael Lazarus is a doctoral candidate at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. His research examines Karl Marx's social ontology and the impact of Aristotelism and Hegelism on Marx's method of immanent critique.

Notes

1. Team members are Jane Kenway, Johannah Fahey, Diana Langmead (Monash), Fazal Rizvi (Melbourne), Cameron McCarthy (Illinois), Debbie Epstein (Roehampton), and Aaron Koh (Chinese University Hong Kong) and five PhD students. Funding is provided by Australian Research Council (DP1093778) and our universities (2010–2015).

2. Schools and school sources are anonymised.