‘Muddling through’: a cultural perspective on life in schools for China's deviant students

Abstract

This article summarizes the main findings and arguments of a doctoral research conducted in an urban city in the Southeast China. Through an eight-month ethnographic study, the author reveals the life of a group of deviant students in a secondary school and their ‘muddling’ subculture. It is argued that the subculture of these young people from lower-class family is a means to negotiate their space and power in a failing school system situated in a drastically transforming society full of diversified yet often conflicting values.

Keywords:

• Youth problem
• Deviant student
• Subculture

China's radical social transformation, brought about by its rapid economic growth, has placed more of its youth at risk. There has been an increase in juvenile delinquency, Internet addiction, school bullying, and gang involvement. Research on this subject in China has attributed the problem to lower socio-economic status of students’ families, faulty parenting style, academic failure, and aggressive personality. However, the dominant discourse virtually ignores the lives of young people within their context and fails to examine what a deviant lifestyle means to them.

This dissertation addresses this limitation by examining the process through which unprivileged students navigate the problems they face in secondary schooling and construct a deviant subculture. This was accomplished through intensive ethnographic fieldwork in an urban secondary school in southeast China with participant observation and interview methods to collect data on a range of students, their parents and teachers. During an eight-month period, the author merged into students’ everyday life in the studied school, dubbed Central Park Secondary School, and followed and interviewed a group of students who are labelled by the school and teachers as deviant. This group, called ‘4+1’ youth, is composed of five students, with four boys (Onion, WS, Shanji, XXL) and one girl (Dusk). Through adopting the concept of subculture with the Chicago School tradition as an analytical model (see, for example, Becker, 1963; Brake, 1985; Cohen, 1955/1971; Colosi, 2010; Thrasher, 1927/1963; Whyte, 1943/1993), this dissertation tried to reveal the interaction between ‘4+1’ youth and the social structure in the specific locality and community, such as the macro social background, the socio-economic status of their family, the school system, and so forth. A ‘deep description’ of their cultural manifestation of creativity and agency to cope with the frustration and oppression in their life is thus rendered.

The dissertation is comprised of eight chapters. The first three chapters give a comprehensive account of the research background, related literature on youth deviant behaviour and subculture. An elaborate introduction of the data collection methods and case selection process is also provided before the three major findings are presented in the following chapter: the structural factors that contribute to students’ deviant behaviours, with special focus on the school organisation; ‘4+1’ youth's process of becoming deviant and their adaption mode to school; and the formation, organisation and meaning of ‘4+1’ youth's ‘muddling’ subculture as a way to cope with the disadvantaged situation.

Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 consist largely of a descriptive analysis of the structure of social relations in Central Park Secondary School. Much of the analysis has been concerned with the unintended consequences on organisation and management within the school, and their deleterious effect on the education process. They reveal that school plays a critical role in the formation of students’ deviant identities. Its preoccupation with academic performance and bureaucratic management pushes students who bear with cumulative disadvantages inherited from their families and community to a more marginalised position. Deviancy develops from a label to a response. The key manifestation of this is the creation and development of a ‘muddling’ subculture as their strategy to survive schooling.

Chapter 6 gives a comprehensive account of this subculture. Three main aspects of ‘4+1’ youth's ‘muddling’ subculture are delineated, namely: muddling through the schooling, muddling through the days, and muddling in the gang. A deviant identity that underlies these behaviours is also discussed. Pragmatic resistance, good social skill and the symbolic meaning of smoking and drinking are considered the key values of the ‘muddling’ subculture. The ‘4+1’ youth construct the identity as ‘deviant students’ in this ‘muddling’ subculture from which they gain a sense of belongingness.

Chapter 7 gives an in-depth interpretation of the subculture and reveals that it not only reflects the influence of mainstream culture and parent culture on ‘4+1’ youth, but also demonstrates their agency. This dissertation argues that young people's subculture, despite its limitations, always has constructive and positive aspects. In the case of ‘4+1’ youth, their agency can be understood in two aspects: subcultural capital and social capital. Firstly, through establishing the ‘muddling’ subculture that makes them distinct from other students, ‘4+1’ youth possess more power to negotiate with the school and teachers on issues such as workload and discipline; and with adults for more social space. In addition, the subculture also acts as a safeguard for their psychological well-being against overwhelming frustration and strain from the social reality. Second, after a re-conceptualisation of social capital, ‘4+1’ youth's social capital can be recognised in terms of the extensive social network they build among students and adults; and the material resources and worldly knowledge they gain from this social network.

As the closing remark, Chapter 8 presents the conclusion and suggestions for educators to understand and help deviant students. The limitation of the research and possible issues for further study are also discussed.

This finding coincides with selected sociological studies of deviant students in the West but also aligns with the special context of contemporary China. First, the Chinese society is evolving even faster after the establishment of Deng's economic model. It is a broadly accepted fact and a roaring public concern that the gap between the poor and rich in China is heading towards a new class structure. In this context, schooling doubtlessly plays a role in the social reproduction. This study claims that lower class students’ deviant subculture is not simply an oppositional culture to the value of school education as argued in western literature; rather, it is a strategic negotiation with the social structure in order to ‘muddle through’ their lives. Second, the nature of this ‘muddling’ subculture has strong links with a pragmatic social ethos that glorifies monetary success. When ‘whatever works to become rich’ is the dominant ‘Chinese dream’, other forms of social recognition, value and well-being attached to formal school education can appear as overwhelmingly irrelevant to the eyes of those students who inherited a social class they did not choose and an educational system that tells them little.

As one of the few ethnographic studies on young people, especially deviant students in China, the major theoretical contribution of this research lies in its effort to contextualise a wealth of western theories into the post-revolutionary China.

First, this research reveals the role that school plays in the process of students’ becoming deviant and the subsequent formation of their subculture. Although this has been well documented in western literature (Ball, 1984; Lacey, 1984; McLaren, 2007; MacLeod, 2009; Reynolds, 1976; Woods, 1979), similar studies on Chinese schools remain conspicuously scarce. This study therefore contributes to the understanding of the phenomena to fill the void.

Second, this research has tried to integrally apply well-established theories in the sociology of deviance to explain the real situation of a group of young people in China. Grounded on ‘4+1’ youth's immediate life, this research critically reviews and selects the most relevant theories to make sense of their deviant behaviour. To do so, it has avoided the stereotyped interpretation of youth problem into victim-blaming, context-striping variables such as broken homes, faulty upbringing or individual psychopathology.

Third, as a crucial group in society, young people's culture/subculture also takes up an important share of the overall societal culture and, more importantly, the future on which society builds. Therefore, ignoring or denying their culture/subculture will finally result in the falling apart of the whole society. By critically adopting subculture as an analytical tool, it offers an integral interpretation of ‘4+1’ youth's subculture, from the influence of structural factors to young people's agency.

It is believed that some of the implication drawn from this research will be relevant to other schools with common problems. Although this research does not directly offer solutions for youth problem, it has taken a crucial first step – to give a comprehensive understanding of a group of deviant students’ life. It is only with rich and authentic knowledge about young people that pertinent intervention becomes visible. According to the findings of this research, there are at least three domains we can work on to make a change.