Educational Experiences and Perceptions of Occupational Hierarchies: The Case of the Norwegian Working Class

ABSTRACT

In this article we present the experiences of members of the Norwegian working class in the educational system and show that the findings contradict established theories in the sociology of education in a way that calls for a re-examination of the function of societal hierarchies in such studies. Secondly, we report how working-class individuals comprehend society’s valuation of their work and whether these experiences affect their own judgments and evaluations of work. The findings reveal an enlightened working class when it comes to conventional occupational hierarchies, but also show that members of the working class classify status in their own, distinctive way. The egalitarian cultural configuration we observe deviates in certain ways from what is reported in comparable studies for Britain, the United States (USA), and France. We argue that the key to the understanding of such variability is knowledge about how education is penetrated by social hierarchies in different social formations.

KEYWORDS:

• Comparison
• educational experiences
• egalitarianism
• Norway
• occupational ranking
• hierarchy
• working class

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the referees. We are grateful to Roger Hestholm for his contributions to our many discussions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In Norway, sociological research in the tradition of mobility studies demonstrates coherence between social background and educational achievements (Hansen, 1999; Hjellbrekke & Korsnes, 2012). Several studies of the Norwegian society have shown self-recruitment (social closure) to law and medicine (Hansen, 1999; Hansen & Strømme, 2014). Some models also show trends towards intergenerational reproduction in the categories of upper-level services and unskilled, manual occupations (Hjellbrekke & Korsnes, 2012, pp. 103–104). Indeed, these findings indicate that a process of social reproduction is going on. At the same time for people in high-status professions, it has been shown that “two-thirds had fathers with modest occupational positions” (Elstad, 2002, p. 32), suggesting a fair chance of upward mobility. In addition, values such as equality, solidarity, honesty and democracy are important in the Norwegian culture, and they might explain the comparatively diffuse content of notions like “social status” and “hierarchy” (Skarpenes & Sakslind, 2010). Thus, it is interesting to know how lower educated people in an egalitarian society experience their time in school and their position in the occupational structure. See note XI.

2 The topic is, for example, welcomed back on the agenda, after having had a shifting presence, in the extended review of the book edited by Lois Weis (2008) by Ken Roberts (2009).

3 Such variations are documented in a review of some classical studies (in Post World War II Britain), that finds that “the main stages in the construction of educational inequality as a social problem” is periodised in this way: Barriers against working-class access to schooling are in the early phase identified as financial, then as cultural, before the emphasis is on school organisation and, lastly, in reproduction theory, the focus is on the school itself as a system imposing the dominant culture (Foster, Gomm, & Hammersley, 1996, p. 19).

4 The perhaps most explicit example of “voice” is in Willis (1977), but his lads were from the low-stream students and constituted a sub-group in the worker-population. For a discussion of the representativeness of this case, see Foster et al., 1996, p. 129ff.

5 See also Skinningsrud (2007), that draws on Margaret Archer's morphogenetic theory in order to explain the development of the educational system in Norway. Concerning the educational content, Lauglo (1995) argues that educational ideals were found in the altruistic values of family life, folk culture and in the rural community (Lauglo, 1995). Scholars seem much in agreement about the particularities of the Nordic model in education, when describing it as guided by values such as “democracy, equality, progressiveness, and pragmatism” (Antikainen, 2006, p. 240); or as “equality, inclusion and adaptive learning” (Telhaug et al., 2006, p. 279).

6 For a study of national contrasts indicating the particularities of a Nordic case (Denmark), see Osborn (2001). She writes:

The English education system has grown out of a laissez-faire, liberal tradition which has been associated with voluntarism, local autonomy and differentiated provision. Education in France has been organised according to the republican ideal, which sees the state as having a duty to ensure a universal system, providing equal opportunities for all. Denmark, along with other Nordic countries, has a strong tradition of communitarianism which places less emphasis on professional autonomy and relies more on a powerful folk tradition of local democracy and social partnership. These different national cultural traditions are reflected in the different emphasis placed on ‘affective' and ‘cognitive’ concerns within each education system. (Osborn, 2001, p. 270)

See Skarpenes and Sakslind (2010, pp. 277–278) for a summary of the major differences between the Norwegian and British educational systems.

7 This finding is a striking fact of intellectual history, especially in comparison with the case of Britain, where sociologists (and intellectuals in general) are portrayed as obsessed with the topic of class, in particular the working class. Even more, much of the identity of the discipline of sociology in Britain is founded on the tradition of working-class studies (Savage, 2000).

8 In 2015 Statistics Norway reports employments by occupation thus: managers 7.7%, occupations requiring academic credentials (professions etc.) 26.8%, occupations requiring university college credentials (nurses, social workers, kindergarten and primary school teachers etc.) 17%. In all 51.5% of those employed had higher education. The rest (office occupations 5.9%, sales and service 19.9%, farmers and fishermen 1.9%, crafts 9.3%, industry 6.2% and other occupations 5.3%) add up to 48.5%. Retrieved 25 November 2016, from https://www.ssb.no/264147/sysselsatte-15-74-ar-etter-kjonn-og-yrke.arsgjennomsnitt.prosent.

9 Here are some of our main questions posed, in (approximate) English translations: When you left lower secondary, what did you think about the education you were given? How did you experience your school-days? Do you think the school works well? What in school did work well for you? What did not work well? What were your teacher-relationships?

10 Q: Question. A: Answer.

11 Needless to say, this conclusion concerns the role of the school, as it emerges in our comparatively framed interpretation. Whatever the function of education in Norway is, it is hardly of the (repressive) types described in the classical works of the sociology of education. Of course, other forms of subjection may exist: The culture of Norwegian education is, evidently, in structural terms, a culture of the middle class, in its Norwegian forms. But how this culture is institutionalised and in action in class-rooms is largely unknown terrain, since Norwegian sociologists, even when doing “sociology of education”, map the influence of just about everything but the school-culture itself (a recent example is Heggen, Helland, & Lauglo, 2013). Nonetheless, a form of “social reproduction” is going on, since a large majority of our interviewees “reproduce” the status of their family of origin.

12 A larger survey of lower-secondary level pupils discovered a pattern that echoes such paradoxes, when it was found that one one hand, 90% report that they “enjoy” school (trives), and on the other that, still, 70% report that the school is “boring” (kjeder seg) (Øia, 2011). Evidently, such boredom could also be taken to indicate some form of cultural alienation.

13 A methodological argument against our interpretation would perhaps be that our worker-contributors tend to understate or gloss over negative experiences in school, for cultural reasons. However, it is hard to find circumstantial evidence to validate such practices, as something widespread, in egalitarian Norway.

14 The recent report from a large-scale survey of attitudes among young Norwegians concludes this way:

National studies of the last 20 years show that Norwegian lower secondary students show an increasing level of satisfaction and fewer report boredom or dread going to school. Compared to pupils in many other countries, the level of satisfaction in Norwegian education is high. (Bakken, 2016, p. 24)

The current study reports that more than 90% of all secondary level students agree (completely or partly) with the statement “I am satisfied with school” (Jeg trives på skolen) (Bakken, 2016).

15 Some earn only 270,000 Norwegian kroner annually, but some working in the oil industry make up to 1,000,000 Norwegian kroner. In general, male workers in industry and in craft occupations make good money, and women in heath and service don't.