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ABSTRACT
Little research has been conducted into the way citizens explain educational outcomes today. This is remarkable because scholars have always claimed that education as an institution contributes to a representation of society in which success is ‘achieved’ on strictly meritocratic grounds. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining public opinion on three explanations for educational success and failure – namely talent, effort and social background – in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Survey data (N = 1693) revealed that people are much more inclined to attribute educational success to effort and dedication when compared to educational failure. Contrary to the expectations derived from the literature on symbolic capital, ‘talent’ was not deemed very important by our respondents as an explanation for educational outcomes. In addition, higher educated people supported an explanation for school success or failure in terms of social background more than the less educated. The implications of our findings are discussed.
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Notes on contributors
Bram Spruyt
Bram Spruyt is an assistant professor of Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and member of the research group TOR. His main research interests include the sociology of education, cultural sociology and public opinion research. This paper is the outcome of a research project on education-based group identity. This project aims to assess how education-based social categories are used in daily interactions and contribute to the social reproduction of educational differentials in among other things political behavior, social participation and opinions.